Welcome then to be seated and returning our attention in the sermon this morning to Psalm 22. And this is the Psalm of the Messiah's sufferings and the sufferings of the Messiah opened up by himself as wonderful and Old Testament chapter as Isaiah 53 is where there the The prophet speaks of him upon whom iniquity is laid. Here we have... another towering chapter of the Old Testament on Christ, the sin bearer. But yet it is he who is speaking in the first person of his sufferings. And when we come down to verses 14 and 15, we come with a particular intensity to consider the sufferings of Messiah as told by himself. because everyone else is fading away into the background. And you'll notice in the previous versus there are repeated references to Christ's enemies, the bulls of Bation, like a ravening and a roaring lion. And right again immediately there in verse 16, describing of them as dogs and them looking and staring upon me. But here in verses 14 and 15, everyone else fades from view and we are left simply with the Messiah, the suffering Messiah opening up directly his sufferings to God. with submission and prayer telling us of what the sum total impact of all these sufferings are upon him so that he is indeed poured out like water. And here in all of this, he is leading us to God. He is praying. He is not relinquishing faith in God, crying, my God, my God, exercising submission and sanctifying the name of God, saying that he is holy, undertaking all of this. so that the ends of the earth may turn unto the Lord so that God may be glorified. He is leading us in the worship of God. And so his meditations are first of all directed to God himself, but they are also opened up To us, he tells us two of his sufferings. And when we come to the occasion of the Lord's Supper, we have a responsibility to engage in the affectionate meditation on the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this psalm is aided to that very purpose. He opens up to us literally in these verses, his very heart and bowels. And hence, there is no proper way of receiving this revealed knowledge of the sufferings of Christ, except by receiving them also into our heart and bowels. In other words, simply a mental recognition of the sufferings of Christ is is a universe away from what we ought to be receiving. And yet, we absolutely need the gift of the Holy Spirit in order, in any way, to receive these things into our very heart and bowels. And we'll consider then, with that end, we'll consider an outline with three parts. And they will be, if perhaps, somewhat of an unconventional outline. And thirdly, thou. So first of all, I. Behold here how the Savior is speaking in the first person. I am poured out like water, he says. The sayings in scripture where our Lord Jesus Christ says, I am, they are exceedingly precious. He says, I am the rose of Sharon. I am the bright and the morning star. Only the Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient. Here, He's not telling us about His glory. He is telling us about His sufferings. I am poured out like water. And just likewise, only Jesus Christ can tell us of His sufferings from the first person, from within. And when it comes to the sufferings of Christ, there is more to them than we can understand. What is revealed to us is revealed so that we might receive it with faith. Here, above all, we are to trust in the Lord with all of our heart and lean not to our own understanding. Our understanding cannot search the sufferings of Christ, but he from within his suffering speaks, and this we must receive with faith and love. He is poured out like water, he says. First of all, he is poured out willingly. Whenever you take water, never resists being poured. Water has zero force or capability to work against gravity and go back into the jar. There is no will within water in order to even will to go back into the pitcher that you're pouring it out of. And so here our Lord Jesus is telling us of his perfect submission to God. He is telling us of his perfect spirit of meekness and quietness, which is in the sight of God of great price. Here is the one subjected to the greatest sufferings that have ever been. But the waters are not turbulent. There is no roaring and foaming and raging against God. A heathen poet openly expressed that in death, he would rage against God. Rage, rage, he said, against the dying of the light, but not so our Lord Jesus Christ. It's true that death is the penalty for sin, In the covenant of works, it's true that man deserves it. An unrenewed man experiencing the penalty and the sting of death can only rage against the God that he hates. Death does not make man submit unto God. But here behold our Lord Jesus Christ, the meek lamb of God, as a lamb led before her shearer's asylum, so he openeth not his mouth without resistance, indeed, even actively pouring out his soul unto death. And this shows his obedience to God and his love to his sheep. Is this poured out Christ a precious Christ to you? His name is as ointment poured forth. Is Christ precious to you? A crucified and poured out Christ. He will always be precious where there is faith to see him and rest upon him. He was poured out willingly. He was also poured out fully like what I am poured out like water. You take the picture, you tip it over. All the water comes down onto the ground. I am poured out like water. I leave to myself no reserves. The Lord Jesus Christ did not have any buffer. He did not have any cushion. You might be in a situation where you think to yourself, you're being pushed