Heavenly Father, thank you for
your mercy to us, for giving us your word, especially for
giving us your Son, and giving us your Spirit through your Son,
that we might know him, that we might trust him. We might
hope to the end, we pray, Lord, to continue your mercy to us,
continue your grace to us, so that as we, in our sinful weakness
and our unbelief, have our ups and our downs, that you would
remain faithful and continue all the grace you have begun
to give us in trusting Christ, and you would perfect the work
that you started, and we would not be left to ourselves. Above
all things, Lord, we pray to save us from our sins according
to your promise. in the Lord Jesus Christ, our
Savior and our Lord. In his name we pray. Amen. Psalm
69. Now, as we have seen in the last
two parts, the Lord Jesus Christ is speaking in this psalm. And
I believe that these were his words during that time when he
began to suffer in the Garden of Gethsemane until he cried
from the cross, it is finished. There were quotations from this
psalm at other times in his ministry, for example in John chapter 2.
But even in that quotation in John chapter 2 where he told
the Jews, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise
it up again, he was referring to the temple of his body. And
so he at that time also was referring to his bearing the sins and the
wrath of God for our sins in his own person, in his suffering
for our salvation. So, it's clear from this, from
the many quotations in the New Testament, and from the nature
of this psalm, that it speaks of Christ as our surety, that
it is speaking of the Lord Jesus himself. And he prays here as
one who needs salvation. Look at verse 1, and this is
going to, I'm going to read the first three verses and comment.
He says, Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my
soul. That tells us that it wasn't
just a superficial suffering like other men suffer in body,
but this was a suffering in his very soul. It was in his body,
but it wasn't his entire human nature, body and soul. Save me,
O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep
mire. where there is no standing. I
am coming to deep waters where the floods overflow me." So below
him, there was no support. Above him, the waters were over
his head. And the waters that he refers
to here, he compares to mire, deep mire. And you know mire
is filthy, it's foul, it's disgusting. There's no way to stand up in
it. And it reminds us of that phrase God uses to describe hell,
the bottomless pit. And the flood overflowing him
reminds us of Noah and the flood that came upon the entire earth
in the days of Noah when they were in the ark and were saved
in the ark. Also, Jonah was in that flood,
and Jesus compares Jonah's time in the belly of the great fish
to his time in the heart of the earth. So in all these cases
we see, and especially in Psalm 88, God compares the wrath of
God to a flood overflowing him. So we know this has to do with
the wrath of God, and the wrath of God is upon us only for our
sin, but this is the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ
suffered. And that's what we learn from
this psalm. He suffered and it's clear that this suffering was
not trivial. It consumed his whole being. He says here in verse 3, I am
weary of my crying, my throat is dried, my eyes fail while
I wait for my God. And I love the way that he speaks
so endearingly to his father and his God. He speaks to him
as my God because in his suffering here. He's suffering as a man. He who was suffering as man is
certainly God in one person, but here we see him suffering
as a man, because man sinned and only man could die and man
could suffer. But here we see this in his place
here as our last and second Adam, him suffering for us in order
to fulfill our obedience and to answer God in righteousness
for all of our sins with his own blood. Alright. So he's weary
of his crying. So we see here, first of all,
that he suffered. Second, here we see that Christ
prayed. We see here that he was in this place needing salvation. That means that he was in the
hand and at the mercy of God. He had no way of getting out
of this unless God saved him. And that's because he was there
for our sin. And that's the way he prays here. Save me, O God. He's utterly
dependent. And he doesn't pray to anyone
but God. He doesn't cry out for Abraham,
as the rich man in hell did. He doesn't cry out for Job or
Noah or Isaiah, none of the prophets. He cries out to the Lord, his
God. He doesn't cry out to his apostles. He doesn't cry out
to his mother, as the Catholics so idolatrously like to say. He cries only to God. And that's
what we see here. And the other thing we see here
in verse three, while I wait for my God. And this teaches
us that he waited on God. He didn't try to deliver himself
before the time. Everything he did, he waited
on God. And this is also what we must
do, what we ought to do in all of our troubles, is to wait to
pray, to cry out for salvation. We can't save ourselves. Cry
to the Lord alone and to depend on Him and wait on Him. Like
it says in the book of 1 Peter, we entrust ourselves, we commit
ourselves to the hand of a faithful Creator, a faithful Savior, a
faithful Redeemer. And so we see that in here. So
Christ waited He says, mine eyes fail while I wait for my God.
