Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening and now
for today's program. I'd like to welcome you to our
program today. I'm glad you could join us. And
I pray and hope the Lord will bless you through the preaching
of his word, as we're going to look at Psalm 22. If you'd like
to follow along in your scriptures, I've got two messages on this
Psalm. And you know, all of the Psalms
are Christ-centered. gospel-centered messages, psalms
or songs, S-O-N-G-S. Some of them were actually sung,
some were just quoted or read, but they're all Christ-centered. But you're going to see from
the outset that this Psalm is truly Christ-centered. Just the
language itself will ring clear to you. And many of the scholars
call it the Psalm of the Cross. And that's what I'm entitling
these messages, these two messages out of this Psalm 22. The Psalm
of the Cross, this is part one. And it starts out in verse one,
Psalm 22, verse one. where David writes, this is a
Psalm of David, he says, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? Now immediately you may recognize
that as one of the sayings of Christ on the cross, quoting
here from Psalm 22. And so this Psalm ultimately,
spiritually, eternally, in an eternal way, is wrapped up in
the glorious person and the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ
on the cross. Now, we don't wanna deny that
there is some application to King David here. And there is. In a temporal, in a very limited,
earthly way, David can be speaking of himself This is during a time
of trouble, probably whenever King Saul was after David, trying
to kill David. And David felt forsaken and he
goes through here and he talks about how all things are against
him. But David himself was a type and a picture of the Lord Jesus
Christ. So what I'm saying is this, yes,
you can see there are limited and temporal and physical applications
to King David here. But the ultimate spiritual eternal
application and lesson for us is wrapped up only in the Lord
Jesus Christ, who was David's savior. The Lord Jesus Christ,
the glory of this person, who is Jesus Christ? He is God manifest
in the flesh. And it's an amazing thing here
when we apply this to Christ, which it is applied to Christ,
and I'll show you down through some of these scriptures too.
when he says in verse one, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? Why art thou so far from helping
me? And that word help is salvation,
far from my salvation and from the words of my Rory. And this
is a mind-boggling truth that can only be explained by the
word of God. because here's the Lord Jesus
Christ crying out from the cross. Now, why is he on the cross?
Well, he came into the, the reason he was on the cross was because
before the foundation of the world, before the world began,
before God created the world, God the Father chose him, God
the Son, to be the surety of his people. And to be the surety
of his people, that means that he took upon himself the responsibility
of the debt of his people. Now, what debt did they owe?
Well, as time went on, Adam fell and we fell in Adam and brought
into the world in sin and death and depravity. It's their sin
debt. So those whom God chose and gave
to Christ, their debt was put upon him. And therefore, in order
for him to pay the debt, what did he have to do? Well, he's
God the Son. You see, the Trinity, God the
Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. That's one God,
not three gods, but one God in three persons. And I know that's
a mind-boggling truth in and of itself. We can't really explain
it or even illustrate it. But here is God the Son crying
out on the cross to God the Father, my God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? Now what we need to understand
is this, there is a, in that transaction, Christ came to the
earth, he became incarnate, the scripture says, that means he
took on himself the likeness of a sinful flesh, but without
sin, The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. That's Christ.
So as the second person of the Trinity, co-equal with the Father
and with the Spirit, He is God. But as God-man, as God with us,
Emmanuel, Matthew 1.23, He submitted himself to the law and to his
father. And you remember, he said, I
came not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me.
He was not denying his deity there, as some say. He was showing
his submission to the father for the purposes of saving his
people from their sins. He was made of a woman, Galatians
4 tells us, 4-4. And He was made, in the fullness
of time, God sent forth His Son, in verse 5, made of a woman,
that's His incarnation, His holy, sinless humanity, united with
His deity, God-man, what a thought that is. And He was made under
the law. Okay, that means he became accountable
to the law to do for his people, God's elect, what they could
not do for themselves. And that is we could not save
ourselves. We could not satisfy the justice of the law. So Christ
was made under the law. And it goes on to say to do what?
