Now I've entitled this message,
The Holy of Holies. And the reason I've entitled
it that is because what went on in the Holy of Holies on the
Day of Atonement is what is being spoken of in this psalm as it
was carried out in reality by our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember,
the blood of animals can never put away sin. And so when the
high priest of Israel would go into the most holy place with
the blood of a sacrifice and pour it out on that mercy seat
there on the Ark of the Covenant, it did not put a single sin away.
I'm sure that it was a most awesome experience for the high priest
because the glory of God filled that place. We realize that, as Solomon said,
the heaven of the heavens cannot contain you, much less this house
that I have built for you. But God represented his presence
among the Jews somehow or another back there, such that not only
did the high priest go back there with blood, he went back there
with a censer full of smoking coals to fill the room with smoke
so that he wouldn't get a clear view of whatever of the presence
of God was visible. It was awesome to the high priest
on that day. It must have been, for a high
priest that understood anything about God, it must have been
a terrifying day. Because as we are taught, our
God is a consuming fire. And if you come before him without the proper sacrifice,
you're dead, you're done. And so even as the high priest
went into that, shall we call it typical presence of God there
in the most holy place, with merely typical blood, yet he
realized that his natural life was at stake, that everything
be done right, perfectly, flawlessly. If they had offered an animal,
with spot and blemish or broken leg or something. That wouldn't
have been good enough, and he'd have been struck dead in the
presence of God. If he'd not followed the pattern
perfectly, dead. I remember we used to have a
test in high school, in college. Of course, I never aimed for
perfection, but I did want to pass. There's some anxiety. How difficult's the test gonna
be? Imagine taking a test where your life depends on it, and
you must be perfect. That's what the high priest faced
once a year. But all of that was merely a symbol of what would
be carried out by the Lord Jesus Christ when he offered himself
without spot to God, and that occurred on the cross of Calvary. And this 22nd Psalm, written
by David, who himself prefigured the Lord Jesus, well, it's so obviously a psalm
concerning the suffering Savior as he pours out his soul unto
death as a sacrifice to put away sin. He begins with what must
be the most, when I use the word pathetic,
I don't mean bad. That's not really what the word
means. It means to be full of sorrow and pain. But there could not be anything
sadder. Anything for which you ought
to have more sympathy on a person. Then if this were true of them,
our Lord cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Our Lord uttered these very words
on the cross. In fact, some speculate he was
quoting entire passages of scripture, and maybe that's what gave that
thief on the cross a clue as to who he is. The Holy Spirit
enabled him to put together what was happening on the cross and
what that person on the cross was saying. But our Lord cried
this out, and you know something? He is the only person on earth
who could say it and it be true to the degree it was true of
him. I know sometimes we feel forsaken. But our Lord said this,
I will never leave you nor forsake you. That's the Lord's promise
to his people. So whatever you feel, understand
this, you have not been forsaken. Not if you belong to God. Those
in hell could say they had been forsaken, but they wouldn't be
surprised by that. They had turned their back on
God. They had rebelled against him.
They'd know full well why God had delivered them over to an
eternity utterly separate from his mercy and goodness. But here
is the spotless lamb of God, that one who did always those
things that pleased his father, the one who said, it is my food
to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. And
he has been forsaken. And in the depths of his agony,
as he feels forsaken by his God, left utterly to the punishment
of the sins that he bore, he cries out, my God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving
me? Paul said, we are nearer our
salvation than we first began. Sometimes I feel like I'm pretty
far from it. I know what Paul meant. He just
meant time has passed. We aren't anymore saved. But
we're nearer to that time when the fullness of salvation will
be worked in us. That he who began a good work
in us will perfect it. And we're closer to that day
than we were when we first believed. But there are times when we feel
as though the Lord is very far away from us. But he never is. He's always
right at hand. He is called a very present help
in time of need. When it seems as though he's
far away, that's only our faulty perception of what's going on,
but it was the truth with regard to our Lord Jesus Christ. He
was surrounded by enemies who hated him, and as it were, God backed up. Why are you so far from saving
me and so far from the words of my groaning? When our Lord Jesus Christ suffered
for our sins, in fact, even before he was nailed to the cross, he
was in the garden of Gethsemane and he was pouring out his heart
to his father. He knew what was coming, not
just a crucifixion. Lots of people have been crucified. He knew that sin would be charged
to him. He knew that he would be held
guilty in the sight of God, his father. And he knew what the
result of that would be. And even there in the garden,
he was under such stress, it says that he sweat, as it were,
great drops of blood. I've read that there is a medical
condition to account for that. that you can be under such stress
that the capillaries around your pores in your skin break. And
therefore when, you know, that stress sweat comes out on you,
there's blood mingled with it. That's the level of stress our
Lord was under. And he was still in the Garden
of Gethsemane just thinking about what's coming ahead. Here, oh my. Have you ever tried to
pray in such trouble of heart that there were no words? That you really couldn't say
what was on your heart, because maybe
you didn't even know for sure. You just knew you were in an
awful state. And inwardly, you just groaned,
maybe even literally. Our Lord says, you're so far
from the words of my groaning. Why does a person groan? We groan
when we're under a burden we cannot bear. What burden was
our Lord under? He bore our sins in his body
on the tree. And he groaned under the weight
of it. Oh my God, I cry out by day,
but you do not answer. By night, I am not silent. At nighttime in Gethsemane, he
cried out and said, Father, if there's any way this cup can
pass from me, by any other means than me drinking it, nevertheless,
Not my will, but yours. And the father made no answer,
which was in itself an answer. And by day, he hung on that tree
and cried out, and no one answered. I know what it feels like to
pray and think that no one heard. But when we have that feeling,
we have the promise that He hears us. We have the promise that
He will never fail to answer us in the way that is best for
us. It may not be in the way we were
looking for, but we always have from our Father what is good
for us. In all reality, the Lord Jesus
Christ is the only one that ever prayed like he did and got no
answer. Verse three, we see something
though of the virtue of our Lord Jesus. He says, yet you are enthroned
as a holy one. You are the praise of Israel. Even though he's hanging on the
tree, suffering for sins he did not do, he did not find fault
with his God. He said, you are enthroned, you
are the sovereign, and you are the holy one. There is no impurity, no injustice
with you. You know, one of the things that
indicates that a person has come to some kind of understanding
of his own sinfulness and of the righteousness of God is that
he does not find fault with God punishing him if that's his will. Would you agree with God if you
stood before him? And he said, I see sin on you. And he remanded you to an eternity
of suffering. Would you find fault with that?
I couldn't. Now, I don't expect
that to happen. Why? Because he's made promises
regarding those who have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ and the
work that Christ has done. But do you see yourself, when
you look at yourself apart from Christ, do you see someone who
you would acknowledge is worthy of the wrath of God? Well, hold
on, I made some mistakes. I've done some things wrong,
you know, but I'm doing the best I can and I'm better than most
people. You're missing the point here. It's not something we have to
dwell on. But it is something we've got
to come to realize and confess. This is part of what it means
to confess sins. To confess sins doesn't merely
mean to say, I did such and such a bad thing. The word means to
say the same thing. So it means not only that we
agree to the charge that we are guilty, we agree to the significance
of that guilt, which is that we deserve God's condemnation. Now, our Lord Jesus Christ was
bearing sins that he himself did not commit. He was suffering
for those sins. And yet even he said, you're
the sovereign and you're the holy one. I find no fault in
what you're doing. In you, our fathers put their
trust. They trusted and you delivered them. They cried to you and were
saved. In you, they trusted and were
not disappointed. Verse six, but I am a worm and
not a man. You know, you and I were born
in sin. David says, I was conceived in sin, in iniquity, and in sin
did my mother conceive me. I was shapen in iniquity. What he means is at the moment
of conception, he was a sinner. And throughout the process of
going from being a single cell within his mother's womb and
it multiplying and dividing into the various organs that make
up a complete human being. He said, through all of that,
I was a sinner. That's what David said. He said, I came forth from the
womb speaking lies. And we haven't stopped sinning
since we started. And so we're so accustomed to
sin, it's rare when we actually feel the filth of our own nature
and are revolted by it. But here is the perfect one,
the spotless one, suddenly polluted with the sins of an uncountable
host of sinners. And he says, I am a worm. And
this isn't even an earthworm that you could make good use
of. Actually, what it's talking about is a maggot. I've never heard
anybody say, I like maggots. I wish I were a maggot. There's hardly anything more
loathsome to us than maggots. And yet the Lord, who knew that
he was bearing sins not his own, yet within himself, and I don't
know how to describe this, I don't know how to explain it, yet he
felt filthy. with our filth. I am a worm. I'm not even a man. I'm not what
man was created to be. I'm not what man should be. I'm
just a beast. Scorned by men and despised by
the people. All who see me mock me. They
hurl insults, shaking their heads. He trusts in the Lord. Let the
Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him since he
delights in him. People falsely accuse us and
we get upset, but we also know this, they may have falsely accused
us, but if they knew the truth, it wouldn't be any better. Our Lord, while it was right
for God to accuse him, because he bore sin in the sight of God,
it was right for God to accuse him. It wasn't right for men
to do it. They had no right to point the
finger at him. and charge him with sin. And
yet they mocked him. They insulted him. And they said he trusts the Lord.