He didn't act to deliver himself. He endured so much more than
Moses, and Moses endured as seeing him who is invisible. The Lord
Jesus Christ endured here, trusting God as a man who needed saving. But he wasn't crying out as a
single man only, but as a man with all of his people with him,
because he was suffering as the surati. You also notice, he says
here in, let's see, where did I see that
here? It's right here, standing in
front of me. Well, I'll probably see it. I
was going to point out that he calls on the Lord, he calls himself
the Lord's servant, but maybe that's in a verse that I haven't
come to yet. So let's go on here. And then in verse 4, notice verse
4, I'm just going to walk through the whole psalm here. He says,
they that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my
head. So the first thing we see here is that the Lord Jesus Christ,
while he was doing the will of God, And this is so significant. What is he doing? Why was he
on earth? To do the will of his father, to finish his father's
work, to glorify his father in all that he did. And while he
was doing that, in his words, in his teaching, in his compassion,
in his miracles, in the way that he silenced the false teachers,
the way that he quoted scripture and then taught what it meant,
the way he revealed the grace of God and the truth of how God
would save, all the things that he did. Everything he did was
holy and right, but while he was doing that, he was hated.
he was hated. And this shows us the nature
of our sinful selves, that by nature, this is what we are,
haters of God. It says in Romans 1 verse 30,
we are haters of God. In Romans 8, 7, it says the carnal
mind, that's what we are naturally, is enmity, hostility against
God. So these things are fearful when
we consider that these men who so hated Christ, when He was
doing the will of God, that's what we are by nature. And the
only way that you and I can be saved from our sin as if the
Lord here, who is calling on his God and Father, actually
saves us from our sins. And this is the way he does it,
through his redeeming death. So he says, they that hate me
without a cause, there was no reason in Christ that any should
hate him. There was every reason in Christ
that men should adore and worship and love him. But they didn't.
They hated him without a cause. And I think that's the greatest
crime of humanity, is that we hate the Lord Jesus Christ, the
one that we should love above all others, with everything that
we have. That's the first commandment,
and it's natural. I mean, it's perfectly holy. It's good that
we would love the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the only one true.
the only one that can be believed, the only righteous one, the only
one who is good in everything. He's faithful and everything
about him is wonderful, and yet we don't love him, and that's
a big, big crime. They hate me without a cause.
They're more than the hairs of my head. They that would destroy
me, being my enemies wrongfully, are mighty. So he was in weakness
against his enemies here. He had submitted himself in weakness. Remember, in the Garden of Gethsemane,
when the soldiers came for him, if you seek me, then let these
go their way. But that was after he asked them,
whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth.
He said, I am. And they fell backward to the
ground. And after they got up, he asked them again, whom seek
ye? And then when they said, Jesus of Nazareth, he said, I
am, but if you seek me, let these go their way. So his submission
in weakness was a willing submission. He had the power, but he didn't
exercise that power to deliver himself. He was not using his
power as God over his enemies. He was submitting himself as
a man under the justice and the law of God in order to fulfill
that law, both for penalty and for precept. And so he submitted
himself to that. And he says, while I was doing
this, while I was pursuing the will of God to do it, to finish
it, the salvation of his people, and I was hated then, then I
restored that which I took not away. It was because of His redeeming
work that He restored everything that we took away by our sin. We robbed God of His glory because
we refused to give the honor and praise and worship to Him,
but by our sin we tried to exalt ourselves and to give, to take
our lives and use it the way we want rather than acknowledging
that God is our Creator, He's our Master, our Lord, and He's
good. No, we're going to see better ways to use our life than
He would have us and we serve ourselves. So we took away God's
glory in that way. And we also lost our inheritance. Remember in Adam, when we sinned,
we lost life. Our spiritual life was taken
from us. We were dead to God, dead in
sins. Christ restored everything. He not only restored God's glory,
but He gave us. He gave us life that we lost
in our sinning. He gave us an eternal inheritance
where we lost a life that was tenuous based on our personal
obedience. He restored everything. What
a wonderful Savior the Lord Jesus Christ is. He gives us more than
we could ask or think. What a magnificent Savior, that
in order to do that, He had to suffer the hatred of our nature
from men God had designed to bring against Him, to pour out
upon Him the wrath that we personally deserve, but He bore because
He bore our sins. All right, so he was hated, and
he restored what he didn't take away, and this is a wonderful
thing that God always does more than we expect, especially in
the matter of our salvation. He not only delivers us from
our sin and the wrath due to us, but he makes us his children,
and he gives us a place at his right hand, seated with Christ
in the heavens, and makes us heirs of God and joint heirs
with Christ. unbelievable, unspeakable, immeasurable,
incomprehensible grace and mercy, all in the Lord Jesus Christ,
because He did this. And that's what we get from this
psalm. One man for the people, suffering all in order to restore
all, and beyond all that we could ever imagine. All right. Then he says in verse 5, O God,
thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from
thee. Now this is proof that he bore our sins. He had no sin
of his own. He knew no sin. He did no sin.