and it's hard, but at least you have a buffer to lean back on. Maybe it's financially, you're spending and being spent for someone, but you think, oh, I have this little nest egg that I'm reserving and that I can go back to. Maybe it's in terms of your physical energy. You are spending yourself and serving, but you're thinking, you know, I have a little place of retreat. I can go back into my private place or I can go into my bed and rest tonight and recover. Here our Lord Jesus is saying, I don't have any. I don't have any hiding place to go back to. I have no cushion, no buffer, no reserves. I am giving everything. I am poured out like water, he says. And he was poured out like water in his life and indeed all his life long. He was his people's sin bearer. He was experiencing the penalty and wrath of God against his people's sins all his life long. In his life, he grappled with Satan personally. The tempter came to him, fasting, wilderness, wrestling against the powers of Cain and ministered unto him. In his lifetime, he preached, he healed, he healed Peter's mother-in-law and they heard about it and then everyone came and the house was mobbed and he was healing them in the evening. He was poured out. He was like a rag. You take it, you twist it, you squeeze it and you get all the water out of it. He was so wiped out that they were in a boat and it was in a storm and he fell asleep in the midst of a raging storm, pouring himself out. But that was nothing compared to what he experienced on the cross. There on the cross, he experienced the unmitigated and boundless ocean of the wrath of God, the waves whipping and thrashing against him as it were, the winds throwing the water, the spray of the wrath of God into his face. It took everything that he had. He was poured out like water. Think of it. Who is he? He is the God man. He is from all eternity and to eternity, the only begotten son. And he took our nature into union with himself, the Godhead supporting and holding up the possible degree of grace that it could hold. And yet, even so, a person that he could bear, he had no reserves. He was poured out. He bore the awful load. Doesn't it show us what a thing sin is? Doesn't it show us that there is no other peace or reconciliation? It took everything that the God man had. to propitiate God's wrath. He was poured out fully. And he was also poured out first. This is a truth that has an application. He tells us in his word, I am poured out you, that he was poured out like water. And that means, therefore, you have no excuse for keeping your life bottled up and safe. Therefore, just think there is no safety to the one who saves his life. He that saveth his life will lose it. but he that loseth his life for my sake and the gospels will keep it to eternal life." The one who said those words was not speaking from a lazy chair. He's the one who was poured out like water. And he says, you come to me, this is because you're going to have to be poured out like water in confession. When you come to God through me, I want you to pour out your heart in confession. Don't hold anything back. So just think about that. He took his precious life and he poured it out like water on the ground. And then think about the position of a sinner who comes not with a precious life, but with like a morsel under my tongue. I wanna keep it and not pour it out. What a contradiction of the death of Jesus Christ. How can such a person Don't think that they're going to receive benefit from receiving of the Savior that poured out His life. You pour yourself out in confession. He'll meet you there in the place of brokenness for your sin. Be poured out in His service. Give what we can't get back. where we take what is most precious, namely our life, and we pour it out on the ground. So the life of a Christian should look like the life of a crazy person to the world. They should be saying, you know, because he's the poured out Savior. Are you a poured out follower of Christ? Would you not beg his Holy Spirit to turn you upside down? His spirit to come and as it were, be the hands to tip your pitcher over that you may be poured out. So first point, I. He says, I am poured out like water. Second point, my, my. He begins to speak about the things that are his, the various parts of his manhood. Of course, God, the Godhead doesn't have parts. It can't be divided into pieces. Manhood has broken down. And that is what Jesus experienced in his manhood. He speaks about the various parts of himself. And the sufferings of Christ have a greater impact upon us when we view them part by part and particularly. So second heading, my. First of all, he speaks about his bones. All my bones are out of joint. Think about it. He is being they pounded big nails through his hands and his feet. They raised him. The cross goes down, presumably into some hole that is dug in the ground. His pierced hands and feet nailed to the cross. His body is jarred as the cross goes and every part of him. is feeling it. And not only the physical sufferings, but do you remember Belshazzar in the Old Testament? That heedless, ungodly king. He took the precious things from the temple in Jerusalem and they were drinking and they were praying with the fingers of a hand opposite the candlestick and wrote upon the wall. And Belshazzar didn't know what it meant, but he was scared out of his wits. And he was right to be scared witless because it was the anger of God against him and his idolatrous kingdom. And do you know what happened to him? But that the joints of his loins were loosed. The terror of God made his body fall apart. And that's what happened to Jesus. The terror of an angry... Just think of it. Did Jesus die for any people who were idolaters? If he didn't, then there's not going to be any idolater that's ever saved. And what does an idolater deserve? And a God blaspheming, God unheeding idolater deserves to be so frightened by the wrath of an angry God that his body falls to pieces. And that's what Jesus experienced. All my bones. are out of joint, blaspheming idolater to be saved. Jesus, in this prayer, he is wrestling with God. He is praying and he won't give up. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He keeps on asking for God's help. Verse 11, be not far from me. And verse 19, but be not thou far from me, O Lord, deliver my soul from the sword. Why is he praying for help? Because he wants the blessing to come to the Lord. He sees that as if God helps him and delivers him, then there will be a people yet unborn who will declare God's righteousness. Do you see that? The Savior, he's wrestling in prayer with God. He won't let go. And so Jesus is greater than Jacob, because God came like Jacob's adversary and wrestled with him and put his bones out of joint, but Jacob wouldn't let go. And behold, here is one greater than Jacob, who had a greater wrestling with God as an adversary, all his bones, in order to have the blessing for you, dear Christian. All my bones are out of joint, he says. And this was so that in him the whole body may be fitly joined together. The church is the body of Christ, and it's nourished by that which every joint supplieth. And so how is it that Jesus got for himself a people who are knit together like a body? How is it that Jesus got for himself a essence be put out of joint? And therefore, if you see and know and love the crucified savior, you should therefore love the unity of the body of Christ. You should see this is the purchase of the crucified savior to have a united knit together people. And therefore, I'll do my utmost to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. Therefore, I'll study to give soft answers. Therefore, I'll study to use much patience. Therefore, I'll seek to excel in mutual service. And when I've wounded the unity of the body of Christ, I'll seek to resist Christ, put all out of joint. Remember his bones. Also, remember his heart? My bones, he says. Also, my heart. My heart is like wax. Psalm 68, we sing about that the hills melt like wax before the presence of God. of the Lord. So the external world on his throne, the external world cannot take the heat. The mountains melt like wax before the presence of God. but especially then within our Lord Jesus experienced this. He experienced an encounter with God in his majesty, seated upon the throne of his judgment and his heart became like wax. Think of the words of Job, another who was afflicted. Therefore, am I troubled at his presence When I consider, I am afraid of him, for God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me. Job was saying, I can't stand up to God with a stout heart. His heart was soft. He was afraid. Our Lord Jesus Christ experienced holy fear of God standing in judgment upon him. in his wrath. And why did he do this? Well, he tells us. He tells us in Psalm 40 why his heart melted like what comes in the volume of the book. It's written of me. I delight to do that. I will. Oh, my God. And then he goes on in Psalm 40. And we might hear the words of David here and they are the words of David. But then we keep listening and we hear the words of Christ. He says, for innumerable evils have compassed me about. Mine iniquity are more than the hairs of mine head. Therefore, my heart faileth me." David, in a sense of his guilt, oh, my sins are so numerous. My heart can't sustain it. My heart is sinking and melting and fainting. Yes, David. But David's sins took hold on Christ. The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. And when that happened, the Savior's heart failed. Oh, what an awful load of many guilty sins laid upon Him before the sight and presence of God. What should we do? We should abandon any idea of being able to stand on our own two feet, as it were, before the presence of the awesome judge. Whoever thinks that he has some righteousness to boast of, or says, I guess I'm pretty good, or at least I'm not as bad as so and so, will immediately abandon this at the day of judgment. Your heart will melt like wax. You won't have any strength. Best thing is now. Christ has purchased by all these awful sufferings, his heart melting like wax. Therefore, so that you, believer, so that your heart may not melt like wax. so that you may come into the presence of God with boldness of access, that you may come before his presence in the full assurance of faith and so that you may lift up your head in his presence so that you may know your acceptance before him as you bring him your petitions and as you bring him your prayers. So let your heart be strong. His heart melted so that your heart might live. His heart Another thing. His bowels. He tells us distinctly something more about this. And the punctuation in our English actually matches the punctuation in the Hebrew. My heart is like wax. That's a statement worth considering in itself. But then he tells us more. It is melted in the midst of my bowels. He tells us that his heart melted. And then he tells us where his heart melted, namely in his bowels. And here he's telling us about these soft feeling and compassionate bowels of his. By comparison, all