Review of 2014. Part 3. (The Crucifixion Psalm, Psalm 22)

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Review of 2014. The Crucifixion Psalm, Psalm 22

In our Study of the importance of repetition and reparation we are now ready for the month of April. Of course April is the month we celebrate Resurrection Sunday known to most Christians as Easter and although we spent the majority of our time on the foot-washing passage of our in Joh 13, I have actually chosen another subject and passage last April as well, and that is the crucifixion Psalm known as Psalm 22.

We also looked a principle we have seen many times and that was the foot-washing passage.  Remember that the Lord uses foot-washing to make a distinction between regeneration and rebound. We looked at the main passage found in JOH 13:10, Jesus said to him, “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.”

One of the main principles that we had the privilege of studying concerning our main passage Joh 13 was the phrase the in JOH 13:1 which says, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. And, of course, the greatest expression of this love was the cross, where He would suffer not only physically, but even more than that, suffer a spiritual death which means to be separated from God the Father for the sins of the entire world.

When was the last time that you really ever contemplated just how truly, physically painful it must have been for Him to be whipped, crowned with thorns, bear the cross, and have iron spikes driven into His hands and feet? And not only His physical sufferings, He also underwent great emotional stress in the garden of Gethsemane the night before His death from being abandoned by friends, and the thought of His humiliation and the cruel death by crucifixion.

LUK 22:44, And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.

This is a medical condition known as hematohidrosis. Although relatively rare, it is well-known, and there have been cases of it. Hematohidrosis as follows = “Around the sweat glands, there are multiple blood vessels in a net-like form.” Under the pressure of great stress the vessels constrict and then as the blood vessels dilate they can actually rupture. The blood then goes into the sweat glands. As the sweat glands producing sweat, they push the blood to the surface - coming out as blood mixed with sweat. This happens under tremendous anxiety or mental pressure. What was the source of Jesus great stress and anguish? Clearly he was in intense spiritual agony. He knew that he was physically facing one of the most horrible forms of capital punishment there has ever been. His body was human, and he would feel everything at least as intensely as we would.

But, the really great weight upon Jesus was the knowledge that he would soon bear the terrible trauma of taking the guilt for all of our sins upon him—my sins and yours-past, present and future! He knew that under this weight of sin, the Father would forsake Him and thus He would endure a form of hell itself for lost sinners. It would come in the form f spiriutual death, spiritual separation from the Father, so that we would never have to.

Jesus could easily have avoided all of this and simply disappeared. He could have brought down a legion of angels to protect him. He could have made his skin impenetrable. He could have numbed His pain so that he felt nothing. But he chose to do none of these things. Rather, He willingly chose to genuinely be “wounded for our transgressions” and “bruised for our iniquities”so that He could truly pay for our sins and suffer human death.

ISA 53:5,7” …He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.”

The point is that this form of suffering was so great that we are told blood came through the pours of His flesh as beads of sweat. But to top it off, even more than all of that, worst of all, He was  about to be forsaken by God the Father for the first time ever. This type of suffering words cannot even express because none of us could ever identify with the suffering that took place when;2CO 5:21, He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

He was on the Cross, not as a sinner dying for us in our place, but He was on the Cross as a “sin offering” or an offering for sin. And just like the innocent lamb was sacrificed in the Old Testament and had no idea what was happening to it, our Lord Jesus Christ, in His Humanity, had no idea what He was truly about to suffer in spiritual death as an offering for sin. And, it was so painful and shocking for Him in His humanity, that He kept on crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?,” Because, you see, God did not die for us or in our place, only Jesus, in His humanity died, not God.

The Psalm of the Crucifixion is Psa 22.

It tells about the suffering and death of Christ 1,000 years before He actually gave his life upon the Cross.

In fact it begins with the phrase in Psa 22, My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?
It ends with the phrase “kiy asah” in verse 31, translated He has performed {it.} meaning “It is finished.”