In him was no sin. In him is no sin. He cannot lie. He is the truth. There's no shadow
of turning in him. He's God overall. And as man,
he's holy. He was born, conceived of the
Spirit of God. He's that holy thing that was
conceived by the Spirit of God in the womb of Mary, so there's
no sin in Him. But He bore our sins, and that's
why He says, O God, thou knowest my foolishness. Now, God knows
every sin that we've ever committed, either in thought, word, or deed.
He knows the motives of our hearts, and He has an accounting that
is perfectly accurate. And He will render to every man
according to his deeds, as it says in Romans chapter 2. He's
going to pay back what we rendered to Him by our sinning. He's accumulated
what we've rendered and He'll render it back again. But here
we see that He is rendering the accounting of our sins to the
Lord Jesus Christ. And Christ willingly has stooped
to take these sins that are ours, the sins of God's elect, and
bear them as his own. So he cries, thou knowest my
foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee. And this is
consistent with the high priest in Leviticus 16, verse 21 and
22, where the high priest laid his hands on the head of the
scapegoat and confessed upon that head of that goat all the
sins of the children of Israel placing those sins on the head
of that goat and then sent that goat out into the land uninhabited
by the hand of a fit man. So he is the high priest, he's
the goat, he confessed the sins of his people over, and he's
the fit man that took that goat out into the wilderness and led
himself out there where he was forgotten out of mind in the
grave. Our sins were buried and put
out of God's remembrance there. given, they were placed on him
and he bore them and he confessed them and so they were on him
and God is not going to require those sins which he paid for,
he's not going to require payment from his people. That's the reason
he gave his son. So here we see that he bore our
sins, he fulfilled his pledge to be our surety, he kept the
obligations of the covenant, he entered with God, and he put
every promise into force for his elect when he suffered for
us as our surety, when he shed his blood, and the result of
that is that he brought us to God. 1 Peter 3.18, he suffered
the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God as our
surety. Alright, and then in verse 6
of Psalm 69, he says, Let not them that wait on thee, O Lord
God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake. Let not those that seek
thee be confounded or confused for my sake. Now, On the road
to Emmaus, remember in Luke chapter 24, the two on the road to Emmaus
were explaining to Jesus, before they knew who he was, that they
were expecting him to be the Redeemer, that God would raise
him up to deliver them from their enemies and be the Redeemer. They trusted that he was, but
they didn't understand how could he do that now that he was buried.
And they didn't realize that he had risen from the dead, or
at least they didn't believe the report that was told to them
by the women. So these men were in a state
of confusion. But here notice how compassionate
the Lord Jesus is for his people. He's praying here for his disciples. In his suffering, he's praying
for his people. And that should tell us so much
that even in his sufferings, the Lord Jesus Christ's concern
was for his people. He was thinking not of himself,
but of them. And so his prayers to God for
himself were really prayers to God for himself with his people
as one with them. Remember, he loved the church
and gave himself for it. The church is his bride, his
wife. members of His flesh, of His bones, and of His body, one
with Him. So that in all that He suffered,
we suffered too. And His sufferings, and His death,
and His burial, and His resurrection, we were with Him, in Him. And
all that He did, we did in Him. And all that came upon Him, came
upon us in Him. And all that was given to Him,
was given to us in Him. and with him. And that's the
amazing wonder of God's wisdom of grace and salvation, that
he would do this for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. So he expresses
his prayer to God for his people. He doesn't want them to be ashamed
for his sake, because he clearly is suffering such great reproach
that he can't be recognized. He was a man of sorrows, and
the men who reproached him accused him of being a sinner. They called
him a Samaritan. They said he had a devil. They
said he was a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, and that he
associated with, he entertained sinners and harlots, and so there
was every reproach that was brought upon him, and they reproached
him even in his death. They claimed that he couldn't
be all that he said he was, the son of God, because God obviously
had delivered him into their hands, and they had power over
him, so they were mocking him. mocking him with a cruel, and
they were doing all sorts of other things too, but he's suffering
this reproach, and he knows that this will cause his own people
to be confused, and they will be ashamed of the one that they
trusted. But he asks his father, he asks
his father to keep them, he asks his father to be with them, because
he's suffering all that he's suffering for his father's sake,
