How to Recognize True Repentance #1

What was Christ thinking on the cross? Well, the words of Psalm 22 were on his lips, and the lips speak that which fills the heart.

Hello, I'm Bill Wright, and you've found the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Well, Don, how should we approach Calvary? What do you hope listeners will come away with from this message? You know, Christ suffered more than physical pain on the cross. Somehow he endured the agony of eternal punishment in his soul so that your sins could be forgiven. Can you imagine anything more humbling to your heart? Has there ever been a friend like Jesus who loved you enough to suffer so greatly so that your sins could be forgiven? We're going to look deeply into the glory of Christ today as we study on the Truth Pulpit. Here's Don Green with part one of The Cross of Christ here on the Truth Pulpit. The Apostle Paul expressed the desire of every true believer in Philippians 3 when he spoke of his desire to know the Lord Jesus Christ. He said, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Christ suffered for us on the cross.

Our salvation came at a great personal cost to him. And Psalm 22 introduces us to that cost in a way that perhaps is unique in all of Scripture, when you follow it and trace it all the way through. Psalm 22 is an uncanny prophecy of the crucifixion of our Lord, and it is an immensely important passage of Scripture. Psalm 22 does more than foreshadow the events of the crucifixion, however.

This colossal psalm actually takes us inside the mind of Christ while he was suffering for us and removing sin from our account. As you read this psalm, a psalm that was written by David, it does not tell us an experience. It does not encapsulate an experience that parallels anything that you see in the life of David elsewhere in Scripture.

It's far too detailed, far too direct about its application to Christ. And we believe that David wrote this psalm perhaps out of some shadow of an experience that he had. But in this psalm, in a particular way, David was writing as a prophet, foretelling things that were yet to come.

I'd like you to look at the book of Acts chapter 2 for just a moment so that you have a sense of that. Acts chapter 2 verse 29, just to have a sense of the role that the author of this psalm played in the canon of Scripture. Peter, when he is speaking of David, said this in Acts chapter 2 verse 29. He said, brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day.

And so, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to see one of his descendants on his throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ that he was neither abandoned to Hades nor did his flesh suffer decay. I call that passage to your attention simply so that you have the sense, the mindset, that David was writing at times not only about his own personal experience, but he was writing as a prophet who was looking into the distant future, speaking of Christ, speaking of the sufferings of Christ and the resurrection of Christ. And it's important for us to realize that when we step back 3,000 years from today and read what David was writing, to have a proper sense of perspective on exactly what he was doing. And here in Psalm 22, David was writing primarily as a prophet, perhaps in the words that we have read already.

David was somehow speaking of a time of suffering that he had, maybe speaking in poetic terms. But what we find as we study this psalm is that the things that he wrote a thousand years earlier were literally fulfilled in the life of Christ and particularly in the crucifixion of Christ. It's a spectacular psalm. It's a psalm that for the tender-hearted believer is enough to make you weep. It is enough by far to humble us in the presence of Christ when we realize what it is that he did for us and what it was like for him to suffer on our behalf on the cross. Charles Spurgeon said about Psalm 22, Before us we have a description, both of the darkness and of the glory of the cross, the sufferings of Christ and the glory which shall follow.

Oh, for grace to draw near and see this great sight. We should read reverently. Putting off our shoes from our feet as Moses did at the burning bush, if there be holy ground anywhere in Scripture, it is in this psalm. Coming from Spurgeon who wrote the Treasury of David on all 150 psalms, that's quite a statement. To isolate Psalm 22 with such words as that. To say if any place in Scripture there is holy ground, it is here in Psalm 22.

And so in saying these things I'm just trying to prepare your mind and to develop in you a sense of expectation and a sense of reverence as we approach God's word here today. The psalm hinges in the middle of what we read. In the first 18 verses you really see a cry of lamentation that reflects what Christ was going through on the cross. In verses 19 to 21 there is a prayer and then in 22 and down through verses 31 you see an exaltation of praise. You see both the humiliation and the exaltation of Christ in this psalm.

And we're going to break it down in three basic parts here this evening. Realizing that we are primarily looking at what Christ endured for us on the cross of Calvary. So first of all here in the first 18 verses we're going to look at what we're going to call the problem of Christ's suffering.

The problem in the sense that he was in trouble, he was in distress. There was pressure upon his soul as he went to Calvary. Now as the psalm opens David is working through some intense feelings of abandonment as enemies are closing in on him. And all move back and forth between saying David and Christ because they're really just identified here in this psalm.

