“Songs of Messiah—The Sacrifice” (Part 1)

The next three weeks, I would like us to think together about the great trilogy of messianic songs found in the book of psalms—Psalms 22, 23, and 24. These songs combine to give us past, present and future perspectives of Christ that is extraordinarily valuable as we seek to live for Him in our generation.

We begin with Psalm 22. It is sobering, heart-wrenching, painful and glorious. It is David’s inspired prophecy of the cross of Jesus Christ hundreds of years before crucifixion was even invented. It is a staggering monument to God’s eternal plan of redemption. Of Psalm 22, Martin Luther wrote…

This is a kind of gem among the psalms, and is peculiarly excellent and remarkable. It contains those deep, sublime, and heavy sufferings of Christ when agonizing in the midst of the terror and pangs of divine wrath and death which surpass all human thought and comprehension. I know not whether any psalm throughout the whole book contains matter so weighty, or from which the hearts of the godly can so truly perceive those sighs and groans, inexpressible by man, which their Lord and Head Jesus Christ uttered when conflicting for us in the midst of death, and in the midst of the pains and terrors of hell. Wherefore this psalm ought to be most highly prized by all who have any acquaintance with temptations of faith and spiritual conflicts.

It is a powerful psalm in which we see real world reactions to life and death, suffering and sinbearing—and we see those things as David steps into the shoes of the coming Redeemer and expresses the heart of Jesus Christ toward the Cross that he would endure. Listen to the heart of Christ as expressed in the words of David.

The Cry of Abandonment (vv.1-2, 9-10, 19-22ff)

The suffering of the Cross at all levels is consumed by the reality of these horrific words from the lips of the Son of God, “My God, why?” It must be understood that in this form of suffering our Lord endured the deepest pain. Kidner exposes this root of spiritual suffering as it finds voice in the cry, “My God, why…” when he writes,

“Our Lord’s cry of dereliction told, it would seem, of an objective reality, namely the punitive separation He accepted in our place, ‘having become a curse for us.’ (Gal. 3:13).”

As He absorbs in Himself the sins of the world, He bears our curse, and, as a result, our separation from God wrought by sin. Leupold wrote…

It must be noted that the “why” is not so much an attempt to find the deepest reason of it all as it is in complaint as to the incomprehensibility of it all. Surely, God had forsaken Him who utters this complaint, but the reason was that He had made Him to be sin that knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21). No man can fathom the mystery of this outcry and what it meant in the experience of Christ. But of this we can be assured: the God-forsakenness was real.

Another wrote, “When the Son of God uttered these words, the greatest transaction of all time occurred. The Righteous died for the guilty. The guiltless One bore the sins of many. The many need only believe and live. We live because He died.”

Yet, as terrible as this sense of abandonment was, the factor that brought this anguish to its fullness was that all the suffering He was enduring was from the very hand of His Father Himself! As with Isaiah’s prophecy, He was being “smitten by God,” fir “it pleased the Lord to bruise Him.” (Isa. 53:4,10). This is reckoned especially in v.15, as one teacher wrote…

Note that it is God, not the enemy, who has brought the sufferer to death. He acknowledges God’s sovereignty. Still He sees Himself as part of the divine plan for the ages. Though dogs and evildoers nail His hands and feet, though soldiers crucify Him at the command of the government and at the urging of the madding throng incited by the Jewish leaders, yet it is God His Father that brings Him to the death (v.15). That is the key verse in this psalm; it is one of the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. God willed that Christ should die.

It was that consciousness of His God-forsakenness and the realization that God Himself was the source of the suffering that, in His sinbearing sacrifice, brought our Lord His deepest pain. But though it was the most severe element of the sufferings of the Lamb of God, it was not the extent of those sufferings.

On Wednesday we will consider the next element of Messiah’s suffering on out behalf.