and he knows that it is for his people, he's doing it for them,
And so he's praying this way for his people and for the shame
that he was bearing for his father. And of course, the reproach that
he suffered was the reproach that came from us against God
by our sin. He's suffering reproach because
our sins brought reproach to God. We, by our idolatrous thoughts, by our pride
motives, by our covetous motives to be honored and worshiped in
the place of God, in the place of Christ. All those things were
horrible heart sins and sins of word and sins of rebellion
and sins of action, serving ourselves And this is the nature of sin,
it comes from our heart, it works its way out, and it brings reproach. God would not own a people that
were such sinners, and so that reproach is against God. But
Christ bore it, in order that He might remove it. But bearing
that caused confusion to His people, because they didn't understand
it, so He prays this way. And then in verse 8, he says,
I am become a stranger to my brethren, an alien to my mother's
children. His family didn't know him, didn't
know that he was Christ, didn't know he was the son of God, didn't
know he came to save or redeem his people. They heard what he
said. He grew up with them, and they
saw him all their lives, and they were blind to it, because
that's the nature of our understanding. Unless God gives us understanding,
we can't know him. And so we see this, no matter
how close we are physically related to Christ, whether we were born
to Abraham or lived in the same household, that's not going to
save us. God has to save us by changing
our heart, giving us a sight from our blindness, life from
our deadness, and feet to walk, and hands to handle, and mouth
to taste, and desire, and be satisfied only with Christ and
Him crucified. He says in the next verse, in
verse 9, for the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up, and the
reproaches of them that reproach thee are fallen upon me. Here
he's saying, I was consumed by my zeal for your people. That's
the house he's talking about. The house here is the house of
God, the household of God, all of God's people, all of his elect. He's going to save them. They're
God's family, his children, and Christ's brethren. He's married
to them, and so He's praying for them. This zeal of His, it
says in Hebrews chapter 12, that the Lord Jesus, for the joy that
was set before Him, endured the cross. That's the zeal that consumed
Him. He endured the cross. The cross
consumed him, suffering and death of the cross consumed him, despising
the shame, it goes on in Hebrews 12 to, despising the shame, and
that's what we read about in this psalm, the reproach, and
now is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. He
looked forward to the joyous reconciliation of his people
with himself in love and in holiness with his father, so that they
would be joined to him in one, in union. And this was a sweet,
joyous thought to him. that he could have these sinners
that he loved from eternity and pledged himself in life and death
to give himself for, that he would have them. And so it was
that joy that enabled him to endure the shame of the cross.
He despised the shame, but he endured it because of the joy
set before him of having his people with him, the house God
had given him. The reproach that he had fallen
upon me, he was consumed by that zeal for his people. In verse
10, 11, and 12, he says this, when I wept and chastened my
soul with fasting, that was to my reproach. I made sackcloth
also my garment, and I became a proverb to them. They that
sit in the gate speak against me, and I was the song of the
drunkards. The drunkards were mocking him. So those who saw the Lord Jesus
Christ saw him weeping in sorrow. They saw in him that he was a
man of sorrows. And because of his shame, because of his suffering,
they spoke against him. And they heaped up their reproaches
against him by mocking, by hitting, by beatings, whipping him, by
the crown of thorns, the robe that mocked him. They stripped
him of the robe. They put it back on him. They hit him in
the face. They took a reed and hit him with the reed on the
head. They had the crown of thorns
on his head. All that they did to him, all the suffering, spitting
in his face and telling him to prophesy and to say who hit him
after they put a cloth over his head, all this was reproach that
they were bringing upon him. They were acting as if they had
power over the Son of God. And he bore it in silence, trusting
God. He didn't revile them again. He didn't come back against them
as one who was unjustly handled. He committed himself to his father
because he was bearing the reproaches of his people. I want to look
at Romans chapter 15. This is quoted, quoting this
psalm in Romans 15, the first three verses. I'll just read
this to you. You can see here, the love of
the Lord Jesus Christ for his people. Paul is concluding, he
says, we then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities
of the weak and not to please ourselves. To please ourselves
means to go about living for ourselves. Don't please yourself,
the Lord says, bear the infirmities of the weak. He goes on, let
every one of us please his neighbor for his good to edification.
