“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning?” (Psalm 22:1)
Psalm 22 is a prophecy of the suffering of the Messiah. The familiar words of verse 1 were spoken by Jesus as he was on the verge of death, as recorded in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34. Among those expecting a personal Messiah, many would have been horrified at the thought of the Messiah being killed – but as a prophet David predicted exactly this (2 Samuel 23:1,2). Psalm 22 ends on a note of triumph (vv.21b–31), indicating that the Messiah’s death will not be the end of the story, but this is what v.1 highlights from Matthew and Mark. His quotation of Jesus’ anguished cries on the cross showed that God had allowed him to suffer, just as David had said in Psalm 22 that the Messiah would suffer.
When Jesus began to tell His disciples what was going to happen to Him, they did not understand it (Luke 9:43-45; 18:31-34). However, after this happened, Jesus explained that His suffering was inevitable. “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was with you, that everything that was written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms might be fulfilled…that Christ should suffer, and be raised from the dead on the third day, and that repentance for the remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:44-47). The death of the Messiah was not an unexpected interruption of God’s plan. This was the most important part of the plan, which was prophesied long ago in the scriptures.
We’ll look at some of the details of Psalm 22 in tomorrow’s lesson, but right now, I just ask you to get a Bible and read the Psalm. It is a gruesome, heartbreaking picture of an innocent man being tortured to death. The purpose of death by crucifixion was torture, and Jesus certainly wasn’t the only person to be put to death in this manner by the Roman government, but as you read Psalm 22, just consider what it meant that the Son of God was subjected to such a death—and that it was even described ten centuries before it happened.
“Psalm 22 makes it clear that the Messiah came first and died for the sins of the world. It is a picture of crucifixion, a method of capital punishment many years before crucifixion. The parallels between this psalm, written about 1,000 years before Jesus, and the gospel accounts are striking” (Mitch Glaser).
Gary Henry – WordPoints.com AreYouaChristian.com
