Please remain standing for the reading of God's word as we are at attention before it. I'm going to speak of the contradiction involved in Psalm 22, and it is really captured in these lyrics, is it not? None shall ever be confounded who on him their hope have built. Not confounded. Then how do you explain, my God, my God, how and why have you forsaken me? You remember Psalm 56 from last week? The whole theme was how bold and courageous we can be in the face of other fears, right? Many of you walked away saying how good that was to hear. I will not be afraid of man. What can he do to me? then how does this psalm fit that theme? I'm gonna read the text in two versions here this morning. One, first of all, from the New Testament as we look at Mark chapter 16 and at verse 21. Then they compelled a certain man, Simon, a Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus. As he was coming out of the country and passing by, they compelled him to bear his cross. And they brought him to the place Golgotha, which is translated place of a skull. Then they gave him wine mingled with myrrh to drink, but he did not take it. And when they crucified him, they divided his garments, casting lots for them to determine what every man should take. Now it was the third hour, and they crucified him. And the inscription of his accusation was written above, the king of the Jews. With him, they also crucified two robbers, one on his right and the other on his left. So the scripture was fulfilled, which says, and he was numbered with the transgressors. And those who passed by blasphemed him, wagging their heads and saying, aha, you who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross. Likewise, the chief priest also, mocking among themselves with the scribes said, he saved others, himself he cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe even those who were crucified with him reviled him. Now when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which is translated, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This is the word of God. All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers, and the flowers fade, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Amen. Please be seated. Turning now to Psalm 22, which we've read responsibly, which we've sung already, and I'll be referring to again in just a moment. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? There are certain characteristics that come across in this Psalm, and as I tried to pick it appropriately for the Sunday in which we're celebrating this Lord's Day. At first, I was going to use the whole chapter as a text. But I thought, no, it's got too much to say in one Sunday. And it has this wonderful reversing middle part that just changes the character of the entire chapter. It's the kind of thing where you wonder, I shake in my head, what happened in the middle of all that sorrow and forsakenness? And we'll get there in a minute. I thought it best to say, let's look at Christ on the cross this day. Let's look at Christ resurrected from the tomb next Sunday, which the last half of the psalm very wonderfully describes. But there we are again, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? How can it be that such a contradiction exists? This man who was also God, who in his ministry on earth heard the Father's voice come out of heaven at least three times, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. How you heard multiple times last week in the sermon from Psalm 56, if God is on our side, who in the world can be against us? And God is for me. Man is against me, but if man is against me and God is for me, I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? How do we understand the man that God was most pleased with, perfectly pleased with? How can he cry out with honesty? You've departed, you've forsaken me. You're nowhere near that I can feel and understand. There's an interesting dynamic that goes on in the first 21 verses of this Psalm. It goes back and forth in a revolving kind of a way, an alternating kind of a way with the one who's dying or facing death and forsakenness talks about he himself, what he is experiencing. And then it goes in this way from what I am experiencing to who you are, oh God, to whom I talk. Now, as we've been going through some of these Psalms, I think what you and I have appreciated very much is the fact that, ah, remember Psalm 142? When I'm lonely, when no one cares for my soul, then the good news is, ah, there's one who cares for me. You see, there's been this emphasis on the way in which the Psalms address our heart needs. And we can say, oh, that's how I feel. That's what I'm living in the midst of. And we can become perhaps too self-centered then in reading the Psalms as though the Psalms were there just to soothe our rawness. But I want you to forget this morning how this psalm might make you feel. And I want you to think about how this psalm describes the suffering, the passions, the feelings of not you, but of Christ, the Son of God. You know, he experienced the range of emotions to a degree much more deeply than we have ever admitted to. So why are you so far from helping me? I cry in the daytime. You're not hearing. Look at verse three. I'm stopping talking about me now, but you, who are you? Oh, you're the Holy One. And you are enthroned in the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted you. They trusted you, delivered them. but I'm not delivered. They cried to you. They were delivered. They trusted in you. They were not ashamed. Revert back to who I am. I'm a worm. What do you think of when you think of a worm? Creepy, ugly, soft, mushy, dirty, no backbone, the lowest of creation. Jesus is describing himself with that kind of despicableness as he hangs there, bloodied and battered. And you say, wait a minute. This isn't talking about Jesus. Jesus wasn't born yet. This is Psalms, Old Testament. Yeah, that's a problem, isn't it? How do you figure that out? I mean, the Jews of today would look at this, this kind of deep, deep travail, and they would say, I know where this fits in the worship of our people. In fact, how would they have used this psalm before Christ came incarnate on the earth? Because they must have used it as part of their worship, as part of their songs. And the answer probably comes to us when someone is so downtrodden in their suffering and affliction. Someone who perhaps is even on a death bed, looking, staring death in the face, perhaps. This is a Psalm that captures the moment. We'll read it privately at the bed. We'll read it together in the service of worship, because everybody's gonna die sometime. Who knows through what amount of travail? And undoubtedly, it was used effectively like that. You know, the thing about the psalm as we go through the whole thing today and next week is you go through this deep, deep lament. Why have you forsaken me? And you go deeper than that into the agonies of what, well, there wasn't crucifixion in the Old Testament days, not the way the Romans did it. But there's some kind of deep, deep suffering. But at the end of the psalm, you come out with victory. And if I can tip the hand for next week, the best way to understand the last verse is not, oh my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's like, ah, it is done. It is finished. Hallelujah. Say, how do you get there? And the answer is, well, I hope we see that more clearly in two weeks. But I'm a worm. I'm the reproach of men, despised by the people. All who look at me ridicule me. They shoot out the lip. They shake their head, saying, what a fool. What an adult. Crazy man. He said he would tear down the temple and he would build it in three days. What kind of megalomaniac is this guy? He trusted in the Lord. Oh great, look where the trust in the Lord has brought him now. Let the Lord bring him down from the cross. And I said to the children earlier, I read the word, what, four times in Mark's account? Crucify, crucify. The verb comes from the noun. The noun is a stake impaled in the ground upon which a victim of torture is pinned with nails. It was the most ignominious kind of death possible in the imagination of men. This cross probably wasn't suspended 12 feet up in the air. It was probably a foot or two off the ground in a cross beam. And the Lord of glory is nailed there. He's not that high above so that you can hear the murmurings and the cries that come out from his lips. You're looking at him in his face. Usually the Romans assigned four different soldiers to each cross, each execution. There were three crosses, that's 12 soldiers with some officer in charge. They're looking at him in the eye. But the disciples, except for John, are not around. They've run away, they're scared. The alternating I with you continues on verse nine. You've forsaken me. You're the one who took me out of the womb. You made me trust while I was on my mother's breasts. How can you desert me now? I was cast upon you from birth. From my mother's womb you have been my God. See, my God, my God. Well, if you're my God, why have you departed and forsaken me? Do you know where you will be when you die? No. Wouldn't you like when you die to be surrounded with people who love you? Wouldn't you like your family to be reading the scriptures to you? Maybe the hymns are playing softly in the background as you leave for another world? Wouldn't you like somebody to be holding your hand? I mean, it's one thing to die, to face death courageously. It's another thing to face death when you are completely deserted. And perhaps the only people around you are the ones who hate you. They're glad to see you suffering. They despise you. You're revolting to them. They're reviling you. They long to see you prolonged for more agony. That's what it was like for Christ. There's savagery going on because these ones who are reviling him, wagging their heads at him and scorn, they're described in beastly terms. And you watch those National Geographic footages and the prey, the zebra, the antelope that seems to be lagging behind from the herd. You got the picture? The scavengers are gathering. The lions are prowling, just waiting for the right moment to finish you off. The dogs are gathering because they know the lions will leave something behind for them to gnaw on. And the birds of prey are circling above, recognizing that when the dogs are finished, that there'll be still some pickings from your bones." You say, that's exaggerating. No, it's not exaggeration. Look, many bulls have surrounded me. Well, there weren't bulls around. There were beastly people. Strong bulls encircled me. They gape at me with their mouths. Their tongues are salivating out of their mouth. because they love the feasts of the orgy of blood. They gape at me with their mouths like a raging, roaring lion. What am I experiencing? I am poured out like water. Well, of course. How much bodily fluid had the Savior lost through weepings and whippings and scourgings and beatings? Do you know that when you get extra tired it might be because you just need a drink? Do you know that? Because what does dehydration do to you? It makes you tired. Because the fluids that are supposed to be carrying the energy around into your body, they're not there. It's just not working. You can't think properly. What's Jesus thinking about in the midst of all this? What's he thinking about? And the best answer we know is he's thinking about what the Holy Spirit caused David the prophet to write down a thousand years before Jesus ever experienced it. He has to be thinking about Psalm 22, among other things, because he says that. These are his words from the cross. My God, my God. I'm the one in whom you're well pleased? Why have you forsaken me? If you're my God, why are you not with me? I'm poured out like water. All my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It's melted within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd. My tongue cleaves to my jaws. And you've brought me to the dust of death. The dogs surrounded me. The congregation of the wicked enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. They look and they stare at me. They divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots. I find it very helpful spiritually to try to imagine the scene. Especially if I'm being faced with temptations that in the past I've given