And then here's the underlying foundation for this exhortation. He says, for even Christ pleased
not himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of them that reproach
thee fell on me. So when we are bearing the weaknesses
of our brethren in church for whatever their weakness is, and
we're receiving them as Christ himself, because God received
us as he received Christ for his sake. That's what he's talking
about there. Christ bearing our reproaches,
then let us bear the weaknesses of our brethren. It's just a
slight hardly to be measured with in
any way what Christ suffered, yet it's the same principle.
He bore our weaknesses, didn't he? then we can bear the weaknesses,
the slight offenses of our brothers against us. We can bear it, we
can pray for them, we can give them the gospel that we so desperately
need ourselves, and thus the church becomes a hospital for
sinners, which is what it's supposed to be. Jesus said in Matthew
25, when I was hungry, you gave me meat. Thirsty, you gave me
drink. When I was naked, you clothed
me. When I was sick, you visited me. When I was in prison, you
came to me." All these things you did in the church because
that's what sinners need. They need the gospel fed to them
for drink and for covering and for comfort in sickness and in
prison. All these things. We're desperately
in need of a salvation that reaches to our soul and only the gospel
can do that. All right. So when he was weeping
in sorrow, it says here that they heaped up or they added
reproach to him. He was the song of the drunkards.
They made mockery of him and all of this. But in Hebrews chapter
5, it tells us what was happening here. In verse 7, he says this, who in the days of his flesh
when he had offered up prayers and supplications, that's what
he's doing in this psalm, prayers and supplications, was strong
crying and tears to him that was able to save him from death
and was heard in that he feared though he were a son, yet learned
he obedience by the things which he suffered and being made perfect. Perfect in sufferings, in obedience,
in love. He became the author of eternal
and salvation to all them that obey Him. In the experience of
those things, in the experience of suffering, the experience
of giving Himself for those sinful people that we are in order to
bring us to God, the just for the unjust, what a Savior. Alright,
then in verse 13, of Psalm 69. He says, but as for me, my prayer
is unto thee, O Lord, in an acceptable time. O God, in the multitude
of thy mercy, hear me in the truth of thy salvation. deliver
me out of the mire, let me not sink, let me be delivered from
them that hate me, and out of the deep waters, and let not
the water flood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow
me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me." You see,
he cries out of this to God, he really is trusting God and
expecting an answer of mercy, isn't he? My prayer is unto thee,
in the multitude of thy mercy, hear me. He believes God will
hear him. That's what faith is. And so
you can see here, he's asking to be delivered and to be delivered
in a time acceptable to God. to God his Father, a time appointed,
a time of God's choosing. This is trust, isn't it? This
is waiting. And he prayed to God only. He didn't pray to any
other. He prayed for mercy, and he prayed
that God would save him in the truth of his salvation. He doesn't
want God to compromise his holiness. He wants to be saved in righteousness. He goes on, and this is very
parallel to what Psalm 22 is all about, where it says in Psalm
22, let me read a couple of verses there to you, in Psalm 22, just
to refresh our memories. Verse one of Psalm 22, my God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from
helping me and from the words of my roaring? This is expressing
Christ's real, sense of being forsaken. It was a real sense
of being forsaken. Oh my God, I cry in the daytime,
but thou hearest not. In the night season, and I'm
not silent, but thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises
of Israel. You see that? Also in Psalm 22
in verse 8, it says, they accused him, he trusted on the Lord that
he would deliver him, Well, let him deliver him, seeing he delighted
in him. And then in the last verse of
that Psalm, Psalm 31, he says, they shall come and shall declare
his righteousness to a people that shall be born that he has
done this. So you see here the trust of
the Lord Jesus Christ in his sufferings. He absolutely trusted
God. That's what they accused him
of, and it was true. The verb there means he rolled
himself upon the Lord, his God, upon Jehovah. That's what it
says in verse 8. His trusting was rolling himself. He just leaned back and he cast
all of his hope on God's faithfulness and His mercy. He pleaded, back
in Psalm 69, In Psalm 69 and verse 14, he says, deliver me
out of the mire and let me not sink. Let me be delivered from
them that hate me and out of the deep mire. And then in verse
15, let not the water flood overflow me. neither let the deep swallow
me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me." So he pleaded
to his God, he asked him to deliver him out of the very wrath and
the hatred and persecution that he was bearing for our sins,
and then to receive his sufferings This is why he's praying this
way, to receive his sufferings as the full answer and his obedience
as the full obedience of righteousness on the basis for why our sins
are forgiven and we are justified and God is glorified. That's
the basis of this prayer here. He's asking God to deliver him
out of the very wrath that he was suffering, which wrath he
suffered for our sins, and therefore he's asking these things to be
