We have been working through Psalm 22 and in Psalm 22 we’re looking at a prophecy of David where he actually gets to see through the eyes of Jesus on a cross and He speaks the words Jesus spoke. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That he saw and went through what Jesus did. He talked about those surrounding him and circling him and want to stop him and just waiting for the moment that he would die.
Today if you listen to Psalm 22, it takes a different turn. David has been speaking from the first person but we see something much different here. We see after all this suffering, after all this pain that there’s like a break where in the midst of this David starts praising God.
We stand as you’re able. Psalm 22, we’ll look at 22 through 27. I will tell of your name to my brethren.
In the midst of the assembly I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him. And you descendants of Jacob, glorify him and stand in awe of him, all you descendants of Israel.
For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, nor has he hidden his face from him. But when he cried to him for help, he heard. From you comes my praise in the great assembly.
I shall pay my vows before those who fear him. The afflicted will even be satisfied. Those who seek him will praise the Lord.
Let your heart live forever. All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord and all the families of the nations will worship before you. The Word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God.
Thanks be to God. Amen. You may be seated.
It’s a definite, stark, different transition that happens right here. David has been crying out with the Messiah, the pain that would be suffered. Calling out for God, crying out for God.
But then he pauses and he says, I will tell of your name among the brethren in the midst of the assembly. I will praise you. Now, the Hebrew word, kahel.
Kahel. Now, I probably need to say it more like this. Kahel.
Means, congregation or assembly. First of all, David is saying, in the midst of this, there is all this pain, all this suffering. He’s seeing what is going to happen to the Messiah.
And then all of a sudden he starts praising God. I will go into the congregation all the days of my life and praise you. I will tell of your name to everyone I see.
Something happened. From all the torture and suffering of being pierced and hanging on the cross that David saw something different in the midst of this. Through the pain and the suffering, he starts praising God.
What happened? The centurion, who was standing below the cross right in front of Jesus, said, he saw him, he saw the way he breathed his last. He said, truly, this man was the son of God. And some interpretations will say he said more like, this was the son of the gods.
Not knowing the one true God yet, knowing even in the midst of the most humiliating public spectacle anybody could go through, the way he breathed his last, he was the son of God. Now, Jesus is an incredible example. I mean, it’s hard enough to follow the example of God.
But even the way Jesus died converted people to understand more about who he was. As he breathed his last, even that last bit of breath coming out from his nostrils in his mouth changed the life of someone who had mocked him and beat him. Who was just fine with hanging him on that cross.
But something changed. What happened when Jesus died? That changed everything. When Jesus died, it changed his life, the centurion’s life.
It changed others’ lives, whether they knew it or not at that time. David said in this transition, he said, I will tell you to the assembly. And he said, I will go around the descendants of Jacob, anyone who is an Israelite, who can go to the synagogue, into the temple, and praise you.
I will praise your name. He said, I will praise you. But he goes on to say, For he has not despised nor abhorred the afflicted.
The affliction of the afflicted nor has he hidden his face from him. But when he cried for help, to him for help he heard. Now David backing off from saying in the first person, Why have you forsaken me? Steps back and sees clearly that it is the Messiah, it is not him.
And he said, the father, when the son cries out in his pain and anguish, he heard him. He didn’t despise. He didn’t turn away and look somewhere else, he heard him.
David goes on to say, after talking about praise, he says, the afflicted will eat and be satisfied. Those who seek him will praise the Lord. Okay, Jesus is the afflicted.
Him, he is the one who has gone through all this. This is what David is talking about in the rest of the psalm, who is suffering, who is pierced for our transgressions. And then he goes on to say, David said, because of this, the afflicted will eat and be satisfied.
Remember Jesus hung on that cross for us. So, in the midst of Jesus dying, what changed is, not only was Jesus afflicted, but he took on our afflictions. By his stripes we are healed.
He bore the scars for our transgressions. David is showing us that in this case, Jesus, because God heard his prayers, took on all that we have, all our hurt and our pain, all our sins and our trespasses. And because of this one man, the afflicted will eat and be satisfied.
Those who seek him will praise the Lord. It goes through a progression here, that David says, I will tell your name to the assembly. And then the assembly, in that praise, not only will the praise happen there, but everyone who is afflicted, everyone who is suffering, under guilt and shame and persecution, who seeks you out, will eat and be satisfied.
Because of what happened, the centurion saw something in Jesus that changed everything. Basically, because of the way he died, everything changed. Philippians 2 puts it like this, being found in the appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
He said, I am a worm and not a man. For this reason also God exalted him. Okay, here the transition in Philippians.
He was put to death on a cross, but because he died not for himself, but for our sins, for this reason also God exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that in the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are on heaven and earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Because of Jesus, we can live.
The transition that takes place at Jesus’ death, because of how he died, we can be forgiven. Because of how he died, we can be saved. Because of how he died, we can praise God through whatever pain or suffering or hurt or difficulty we face.
Because what Jesus went through, he did for the whole world. Martin Luther put it like this, our weakness requires so much exhortation that it might not dread being humbled, nor despair when humbled, and thus might after bearing the bearing of the cross receive salvation. Last week we talked about carrying our own cross and that we humble ourselves.