up too easily on. Don't you know there's no temptation given except the common kind? But this was no common kind for Christ. Like a lamb led to the slaughter so he did not open his mouth. So they probably put him on the ground, his back stretching out on this rough crossbar. And they take nails and they drive nails through his hands and his feet without breaking any bones. They hoist this cross so that it stands impaled, which it's supposed to do, in the earth, and then they stand by to watch. Now sometimes it took days for the one crucified to die. Not so with Christ. All my bones are out of joint. Is that hard to see? I mean, how much does a man weigh? A grown man, 180 pounds, 200 pounds? He's being suspended, all that weight, with two nails in his hands? You know, I'm persuaded there probably was not a nerve in his body that was not crying out, screaming, And as he slumps lower and lower, hung by his pierced hands, what happens? You can't breathe. The diaphragm doesn't work anymore. Some of you with asthma or perhaps COPD, you might have a little taste of the kind of panic that would be possible when you feel like, I can't breathe. I'm not getting air into my lungs, I can't live. So what do you do? Well, if you're on the cross, evidently, your pierced feet begin to take the full weight of your body. You exert the strength of your leg muscles to what? Push yourself up so you can take some air into your lungs. And when you begin to take the pressure off of Your hands, ah, maybe they don't hurt so much, but what's going on now? I mean, normally when you stand upright, you've got the soles of your feet with all the muscles of your toes to support you, to operate in a way that you're stable. But now you're putting all of that force on what, a half an inch nail? that slowly you're trying to push yourself up on so you can gather some air from the outside. And it must be so excruciating now from the bottom up that you're saying, ah! And every time you move up and down, your back, which has been shredded with the whip of the cat of nine tails, is grating upon the rough wood of the cross of your back. And in the midst of it all, you throw your head back like this because it's so excruciating. And you remember, there's a crown of thorns on my head as it smacks the back of the cross. And everywhere you move, it just increases the pain somewhere. I can count all my bones. I'm being poured out like water. Of course you are. My heart is like wax. What does that mean? If you watch someone die of congestive heart failure, when the heart is just not pumping enough, And the fluids are collecting around the heart. And with every ounce of fluid, what remains in your body that's not spent is constricting your heart so it can't pump. It's like wax melting in the fire. It just goes away. There are those who have been trained in medicine who look at this, what's going on, and they would say, he died of asphyxiation, you know, he just couldn't breathe anymore. The impurities in his body were so built up, nothing functioned, it was over. Or else, the heart was so overworked and so crushed by the load of the suffering, that this was not just congestive heart failure, this was a rupture of the heart. It just burst like wax poured out, which might be confirmed somewhat because when the Roman soldier thrust the spear into the side, there's evidence that not only blood, but blood and water separated, flowed out. And when the soldiers go around, as would be normal procedure, ready to break the legs of those who were perhaps lingering in life, they found they needed not break the legs of our Savior because he was already dead. Why would they break the legs? Because if they break the legs, you could no longer exert the strength to lift yourself up on the cross to breathe. and it had already been prophesied that not one of his bones would be broken. And Jesus is there knowing, I'm here to fulfill all scripture. You know, for people who like to go to church and be made to feel good, I don't know what you do with this. And if I thought God meant for everybody to come to church so they could feel good, I'd think he's not the God of the Bible. I was sharing the gospel with someone last week, and I was trying to proclaim the good news. I said, listen, before you understand the good news, you need to understand the bad news. Why do you think Jesus died on the cross? And the answer, of course, is what? He took our place. What does that mean? If that was our place, then that's where we should have been. You understand? But we are not there. He was because He is our substitute. And I was saying to this man, before you can become a Christian, you need to understand that you, by your sins against a holy God, you were worthy of dying the way Jesus died. What? How can anybody see themselves as that bad? And the answer is, who cannot see themselves as that bad? Because that's what the Bible says. He was wounded for our transgressions. The chastisement of our peace was upon him. By his stripes, we are healed. He got what we deserved so that we could get what he deserved in his perfect righteousness. Now that is good news. Wow. Now Jesus is gonna come to the end of verse 21. This alternation of I but you, you see it in verse 19, it comes back to you, oh Lord. Do not be far from me. Oh, my strength hasten to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth and from the horns of the wild oxen. Did God hear that prayer? Reading from the New King James Version, the last phrase of verse 21 is said, you have answered me. And from there on, the lament just turns into victorious reversal of praise. But that's for next week. You have answered me. You know, what does this mean for us? Let me just say this. Christ died at Calvary. This is gonna sound strange. Christ died at Calvary so that you and I could join him on his road to Calvary. See, that doesn't make sense. Well, let me remind you again, the thing Jesus said more than any other thing, beside the phrase, truly I say to you. He said, if anybody would come after me, what? Let him deny himself, take up his what? The agent of execution? His cross? Take up his cross? And what? Follow me. Imagine yourself to be