Day 9: Psalm 22
- Readings: Psalm 22: 1-18
King David wrote this Psalm when he was going through intense suffering but he believed God would lead him out of despair and into joy. His focus remained on the future day when God would rule over the earth.
This Psalm is an accurate account of how Jesus, the Messiah, would suffer. We could go through each part of this passage like we did with Isaiah 53, but then you’d have to endure a long blog post again. So I challenge you to go through this passage and see how it foreshadows the death of the Messiah. We’ll look at one obvious one -verse 1, a foreshadow of an event at the cross, another that just clarified different language and then how it ends. This will give you an idea of how to dive into the rest of the passage if you so desire.
- My God, My God. Why have you forsaken me.
My God personalized the relationship between God and the Messiah. Emphasis on My. Seeing that it was stated twice shows the desperation in the cry.
Forsaken.
I love how concise and powerful David Guzik explains this moment on the cross.
“Yet beyond David and his life, this agonized cry and the intentional identification of Jesus with these words are some of most intense and mysterious descriptions of what Jesus experienced on the cross. Jesus had known great pain and suffering (both physical and emotional) during His life. Yet He had never known separation or alienation from God His Father. At this moment He experienced what He had not yet ever experienced. There was a significant sense in which Jesus rightly felt forsaken by God the Father at this moment
On the cross at that moment, a holy transaction took place. God the Father regarded God the Son as if He were a sinner. 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. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
- Verse 8
During Jesus’s crucifixion, people gathered at the foot of the cross and mocked Jesus. We see the words foreshadowed in Psalm 22:8 and fulfilled in Matthew 27:43
- Bulls
Before this study I never knew what “bulls” referenced so I went searching and found this:
"The bull is the emblem of brutal strength, that gores and tramples down all before it." (Clarke)
"The priests, elders, scribes, Pharisees, rulers, and captains bellowed round the cross like wild cattle, fed in the fat and solitary pastures of Bashan, full of strength and fury; they stamped and foamed around the innocent One, and longed to gore him to death with their cruelties." (Spurgeon)
Another proof that you constantly can grow and go deeper on the Bible.
If you are wondering how I look further into areas I search my study bible, read Blue Letter Bible Commentaries (my favorite way to search,) visit past studies or if those don’t lead me I just google.
There are other verses in this passage that foreshadow the events that were to happen to the Messiah, particularly to the body. Example, all joints out of place and tongue sticks to my jaws in verses 14 meaning when a man hangs on the cross, joints most likely come out of place and all the fluid in the body goes to his feet leaving the mouth extremely dry.
Let me remind you that this Messianic Psalm was written 1,000 years before the death of our Savior! Can we just all agree there is great power in these words? Personally these words help solidify my faith knowing that it was in God’s plan all along. It wasn’t by mere chance that Jesus died on the cross. It was planned and he foretold the details in the plan so we would know that this was the Messiah that was written about and promised to us.
- The Ending
But can we just read the end of this Psalm again?
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the Lord and he rules of the nations.” Verse 27-28
May we praise God and His holy name. And may we proclaim his righteousness to the people that He has done it (v31)