done by God because he himself is suffering as the answer to
God's justice and His obedience in His sufferings and love is
the full fulfillment of His righteousness. And then, therefore, on that
ground, on the redemption, the basis of the redemption of Christ,
precious blood, our sins are forgiven, we are justified, and
this is the way God is glorified in all of our salvation. God
is glorified in our salvation without compromise. He doesn't
He doesn't do this in a corner. There's a song by Paul Overstreet, and it's really
a song to his wife, but he says, I'll stand on the highest mountain
and I'll declare my love to you so that all the world can hear. And I'll let it echo through
the deepest, darkest canyon. and words to that effect. So
this is what we see in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus
Christ stood on Mount Calvary, as it were, hanging on the cross,
declaring his love for his bride. from the tallest mountain and
let it echo through the deepest, darkest canyon. And he wouldn't
let that love go in a shadow. He made it public. And so God
challenges the entire universe, angels, In heaven, devils in
hell, anyone on earth, who shall lay anything to the charge of
God's elect? Stand up! Now is the time to
speak, because it is God who justifies. And so you see that
in this prayer of Christ, he's praying for the deliverance of
himself with his people, because he is the one suffering by the
will of God for them. Then, in verse 16 of Psalm 69,
it says, Hear me, O Lord, for thy lovingkindness is good. Turn
to me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies. Here we
see him pleading, and this time he's pleading not just his sufferings,
not just his engagement as our surety, but he's pleading his
father's lovingkindness and his tender mercies as a reason why
his father would deliver him. In other words, he's asking God
to magnify his name, his person, who he is, in his tender mercies
and his loving kindness, which is a mercy and a kindness based
on justice satisfied. He goes on in verse 17, "...and
hide not thy face from thy servant, for I am in trouble. Hear me
speedily." Here's that place where I thought the word servant
was mentioned earlier. He's now pleading as the servant. What I'm doing is what you gave
me to do. He's telling the Lord, I'm your
servant. Everything you gave me to do,
I am doing. I'm fulfilling it. Therefore,
again, he's pleading not only on the basis of his sufferings
and death that made satisfaction and fulfilled righteousness,
and on his father's loving kindness and his mercies, but now, because
this was what his father gave him to do, and as a servant of
the Lord, he was fulfilling it. So now he's asking God to receive
his service as the fulfillment, and honor his servant who did
what he was given to do. And he goes on here, He asks
for swift deliverance. Notice, I am in trouble, hear
me speedily. That's what he says in verse
17. I'm in trouble, hear me speedily. When he began to suffer, of course,
he bore the, it says in Matthew 8, 17, I think, that he himself
took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses, and that was
the basis on which he was healing the sick. It was because he would
bear their sicknesses himself. And so in that sense, the entire
time of Christ's life was a time of suffering. But it came to
a point at Gethsemane, didn't it? And it was in the garden
when he said he began to be heavy, very sorrowful and very heavy,
and sore amazed. so that he sweat great drops
of blood. And then of course, for all the time of his suffering
until he died on the cross, it was a painful, painful suffering. And so even though that time
in the larger scheme of things seemed short, during that suffering,
he was looking for the deliverance to come speedily. It's one thing
for us to feel alienated from God, But the Lord Jesus Christ
from eternity was face to face with his Father in perfect union
of mind and will and glory and power and honor. And so for him
to be alienated from God for but a moment, is beyond belief,
but here he's suffering this time, and so he's praying to
deliver me speedily. And it would come speedily in
that sense, because he was delivered when God raised him from the
dead. And then he says, let's see, in the next verse, he says
in verse 18, draw nigh to my soul and redeem it. Deliver me
because of mine enemies." Now here, notice, he asked the Lord,
his God, to return to him and draw near to his soul. As I mentioned
in John 1 verses 1 through 3, he speaks about the word was
with God, and the word with in John 1 verse 1 and 2 means face
to face. with God face-to-face in perfect
complacency and satisfaction and pleasure and delight. If
you can imagine that, look into the face of your wife, if you're
a husband, and think about how much delight she gives to you
for being your wife. through thick and thin, so faithfully
loving and all that, and you begin to get a sense of that
deep communion that exists between a husband and wife, and here
this is between the father and the son, there's nothing between
them. that would separate or be a shadow
of anything hiding face to face. And yet he asks his God now in
his dire condition, he says, draw near to my soul and redeem
it. He asked God to draw near. He
was drowning in the waters of the wrath of God. He suffered
that wrath willingly in love because he would accomplish his
father's will. He was made sin for us that we
might be made the righteousness of God in him. And he asked his
father to redeem him." Now notice this. This is important. He asked him to redeem him. What
is required for redemption? A price has to be paid, right?
