Could you take God's word and turn to Psalm 22? And just open your Bibles there, and with the word of God open in Psalm 22, we're going to just unite in prayer. We'll not be reading the psalm together, we'll be speaking concerning it. It is quite a lengthy reading, and so we're going to be making comment the whole way through the psalm, or most of the psalm, so we want to just open the word, and now let's pray together. Loving Father, we come tonight into thy presence, And to the house of God, to the place of public meeting, we thank thee that unto him shall the gathering of the people be. And we now gather ourselves to the throne of grace and to the God of grace who reigns and rules from that very throne, the one who sits upon the circle of the earth. We recognize that thou art the only king so head off the church and it is to thee we submit ourselves and we give ourselves unreservedly to as we consider calvary in the cross we say with paul god forbid that i should glory save in the cross of the lord jesus christ lord it is only because of calvary we are what we are only through the grace of god and by the miracle of the new birth Have we been brought out of nature's and sin's darkness and into the marvelous and glorious light of the gospel? We thank thee for the gospel light that shone into our darkened understanding and brought us to a realization of our true state before thee. Lost, undone, rebels, those who had defied almighty God. Yet we bless thee that we found in our Savior a refuge from the storm of God's wrath. We thank thee that that storm broke on the very body of Jesus Christ when he suffered and bled and died for our sin upon the tree. Lord, we cry as we visit the cross tonight. that we'll fall in love with our Savior again. Oh God, that our souls will be so fired and inspired. Oh God, that as we go out tomorrow, that we'll speak well of our Savior, take away all distracting thoughts, and bring us into the holy of holies, we pray, as it were. May we behold our God in all of his agony and sorrow and suffering that he endured there on the tree for me and for my brethren and sisters and grant dear God the melting of our hearts again and the warming of them in these days. We pray that thou would visit us Lord by thy spirit and make Calvary love And the fire of it burned brightly within our souls. Lord grant, dear God, every child of God to be visited in this house tonight by the Spirit of God. And so, draw near to us, we pray. May thy blessing be upon the preaching of the Word. Come and fill this preacher with the Holy Ghost and power. We pray these, our prayers. in and through the Savior's all-precious and lovely and worthy name. Amen and amen. Draw not nigh thither, put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. These words spoken by God unto Moses from out of the burning bush could well govern our approach when we come to this 22nd Psalm. Holy ground is where we are standing this evening. To the casual Bible reader, they see the contents of this psalm detailing simply the events in the life of its human penman, who is identified in the title of the psalm as being David. But that is simply not the case. Psalm 22 is one of the Messianic Psalms. Don't let that term scare you. Messianic simply refers to the Messiah, the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, who being the eternal Son of God became man and so was and continues to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever. In this chapter of God's Word we come to view the crowning act of the Messiah's earthly ministry, His death upon the cross of Calvary. This chapter in the Word of God could be grouped together, married together with other similar chapters that we find in the Old Testament Scriptures, where Calvary, the place of the Savior's death, are clearly set forth for us. Genesis 22 is one obvious chapter, a chapter where we find Abraham ascending to the top of Mount Moriah with his much-loved son Isaac. And there he was willing, as the father, to sacrifice his son in obedience to God the Father's command. But rather than Isaac dying, Aram, whose horns had been caught in the thicket, would have replaced him on the altar and died, and Isaac stayed. Or we could group Psalm 22 with Leviticus 16, where the work of Christ on Calvary's cross is very much in view. Both the Godward and the manward aspect of redemption is clearly seen in the two goats that we have on the great day of atonement. One slain, its blood taken into the holy of holies, to be presented to God the other goat spared and yet the sins of the nation confessed over it and sent into an uninhabitable We could certainly bring Psalm 22 alongside Numbers 21 where we find Moses preparing the brazen serpent, putting it on the pole and lifting it high for all who had been bitten by the fiery serpents to look to it in order that they might be spared death. Christ himself will take that very event