This Psalm is a photograph of our Lord’s darkest hours and a record of His dying words. Here David takes us deep into the horrors of the Cross while at the same time we are made to see the fruits of the Lord Jesus Christ and His passion. Was David was given an inside, intense and very private account of the event from the the Lord? Even though the Psalm was the expression of a personal anguish on the part of David, cry­ing out and saying, My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? This in no way invalidates the claim that this was to be a prophecy of the the Lord on the Cross. There is no more accurate expression of our Lord’s thoughts and feelings during the awful six hours on the cross in all of the Scriptures than what we have in Psalm 22.

PSA 22:1, My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning. This of course was quoted by our Lord in MAT 27:46.

It was a phrase that caused the Jews to mock but the elect angels to rejoice.

Psa 22 states the unanswered prayer of our Lord on the Cross, “O my God, I cry out by day [this refers to the first three hours on the cross from 9AM to 12 noon] and then by night or the night season there is no silence for Me.” This was the continued prayer of our Lord during the darkness that surrounded the Cross from 12 noon‑3 PM, when He was being judged for our sins.

PSA 22:3 tells the reason why that prayer could not be answered in one phrase, “You are Holy. You who art enthroned upon the praises of Israel.” God the Father was imputing our sins to Christ and judging them from His Justice and His Holiness. Therefore, He couldn’t answer the prayer for deliverance on the Cross because God can have nothing to with sin,HAB 1:13.

In PSA 22:4-5, Jesus even pointed out to the Father that He had previously delivered Israel under severe conditions.

PSA 22:4-5, “Our fathers trusted in You [faith‑rest]; they trusted, and You delivered them [You answered their prayers].They cried out to You in prayer and were delivered; they trusted You and were not disappointed.”

Out of all the Jewish difficulties and miseries, their faith brought them out of it by calling God to the rescue but in the case of our Lord, His perfect faith brought no assistance from Heaven. Of all the ones who ever trusted in God throughout their lifetime, He would be the only one forsaken by God. And of course we will never be as HEB 13:5, states “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,”
Why couldn’t our Lord’s prayer be answered? The reason is given in PSA 22:6, “But I am a worm.” Usually in the Bible, the Hebrew word for a worm is rimmah, which means a maggot, but the Hebrew word Jesus used here for worm, is tolah, which means a crimson worm or scarlet worm. Remember that both scarlet and crimson are the colors of blood - deep red. The interesting thing about this tolah worm is that when it was time for the female crimson worm to have babies (which she does only one time in her life), she finds the trunk of a tree. She is so strongly and permanently stuck to the wood that the shell can never be removed without tearing her body completely apart and killing her. When the baby worms hatch, they stay under the shell. Not only does the mother’s body give protection for her babies, but it also provides them with food - the babies feed on the body of the mother.

You can see the spiritual analogy, the Lord Jesus Christ protects us and provides the spiritual food that we need, which of course refers to Bible doctrine.

JOH 6:50-51, “This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh.”

After just a few days, when the young worms grow to the point that they are able to take care of themselves, and the mother dies. And as the mother Crimson worm dies, she oozes a crimson or scarlet red dye which not only stains the wood she is attached to, but also her young children. They are colored scarlet red for the rest of their lives. Just as we have the scarlet red of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ covering us for all of eternity.

May 26:28, our Lord said, this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.

Then after three days, the dead mother Crimson worm’s body loses its crimson color and turns into a white wax which falls to the ground like snow.

So what did Jesus mean by saying “I am a worm”? Well, no one knows exactly what Jesus meant. It is very interesting that, just like the Crimson worm, the Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed His life on a tree. His children (believers) are likewise washed with his crimson blood and their sins cleaned white as snow.

ISA 1:18, “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord, “Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.”

He was being crushed for our sins, so that you and I, as members of the royal family of God, could wear the crimson robe of the royal family forever. And so our Lord felt Himself to be comparable to a helpless, powerless, down-trodden worm, passive while crushed and unnoticed and despised by those who walk upon Him. PSA 22:6, But I am a worm, and not a man,
“And I am not a man” means “I no longer even appear human.”