A price has to be paid. So here, a payment must be paid,
a ransom must be rendered, his blood was the price, he suffered
the just for the unjust, and he's asking the Lord, he's asking
his God to receive me, receive this offering of myself in sacrifice,
of total submission as a servant of the Lord, under the wrath
of God, bearing the sins, trusting all the while, praising God,
thanking Him, and declaring Him to be the Lord, the God, the
Holy One, and saving Him, and saving Him. So redeem me, not
for Himself, because He's not paying for His own soul, but
His people have been so joined to Him that the payment of Himself
was given for them, and He would be redeemed if they were redeemed.
He would not be redeemed if they were not redeemed. So his redemption
is our redemption. His resurrection is our resurrection.
His justification is our justification. Everything he's praying for here
is the reason why we so delight in this psalm, don't we? What
time is it? All right. And then in verse
18, he says, he asked to be delivered because of the merciless, cruel,
injustice of his enemies who hated him and his God and Father.
There's another reason. These enemies, they're unjust,
they're cruel, they're merciless. Deliver me from them. Now, in verse 19, he says, thou
hast known my reproach and my shame and my dishonor. My adversaries
are all before thee. So he pours out his heart in
trust. He's trusting God to consider his suffering condition. He has
an expectation. You know my reproach, my shame,
and my dishonor. All my adversaries are before
thee. Reproach has broken my heart. I'm full of heaviness.
I looked for some to take pity. There was none. I looked for
comforters. I found none. And they gave me
also gall for my meat, and my thirst they gave me vinegar to
drink." His heart broken because of shame, the shame of our sin,
the sins which he bore. He was delivered for our offenses.
That's why he was in the shame. And then, notice, in his thirst
of soul and body, what did they give him? Gall and vinegar. And what is gall? I didn't know
what it was until I looked it up here. You know what gall is? It's actually the same word that's
used in Deuteronomy 32-33. You can look it up later. It's
in the notes. And Job 20 verse 16. Gall is a bitter, poisonous
herb. It's also the same word that's
translated venom of serpents and poison of serpents. And so
they gave him poison to drink when he was thirsty. I thirst. And so they gave him poison and
vinegar mixed together. He didn't drink it, but that's
what they gave him. Can you imagine the cruelty?
This is the kind of stuff that people do, isn't it? This is
what sinners do. This is what sin is all about.
The cruelty they showed to one who was so compassionate. He
only did good to the souls of men and to their bodies, and
yet they gave him poison to drink in his thirst when he was dying,
doing the will of God, the only one who ever did, and here he
is dying for that, and they gave him this. Let those thoughts
just reflect on us. And then he says in verse 22,
now the next few verses from verse 22 all the way through
verse 28, I'll just read through these. This is him, the Lord
Jesus, interceding against these people, not his people, against
those who are not his people, but those who afflicted him in
his sufferings. He says in verse 22, let their
table become a snare before them. In other words, what should have
been the table that should have directed them to the bread of
life, let it be a snare. And that which should have been
for their welfare, let it become a trap. These things that God
gave in the Old Testament, the things he had in scripture concerning
Christ, it should have been if they searched the scriptures
for Christ, for their welfare, but they didn't look for it for
that way. They kept looking for ways they could earn their salvation. Let their eyes be darkened that
they may not see. and make their loins continually
to shake, like those who are trembling in fear. Pour out thine
indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold
of them. Let their habitation be desolate, in other words,
nobody's there. And let none dwell in their tents,
for they persecute him whom thou hast smitten, and they talk to
the grief of those whom thou hast wounded. add iniquity to
their iniquity, and let them not come unto thy righteousness. Let them be blotted out of the
book of the living and not be written with the righteous."