To redeem them that were under the law. So, We see a submission
of the father, of the son rather, to the father, the son as God
manifest in the flesh, as God-man, that's his mediatorial, the old
theologians, he's the mediator. And his mediatorial office. So having the sins of God's chosen
people imputed to him, their debt charged to him, He came
to this earth, became incarnate, obeyed the law perfectly unto
death, and substituted Himself on the cross to die for the sins
of His sheep. And He had redeemed them. So
while on that cross, there was a legal separation between the
Father and the Son based upon the sins of God's elect charged
to Christ. And so the father forsook the
son in a legal way because Christ died, came under the condemnation
of the law for the sins of his people. He was made a curse for
us, the scripture says. He was made sin, 2 Corinthians
5.21 says. That means sin was imputed to
him. And so while he was suffering in his holy humanity on that
cross, dying for the sins of his sheep, in his agony and in
his pain, in his suffering, he cried out, my God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me? And David goes on writing here,
why art thou so far from helping me and from the words of my roaring? Now see, Christ as the substitute
of his people could not be saved from the death that he had to
die. He had to suffer unto death. The Bible says it behooved him. That's in Hebrews chapter two.
I believe it's verse 16 or 17, I can't remember, but it behooved
him, B-E-H-O-V-E-D, it behooved him to suffer, to die. That word behooved is the Greek
word for debt. He had a debt that he owed. It
was not a debt that he incurred and ran up, it was the debt that
his people incurred and ran up. We're the sinners. Christ is
the sin bearer. He had sin imputed to him. So
it behooved him to suffer, to bleed, to die for the sins of
his people. And so when he says on the cross,
as it's recorded in the scriptures, my God, my God, in Matthew 27
and Mark 15, he said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? He's not asking a question to get information. He knew exactly
why the father forsook him. He told his disciples that in
his lifetime. He said, when they tried to stop
him from going into Jerusalem, because they knew what would
happen to him. They knew he would be arrested and suffer and all
of that. They knew that the Pharisees
wanted to kill him. And he told them, he said, this
is the reason I came into the world. At his baptism, he testified
of that. His baptism, he went down into
the water and came up, showing his death, burial, and resurrection.
And he told John the Baptist, he said, suffer to be so for
us to fulfill all righteousness. This is what he had to do in
order to fulfill the righteousness and the justice of the law for
his people. Having their sins imputed to
him, the righteousness that He worked out on the cross by being
forsaken of the Father, by dying the death that He died. He worked
out a perfect righteousness which the Father has imputed to all
of His people. That's justification. And that's
why He had to be buried and He arose again the third day because
He satisfied justice. Look at verse two of Psalm 22.
He says, oh my God, I cry in the daytime that thou hearest
not in the night season and am not silent. In other words, his
suffering. That's what this is describing.
Now David himself was suffering as he was being pursued by Saul
and being almost killed. But this is talking about Christ. And he says in verse three, but
thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. You see,
this is no reflection on God as if to say that He's doing
something that's cruel or something that is wrong or sinful. God is holy. Now, the holiness
of God describes God's uniqueness. You see, this is how God reveals
himself in the one way that, well, there's many ways, but
actually the one main way that no other God and I idols could
reveal themselves. He's both a just God and a savior. So it's through the death of
Christ that he saved his people from their sins and Christ being
successful as indicated by his resurrection from the dead. And
he says in verse four, our fathers trusted in thee. When you think
about the fathers here, he's specifically talking about Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, Joseph. They trusted in thee. They trusted
and thou didst deliver them. They were delivered. Verse five,
they cried unto thee and were delivered. They trusted in thee
and were not confounded. The Bible says he that believes
in Christ shall not be confounded. There'll be no confusion. There'll
be no disappointment. But I want you to look at verse
six specifically. David, the King David, David
knew himself to be a sinner. He knew that he was a sinful
man. And he knew that if God were to give him at any time
what he deserved or what he earned, it would be death and hell. David
himself, in Psalm 130, verse three, he said, Lord, if thou,
Lord, shouldest mark iniquity, who would stand? He wrote in
Psalm 32, he said, blessed is the man, verse two, blessed is
the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. Psalm 51, we could
go through and talk about this. But here's Christ speaking. And
listen to these words. Now Christ didn't say these words
literally on the cross. The only one he said on the cross
was, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But this describes
his situation as the substitute for sinners dying in their place
to satisfy God's justice, bring forth righteousness and redeem
them from their sins. And it says here, look at verse
six, he says, but I am a worm and no man, a reproach of men
and despised of the people. Now, obviously here, he's speaking
of how sinners by nature, all of us by nature, look at him
and view him. He goes on in verse seven, he
says, all they that see me laugh me to scorn. You see, that's
what Christ went through. He went through the humiliation.