and explain the gospel to Nicodemus in John chapter 3 or Isaiah 53. There's a chapter where really the entirety of the Savior's earthly ministry is in view from birth to death right through to his resurrection. Psalm 22 brings us undoubtedly to Calvary. Holy ground. Just listen to some comments made by godly men from the past that affirms that this psalm speaks of Christ's cross. Martin Luther The Protestant reformer said, this is a kind of jam among the Psalms and is peculiarly excellent and remarkable. It contains those deep sublime and heavy sufferings of Christ when agonizing in the midst of the tears and pangs of divine wrath and death which surpass all human thought and comprehension. He said, I know not whether any Psalm throughout the whole book contains matter more weighty, or from which the hearts of the godly can so truly perceive those sighs and groans inexpressible by man, which their Lord and Head Jesus Christ uttered when conflicting for us in the midst of death and in the midst of pains and terrors of hell. William Dodge, the Puritan, said, this psalm, as it sets out the sufferings of Christ to the full, so also his three great offices. His sufferings are copiously described from the beginning of the psalm to verse 22. The prophetic office of Christ from verse 22 to 25, that which is foretold about his vows in verse 25 have respect to his priestly function. In the rest of the psalm, the keenly office of Christ is set forth. Henry Law, said the deepest anguish of our suffering lord is here portrayed the story of the cross is told in minute detail then that much love commentator matthew henry he said the spirit of christ which was in the prophets testifies in this psalm as clearly and fully as anywhere in all the old testament the sufferings of christ and the glory that should follow of him No doubt David here speaks and not of himself or any other man. Much of it is expressly applied to Christ in the New Testament. All of it may be applied to him and some of it must be understood of him only. No better exercise could we engage in this evening. No more uplifting, no more encouraging subject matter could we spend these few moments considering together. the work of our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and that work that he accomplished there for us at the place called Calvary. I pray that as we come to see him in the psalm our souls will be gladdened and then as we consider him that our fainting minds and spirits will be revived. So I simply want to walk through the psalm together and point you to Calvary, the place where you and I first fell in love with our Savior and praying that we will fall in love with Him all over again. I want you to keep in your mind as we make our way through the psalm that what makes this chapter in God's Word unique to any other chapter is that the view that we get of the Savior at the cross here does not come from beneath the cross. But rather, the view that we get here comes from off the cross. You see, in Psalm 22, it brings us to consider what the Son of God came to view from off the cross. This is His view. This is what He beholds as He hangs upon the tree. every other passage surrounding the cross takes the viewpoint from beneath the cross or near the cross looking towards the cross but this psalm takes us to look and bring us to the view that christ beheld from off the cross the opening verse of psalm 22 certainly brings us to the cross of calvary my god my god why hast thou forsaken me. Our Savior Jesus Christ as he was hanging on the cross and when ready to yield up his spirit into the hands of God his Father would make use of these very words here in Psalm 22. It is Matthew who informs us of this in his gospel. In Matthew 27 verse 46 we're told that at the ninth hour or at 12 noon Jesus cried with a loud voice saying Eli Eli Lama sabbath can I that is to say my God my God Why has thou? forsaken me He employs the very language of of now the Psalmist David here in Psalm 22. And having done his worst, God the Father now comes to draw a veil over the cross by darkening the sun for three hours. In those hours, God the Father would bruise his son. I employ the language now of Isaiah the prophet, and to put his son to grief for our sins. What transpired in those hours of darkness we cannot tell, and we cannot even begin to fathom. Scripture remains almost silent on the matter, only to say that He became sin for us. It is a statement that is pregnant with mystery, that God the Son The pure, innocent, impeccable Son of God became sin for us. What a mystery! What a marvel! What a mercy! Who could fathom it? Who can explain it? However, we do come to a little understanding as to the transaction that took place from the cry that went forth from out of the deep darkness of Golgotha's broi when the Saviour came to suffer for sin on Golgotha's hillside. In those words, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? God