Why, God?

Lord, thank you that we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but instead is a high priest who understands and identifies with us because he experienced in every respect the temptations and betrayals and the trials that we experience, even death itself. And Lord, because your Son experienced all of these things yet without sin, he is in the sole position of granting forgiveness to us. We who cave in the face of temptation, we who buckle under suffering, you have granted to us forgiveness. Thank you for being a God who redeems weak, broken, sinful people like us. I pray that our consideration of the sufferings of Christ tonight would increase our faith in the midst of trial and that we might even learn to rejoice in suffering, knowing that there's coming a day when there will be no more pain, no more tears, no more death. Thank you, God, that you will not leave us in the grave on the last day, but will resurrect us in Christ, in whose name I pray.

Amen. Psalm 22 is a psalm of both lament and thanksgiving. The first part of the psalm is full of trouble and doubt as it depicts the tension that exists in the heart of someone who at some level knows God and trusts God, but at another level cannot quite come to grips with the fact that he's suffering so intensely.

It's really an age-old question, isn't it? If God is sovereign and good, why are these bad things happening? If God is my God, why are these bad things happening to me? But the second half of Psalm 22 is the song of a saint who has come to realize that even though we may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, God never ceases to be sovereign nor does he cease to be good. He is a God who rescues his children. The fact that this psalm was on the lips of Jesus as he hung on the cross tells us something very important. It tells us that our suffering, and by our I mean those who are united to Christ by faith, our suffering ought to be viewed through the lens of Christ's suffering. This psalm is a psalm of David. He wrote it in the first person about himself, but we identify with the words of Jesus because when Jesus spoke these now famous words, his sufferings were so much more dire and profound than whatever David may have been going through at the time. That's not to belittle David's suffering, but it is to put David's suffering in perspective.

It also puts our suffering in perspective. When we say with David, my God, my God, why? Why is this happening to me? How can you let this happen?

Where are you? The one who was supposed to never leave me nor forsake me. When we ask these questions along with David, we're not asking anything that Jesus Christ did not ask. Only Jesus asked these questions in the midst of a suffering that our suffering cannot even come close to being compared to. If you're walking through a trial that seems inexplicably hard or unjust or unending, think of Christ. Look to Christ who endured the profound suffering of the cross and yet received the joy that came on the other side of that cross and keep on trusting that God is sovereign and God is good.

He will see his children through to the end. Well, the Psalm begins with a feeling of distress and abandonment. Verse 1, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? I think every Christian at one point or another feels this way. Life gets so difficult or so unpredictable or so out of control that it feels as if there is no divine order or favor directing the circumstances that are overwhelming the believer. And yet even in those lowest moments, we're often able to affirm something of the goodness and power of God. In spite of his doubt, David is still able to acknowledge in verse 3 that God is holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. He remembers that his ancestors trusted God. Verse 4, in you our fathers trusted. He remembers that not only did his ancestors trust God, but God rescued them.

He delivered them. He cannot deny the past, that host of great witnesses that surround suffering saints and remind us that God has always been faithful. And yet life for David at the current moment is not fine. God may have rescued my grandparents and great grandparents, David acknowledges, but verse 6, I am a worm and not a man.

Scorned by mankind, despised by the people, all who see me mock me. They make mouths at me, they wag their heads, he trusts in the Lord, let him deliver him. We get the sense in these opening verses that David is waffling between feelings and faith. There's a discrepancy between what he sees with his eyes and what he believes and knows with his spirit. Have you ever known that discrepancy? That contradiction between what you think you know about God and how he operates and what is actually happening in your life?

It's intense and it often feels unresolvable, irredeemable. Yet David cannot deny that God has been his God from birth and that he has proven himself to be a trustworthy God. Verse 9, you are he who took me from the womb, you made me trust you at my mother's breasts. David cannot deny that God is sovereign and that God's sovereignty is even the cause of David's faith. You made me trust you. If God is truly sovereign, then to whom else can David turn but God?

No one. And so we hear David's first cry for help in verse 11 and it's a pitiful plea for the presence of the Lord. David says, be not far from me for trouble is near and there is none to help. What kind of trouble was David up against?

Well, we don't know the historical timeframe of this psalm. What we do know is that David's trouble was an oversized extreme sort of trouble. His reference in verse 12 to the bulls of Bashan refers to a superior breed of livestock that was raised on the elevated plains of Bashan, a location that sat some 2,000 feet above sea level, received very consistent amounts of rainfall.