of people, sinful people. And he says, they shoot out the
lip, they shake the head, saying, he trusted on the Lord, verse
eight, that he would deliver him. Let him deliver him, seeing
he delighted in him. If you're God, come down from
the cross. That's the kind of derision that
people had for him. But he trusted in the Lord, verse
eight. He did trust in the Lord. Sinful
people said that mocking him. He trusted in the Lord. Now look
at him. He's on a cross dying. He did trust in the Lord. He
trusted in his father to deliver him out. But go back to this
verse six. Here's something that's very
interesting. But I am a worm and no man. Now,
how could Christ say that? Well, he certainly was less than
human in the eyes of men. But this word worm here is an
interesting word. In the Hebrew, it's the word
tola. And what it's referring to, it
was the crimson worm whose blood, red blood, was used to make the
dye coloring that was used in the priestly garments, the high
priest. And in the tabernacle, any of
the cloth that was red, there was red and there was white,
and any that was red, this is the Tola worm that it was used. And what it represents is redemption
by sacrifice. And it's translated worm, you
wouldn't see that from just looking at it. But let me give you another
passage where it's used. It's in Isaiah chapter one. Isaiah
chapter one and verse 18. Now this verse here is a command
and a call of the gospel. And Isaiah writes in Isaiah 1.18,
come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord, though your sins
be as scarlet. Now scarlet's a red color. Though
they shall be white as snow. Now, how's that possible? Though
your sins shine forth, obviously, in God's sight, they'll be white
as snow. How's that possible? Well, he
says, though they be red like crimson. Now, that word crimson
is the exact same word that's translated worm in Psalm 22 six. The tola worm. It says, though
they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. You see that? That worm there is talking about
the redemption price. And there's another passage I
want you to see on that. Look over at the book of Job,
chapter 25. Now this is a short chapter. This is Bildad the Shuhite, one
of Job's friends speaking. And he says in verse four, this
is Job 25, just six verses, but let's just read verse four through
six. He says, how then can man be
justified with God? What a question. Or how can he
be clean that is born of woman? Now that's the question of questions.
How can a sinner, a sinful man who deserves nothing but death
and hell be justified before God, be forgiven on a just ground,
be made righteous, declared righteous before God, how can that be?
He says in verse five, behold, even to the moon and it shineth
not, yea, the stars are not pure in his sight. This is how holy
God is. And so he says in verse six,
how much less man that is a worm and the son of man which is a
worm. Now look at that in verse six. The first word worm, how
much less man that is a worm, that's another Hebrew word, it's
rimah, and it's what we refer to as a maggot. And that's how
he describes sinful man. But when he comes to the son
of man, that's Christ, which is a worm, that's the word tolah.
That same word back here in Psalm 22, six, it's the crimson worm,
which speaks of redemption. And what it's talking about,
look back at Psalm 22 six, but I am a worm and no man, a reproach
of men and despised of the people. That's how sinful man looked
at Christ, not realizing that this is the redeemer of his people. Why was Christ on that cross?