Well, let's just watch and see if the Lord will come to his
rescue. And that's what they said. That's what they said. And they rejoiced in his suffering. Verse nine, you brought me out
of the womb. You made me trust in you even at my mother's breast.
From birth, I was cast upon you. From my mother's womb, you have
been my God. Do you realize he's the only
human being that that's true about them? Adam and Eve began
their existence trusting in God, but they were never in the womb.
They were never born. They were just created from the
hand of God. The only human being in all of
history who trusted God from the moment of his human existence
and throughout his entire life, the only one who loved God from
the moment of his human existence is the man Christ Jesus. The lady was at Brother Donny
Bell's church, or where Donny Bell was preaching one time,
and I guess she didn't really care for something he'd said
about sin. And she said, well, I've loved God all my life. And
he said, that's too long. You haven't loved God all your
life. People say, well, I got nothing against God. That's because
you've never met him. The natural man does not receive the things
of the Spirit of God. The natural man despises the
things of God. And unless and until God changes
the heart They just go right on despising him. Do not be far from me for trouble
is near and there's no one to help. Many bulls surround me.
Strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. Roaring lions tearing their
prey open their mouths wide against me. These were his enemies. This was the devil. who goes
about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. You know
why he'll never devour us? Because he opened his mouth wide
against the Lord Jesus Christ. Now understand that the devil,
in his fury, entering the hearts of his agents there in that time. He was not the one who exacted
the penalty for sin from our Lord. There's only one that could
do that, and that's God. But the devil did heap upon him
whatever suffering he was able to do. And our Lord says, I am
poured out like water. I can't remember the exact text, but I believe it was a woman
arguing with King David about doing something, but she
said, it's like water poured out on
the ground that cannot be recovered. And she was simply illustrating
a principle that there are things that can happen which cannot
be undone. You pour water on the ground,
it's just gone. He says, I'm poured out like
water. And all my bones are out of joint. This is a literal fact of the
human suffering of crucifixion. That's part of the purpose and
design of crucifixion, is not only to kill, but to inflict
as much pain as possible. And one of them is that the bones
go out of joint. You can't hang by your arms like
that for very long. Your muscles cannot
hold you together. And when they weaken, It pulls
the bones out of joint. To my knowledge, I've never really
had a bone out of joint, at least not seriously. You know, I've
had all of us, you know, our elbow might need popped or something
like that. I've heard about people like
their shoulder goes out of joint and it hurts when it goes out
of joint and it hurts a lot when they put it back. Horrible, horrible
pain. My heart has turned to wax It
has melted within me. And I imagine that this is a
description of actually how he felt. He was probably horribly
dehydrated, having been beaten to within an inch of his life
and already lost a lot of blood before he ever got to Calvary.
He lost more there. Physically speaking, it's all
his heart can do to pump what blood he's got and get it to
move around. And it doubtless was, overworked, but more than
this, that metaphorical heart, the inner man, it's just melted away in him. Everything about our inner selves
that makes us wake up and get up in the morning gives us a
little bit of hope about what lies ahead. All of that was robbed,
taken from the Lord Jesus Christ. My strength is dried up like
a pot shirt and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You
lay me in the dust of death. Dog, well, I don't wanna move
away from that. I wanna make one point here.