That like Jesus dying on the cross, when we pick up the cross, it’s not just for our own sake, it’s not for our own glory. It’s so we humble ourselves and we serve God and we love others and we praise God in their presence and they can see us. Even when we have difficulties and problems, even when we have sinned and fallen short, that we can still be in the presence of God, that we can be restored and we can be refreshed and then when the world sees that, everything changes.
David goes on to say, all the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and the families of the nation will worship for you. Hinting that, it’s not just about the sons and daughters of Jacob, it’s not just about Israel. When the Messiah does this, the way the Messiah dies on the cross, it’s not just for one group of people, it’s for people through the ends of the earth to know Jesus, to praise God, and to come into the presence and worship God.
It’s something that we offer to everyone. A couple chapters later in Philippians, Paul says, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I would say rejoice.
Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Why don’t you guys say rejoice in the Lord always.
Always. Don’t repeat everything I’m saying now. But always.
Always. Always. Not just rejoice in the Lord when I feel like it.
When we, again, Lent is that little piece of putting ourselves through something. When we wish we could have something, but we deny ourselves of that, part of that is to pick up our cross and carry it, and say it’s not about me, it’s about you God, and we humble ourselves before God, and in that humbling, in the challenges we face every single day, we rejoice, we praise God. It’s hard to say, thank you God for these bad knees.
Thank you God for this hip that doesn’t do what I want to do. Thank you God for this shoulder that has been through so much excruciating pain. Thank you God for this disease that may end up taking my life.
Always. David saw it through the eyes of Jesus. That when he saw the way Jesus died, he immediately turned to pray.
And that we, like Jesus, can be that example. William E. Sangster was born in 1900 in a humble home in Sordich, London. The son of Anglican parents.
In part of his biography he wrote this, I believe that I was born to be a minister. I cannot recall a time in my life when I was without a sense of holy vocation. It did not derive from any conviction in my mind of my parents, who had never so much as entertained thought, but I felt the pressure of directing, a directing hand upon me for my tenderest years.
In my teens when I came to regard as a deeper and more personal relationship with God, I drifted from the church of my baptism in early training and associated with a people called Methodists. See how he stepped away from the church and he became Methodist. And when the time came for me to join the army on my 18th birthday, I was already a local priest.
The army life tested me and deepened me. The strange man on the cross haunted and held me all the time. I came out of the army convinced that he was the only way and I offered myself to the Methodist ministry.
I had four years training in college and was put on sound lines of scholarship. Later his daughter, Margaret, wrote in the mid-50s about her father, W.E. Sangster, how she began to notice some uneasiness in his throat and dragging in his legs when he went to the doctor. He found an incurable disease that caused progressive muscular atrophy.
His muscles would gradually waste away, his voice would fail, his throat would soon become unable to swallow. Sangster threw himself into his work in British home missions, figuring he could still write and would even have more time for prayer. Let me stay in the struggle, Lord, he pleaded.
I don’t mind if I can no longer be a general, but give me just a regimental lead. He wrote articles and books. He helped organize prayer cells throughout England.
I’m only in the kindergarten of suffering, he would tell people who pitied him. Gradually his legs became useless, his voice went completely, but he could still hold a pen, he’d shake it. On Easter morning, just a few weeks before he died, he wrote a letter to his daughter.
In it he said it is a terrible way to wake up on Easter morning and have no voice to shout, now he is risen, but it would be even more terrible to have a voice and not want to shout. In the midst of his pain, he praised God with everything. I don’t know how else to say that, but say this, but we’re blessed.
I’m not sure I know what everybody is facing. I’m not sure what weighs heavy on your heart, what pulls all your energy and your strength, but what I do know is that right here, right now, in this place, as in every place we are in, we are called to praise God. We are called to lift our hands to the heavens and say, how great thou art.
Jesus gave everything on that cross for you and for me, so we could praise God, we could worship God, we could be in the presence of God. The way that that man died on the cross changed the world. The way that that man died on the cross is worthy of our praise.
The way that that man died on the cross speaks through us in volumes. When others can see that even though things may not be perfect, that we can raise our hands and praise the Lord God Almighty because he gave everything so that we could be forgiven, so that we could live, and by the way Jesus breathed his last, the world was changed. So today, in this place, in the midst of knowing what Jesus suffered, we praise God because God is good.
God loves us. God is worthy, no matter what we’re going through, for us to rejoice. Almighty God, we thank you for a voice that can praise you.
We thank you that in the midst of anything that you can remind us of what Jesus did for us so that we can stop, we can offer our thanksgiving, we can offer our praise. In the middle of everything, in the middle of stress, in the middle of pain, in the middle of uncertainty, in the middle of doubt, in the middle of anxiety, we can stop and say thank you God for Jesus Christ who died for us. Thank you God for walking with us when we go through the valley.
You are worthy of praise. You are worthy of worship. You are worthy of everything we can offer.
You are worthy of us to pick up our cross and carry it. We love you Jesus. Thank you.
Amen.