The crops and the livestock that came out of Bashan were the best in Israel. And so if David's trouble is comparable to the bulls of Bashan, he means that it's the biggest and the baddest sort of trouble. It's so troublesome in fact that mighty David, the warrior who withstood Goliath to his face and routed the Philistines was emptied of all courage and strength. Verse 14, I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within my breast. My strength is dried up like a potsherd and my tongue sticks to my jaws.

You lay me in the dust of death. Have you ever been so afraid, felt so vulnerable to some threat that your body just turns to jelly? The fear, the weariness, the distress just absolutely saps you of all strength. David felt that way.

You and I sometimes feel that way. But Jesus actually went through it. Slowly, physically, to the point in fact that he sweat great drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. His suffering was indeed the worst and the most intense suffering a person could experience. The allusions to Christ's suffering in this psalm and to his crucifixion specifically get increasingly more obvious.

Look at verse 16. Dogs encompass me. A company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet.

I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots. And the message of this psalm comes through loud and clear once again. The children of God need to view their own suffering through the lens of Christ's suffering.

Why? Because Christ's suffering puts our suffering in its proper perspective. There's nothing that you or I could possibly suffer that is as bad and painful and as hurtful and frightening as the suffering of the Son of God on the cross. And when we can learn to see our worst days from the vantage point of Christ's worst day, we realize that God does and is answering our plea for help. As David prays in verse 19, O Lord, do not be far off.

Come quickly to my aid. And as we echo that prayer in the midst of our own sufferings, we realize that in Christ, God has come to our aid. God has not forsaken us. In fact, he has done the one thing that fixes all suffering for all time. He has paid the price for sin by suffering not just at the hands of patience bulls, but at the hands of Heaven's bull. He has suffered the full wrath of God against sin.

So how is it a comfort? In the midst of our own suffering, to know that Christ suffered worse than we have or than we ever do. How does simply knowing that Christ has suffered help me cope with whatever it is I happen to be going through? Well, first of all, there is comfort in knowing that someone else has suffered as you have suffered and can identify with you and understand you.

And in the words of Hebrews 4.15, sympathize with you. I was talking with a brother in Christ a few days ago and we were talking about how there are times in this life when it feels like nobody gets us. Even those closest to us who know us better than anyone else. Loved ones whom we can confide in and vent to. Even they at times are unable to identify with our struggles, our vulnerabilities, our fears, our trials.

In another psalm, David expressed this sentiment in the most extreme terms. He said, when my father and my mother forsake me. Now that's the bottom of the barrel when one's own parents abandon even their parental love for you.

When my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me in. When no one else gets me, when no one else understands what I'm going through, when my suffering, at least in my mind, outranks everyone else's suffering. Christ is there, understanding, sympathizing, consoling.

How? Because he has suffered just like you and he has suffered far worse than you. Have you ever been in the middle of a complaint about some seemingly unfair providence in your life when someone begins to share their own difficult trial and you suddenly realize that their trial is ten times worse than yours? It puts everything in perspective, doesn't it?

It tempers your dissatisfaction, your discontentment. Christ's suffering puts our suffering into perspective. But there's another reason why viewing our suffering through the lens of Christ's suffering is a comfort, and it's that Christ's suffering is not merely an identification with our suffering. Christ's suffering actually fixes our suffering. Had Christ not suffered as he did, then our suffering, our pain, our death would be the end of it.

There'd be nothing left to hope for, look forward to, or delight in. Sin would lead to death and death would be the end of it, the period at the conclusion of the sentence. But Christ did suffer and he was raised from the dead.

He conquered death and sin and my flesh and the world and the devil. Everything that brings about suffering in the world has been defeated by the cross of Christ. To realize then that when I suffer, I'm not suffering as one who is without hope. I'm suffering as one who will ultimately overcome whatever trouble I'm in because Christ has overcome everything on my behalf.

There is great comfort in knowing that. I love how Paul put it in 1 Corinthians. He said, we are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. Christian, you can suffer your momentary light affliction because Christ Jesus has suffered the ultimate affliction on your behalf.

