“This was the blackness and darkness of his horror then it was that he penetrated the depths of the caverns of suffering.” (Spurgeon) Yet Jesus not only endured the withdrawal of the Father’s fellowship, but also the actual outpouring of the Father’s wrath upon Him as a substitute for sinful humanity. As the Apostle Paul would later write, God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. God the Father regarded God the Son as if He were a sinner. On the cross, a holy transaction took place. There was a significant sense in which Jesus rightly felt forsaken by God the Father on the cross. At this moment He experienced what He had not yet ever experienced. Yet He had never known separation or alienation from God His Father. Jesus had known great pain and suffering (both physical and emotional) during His life. Yet beyond David and his life, this agonized cry and the intentional identification of Jesus with these words are some of the most intense and mysterious descriptions of what Jesus experienced on the cross. Many times he found himself in seemingly impossible circumstances and wondered why God did not rescue him immediately. We may easily imagine a situation in the life of King David where he experienced this. The Forsaken One seems bewildered “Why would My God forsake Me? Others may deserve such, but I cannot figure out why He would forsake Me.” Why have You forsaken Me? There is a note of surprise in this cry and in the following lines. “Then it was that he felt in soul and body the horror of God’s displeasure against sin, for which he had undertaken.” (Trapp)Ĭ. Second, the repetition of the plea shows the intensity of the agony. He was a victim of the cruelty of men, but the cry and the complaint is to God – even My God – and not to or against man. The cry “ My God” shows that the Forsaken One truly did have a relationship with God. My God, My God: This opening is powerful on at least two levels. “I doubt not that David, though he had an eye to his own condition in diverse passages here used, yet was carried forth by the Spirit of prophecy beyond himself, and unto Christ, to whom alone it truly and fully agrees.” (Poole)ī. “We can be fairly certain that Jesus was meditating on the Old Testament during the hours of his suffering and that he saw his crucifixion as a fulfillment of Psalm 22 particularly.” (Boice) Jesus deliberately chose these words to describe His agony on the cross (Matthew 27:46). While this psalm was certainly true of King David in his life experience, it – like many psalms – is even truer of Jesus the Messiah than of David.
Before and after taking the throne of Israel, David lived in seasons of great danger and deprivation. This is a Psalm of David, and there were many instances in the life of David where he might write such an agonized poem. My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me: This psalm begins abruptly, with a disturbing scene: someone who knows and trusts God is forsaken, and cries out to God in agony. O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear Īnd in the night season, and am not silent.Ī.
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? It contains those deep, sublime, and heavy sufferings of Christ, when agonizing in the midst of the terrors and pangs of divine wrath and death which surpass all human thought and comprehension.” (Martin Luther, cited in Charles Spurgeon) A. “ This is a kind of gem among the Psalms, and is peculiarly excellent and remarkable. Here, David sings as more than an artist, but also as one of the greatest prophets ever to speak, pointing more to his Greater Son, Jesus the Messiah, than even to himself. We can say that this is a Psalm sung to the Greatest Musician, to an unknown tune, by the Sweet Psalmist of Israel (2 Samuel 23:1). Set to “The Deer of the Dawn.” A Psalm of David. This is another psalm with a title: To the Chief Musician.
Psalm 22 – The Servant of God Forsaken, Rescued, and Triumphant