ISA 52:14, Just as many were astonished at you, {My people,} So His appearance was marred more than any man, And His form more than the sons of men. And then He says I am a reproach of men, and despised by the people. The very people who wanted to crowned Him have now condemned Him. The very ones who benefited from His cures now despised Him, how quickly people forget.

PSA 22:7, All who see me sneer at me; They separate with the lip, they wag the head, {saying,}

These were gestures of contempt and hatred. Man made faces at Him while the angels veil their faces and adore Him. This was fulfilled in MAT 27:39-40. Priest and people, Jews and Gentiles, soldiers and civilians, all united together to hurl abuse at Him, mock Him while He was dying for those very sins. How can we ever complain of mockery and ridicule after this?

PSA 22:8, “Commit {yourself} to the Lord; let Him deliver him; Let Him rescue him, because He delights in Him.”

Our Lord’s prayer was heard by all who were there, and they saw that it couldn’t be answered. But they didn’t understand the reason--because He was bearing their sins and our sins in His own body on the Cross. This was the only prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ that could not be answered because it was the way of our so great salvation (HEB 2:3).

He was being judged for our sins; He was our substitute; He was taking our place.

PSA 22:8, was fulfilled in MAT 27:41-43, In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking {Him,} and saying, “He saved others; He cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel; let Him now come down from the cross, and we shall believe in Him. He trusts in God; let Him deliver {Him} now, if He takes pleasure in Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’“

If you ever become tormented by others and mocked and judged and ridiculed, let us remember what our Lord went through.

HEB 12:3, For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you may not grow weary and lose heart.

Back in PSA 22:9-10, Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb; You made me trust when upon my mother's breasts. Upon You I was cast from birth; You have been my God from my mother's womb.

By the way, if there were two souls in one body, meaning two soul lives, then why wouldn’t the fetus or the so-called soul have God as his or her God in the womb, not from the womb? And let me make this crystal clear, this is in no way condoning abortion because there is movement, and there is biological life in the womb, which is the extension of the mother’s life.

PSA 22:11, Be not far from me, for trouble is near; For there is none to help.

Our lord’s great sorrow was that God had forsaken Him, His great prayer is that He would be near Him.

PSA 22:12, Many bulls have surrounded me; Strong {bulls} of Bashan have encircled me.

This was fulfilled in MAT 27:1, Now when morning had come, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put Him to death;

PSA 22:13, They open wide their mouth at me, As a ravening and a roaring lion.

This was fulfilled in MAT 26:59-60, Now the chief priests and the whole Council kept trying to obtain false testimony against Jesus, in order that they might put Him to death; and they did not find {any,} even though many false witnesses came forward. But later on two came forward,

Like hungry cannibals they opened their blasphemous mouths as if they were about to devour the one they hated. They could not vomit forth their anger and jealousy fast enough.

PSA 22:14, turning from His enemies, our Lord describes His own personal condition,  I am poured out like water,

This took place in LUK 22:44, And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.

PSA 22:14, I am poured out like water, And all my bones are out of joint;

His bones were out of joint but not broken, JOH 19:36, For these things came to pass, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, “Not a bone of Him shall be broken.”

MAR 14:33-34, And He took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled. And He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death;”

PSA 22:15, My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And my tongue cleaves to my jaws

JOH 19:28, tells us why He cried out when He said  “I am thirsty”; And Thou dost lay me in the dust of death.

This is a description of the burning afflictions under the physical sufferings of Christ. All His strength was dried up in the tremendous flames of divine justice just as the Passover lamb was roasted in the fire.

PSA 22:16, For dogs have surrounded me; A band of evildoers has encompassed me;

LUK 23:10-11, And the chief priests and the scribes were standing there, accusing Him vehemently. And Herod with his soldiers, after treating Him with contempt and mocking Him, dressed Him in a gorgeous robe and sent Him back to Pilate.

