Today we continue with our second Sunday of the season of Lent and we are looking at Psalm 22. And as we’re going through Psalm 22, keep in mind this is a Psalm of David. David went through a lot of turmoil in his life and he had his ups and downs and he also had this walk with God.
And along this walk with God, it appears in Psalm 22 that he had this vision that was not only a vision of the Messiah and what would happen, but it’s almost as if, and maybe so, he saw directly through Jesus’ eyes while Jesus was hanging on the cross. So as we’re walking through Psalm 22, we’re looking at the life of David, but we’re also seeing how that tightly connects to the Gospels and what happened with Jesus on the cross and the point of Jesus being on the cross. We also see that in Isaiah 53, that we have the call to worship, that is a very tight and amazing prophecy of Jesus that we have in the Bible.
We stand as you are able. We are going to look at Psalm 22, 6 through 13 today. But I am a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and despised by the people.
All who see me sneer at me. They separate with lit, they wag the head, saying, Commit yourself to the Lord. Let him deliver him.
Let him rescue him, because he delights in him. Yet you are he who brought me forth from the womb. You made me trust when upon my mother’s breast.
Upon you I was cast from birth. You have been my God from my mother’s womb. Be not far from me, for our trouble is near.
For there is no one to help me. Many bulls have surrounded me, strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. They open wide their mouths at me as a ravening and roaring lion.
The Word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
You may be seated. I don’t know if any of you have seen it, but Holly came across this show that we’ve been watching, that there’s like 10 seasons, so I don’t think you can even binge watch it too closely. But it’s called Homestead Rescue, and we’ve been watching that when we have time.
It seems to be about the only thing I watch on TV these days. But it is a story about this family in Alaska, Marty and Molly Rainey. And Marty is like a father, and he’s got two grown children, Matt and Misty, who go out with him and help homesteaders who are struggling.
They live in Alaska, so they can pretty much prepare for anything. And he seems like the typical man being in charge. He seems like he might even have an engineering degree.
He can figure out so many things and take a piece of wood and cut it in a certain way to fit just right when they cut down a tree, and he teaches homesteaders how to get water, how to have livestock, and his son teaches them how to hunt game. His daughter teaches them how to raise food in the garden so they have it, so they’re not spending all their money going miles and miles back into town. They help people all throughout the United States and around Alaska.
But the latest ones we’re watching, in whatever season it is, from like 2023, they’re working on their own cabins. The daughter is married, and they are working on their own cabin. The son is married, and they have a child, and they’re working on his own sawmill.
And the dad and mom, Marty and Molly, are working on a new cabin up on a hill, on a cliff, in about the most dangerous place you can imagine. You have to cross a glacier to get there on the way up. And anything they have to bring across has to go across a river.
Then on this last episode, they thought it was frozen, and they started driving a truck in there, and the truck went down. So it didn’t go all the way in, so he climbed out, and then he got a snowmobile and pulled the barrel on the snowmobile, and before he would do that, he walked out there with a rope tied around it to see if it was secure enough so he stomped it across the river, and he went in. And they pulled him out with the rope, and he said this line.
Sorry, honey, I should have listened to you. Well, here’s how he runs the show. He might be a little more boisterous because it’s on TV, but he’s whistling over here, he’s snapping over here, he goes, come on, follow me, let’s go, let’s get this in line.
And he is not shy about telling his family and the homesteaders he helps out what to do. And they all look to him, and then they have, you know, how they do on reality shows, and then the son or the daughter is talking, and they go, yeah, my dad’s pretty crazy, but he’s really smart, he knows what he’s doing, he gets people through, he cares so much, and they’re just building him up. And then on this episode, there was an issue with their wood-burning stove and their house burned down in the middle of the night.