The book that the righteous are written in is the book of life.
We know that everyone in that book is righteous, and we know
everyone that's righteous is only righteous because of the
righteousness of Christ. And what the Lord is saying here,
is leave them in their sins and add to their sins. And that's
something that as you think about those words of Christ, that's
the last thing that you want, isn't it? And don't you, when
you read those words, don't you immediately think in your heart,
Lord, don't let me be with them, let me be with you. And so when
we find that prayer, that cry of our heart coming out, we should
be encouraged that God would give us that, because it's the
humble and the poor that the Lord is near to. So he made a
supplication against them, and I'll refer you to places like
Romans 11 where it talks about this. But remember how Pharaoh
was humbled? Why was Pharaoh humbled so much
by God? Two reasons. One, because he exalted himself
against God and God's people. And two, because God raised him
up to show his power in him. And so it's the same thing here.
It's the same thing throughout scripture. God will destroy those
who think to bring evil against his son and his people. That
was the devil's motive, to kill Christ and to kill his people
with him. And that was the motive of those
who were in the kingdom of Satan, who then brought this upon Christ. And unless we're translated from
the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God's dear Son, that's
the way we'll behave. And so we say, Lord, don't let
me be left to myself like that. Pharaoh was destroyed with his
armies, Satan is going to be destroyed with his armies, and
all who are trusting their own works instead of Christ's. All
right, so I'm going to let you refer to the notes for the rest
of this, but I want to bring just a couple of points here
at the end. What is the effect of this? What
is the effect of this prayer on us? Well, first, there's an
effect in heaven and in our conscience by the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
through the preaching of the gospel. The Lord Jesus Christ
fulfilled all of the everlasting covenant. He put it into force.
He made us God's children, even the heirs of God, mature heirs
of God. And all the wrath of God against
us has passed away. All of our sins have been forgotten.
God remembers them no more. And by His life, by His endless
life, we'll be saved to the uttermost. He obtained for us an eternal
redemption. He blotted out our sins. He put
them away as far as the east is from the west. He perfected
forever them that are sanctified. He's done all of this by himself. We have access into the presence
of God in all of his holiness with boldness only by the blood
of Jesus because of his blood. So these are all the things that
this psalm is teaching us and many more. But there's another
effect that this psalm has, and it's the effect that it has in
our hearts. And that is that the Lord Jesus Christ becomes
the one we adore. As in Revelation 5, all the songs
of the redeemed were to him, they say, blessing and honor
and glory and power and everything be given to him. And so he's
worshipped, and God is worshipped in spirit and in truth because
of this psalm. All thanksgiving and praise for Christ is continuously
rendered from his people. And also, God is praised by the
Lord Jesus Christ with his people. And this is phenomenal to think
about. You see that here in verse 30. God is glorified. God is pleased. We have been
given faith in such a great Redeemer. We have confidence and assurance
before God, all because of Christ and His precious blood. And all
of this faith produces love to Christ and love to God and love
for His people in us. We're humbled by this grace and
we receive one another. in the weakness of our brethren,
all for Christ's sake, because He received us and bore our reproaches,
all to the glory of God." What a wonderful salvation. Judgment
has passed on our Savior, and we will not come into condemnation. And we therefore don't judge
our brethren, we leave that to the Lord, and we trust the Lord
to do what's right, and we exhort one another And we preach the
gospel to one another because that's our life, and all of our
life, all of our salvation, and all glory are in Christ and belong
to Christ, and we trust Him for everything. And we don't have
a middle ground, do we? We're either all in Christ and
have no righteousness of our own or we're only in our sin
and we're going to face God in judgment. There's no middle ground. And there's also no middle ground
between what Christ did and He gave everything, didn't He? He
gave Himself. He gave Himself in suffering
and obedience and humiliation. And so we live our lives and
we pray that God would grant us this grace to make to give
our bodies as a living sacrifice and not be conformed to this
world, but to follow Christ in everything. It's amazing what
the gospel does to us, isn't it? It's such a blessing. Saves us and changes our heart
and causes us to worship God. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for your great mercy to us. Help us to be always humbled
by the gospel of what our Lord Jesus Christ suffered, all for
sinners' sake, for our sake, because of our sin against Him
and against God. Help us to trust Him with all
of our heart, and to thank and praise Him, and to hear His words,
and admire Him, and adore Him, and worship Him, and God in Him,
and help us to love one another. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.