Simon the siren, right? Normal day, get up, you want to go into the city. It's festive day, Passover. You got two boys, their names Alexander and Rufus. Now these would be probably the same Alexander and Rufus who were part later of the church in Rome. Because when Paul writes to the Roman church, he says, make sure you greet Alexander and Rufus. Here's Simon, normal day. What's all the commotion? It's the crucifixion day for the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And he can't carry his own cross. You're roughly manhandled against your will. You're impressed into service bearing a heavy Roman cross of execution. Would you ever forgotten that? We would know somehow that this man somehow became one of God's elect. He who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Jesus Christ died so that he could make us companions on the road to the cross with him. Years ago, I bought this little paperback book by a Brit named Roy Heshin. It was recommended by a man who helped me understand my own testimony of conversion into Christ. His name was Jim Wilson, who's the father actually of Doug Wilson, who's fairly well-known. Jim, a 1950 graduate of the Naval Academy and who married a Japanese-American missionary and who served the Lord faithfully for all his years. He said, you ought to read the book, My Calvary Road by Roy Hischen. I did. Wrote another book later about his own experience on the Calvary Road. It's a foundational book for me, as was the book, The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that I was reading in the summer I was coming to Christ. And the standout phrase of the martyr Bonhoeffer is simply what? When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. Because if any man does not take up his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple. See, Jesus wants us on the road to Calvary, to the cross with him, not because he needs to die again. Do you understand? He's already died. He wants us on the cross to Calvary because he knows we have to die. We have to die to ourselves. If you're gonna become a Christian, like I was telling this man, you need to understand you deserve the death that Christ died for you in your place. Yes, your record of sin is really that onerous. And all those ambitions you have for self-aggrandization, self-actualization, All those proud thoughts of what you want to be when your dad was telling you as a young child, Stephen, you can be whatever you want to be as long as you want it badly enough. I said, I can't save myself, Dad. I can't ever be good enough. You need to die to that. When God calls a disciple, He calls him to come and die. God's not gonna die again. We must die. See, we have to trust in the blood, the lifeblood of Christ. It's the only agent that can wash away our sin. We trust in His blood. and we might have to shed our own blood, that's what the cross means. And like Paul wrote to the Colossian church, some of us will, and all of us to some degree will, fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. And when Satan, our enemy, wants to ridicule us on the way, the way Satan's agents ridicule Christ on the cross, we would say, no, we'll overcome you by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of our testimony, because we don't even love our life, no, not even to the point of dying. What a wonderful thing to be on the Calvary Road, joined with Christ. You want to follow Him? Well, then you need to be where He is, giving up your life so others can live. It's the ministry philosophy of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 4. I'm more and more dying so you can more and more live. It's a wonderful thing. When a man is called by Christ, Christ says, come and die. And you say, what? I am crucified with Christ, hallelujah. Nevertheless, I what? I live. Yet, not I, but Christ lives in me. In the life that I now live in the flesh, I live in faith union with him. who loved me and gave himself up for me. God forbid that I should boast in anything except the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world's crucified me. The world doesn't want any part of me. That's fine. I don't want any part of the world. The world's crucified to me and I to the world. And yet we're sent out to the world to love the world so that through our death somebody in the world might live. And Paul goes to the Corinthians and he says, what? I am persuaded. I purpose. that I'll say nothing to you at all except to preach the cross of Christ to the world across as utter foolishness. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God unto salvation. And I'll not be ashamed on the Calvary Road. How could you be ashamed to be where Jesus is? Let us pray. Father, I pray that the Spirit of God would help these words to be, these impressions to be, the truth of this description to be embedded in our mind and heart in such a way that by the power of the resurrection of Christ, we who can be raised from the dead out of our trespasses and sin and empowered daily to follow Him and walk with Him, would not be ashamed of the cross and recognize that this is the epitome of the expression of the love of God. If we could consider the hell in which he descended into, as we think from nine o'clock in the morning till noontime, and then from noontime to three o'clock in abject darkness when the sun refused to shine. In that six hour period, our Lord descended into hell and heaped upon him was the unmitigated wrath of God, that it would take an eternity without ending, an eternity of punishment for every sin that every elect person ever committed, and the wrath never would be exhausted. If you take that combined wrath of God heaped together, and put it on Christ in a six-hour period. How great was the hellishness of that. And yet it sufficed to bring justice to those who were justified. Father, the meditation of this can never reach its limit. I pray, oh God, that you would see the worth of the Savior. We could see that and live for him. Help us today to deny ourselves, to take up our cross, to follow him. There's nothing meritorious in that, but there's everything appropriate to being in union with Christ. We pray in his name, amen.