Then the Psalmist goes on to say They pierced my hands and my feet. This was a fulfillment of ZEC 12:10 and another reason why this Psalm does not ultimately refer to David like some teach.

PSA 22:17, I can count all my bones.

This was a fulfillment of ISA 52:14, Just as many were astonished at you, My people, So His appearance was marred more than any man, And His form more than the sons of men.

And then the Psalmist says They look or they stare at me;

Who are they? They are those found in MAT 27:36, And when they had crucified Him, they sat down and they began to keep watch over Him there. 

PSA 22:18, They divide my garments among them, And for my clothing they cast lots.

MAT 27:35, And when they had crucified Him, they divided up His garments among themselves, casting lots;

PSA 22:19-20, But Thou, O Lord, be not far off; O Thou my help, hasten to my assistance. Deliver my soul from the sword, My only {life} from the power of the dog.

The sword is found in ZEC 13:7, “Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, And against the man, My Associate,” Declares the Lord of hosts. “Strike the Shepherd that the sheep may be scattered;”

The power of the dog represent the Romans who were Gentiles.

PSA 22:21, Save me from the lion’s mouth; And from the horns of the wild oxen Thou dost answer me.

The Lion’s mouth is a reference to Satan in 1PE 5:8, Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. And the wild oxen refers to the authorities of the land in ACT 4:27, “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Thy holy servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,” You can be sure that the devil as the “roar­ing lion” closed in on TLJC unlike any other man with such a rage.
Never was the devil so determined to wreck a soul. Without a doubt he threw all that the kingdom of darkness had at their disposal at our Lord. In fact, the Lord Jesus Christ said that this was the hour of the power of darkness, and that Satan would come but would find nothing in Him.

LUK 22:53, “While I was with you daily in the temple, you did not lay hands on Me; but this hour and the power of darkness are yours.”

The truth of the matter is that here where Satan did his worst, Jesus Christ did His best. The Cross is where the adversary was stripped of his authority. For the Lord bore in His body on the Cross the sins of all men, and therefore annulling the rights of the evil one to accuse and enslave them.

REV 12:10-11, And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even to death.”

The twenty-second Psalm does not close without proclaim­ing this fact:

PSA 22:31, “They will come and will declare His righteousness To a people who will be born, that He has performed {it.}”

It is declared that all the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord.

PSA 22:26-28, “The afflicted shall eat and 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 Thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s, And He rules over the nations.”

In this way, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, links up His Cross and the victory won on the Cross, with the glo­rious future and life that He promises to all of those who believe in Him. Now I say all of this because it ought to stimulate our gratitude and appreciation for what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us. God has noth­ing more wonderful to reveal to man than the Cross. Heaven knows of nothing so marvelous than the Cross. The Cross will stand forever and ever as God’s Masterpiece. The greatest of the apostles declared that he would not glory in anything except the cross of Christ.

GAL 6:14, But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

At the Cross, we have the meritorious attributes of God coming to their most majestic expres­sion.

At the Cross, God found a way to do what, according to the Word of God, could never be done, that is to say God justifying the ungodly, and yet remaining just. At the Cross, we have God declaring the wicked, righteous, without a shadow of blame or unrighteousness falling upon His righteous character­. At the Cross, God frees the sinner who believes on His Son though he be the worst of sinners, and yet there is not a tint of a blemish upon His Holiness. At the Cross God provides a forgiveness which has power to transform the wicked and make him a saint. It is then that he gets the divine focus and realizes what, all across the pages of the Scriptures, the Lord was forever aiming at, as His supreme goal.

The point is that God has noth­ing more wonderful to reveal to man than the Cross. Heaven knows of nothing so glorious than the Cross. For example, witness the new song of millions of the redeemed sing around the throne as we have it in Rev 5.

REV 5:9-13, And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to break its seals; for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And Thou hast made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth. And I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.”

Think of it, the very universe is a poor insignificant thing when compared to the Cross of Christ. The combined wisdom of the entire angelic creation can never conceive of anything that could begin to match its glory.