The Bible says in Isaiah 53 that we esteemed him not, we looked
upon him as smitten of God. We looked upon Christ, naturally,
in our sinfulness, we looked upon Christ as one who was cursed
of God and deserved what he got. Well, listen to me, you gotta
be careful here now. Christ went under the wrath of
his father justly, but not for his own sins, They became His
by imputation. In another Messianic Psalm, it
speaks, in Psalm 69, it speaks of Him calling those sins His
own, not because He committed them, not because they were imparted
to Him or infused into Him or corrupted Him in His mind, affections,
and words, only because they were imputed to Him. Our debt,
the debt of God's chosen people became His, became His debt. And he paid the debt. And that's
what he's saying. Look back at Psalm 22. He says
in verse nine, he says, but thou art he that took me out of the
womb. Thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breast. Verse 10, I was cast upon thee
from the womb. Thou art my God from my mother's
belly. See, he always had perfect faith
in the Lord God. The Bible speaks of a salvation
of sinners by the faith of Christ, the faithfulness of Christ. And
that's his faithfulness. He never winced, he never got
his mind off of what his task was to do. Even in the garden
when he said, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, he
wasn't doubting or disbelieving. He was going through suffering
and in his humanity, things that he'd never experienced before
because in his humanity, he'd never suffered like that. Verse
11, but be not far from me for trouble is near for there is
none to help. There's no helper. Christ walked
the winepress of God's wrath alone. Not even his disciples
were with him, they forsook him. He did it alone. By His one offering
alone He accomplished it. And that's the gospel. The gospel
is salvation and all of its blessings and benefits conditioned on Christ
and on Him alone. And he fulfilled those conditions
and secured the salvation of everyone for whom he died. He
goes on, verse 12, many bulls have compassed me, surrounded
me, strong bulls of Bashan have beset me around the best of the
best. Verse 13, they gaped upon me
with their mouths as a ravening and roaring lion. I'm poured
out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is
like wax. It is melted in the midst of
my mouth. See, this is describing his suffering. Like no other. Verse 15, my strength is dried
up like a potsherd, like a broken pot, a piece of a broken pot.
My tongue cleaveth to my jaws, and thou hast brought me into
the dust of death, for dogs have compassed me, surrounded me.
The assembly of the wicked hath enclosed me. And look at this,
now this directly to Christ. They pierced my hands and feet.
Verse 17, I may tell all my bones, they look and stare upon me.
They part my garments, verse 18, among them and cast lots
upon my vesture. They cast lots, you remember
their soldiers did that for his robe. Verse 19, but be thou not
far from me, O Lord, O my strength, haste thee to help me. Verse
20, deliver my soul from the sword and my darling from the
power of the dog. And then he says in verse 21,
save me from the lion's mouth for thou hast heard me from the
horns of the unicorns. That's Christ's suffering. And
don't get bogged down when the Bible uses terms like unicorn. I had a man tell me one time
that he didn't believe the Bible was true because it thought unicorns
were real, you know, the horse with the one on. Some say that
he's talking about like rhinoceroses or something like that. The Bible
recognized that man has myths and it may use some of those
myths to describe metaphorically these things. And here it's talking
about the sufferings unto death of the Lord Jesus Christ. who
died for the sins of his people, being made that worm, that crimson
worm, that crimson flow of blood that Christ poured out his soul
as an offering for sin, suffering unto death to establish the only
righteousness whereby God could be just. to justify ungodly sinners. And that's what he had to do.
And that's why he cried, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? That's why he died and was buried
and arose again the third day. He arose perfectly from all of
this suffering, having accomplished redemption for his people. And it was by the shedding of
his blood, by his death, that righteousness was established
for his people. all of this describing his untold
sufferings, his pain, his sorrow, some of the things that went
through his mind. We don't know We don't know everything that
went through his mind in this suffering and how he felt, but
we're given some idea in passages like this and in the actual historical
references to the cross, the prophecies of Isaiah, for example,
Isaiah 53. Christ suffered from the cross,
and he was saved from death by his resurrection from death.
He wasn't saved from death in that he didn't die. He died,
but he arose again the third day. And that was his only, that
was his obedience unto death for the sins of his people. That's
how he established righteousness for his people. And that's how
he saved his people from their sins. He who was made sin by
imputation of sins to him, we're made the righteousness of God
in him, all who believe. I hope you'll join us next week
for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
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today and may the Lord be with you.