And he and his wife, he saved four photo albums and lost all this memorabilia they had collected throughout, not only in the wilderness, but throughout the country, because they travel all over helping other homesteaders, and they lost everything. And the first show we watched, as the fire burned it down, he spent the whole show telling everybody, I’m sorry, this is my fault, I should have known better. And then, the halfway finished cabin at the top of a hill, the whole family came together, and they helped him, who led everything before, finish his cabin.
And he was put in this position where every time he would go talk to the camera, instead of just being this guy that had more dad jokes than you can imagine, and more bold about making his plans come to life, he would cry so much, he was brought to tears, in so much humility, that this man, who was so in charge and had so many great ideas to make things work out in the wilderness, had to humble himself and let his family come and help him out and do so much. David, David faced so much in his life. He had times where he was running from King Saul, where he was hiding, where he was trying to get away from him, where so much had gone against him.
He had times where they were fighting wars, and then they had infighting within his own family, and it was, for all the success he had, David was a man who the people would cry out, King Saul before him, and they would say, well, King Saul has killed his thousands, but David has killed his tens of thousands, meaning he was a more powerful warrior than the king that was there. He was anointed by God as a child, chosen by God to lead the people of Israel after King Saul, and he held on to that anointing for years and years and years, and you probably know he made some mistakes. He’d be close to God.
God said, this is a man after me. Now, David in the Bible is what we call a type of Jesus, meaning he had some of the characteristics of the Messiah, the chosen one. He led the people of Israel into Jerusalem and built a kingdom, fought many wars, did many great things.
He was called a man after God’s own heart, but yet in this vision that he got that he gets to see out of Jesus’ eyes, and he gets to see what Jesus is saying, it’s amazing how he says this. But I am a worm and not a man. I mean, David, like Marty, was a man’s man, a leader, a warrior, a king, a man of God, a man of principle most of the time, and a man who could lead the people and follow God’s will and trust that God had good plans for them, and yet there were times where he was brought.
If you can picture David looking through the eyes of Jesus on the cross, and Jesus saying, I am a worm and not a man, how can that be? We’re talking about the king of kings, the Lord of lords. We’re talking about the one who, if you read the newsletter article this week, coming out of the book of Philippians, where it says, he didn’t consider it too high to be in heaven with the Father, the Trinity all there together, in the full power of being of the Godhead, yet he came down. In humility, he came down and condescended himself to be a human, a lowly human, and not only be a lowly human, but as low as a worm.
And if you think of a worm, you think of something, if you’re walking on the ground, you may step on it and not even notice it. Now you’re grossed out and you’re going to check your shoes. A worm is something also that if you look at Philippians 2, it says, do nothing out of selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves.
Do you want to be like Jesus? Do you want to be more Christ-like in your life? Jesus regarded others as more important than himself. The God who spoke creation into existence became a worm among men, humiliated, beaten, hung on a cross like a common criminal. At the wedding I was blessed to officiate over the weekend, one of the verses they chose was out of the book of Romans, and in Romans 12, it started off with let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, cling to what is good.
And then it talked a lot about how to act in conflict, which is good to know in a marriage. But he says this, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another.
Do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own eyes. I don’t know why, but I’m always looking at the groom when I say these words.
Do not be wise in your own eyes. In other words, when someone ridicules you, when someone is harsh to you, when someone is unfair to you, love them. Piece of cake, right? Jesus.
Jesus hung on that cross. And as he was hung on that cross, he called himself a worm and not a man. And then he said, upon you I was cast from birth.
He said, Father, you, I don’t know anything else but you. Some of you might know that feeling with your faith that you grew up in the church, that you were baptized as a baby, that you know life not outside the church and no other God but our God. You don’t know how to live life without God.
And here was Jesus always leaning on the Father and the Holy Spirit, having them in every moment. And then it comes to the point where he’s hanging on the cross. Last week we talked about being forsaken by the Father because if you look at verse 11 again, it says, be not far from me for trouble is here for there is none to help.
And when there is none to help, it means Jesus, the human, was on his own. The only one in all of history, the only one who could take the sins of the world in human flesh, but yet be pure and spotless lamb, the only one who on his own could take every one of our sins, bear it on the cross so that we could die and rise to life with him. There is no one here to help.
