Taking a Nearer Have a look at Psalm 22

A Acquainted Psalm

Let’s look intently at Psalm 22 collectively. And since it’s an extended psalm, we’re going to have a look at only some chosen verses that give us the storyline of the entire thing. You’re going to seek out once we bounce into this psalm, that it’s remarkably acquainted to you, or at the very least its first verse is. However I wish to see the place the entire psalm goes, not simply the place it begins. Let’s learn.

To the choir grasp. In line with the Doe of the Daybreak. A Psalm of David.

My God, my God, why have you ever forsaken me? Why are you so removed from saving me from the phrases of my groaning? Oh my God, I cry by day, however you don’t reply, and by night time, however I discover no relaxation.

Transferring to verse 12:

Many bulls embody me; robust bulls of Bashan encompass me; they open broad their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion. I’m poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my coronary heart is like wax; it’s melted inside my breast; my energy is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me within the mud of loss of life.

Transferring to verse 21:

Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have got rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen! I’ll inform of your identify to my brothers; within the midst of the congregation I’ll reward you: You who worry the Lord, reward him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the bothered, and he has not hidden his face from him, however has heard when he cried to him.

To verse 27:

All the ends of the earth shall bear in mind and switch to the Lord, and all of the households of the nation shall worship earlier than you. For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he guidelines over the nations.

We’ll cease there. As I mentioned, this psalm is probably going, at the very least in its starting, a really acquainted psalm to you. Psalm 22:1 is what Jesus himself says when he’s up on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you ever forsaken me?” Due to this, it’s probably, at the very least in a point, acquainted to us from Good Friday providers or via preaching from the Gospels.

And even for apologetic functions, Psalm 22 usually will get used as a result of right here, on this psalm of David, we do appear to have an outline of Jesus’s loss of life on the crucifixion—that his joints are stretched out, his coronary heart melts away like wax, and we even discover inside it individuals dividing his clothes and casting heaps (Ps. 22:18). So Psalm 22 does meet us with the crucifixion scene. It’s a prophecy, at the same time as it’s a psalm, telling us of how Jesus was to die. And Jesus needed us to see it that method.

However is that every one that’s right here? The explanation why I didn’t cease at these parts and why I needed us to learn via the latter half of the psalm is that this isn’t only one scene, however it’s a narrative. Psalm 22 begins with this cry of seeming abandonment from God. It goes via the struggling of the speaker. It says down “to the mud of loss of life” in verse 15.

However that isn’t the place the psalm ends. The psalm strikes from the loss of life of the speaker, so far as we are able to inform, from this final cry to be saved to the declaration: “You have got rescued me.”

Verse 21 breaks into two halves. And as just isn’t typical of the psalms, between the 2 strains out of the blue every part has modified. “Save me” and “You have got rescued me.” This one who begins talking in desperation and in a way of abandonment by God—in “the mud of loss of life”—finally ends up declaring that he has been delivered.

Jesus just isn’t solely the rationale why we worship; he’s our worship chief.

And this deliverance goes on to better impact. It’s not solely that this one particular person has been saved from loss of life, however as we see, “the ends of the earth shall bear in mind.” And certainly on the finish of it, “Posterity shall serve him; this shall be informed of the Lord to the approaching technology” that he has achieved it. This rescue from loss of life of the speaker is informed to all nations forever, and the entire earth praises God due to this. This isn’t simply the cross; that is extra. That is deliverance and deliverance for all individuals. This leads us, though it doesn’t explicitly use the identify of Jesus, to see the story of a person who’s executed in public, who dies, who comes up from that loss of life in rescue, and for that rescue is praised, and God receives reward from all of the earth. It may appear that there’s nothing else so as to add, that we have already got the story of the New Testomony right here.

Singing His Reward

However I wish to see what occurs once we look from this psalm to a selected quotation within the New Testomony e book of Hebrews. In Hebrews 2, we discover a dialogue of how Jesus helps us people—us mortal sinners. And we discover in verse 11 of chapter two and onwards:

He who sanctifies and those that are sanctified all have one supply. That’s the reason he’s not ashamed to name them brothers, saying, “I’ll inform of your identify to my brothers; within the midst of the congregation, I’ll sing your reward.”

Right here, the epistle to the Hebrews cites a passage from Psalm 22 that we wouldn’t anticipate. This isn’t the cry of dereliction on the cross, neither is it the declaration of resurrection, neither is it the longer term look in direction of nations and generations being saved.

But it surely’s a line that you might have missed. “I’ll inform of your identify to my brothers; within the midst of the congregation I’ll sing your reward.” And the writer of Hebrews makes use of this to say that those that are saved by Jesus—those that are sanctified by Jesus the sanctifier—are all united to him. We’re all of 1 household, and he’s not ashamed to name us brothers.

And for a scriptural foundation for that, he goes to Psalm 22. And within the midst of this psalm that speaks of resurrection and the salvation of the nations, we’ve got this not solely as a grand sweeping storyline however shut and familial. And Jesus stops in the midst of that to speak about his individuals as his brothers, as people who he’s not ashamed of, as these which can be all of 1 household with him. And as we glance again then from Hebrews to the psalm, what we discover is that it’s not solely that reward goes to God due to the the deliverance that comes via Jesus, however that Jesus leads us in singing these praises. The reward from all of the earth comes as a result of he’s the one who within the congregation declares the identify of the Lord to us.

And he’s the one who praises the Father and who leads us in praising the Father. Jesus just isn’t solely the rationale why we worship; he’s our worship chief. And we discover, then, that this psalm that tells about Jesus isn’t simply one thing type of shadowy about David that then corresponds to him, however is a method that Jesus, because the chief of worship, exhibits us how we should always reward God for what he has achieved. We undergo the psalm, we discover the story of Jesus, and, once more, we discover ourselves in it as these rescued, as these united to Jesus, after which as those that he leads in praising the Father, as a result of within the phrases of Psalm 22, “he has achieved it.”

Daniel Stevens is the writer of Songs of the Son: Studying the Psalms with the Writer of Hebrews.