David is just the figure, the forerunner of Christ in this psalm and everything about this psalm is pointing prophetically to Christ. So in Psalm 22 verse 1 it opens up and you see a man in distress. You see a man who is suffering in his soul and he cries out in verse 1, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.

Oh my God, I cry by day but you do not answer and by night but I have no rest. These two verses are describing a sense of alienation, a sense of abandonment. And it's not a lack of faith that is speaking here and that's very important for us to see. This is faith speaking in the depth of unspeakable sorrow. You see the faith by the personal pronoun, my God, my God, my God. And so he's speaking to God, speaking to the mighty one and claiming him as his own but he's finding that his experience is different from that which one would expect from belonging to a most holy and high and gracious God.

There was something about his experience that was almost disorienting, something about his experience that led to a sense of separation from the God that he knew was there. And as the psalm is written, enemies are closing in. Christ himself spoke these words in Aramaic from the cross. Look over at Matthew 27 verse 45. Remember that as we're studying this psalm we're entering into the very mind of Christ. We're not just reading a Bible story about facts that occurred back when.

This is profoundly spiritual, it is profoundly deep. We are entering into the mind of the eternal Son of God as he was hanging on the cross. That is the very thing that we are doing as we look at this passage of Scripture. Look at Matthew 27 verse 45 describing the time of the crucifixion. Now from the sixth hour, which was approximately 12 o'clock noon in the reckoning of our time. Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour.

This is the time in which Christ was particularly receiving the impress of the wrath of God on his soul for our sins as he hung on that cross as a substitute for sinners like you and me. And what did he say at the conclusion of all of that darkness and all of that separation and all of that alienation? Verse 46, about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.

That is my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He's at the end of that three hour period and he feels the weight of the judgment that he's been enduring. What does that say about the mind of Christ? What does it say about what he was going through as he hung on that cross? Look, let me pause for a moment and just say that Psalm 22 is a good corrective force.

It's a good dose of medicine for us. Because even as serious Bible-believing, Christ-loving Christians, we're so familiar with the cross that we forget what it was like for Christ. And we can easily speak that Christ died on the cross for my sins and that just kind of rolls off our tongue with a little bit too much ease, with a little bit of a lack of reverence sometimes, not taking into account what it meant for Christ.

Well, we don't want to be that way. We want to be like Paul and say, I want to know the fellowship of his sufferings. You say to yourself, I love Christ so much that I want to enter into, into whatever extent I can, I want to enter into the fellowship of his sufferings.

I want to know what that was like. I want to identify with him. I want to be united with him. And Scripture pulls back the curtain a little bit and lets us see here. What was Christ thinking on the cross? Well, the words of Psalm 22 were on his lips, and the lips speak that which fills the heart. There's been some commentators that believe that Christ maybe had recited the entire psalm while he suffered on the cross. There's no scriptural evidence of that, but Psalm 22 is so woven around the crucifixion that you see the emphasis that Scripture places on it.

About 15 times Psalm 22 is quoted in fulfillment of messianic expectations as Christ hung on that cross giving himself over for your sins and for mine. Somehow, Jesus felt incalculable, immense pain resulting from the separation from his father as he bore the punishment for our sins. There was a pain. There was a sense of abandonment.

There was a sense of alienation. This God that he had been, essentially, he had shared essence with from before time began. This father whom he loved and who loved him as well in the bonds of an eternal counsel of God that we cannot begin to comprehend. In a love that Christ placed supreme value on, in the father that he loved, the father that he prayed to while here on earth, the father that he obeyed implicitly, the father that he would serve with every drop of his blood. Now, somehow, in a way that we don't pretend to be able to explain, how does the Trinity separate at a time like that? How does the father turn away from his own son?

There's no words to describe that. But there's enough for us to see that Christ felt this sense of separation from his father, and it pained him to an eternal depth that we cannot begin to plumb. Psalm 22 was especially appropriate on his lips. It's not just that he experienced pain and the spiritual anguish of soul that came from bearing our sins. When you read through Psalm 22, it's a psalm where he's recognizing his enemies, but he's not asking for vengeance upon them. He's not praying imprecatory psalms over them, even though he was suffering unjustly.

As he was there in the midst of profound suffering brought on through the human hands of wicked men, there was no sense of retaliation against them. How holy, how sacred he was, how selfless he was. As he hung on the cross, he prayed, Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing. He took care of his mother, looked at John and said, Behold your mother, woman, behold your son.

He took care of his mother while they were hanging there. He turned to the thief on the cross and said, Today you'll be with me in paradise. In the midst of this unspeakable anguish, this incredible suffering, you see Christ calling out for his father, missing that sense of fellowship, or having earlier been looking out for the needs of the humans all around him.

