Psalms 22:1-9

Psalms 22:1. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

What a dolorous cry! How terrible it must have been to have heard that cry, but how much more terrible to have uttered it! For the dear Son of God, the Well-beloved, with whom the Father is always pleased, to be forsaken of his God, was indeed grief unfathomable.

Psalms 22:1. Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?

It seems as if the Saviour's voice, and almost his mind, had failed him, for he calls his prayer «roaring» likening himself to a wounded beast. When any of you cannot pray, or think you cannot, remember these words of your Lord. If he, the ever-blessed Son of God, speaks of his own prayer as a «roaring», what must ours be! You know that Isaiah spoke of his own prayer as being like the chattering of a crane or a swallow, or the mourning of a dove, as if there were no articulate utterance about it; but to the ear and eye of God, there is music in a sigh, and beauty in a tear. As our Lord had to pray like this, do not wonder if we, sometimes, should feel that God has forsaken us. If there were such dark clouds for Christ there may well be some for us also.

Psalms 22:2. O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.

If we remember Gethsemane, and think how Jesus prayed there, even to an agony and a bloody sweat, shall we wonder if, sometime, our prayers seem to be put on one side, and we do not immediately receive answers of peace to them? Yet, you see, our Lord kept on crying to God both day and night.

Psalms 22:3. But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.

Settle it in your hearts that, whatever God does, he is holy. Never harbour a thought against his, never imagine that he is hard, or unjust, or unfaithful.

That cannot be, so, if the worst comes to the worst, never let your faith have any question upon this point.

Psalms 22:4. Our fathers trusted in thee; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.

Look back, and see how God helped our ancestors. Recall how, in the past ages, the Lord always was the Deliverer of all those that trusted in him. Was a righteous man ever finally forsaken of God? Since the world began, has not the Lord, sooner or later, appeared to deliver his children? It is wonderful to hear our Divine Master pleading in this fashion; but most wonderful of all is that next verse:

Psalms 22:6. But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

There is a little red worm which seems to be nothing else but blood when it is crushed, it seems all gone except a blood-stain; and the Saviour, in the deep humiliation of his spirit, compares himself to that little red worm. How true it is that «he made himself of no reputation» for our sakes! He emptied himself of all his glory; and if there be any glory natural to manhood, he emptied himself even of that. Not only the glories of his Godhead, but the honours of his manhood he laid aside that it might be seen that, «though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor.»

Psalms 22:7. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head saying, He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.

Or, as the passage is quoted in Matthew, «Let him deliver him now, if he will have him.»

Psalms 22:9. But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts.

This is a very wonderful thing. I do not think we remember as we ought that, for years after our birth, we could do nothing to help ourselves, yet we were taken care of even then. He who has passed safely through his infancy need not be afraid that God will not help him through the rest of his life, and if we should live so long that we to a second infancy, the God who carried us through the first will carry us through the second. He has already done so much for us that we are bound to trust him for all the future. Now let us see, as I reminded you just now, how this passage is referred to in the Gospel according to Matthew.

This exposition consisted of readings from Psalms 22:1; and Matthew 27:33.