of us are like crusty and hard, but he, again and again, he's moved with compassion. He sees the crowds that they're like sheep without a shepherd. He's moved with compassion towards them, literally that thing in compassionate bowels. of our Lord Jesus Christ, they receive what? But they receive his heart melting right in the midst of them, that there was none so feeling and tender as Jesus. And so he felt in the very center of his being all that was implied in God's hot anger being awakened against him. And so he felt not only the miseries of other people, but he felt the sum total of all the misery, which is the wrath and curse of God right there in his gut. And therefore, let this move your bowels, see the suffering savior. Feeling the hot anger of God. Right in his gut. And can we look on such a site and then harden ourselves in sin? Can we then say, I'm shutting out the voice of the word, I'm shutting out the voice of conscience and I just want to, so I'm going to go ahead and sin? To harden oneself in sin, oh, the guilt or notice that here lies the answer. It's actually not possible to have an active sight of Christ, his heart melted in the midst of his bowels, and then to be hard. Here's what we need in order to get softened towards God. We need a sight of Christ, his heart melted in the midst of his bowels, and then we'll be soft too. What a good thing that we have a savior with such capacity to pity. And in the experience of the cross, his ability to compassionate, to have his bowels yearn over one who suffers, it has only been enlarged when his heart was melted in the midst of his bowels. And maybe you're in circumstances that he was never in. Maybe you're a mother. Well, he was never in those circumstances, but he knows and he understands everything that you suffer. because he has experienced the sum total of all misery, which is the wrath of God. And believer, his compassionate bowels are at work for your good now in heaven. He hasn't forgotten this experience, his bowels. He tells us also of his strength. He says, my strength is dried up Like a pot shirt. And here the theme of the hot flame of God's wrath continues. He is continuing in the withering flame until all of his strength is dried up. Picture how we might go down to the riverbank and we might take a shovel or whatever it be and we get clay. out of the riverbank and it can hold a lot of moisture because it's clay and it's formed into something and it is held there and held there and held there until it becomes a dry pot shirt. And then perhaps to add to the picture, this pot is broken. All that's left is a pot shirt. It's one step away from returning back into dry dust. That's what became of the strength of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's our flesh, isn't he? He took our nature. We're of the dust. And he took our nature of the dust and experienced utter exhaustion. And why did he do this? Well, he did it for sinners. Remember how David says he hasn't confessed his sins and God's hand is heavy upon him. And what does he say? But my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Thereby, he is exhausted and weary. Do you know what that's like? to be exhausted and weary and have your strength spent in a sense of your own sinfulness. You look here and there's sin there and there's sin back in your life and there's sin recently in you. There's so much sin. It's so displeasing to God. Isn't that a wearying thought to you? Doesn't it spend your strength? Well, he says, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. He was all tired out and his strength was spent in bearing the sins of his people. Therefore, you come to him and your burden is relieved. You don't have to be weary anymore. Christ has peace. He youth like the eagles. So his strength and then finally his tongue And we've had a theme of the tongue, which has been running throughout our sermons in this communion. And he tells us finally about his his tongue. My strength is dried up like a pot shirt and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws. The cause of the tongue cleaving to the 27 we sing an imprecation on ourselves if we forget Jerusalem and set her not above our chiefest joy. We pray. there that in that case, that our tongue would cleave to the roof roof of our mouth. And we have an immediate sense that that would be a curse from God to have your tongue cleaving to your to the roof of your mouth. And then the heavens above you are going to be like brass and the earth under you is going to be like iron. And I'm going to shut off the waters of heaven and make you to be all dried out. That's what God's curse looks like. And that's what Jesus was experiencing. He experienced, indeed, dryness and thirst to the uttermost. And through the first drink which was offered to him, which he tasted, and tasted the bitterness of gall, thereby but refused, because it would have blunted the pain, he continued thirsting under the hot sun. And then towards the end of all his exhausting struggle, he says, I thirst. And this was part of his suffering to his body and it was a suffering to his soul because the anger of God lay behind that physical thirst. Thirst can be quite debilitating and intense. I can remember a brother I knew at one point who through his bout with cancer, he had lost his salivary glands. And so you could see him anytime I saw him, he always had a big cup with him with a straw in it. And he would be pretty much constantly taking a little sip from his straw to wet his mouth. Otherwise his mouth would have been