It's something that most Christians don't understand. Our Lord's
suffering, Oh, there was some suffering inflicted on him by
men, but that's not the suffering that saved us. Our Lord Jesus
Christ here through the mouth of David is speaking to God and
he says, you lay me in the dust of death. It is written, he spared not
his own son, but delivered him up for us all. God didn't spare
him. He laid on him the iniquity of
all his wandering sheep and then laid upon him every stripe, every
pain, every agonizing torment worthy of those sins. Dogs have surrounded me, a band
of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and
my feet. You know, this is one of those
proofs of the validity of scripture that a thousand years before
our Lord lived on the earth and before anybody had ever even
invented crucifixion, David says, they pierced my hands
and my feet. What made him think that? I mean,
nobody was doing that. Holy men of God spoke as they
were moved by the Holy Spirit. Says Paul, that's how David knew
that. They divide my garments among
them and cast lots from my clothing. And they did exactly that. I can count all my bones. People
stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among
them and cast lots from my clothing. But you, O Lord, be not far off. Oh, my strength, come quickly
to help me. Deliver my life from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the
mouth of the lion. Save me from the horns of the
wild oxen. Now, I suppose we could draw
some illustrations from each of those animals, but let's just
gather them all together. And what our Lord is saying is,
I am surrounded by difficulties I cannot overcome. You see, our
Lord did not save us by overcoming the suffering laid upon Him. He died. That's not overcoming
suffering. That's falling to it. Our Lord
could have. I mean, all he had to do, he
said at any point, he could call on his Father. He could say,
okay, not your will, my will now. Send some angels. And the
Father would have done it. He could have, by his own divine
power, opposed everything put against him. He could have sustained
himself by his divine power, but he didn't. He faced all of
these things as a human being, and they were more than he could
endure. And therefore he calls on God
to rescue him. You say, well, is there any parallel
to that in the New Testament in our Lord's suffering and what
he said from the cross? Yeah, his very last words. Father, into your hands, I commit
my spirit. What's he saying there? I can't
save my spirit. I cannot. bring me back from
the dead. He surrendered himself to death. And he went into death not with the knowledge or the
expectation that he would overcome it by his own power. He said,
I commit myself, my spirit, to my father. And that's why the
Bible always says God raised him from the dead. You see, our work, our Lord's
work, was not a work of power in the sense that we normally
think of the word power. It was a work of submission. It was a work of surrendering. It said he made himself of no
reputation. And being found in fashion as
a man and in the likeness of sinful flesh, he became obedient
to death, even the death of the cross. The Lord of life became
obedient and submissive to death. And surrendered himself to his
father, his father's care. Well, what's the result of all
this? Verse 22, I will declare your name to my brothers in the
congregation. I will praise you. Now, we don't
have a record in the New Testament of our Lord uttering these words,
but it is quite plausible, quite probable that he didn't just
cry out these few little snippets here in Psalm 22. The entire
Psalm was on his mind. And even as he hung there dying
for our sins, he's saying, I will declare your name to my brothers. So our Lord is in agony of death,
agony of death in its ultimate sense of the word, and yet even
then such was his faith in his God that he knew that after the
suffering of his soul, he would see the light of life. God would
not abandon him to the grave, nor allow his holy one to see
corruption. How little trial it takes to
bowl our faith over. And here our Lord is suffering
the greatest trial ever suffered by any man. And he says, but
I will declare your name to my brothers. He had a confident expectation
of the resurrection of the dead and that he would be coming back.
And when he came back, he was going to declare the name of
his God to his brothers. Now to declare the name of God
doesn't mean to just tell people that God's name is Jehovah or
Yahweh or Yavah or however you want to pronounce it. To declare
someone's name meant to tell who and what they are. Now, we
just use a name so that we don't have to say, hey, you. But in times past, names had,
they said something about the person who had them. And so to
declare someone's name meant to describe them. So he says,
I will declare your name. I will tell them who you are. I will tell them of your righteousness. I will tell them of your justice
and your holiness. And I will also tell them of
your love and mercy and grace. I will declare your name to my
brothers. Now, who's that? Didn't say, I'll declare your
name to the entire world. He said, I'll declare your name
to my brothers. That's us. In the book of Hebrews, it says, and this is shocking,
he is not ashamed to call us brothers. Nearly every family
has somebody in it that you kind of wish wasn't part of the family.
That's your brother? Yeah. Who knows, maybe that's us. Maybe
we're that one. Maybe I just never seen my parents
or sisters. All of us are the black sheep
of the family. And yet the only white sheep
of the family, our Lord Jesus Christ, is not ashamed to own
us as his brethren. God forgive us that we're ever
ashamed to own him as our brother in the face of this world. Brothers. In the congregation,
I'll praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise
him. All you descendants of Jacob, Jacob the scoundrel, honor him,
revere him, all you descendants of Israel. For he has not despised
or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one. He has not
hidden his face from him, but has listened to his cry for help."