the Son comes to testify that God, his God, was no more in his mind, no more present. His countenance is now wholly hidden. He is of pure eyes, and to behold iniquity, and canst not look upon sin. Henry Law wrote utter desertion overwhelmed him. He cried for help, but no help came. He groaned through the extremist anguish, and was not silent, but no answer came. It was the hour and power of darkness. Hell could do no more to terrify and excruciate. He was abandoned to its fury. He was surrendered to its worst. Now, beloved, every word of that cry is weighted down with a sorrow that is beyond human expression. Why? Why? What is the cause of this forsaking? Why am I left? Why am I left at such a time and in such a plight? There is no cause for me whereby this course of action is justified in and of myself. I am the eternal Son of God. Why? Hast. Note the forsaking. It's not a threat. This forsaking has actually taken place. It's done. I'm forsaken, the Savior here acknowledges. Why hast thou, thy God, omnipotent God, eternal God, my God, my Father, why hast thou, He had been forsaken by his disciples, but he does not mention their forsaking. That forsaking was really nothing. Compared to the forsaking that he speaks of here. What he speaks of here is the forsaking of his father. It was this forsaking, this abandonment which inflicted the greatest grief upon the Son of God. Why hast thou forsaken me, the well-begotten, the only begotten Son of God? It's hard to fathom. The innocent one, the holy one, the eternal one, forsaken by God. What a mystery. Now, brethren, sisters, I know full well that there are times in our human experience when we feel that we have been forsaken, times maybe when we feel that we have been abandoned by God, when sickness just keeps lingering, maybe matters seem to get worse, or maybe when sorrow overwhelms us, like sea bellows roll as the hymn writer puts it or when death will take from our side our life's partner or a much-loved child or a close relative or a friend and some of us in those occasions we could almost cry out with the psalmist here, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? There are seasons in our life's experience when the Father's smile is eclipsed by clouds and it's shrouded by darkness, but let's ever remember in those times that God has not forsaken us. It is only but a seeming forsaking with us, but in Christ it was a real forsaking. Abandoned by God, as abandoned by God as you might feel tonight. Remember, child of God, God hasn't hasn't really forsaken you he has promised never to leave you nor forsake you and thus none can enter into the depths of the savior's forsaking calvary comes into our vision again in the verses six through to the verse eight so let's read those verses but i am a worm and no man reproach of men and despised of the people all they that see me laugh me to scorn they shoot out the lip they shake their head saying he trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him let him deliver him seeing he delighteth in him think of it I am becomes a worm but I am that's one of the titles of Christ See, I am. He says, but I am a worm. Oh, what matchless condescension the eternal God displays. The Son of God felt himself to be comparable to a helpless, powerless, downtrodden worm, passive while crushed and unnoticed and despised by all who would tread upon him. The word worm. employed by Christ here in verse 6 comes from a Hebrew word that means the crimson grub. The crimson grub. It was a scarlet grub. And whenever that scarlet grub was crushed and bruised, the color that was produced from that crushing process was then used in the dyeing of clothes into a crimson red. On the cross, Christ was crushed, bruised, pierced. Each piercing, hands and feet and brow and side provided a conduit through which the crimson blood of Jesus Christ could flow, the price of our redemption. I'm informed that whenever this little scarlet grub was going to give birth, That little grub would have attached itself to a trunk of a tree. It would have given birth to its offspring and lived long enough to care for those offspring before that little grub would then crawl off and die all alone. And in that dying process, that scarlet grub would then decompose and the scarlet fluid inside the grub emerged to stain the body of the grub and also to stain the tree to which it was now attached. What an apt picture of Jesus Christ and the blood stained cross. The old rugged cross. His body bloodied, and the cross too. The Savior speaks in the verses of being reproached and despised of the people. He was despised and rejected of men, Isaiah would say. And we find then this reproach, it comes to find an expression in the bodies of those who are reproaching him because they shut out the lip and they shake their head in disdain. Alongside that mockery and scorn directed, alongside that we