He bore it himself. David goes on to say, strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. David, David himself, do you guys remember his career as a kid? Before a king? It’s kind of not a prerequisite to being a king, so it’s a tough one to just know.
He was a shepherd boy. And he talked about how when he went out to face Goliath that there were wild animals. There were bears, there were lions, there were large game that would try to hunt down those sheep or try to attack him.
And he knows how they can just circle around, tightening their grip on their prey until they attack. And David said, strong bulls surround me. Jesus, looking from the cross, saw something amazing.
When you’re talking about that, is that he saw people passing by, just passersby, just your everyday Jews coming into town for the Passover or for the festival of bread. And they saw him on the cross and they hurled insults around him. They’re walking around looking up at him and he’s seeing these people whom he gave up the throne in heaven for a time because he loves them so much, ripping him apart with their words.
Not only was it the passersby, but it was the priests and the scribes, it says. They were standing around talking to themselves, going, yeah, let’s see, he leans on the father, let’s see if the father is going to let him down. And they were so proud that they could trap him and get him up on the cross.
You know, hindsight’s 20-20, but they didn’t do too good of a job. Then there were priests and scribes, the priests and scribes, and then it says, and the criminals who hung with him were hurling insults at him. And the Roman soldiers, it says, those who crucified him were mocking him.
So when you look at Jesus and he’s saying there are passersby, those were the Jews mocked him. The priests and scribes relished in his crucifixion the Jewish leaders, the lowest of the low, the criminals on the cross with him, even put him down, put him down lower than that. So you can see why he called himself a worm.
And then the soldiers representing the Gentiles made fun of him too. They took his clothing. They did whatever they wanted to do to him after they beat and mocked and spit on him.
Basically, when you throw together the Jewish people, the religious leaders, the criminals and the Gentiles, you’ve got someone who was despised by the world. Jesus was despised by the world. For God so loved the world, even though the world hated his only son, even though the world turned from him.
Now, we sometimes forget what Jesus went through and we forget that being a Christian is not about pride, not about thinking we’re better than anyone else, not about thinking, well, I’m too good to associate with someone else. You know, today is our fourth trip to Kansas City. Is that right? December, January, February, March.
Yeah, good count. And sometimes we have stereotypes about the homeless. They should be working.
They should be in a hospital. They should be in jail. Whatever stereotypes we have about them, they’re only there to take and not give.
But we go there and we listen to their stories. It’s a humbling experience to know that they are human and that they have hurt and that they have pain and they have likes and they have dislikes. They have opinions.
They have a lot of opinions. Did you notice that? They have a lot of opinions. But they’re children of a father who loves us.
We’re not too good to associate with those who may despise us. I mean, usually they are so thankful and so kind, but not every time we help someone out do we see the appreciation. Jesus didn’t see the appreciation on the cross, but he humbled himself.
If we’re gonna be like Jesus, if we’re gonna use this season of Lent to really grow closer to God, whether it’s by what we have given up for Lent or by what we are adding in place of that to spend with God and know God and know what God has in store for us, then one of the main things we need to do is humble ourselves like Jesus. Think of ourselves that we’re not higher than we ought to be. Think of ourselves as a worm, and that’s okay, that we’re not here to fight and put down and hurt others who disagree with us.
We’re here to love. Does someone insult you? Certainly. Does someone despise you? Sure, then you love them.
We don’t love other people because they love us. We love others because God loved us first. Work on this Lent, being more humble like Jesus, trusting in God’s plan even when we go through the wilderness, even if it feels like you’re being despised, meekness, humility, lowliness, serving those who we might not even think deserve it and praising God through the whole thing.
We stand as you are able. We put your arms out without slapping anyone again this week. Just like Jesus, your arms are out, hanging on the cross, seeing through Jesus’ eyes.
Say these words with me. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.