What kind of magnificent soul are we looking into when we consider the nature of Christ? Where is any parallel in human history of a man that perfect, that great, that selfless, who suffered so much, though he was innocent of any wrongdoing of his own? No wonder Isaiah could say in Isaiah 53 verse 7 that he was like a lamb led to slaughter. He was silent before the shearers as he interceded for sinners.

He did not protest against his suffering. It's what he was sent from heaven to do. As much as we can into the very soul of Christ as he was hanging on the cross for us, we see an innocent man suffering to a degree that we will never understand. We see a selfless, generous, gracious man looking out for those who were gathered around his cross. Some of his enemies, his family, a new friend that would that day be with him in paradise.

You see why Spurgeon called it holy ground? We're talking about the central focus of the redemption of the human race. And we see what the God-man was like as he brought that redemption to pass. And he did it alone. He was alone. He was alone only with your sin and mine and the punishment that it required. Alone with our sin. Alone as it were with the vitriolic hatred of his enemies. Mocking him and enjoying the spectacle of his seeming loss.

And what did he do in that time? Look at verse 3. It says, Yet you are holy, O you who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted. They trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried out and were delivered.

In you they trusted and were not disappointed. In the midst of his suffering he recalled the holiness of God. He acknowledged that God had delivered his people in the past. Perhaps as we read Scripture we remember the accounts of God delivering Noah, delivering Abraham, delivering Joseph, delivering Moses in the midst of all of their unjust suffering.

He brought the nation of Israel out of Egypt. And through those events manifested the fact that when God's people trust him, their trust was never in vain. He never failed their trust.

He never disappointed them. Scripture says that he who believes in him will not be disappointed. Christ lays hold of that on the cross and it renews his trust in his father and consciously vindicates the holiness and character of the father even as he is suffering alone on the cross for us.

As he's laying this out in the gentle, generous, gracious nature of his spirit, in the perfection of his holy heart, as he is in a most pure and simple, simple meaning undivided, in a most undivided way trusting in his father, what is the response of the men that are around him? They treated him like a worm. Look at verses 6 through 8. He says, But I am a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and despised by the people. All who see me sneer at me.

They separate with the lip. They wag the head saying, Commit yourself to the Lord. Let him deliver him.

Let him rescue him because he delights in him. They're mocking him at the cross. And so Jesus in his innocence, alone with our sin, as if that weren't enough, he was hated.

He was unwanted. He was mocked as he hung as it were between earth and heaven on our behalf. He was trusting in God like no one ever did before or after and yet in the midst of the purity of his trust his enemies taunted him. Look at Matthew 27 where we see this passage played out in the literal life of Christ on the cross.

This is enough to make you ashamed of sharing humanity with these people. Matthew 27. Let's look at verse 38 just to set the context for you. At that time, Matthew 27 verse 38. At that time two robbers were crucified with him.

One on the right and one on the left. Perhaps the most degraded display of sinful humanity ever recorded in the history of time we see in verse 39. And those passing by were hurling abuse at him, wagging their heads and saying, You who are going to destroy this temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself. If you are the son of God, come down from the cross.

In the same way the chief priests also along with the scribes and elders were mocking him and saying, He saved others. He cannot save himself. He is the king of Israel. Let him come down from the cross and we will believe in him. He trusts in God.

Let God rescue him. Now if he delights in him for, he said, I am the son of God. The picture of the wagging of the head and the separating of the lips, it's as though they were pulling their lips apart and sticking their tongues out at him. So degraded was their mocking.

It was like they were a school kid, sticking their tongues out, separating their lips, somehow wagging their head in a way that was the ultimate in utter derision, against the holy son of God. As Pastor Don Green stated earlier, the crucifixion of Christ can be understood and broken down in three parts. So far we've looked at the problem of our Lord's suffering, but there are two other words that also start with the letter P, and Don will get to those next time on The Truth Pulpit. Don't miss a moment. And Don's here in studio with a special invitation for you. Friend, if you don't have a church home and you live near Cincinnati, why not visit us soon at Truth Community Church? We have a lot of gracious people that I know would make you feel welcome and you'd enjoy the same Bible teaching that you hear on our program. Also let me tell you that if you're ever stranded at home and unable to attend your own church, join us on our live stream. Everything you need to connect with our church can be found at our website.

Here's Bill with all you need to know. Just visit us at thetruthpulpit.com for address and service information. There you'll also find a link to Don's Facebook page. You can also download Don's messages to hear again at your convenience. That's thetruthpulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright. We'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit with Don Green.