find mockery, sorry, and scorn directed towards the Son of God as those, as they came to gaze upon the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. So we find in the verse a number, yet he trusted in the Lord. This is what they say, that he would deliver him. Let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. All of these details will find their fulfillment at the cross of Calvary. Turn to Matthew 27, verse 39 through to 43. Matthew 27, 39 to 43. It says, and they that pass by reviled him, wagging their heads. Psalm 22, verse seven, fulfilled. And saying, thou that destroyest the temple and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priests marking him with the scribes and elders said, he saved others, himself he cannot save. If he be the king of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God, let him deliver him now. Psalm 22 verse eight fulfilled. If he will have him, for he said, I am the son of God. You know the similarities between Psalm 22 and Matthew 27 are striking. It's no wonder then that the Psalm 22 It's been called the Crucifixion Psalm or the Psalm of the Cross. It gives a prophetic description of the Lord's crucifixion 1,000 years before it happened, before the event actually took place, 1,000 years. And here we have the cross in our view. Brethren and sisters, when we consider the Savior's ridicule and His reproach, whenever we are ridiculed, And whenever we are despised by family members and by work colleagues and by fellow pupils, maybe at school, let us ever remember Him who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself. And in doing so, we'll be comforted with the thought that the Savior has walked the road of rejection and reproach before us and knows exactly how we're feeling. We turn in spirit again to the cross in the verses 12 through to 18. Many bulls have compassed me, strong bulls of Bastion beset me round. The bulls of Bastion are here alluded to as remarkable for their size and their strength and their fierceness and are designed to represent the enemies and the foes that were fierce and savage and violent against the Savior. Some believe that this refers to human foes. The Romans and The scribes and the Pharisees and the elders and the chief priests, others, commentators, believe that this refers to demonic enemies, who in the hour of darkness assaulted the Savior when he found himself in the throes of death. The bulls have compassed me, strong bulls of Bastion have beset me round. They gaped upon me, verse 13, with their mouths as a raving and a roaring lion. Mention of the roaring lion might well be an allusion to the devil himself. Remember how Peter describes him there in 1 Peter 5 verse 8. He describes him there as the roaring lion. Be sober, be vigilant because your adversary walketh about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. However the term they They gaped upon me with their mouths. Suggests that his persecutors were plural, not singular in number. We can say at least this, brethren and sisters, the roaring lion, the devil, was certainly inspiring his enemies to inflict such agony and such persecution against the Lord Jesus Christ as they mocked and scorned him as they hung on the tree. The hand of the wicked one is seen here. Verse 14, I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted in the midst of my bowels. Prophecy requires that not one bone of the Savior would be broken. That's why whenever the soldiers come to see whether or not Jesus Christ is dead, They break the legs of the thieves on either side of the Savior, but not his legs, for he has already died. He has already given up the ghost. But these words seem to appear that though no bone was broken, there is suggestion that all of his bones were out of their natural joints by the violent stretching of his body upon the cross like as on a rack. Verse 15, he says, my strength is dried up like a pot showered, like a piece of pottery. My tongue cleaveth to my jaws and that was brought me into the dust of death with tongue cleaving to his jaws. The cry goes up from Christ on the cross, I thirst, I thirst. Verse 16, for dogs have compassed me. The assembly of the wicked have enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. Could I suggest to you that the dogs here, they speak about the Gentiles? Remember the Seraphim woman? Remember how the Savior would speak about the crumbs falling off the table for dogs? The Gentiles? It refers to the Gentile Romans who stood near the Savior's cross while the assembly of the wicked. Surely that refers us to the Jewish Sanhedrin, the chief priests and the elders who had conspired against the Son of God. And certainly the detail, they pierce my hands and my feet, bring us to consider the kneeling of the Savior to the cross and those wounds that those kneels would have inflicted on the hands and the feet of the Son of Man, for He is the Lamb. It was slain before the foundation of the world. What are these wounds in thine hands? They pierce my hands and my feet. Verse 18, they part my garments among them and cast lots upon my vesture. Can you not hear it? Child of God, can you not hear it? Can you not hear the dice as they collide in the hands of the soldiers? We vie for the seamless robe of the Savior. Can you not hear them as they knock against each other, as they gamble for the very garments of Jesus Christ? John speaks of this detail in John 19, 23 and 24. Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and made four parts, so every soldier a part, and also his coat. Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said, therefore, among themselves, let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be, that the scripture, the scripture, Sam, we could put in there, that psalm 22 verse number 18 might be fulfilled which said they parted my raiment among them and for my vesture did they cast lots these things therefore the soldiers did each detail within this seven verse section of psalm 22 finds its fulfillment in the death of Jesus Christ And as we read the detail, brethren and sisters, we must not forget that Christ and all that he was suffering and all that he was enduring on the cross was an order to secure eternal redemption for us. Amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, wouldst die for me? Now to the casual Bible reader of the psalm, the concluding verses make no apparent reference to the sufferings and the work of the Messiah and the cross. However, such thinking would be wrong. There is one final reference to the cross of Calvary that could very easily be missed in the psalm if you're not careful. You'll find that final reference to the cross in verse 31, the concluding verse. Note those last words, he hath done this. In the Hebrew, it is one word. It is the word finished. Done. Accomplished. Now, where do we hear that word again? We hear it in John 19, 30. When Jesus, therefore, had received the vinegar, he said, it is finished. One word. Tetelestai. Done. Accomplished. And he bowed his head, and he gave up the ghost. The sacrificial types were accomplished. The prophecies of his sufferings were fulfilled. The work that the father had given him to do had been perfectly done. And thus, the Redeemer was able to cry from the cross, it is finished. He, he has done it. He has done it. What a blessing this evening to know that the work of man's redemption has been accomplished. The demands of the law and of divine justice are satisfied. And all that I do is rest my soul on the finished work of Christ, the Redeemer. Is there any more comforting thought than that? all that is necessary for my salvation has been done, accomplished by Jesus Christ. Believe in a child of God and rest in it. He hath done this. And what he hath done, he hath done well, for he doeth all things well. And most certainly, in redemption, hath he done all things well. It begins, the psalm with the words, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And the psalm concludes with the word, finished, done. redemption accomplished, redemption done. There are other passages in the Word of God that bring us to consider the external events of the crucifixion, but as I've said, Psalm 22, in the psalm we have a record of what actually passed through the very mind of Jesus Christ in those hours of unspeakable anguish when he came to make atonement for sin. Understanding this unique difference between this account of the cross and every other account of the cross, we have to say that this psalm is most certainly holy ground. its holy ground. May God encourage and cheer and comfort our hearts as we saw our Savior again and all that he did for us in salvation. May God humble us at the foot of the cross tonight for Christ's sake. Amen. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Our Father, no better place could we be tonight than at the cross of your dear Son. We thank thee for Calvary, its picture. We thank thee for the great view that we have of our Savior here and his dying agony and his love for us and all he endured for us in order to secure and procure salvation from sin for all of his people. We rejoice in redemption. And Lord, if there's nothing else that we should pray tonight, it should be thank you, Lord, for saving my soul. Thank you, Lord, for making me whole. Thank you, Lord, for going to the cross. bearing shame and scoffing rude and in my place condemned dear God you stood and you sealed my pardon with your blood hallelujah what a savior oh help every heart to go out to thee in thanksgiving even as we have met around the savior's cross and help us as we come to prayer May even the Savior's love for us inspire us to pray, and may our hearts be blended together in Christian love, one toward another. For we pray these, our prayers, through Christ's all-prevailing name. Amen and amen.