constantly dry. It's an unbearable kind of suffering. And what's the effect of having one's tongue cleave unto one's jaws? It's silence. Job saw the princes, they saw me, and they're talking because they respected me so much. Well, so our Lord Jesus, with his tongue cleaving to his jaws, he couldn't say anything in his own defense. He couldn't say, I'm innocent. He couldn't say, I don't deserve this. He couldn't say, you should let me down from the cross. None of this. Not that he had any hard inclination to defend himself anyways, but he in silence continued bearing the intense suffering. And why did he do this? It was for people who have committed loads and loads of sins with their tongues. He endured this in order to purchase the gift of the Holy Spirit and to renew a people for himself who would be a people of pure language, confessing him and their jaws unto gluttony. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered with his tongue cleaving to his jaws. What delicacy could he enjoy? How could he possibly overindulge or anything like this in his circumstances for rash and careless tongues that have darted out too quickly, have spoken idle words, have spoken before thinking God. for unruly hot tongues that have burned up the reputation of others to too many words and sinful words. Our Lord Jesus endured his tongues in silence, cleaving unto his mouth. And here is where words, but by looking in faith to the sin bearer. So then we've seen my, not only I, And then my, but thirdly, thou. He says, my strength, my tongue cleaveth to my jaws and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. As I was saying to you that the secondary instruments and the men who were the means through which Christ suffered these things disappear into the background and he directly ascribes all his suffering unto God's immediate hand upon him. Thou hast brought me to the dust. of death and here consider the will of God. He's he is submitting to the will of God, God in his sovereignty, substitute to stand in the place of a sinful people. God willed that he would lay the sins of a multitude upon his own son. And here the Lord Jesus. In the flesh, he submits to the will of God, not hiding or in any sense not abashed of the fact that it is God that has brought him to the dust of death. And because the Lord Jesus submitted to the will of God in this, we need to submit to the will of God in this. This is the way that we need to pursue righteousness, peace and reconciliation with the God of heaven. In fact, if we were to go about to establish our own righteousness, this would be resisting the very hand and will of God that brought the Savior to the dust of death in the greatest way that we'd be capable of. It would be a heinous instance of unsubmission to God's will to seek your own righteousness in your works of the law. See him submitting to the will of God. Consider also the justice of God. Thou has brought me into the dust of that responsible before God at times to deliver the penalty of death. And they should deliver the penalty of death to those who deserve it. And there are those who howl and protest and say that it can never possibly be fair. for a human judge and so forth to sentence someone to death. And we recognize that that's bankrupt and wrong. At the same time, it is possible for human judges to err, but it's never possible for the divine judge to err. What God did, he did absolutely and unquestionably justly. He brought Jesus to the dust of death justly because the sins of his people were placed upon him. God did not show any mercy to his son on the cross. God pursued his son all the way to death. because this is the wages of sin. God did not spare him or let him off the hook till he penalized him all the way. Therefore, don't expect mercy from God any other way than through the cross of Christ. But do come and do expect mercy through the cross of Christ, because you, a sinner, can glorify the righteousness of God by believing upon the Lord Jesus, by Him in His righteousness more by believing on His Son than you ever could conceivably have done if, suppose, you fulfill the law perfectly, which you can't do. but you glorify the righteousness of God by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. So don't say the righteousness of God is so great that I can't possibly come near delivering his son to death. Therefore, I want to glorify him and I will come near by faith. And we consider the mercy of God, the love of God, Thou hast brought me into the dust of death. Why did he do this? For the love that he had to his people. It was God in his love who provided this loving Savior. God's love is behind the cross. And if God spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things? We cannot expect too much out of the love of such a God who brought this one into the dust of death. May the Lord bless these things to us, and would you stand with me for prayer? O Lord, our God and our Father in heaven, who can utter thy glory as seen in the cross of Christ, Who can utter the sufferings of the God-man? Who can tell what it was for him to be poured out like water? But yet faith does know and does receive that which passes comprehension. And bless us then to know, receive, and rest upon a crucified Savior, to the end that we may be constrained to live in love unto God and to the lamb, to the end that we may know our lives to not be our own, but ourselves to be purchased and redeemed unto the service of Christ. Bless us as we continue to the sacrament of the supper, and we pray in Jesus' name, amen.