We need to learn to view our trials through the lens of Christ's suffering. And as we do this, we're able to join David in the second half of this psalm in which he is able to give thanks and praise to God for his deliverance. It begins in the second part of verse 21 where David's complaining ends and his praise of God takes over. He says there at the latter half of 21, you have rescued me from the horns of wild oxen. David affirms that God has rescued him and he never looks back. The rest of the psalm is occupied with words of praise and thanksgiving and trust and hope in God. And David cannot keep his sense of relief and joy to himself.

He has to share it with somebody. You see, when we view our suffering through the lens of Christ's suffering, we realize that it's all going to be okay. We are compelled by the sheer relief of this to tell other people. Look at what David does in verse 22. He says, I will tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation, I will praise you. He's not content to just thank God privately, silently in his bedroom.

No, he wants the whole congregation of Israel to hear about how God has rescued him. Have you ever been alone and seen a beautiful sunset but there's no one there to enjoy it with you? Have you ever experienced some answer to prayer, some providential provision and you cannot wait to tell someone? We are wired to want to publicly praise that which we admire and love and enjoy. In fact, part of the enjoyment of a thing is sharing that enjoyment with others.

C.S. Lewis wrote in his Reflections on the Psalms that praise is not fully consummated, fully enjoyed until it's expressed and shared publicly. If I am genuinely in awe of something, I want those around me to be in awe of it too. Lewis said this, he said, I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are. The delight is incomplete until it is expressed.

It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not be able to tell anyone how good he is. To come suddenly at the turn of the road upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than a tin can in the ditch. To hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. The Scotch Catechism, that's our catechism, Westminster, he calls it, the Scotch Catechism says that man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify him, God is inviting us to enjoy him. When we experience the enjoyment of God's rescue, we can't help but begin to glorify him for that rescue by telling others about it so that they can enter into the enjoyment with us. Well, David first shares his enthusiasm with the covenant community, with the congregation, with Israel.

But eventually he can't help himself and so he shares it with the whole world, with anyone who will listen. Look at verse 27. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord and all the families of the nations shall worship before you, for kingship belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations. Remember, this psalm is not just about David or about the experience of God's children. It's about Christ and the way his suffering turned into praise. When we hear David heralding to the nations that God is worthy of our worship and praise and delight, we should hear Jesus heralding to the nations that God is worthy of worship and praise and delight.

Why? Because God's rescue of sinners is for sinners from every nation and kindred and people and tongue. This divine rescue is not merely a David thing or an Israel thing.

It's not an individualistic experience that you have alone with God. Deliverance from sin and suffering and pain and tears, God's rescuing us from the bulls of Bashan is intended to be a public thing for the whole world to see and rejoice in. God's rescue extends across ethnic lines, Jews and Gentiles. Verse 27, all the ends of the earth, all the families of the nations are included. God's rescue extends across socioeconomic boundaries. Verse 29, all the prosperous of the earth Eden worshiped.

Before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive. In other words, God's deliverance is for both rich and poor. God's rescue spans across generational divides, uniting the elderly to those who are yet unborn. Verse 30, posterity shall serve him. It shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation.

They shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn that he has done it, that God has rescued suffering sinners. And so David's suffering has turned to praise. Our suffering can turn to praise when we view it through the lens of Christ's suffering and all that his redemptive work has accomplished. I don't know what you're going through right now, and even if you told me, I wouldn't necessarily be able to identify with your particular agony or fear or pain, nor could you with mine.

But brothers and sisters, I know someone who can identify. In fact, I know the one who has suffered far more than any of us, and through his suffering, our suffering will ultimately be brought to a good and a happy end. So parent who lays awake at night crying for the soul of your wayward child, young person who worries and frets about a future that is terrifyingly out of your control, elderly saint whose life here is quickly approaching an unknown end, you who are so laden with care and fear and worry and frustration that all you know to do is to stop and pray, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? If Christ is your savior, God has not forsaken you, and he will never forsake you. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross. Despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. Church Christ has come, Christ has died, Christ is alive. God will never leave you or forsake you.

It really is going to be okay. Let's pray. Father, suffering is painful, and you don't belittle our pain, but Lord, you do want us to view our pain and suffering rightly, and you've shown us that the right way to view it is for us to recognize that while we deserve to suffer, Christ has actually suffered undeservedly on our behalf that we might be rescued from the very thing we deserve. Lord, help us to understand that awesome grace, and as we understand it, may it give us stamina to suffer well, with hope and even with joy, knowing that the delights of heaven await us. O God, rescue us that we might rejoice in you. In Jesus' name, amen.