Oh, so much in that. There are people, most who call
themselves Christians, claim that God actually does despise
and disdain the suffering of Jesus Christ and his afflictions
for sin. You say, how do they do that?
Because they said, they'll tell people that Jesus Christ suffered
for the sins of some people who will still end up in hell. I know this. I would never give
any of my children for somebody else. I'm not like God. But if
I did, I guarantee you that I would honor their lives to such a degree
that whatever was to be purchased by their lives was actually obtained. And yet they'll preach up that
the Lord Jesus Christ suffered under the wrath of God and then some of those for whom
he suffered perish anyway. That means that God had no regard
for his suffering. No, he will not disdain it. Were
my sins laid on Christ? If they were, they'll never be
laid on me. Jesus Christ may have been despised
and rejected of men, but he was not despised and rejected of
God. not when he had finished his sufferings. You can be sure
that everyone for whom Christ suffered will be redeemed. From you comes the theme of my
praise is verse 25 in the Great Assembly. Before those who fear
you, I will fulfill my vows. He promised to save his people
and he will. He says, I've come to seek and
to save that which was lost. I remember the first time I heard
preaching in this fashion was Henry Mahan. He quoted that scripture. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I've
come to seek and to save that which is lost. And Henry said,
and he is going to seek, find, and save everybody who's lost.
You say, well, isn't everybody lost? He said, no, just ask them. Everybody who's lost. The Lord
will find them and the Lord will save them. He will fulfill his
vows. He promised the Father. He said
of God's chosen people, he said, they were yours and you gave
them to me and I have not lost one. And he won't. The poor will eat and be satisfied.
They who seek the Lord will praise him. Oh, we who by the Spirit
of God have been made poor and needy, who know that in ourselves
we are nothing, we're poor, but we're the poor who feast
in the king's house. Verse 27, all the ends of the
earth will remember and turn to the Lord. What's he prophesying
of there? That this work that he did was
not just for Israel. He was not confined to that little
patch of real estate there on the eastern side of the Mediterranean. For a long time, the truth of
God had pretty well been isolated to that little spot. But once
Christ, who is the truth of God, once he fulfills the work he
came to do, it's like an explosion. spread all over the world. In
fact, Paul said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it
is the power of God and salvation. That word translated power is
dunamis. It comes in our English as dynamite. All the aliens of the earth will
remember and turn to the Lord. You know who he was talking about
when he said, he's talking about you and me. We aren't Jews. We
would have just been in darkness. We'd have never heard the truth,
but for this. Dominion belongs to the Lord
and he rules over the nations. All the rich of the earth will
feast and worship. All who go down to the dust will
kneel before him. Those who cannot keep themselves
alive. Even those who think they're
rich He will, by His Spirit, impoverish
them in their own eyes. And they will realize they cannot
keep themselves alive, and they will turn to Him. Posterity will
serve Him. Future generations will be told
about the Lord. They will proclaim His righteousness
to a people not yet born. That's you and me. We are told about a righteousness
not one that we produce, but one that we receive as a gift
from God. We were told about that. That's why we rest. That's why
we quit trying to produce a righteousness God can accept, because he can
never accept ours. But not only that, he produced
one for us. It says he has clothed us in
garments of salvation. It's not a robe that we wove
and sewed and however you make robes. It's one made entirely
of the doing and the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ. They will
proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn. And then
the most blessed words in all of scripture. For he has done it. He has done it. Our Lord said
those words from the cross, except instead of saying he, since he's
the one that did it, he just said, it is finished. I have
done it. I have done everything that God
sent me to do. I have done and endured everything
a holy and righteous God could do in response to sin. I have redeemed. I have made
atonement. I have done it. He didn't make the salvation
of his people possible. He saved them. He didn't make
it so that we could redeem ourselves. He redeemed us. He did not provide
us the means to make atonement for ourselves. He made atonement
for us. For every one of you who believes,
you can be assured of this. Before you ever believed, He
had done it. And you didn't, you aren't saved
because you believed. You believed. because God saved
you through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He has done it,
and because he's done, there's nothing more for us to do. As has been said, the difference
between life and death, between the true gospel and the false
gospel, is just two letters. Most of the world's religions
Most of Christianity says do, Christ says done. So we should appreciate the letters
N and E, for they are our soul's salvation.