Forsaken by God

Show Notes

Psalm 22 (Listen)

Why Have You Forsaken Me?

To the choirmaster: according to The Doe of the Dawn. A Psalm of David.

22:1   My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
2   O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
    and by night, but I find no rest.
3   Yet you are holy,
    enthroned on the praises¹ of Israel.
4   In you our fathers trusted;
    they trusted, and you delivered them.
5   To you they cried and were rescued;
    in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
6   But I am a worm and not a man,
    scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
7   All who see me mock me;
    they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
8   “He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him;
    let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”
9   Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
    you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
10   On you was I cast from my birth,
    and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
11   Be not far from me,
    for trouble is near,
    and there is none to help.
12   Many bulls encompass me;
    strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
13   they open wide their mouths at me,
    like a ravening and roaring lion.
14   I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint;
  my heart is like wax;
    it is melted within my breast;
15   my strength is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
    you lay me in the dust of death.
16   For dogs encompass me;
    a company of evildoers encircles me;
  they have pierced my hands and feet²—
17   I can count all my bones—
  they stare and gloat over me;
18   they divide my garments among them,
    and for my clothing they cast lots.
19   But you, O LORD, do not be far off!
    O you my help, come quickly to my aid!
20   Deliver my soul from the sword,
    my precious life from the power of the dog!
21     Save me from the mouth of the lion!
  You have rescued³ me from the horns of the wild oxen!
22   I will tell of your name to my brothers;
    in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
23   You who fear the LORD, praise him!
    All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him,
    and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
24   For he has not despised or abhorred
    the affliction of the afflicted,
  and he has not hidden his face from him,
    but has heard, when he cried to him.
25   From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
    my vows I will perform before those who fear him.
26   The afflicted⁴ shall eat and be satisfied;
    those who seek him shall praise the LORD!
    May your hearts live forever!
27   All the ends of the earth shall remember
    and turn to the LORD,
  and all the families of the nations
    shall worship before you.
28   For kingship belongs to the LORD,
    and he rules over the nations.
29   All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship;
    before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
    even the one who could not keep himself alive.
30   Posterity shall serve him;
    it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;
31   they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
    that he has done it.

Footnotes

[1] 22:3 Or dwelling in the praises
[2] 22:16 Some Hebrew manuscripts, Septuagint, Vulgate, Syriac; most Hebrew manuscripts like a lion [they are at] my hands and feet
[3] 22:21 Hebrew answered
[4] 22:26 Or The meek

(ESV)

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Joel Brooks: 00:00

You would turn in your Bibles to Psalm 22. I'll be reading the entire Psalm. It's in your worship guide. Psalm 22. Psalm 22.

Joel Brooks: 00:27

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? Oh my God, I cry by day but you do not answer. And by night but I find no rest. Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.

Joel Brooks: 00:51

And you, our fathers, trusted. They trusted and you delivered them. To you, they cried and were rescued. And knew they trusted and were put not to and were not put to shame, But I'm a worm and not a man. Scorned by mankind and despised by the people.

Joel Brooks: 01:13

All who see me mock me. They make mouths at me. They wag their heads. He trust in the lord. Let him deliver him.

Joel Brooks: 01:23

Let him rescue him for he delights in him. Yet, you were he who took me from the womb. You made me trust you at my mother's breast. On you was I cast from my birth and from my mother's womb, you have been my God. Be not far from me for trouble is near, and there is none to help.

Joel Brooks: 01:50

Many bulls encompass me. Strong bulls of Bashan surround me. They open wide their mouths at me like a a ravening and roaring lion. I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax.

Joel Brooks: 02:09

It is melted within my breast. My strength is dried up like a potsherd and my tongue sticks to my mouth and you lay me in the dust of death. For dogs encompass me, a company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I can count all my bones.

Joel Brooks: 02:34

They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing, they cast lots. But you, oh lord, do not be far off. Oh you, my help, come quickly to my aid. Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog.

Joel Brooks: 02:55

Save me from the mouth of the lion. You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen. I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation. I will praise you. You who fear the lord, praise him.

Joel Brooks: 03:13

And you offspring of Jacob glorifying him. And stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel. For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, And he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard when he cried to him. From you comes my praise and the great congregation. My vows I will perform before those who fear him.

Joel Brooks: 03:41

The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied. Though who's who seek Him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.

Joel Brooks: 04:06

All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship before him shall bow all who go down to the dust. Even the one who could not keep himself alive. Posterity shall serve him. It shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation. They shall come and proclaim his unrighteousness or his righteousness to a people yet unborn that he has done it.

Joel Brooks: 04:35

Pray with me. Lord, this is a weighty and powerful text we just read through, and yet we can completely miss it because left on our own we are spiritually unable to hear from you. So God opened up our hearts and our minds that we might receive what you have for us. Lord, ask in this moment that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. And Lord, may your words remain and may they change us.

Joel Brooks: 05:16

We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. When you read through the gospels of Matthew and Mark, you're gonna notice they read very similar when it comes to the accounts of the crucifixion. They're gonna tell a lot of the same sufferings that Jesus went through, and both Matthew and Mark are going to mention that Jesus cried out from the cross. These first words we have in Psalm 22, my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?

Joel Brooks: 05:51

The response to Jesus when he cried out those words is recorded the same way in both of those gospels. People thought that he was calling out for Elijah, because the word Eli and the word my god are very similar in Aramaic. After Jesus cries out these words and then he dies, both Matthew and Mark record that it was a Roman soldier who saw and heard what was going on and that he is the one who is converted and comes to know the lord. What I find interesting about this is that there was a lot of religious smart people that were surrounding the cross during the crucifixion. There were religious people who knew their old testament, people who obviously were familiar with Elijah, and these people are watching Jesus die before their very eyes, and watching him cry out from the cross, and they miss it.

Joel Brooks: 06:53

They completely miss it. The the one person who doesn't miss it at at this scene was the Roman soldier, who would have known nothing about the Jewish faith, who would have known nothing about the Old Testament scriptures, would have had no idea he was quoting Psalm 22, yet this was the person who understood what was happening. He said, truly, this was the Son of God. And you actually find this as you go through the gospel of Mark. I I love it.

Joel Brooks: 07:20

All through the gospel of Mark, Jesus does a miracle, and people go, who is this man? Jesus preaches and people go, who is this man? All through the gospel they never get who he is. Every time he does something they miss it. It's only when Jesus is on the cross and he's bleeding that finally somebody says, that's the son of God.

Joel Brooks: 07:39

That's him. But often the religious meet it miss this. Yeah. You can actually see this in the, the Muslim understanding of what goes on on the cross. Muslims are obviously very religious, and they believe in Jesus.

Joel Brooks: 07:58

They believe in much of our Bible. But when it comes to the cross, the vast majority of Muslims believe that Jesus did not die there. They believe that there's no way that Jesus could have cried out those words. Those words that God had abandoned him. There's no way he could have cried that out from the cross, and so they actually believe that Jesus was taken up just like Elijah was taken up in heaven.

Joel Brooks: 08:26

Jesus was taken up beforehand and it was Judas who died on the cross. And so they miss it. Many religious people miss it, and we tend to focus on the wrong things. It's one of the reasons I decided to go through Psalm 22 again, so we could slow down and remind ourselves of the cross, remind ourselves of the gospel. You know, when Jesus was on the cross, he cried out these words we just read from the Psalm.

Joel Brooks: 08:54

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The language that the new testament writers use when it says Jesus cried out these words, it's a very unusual word. It's the only time that word cry is used in the entire bible, and it's it's a cry of extreme distress, The utmost distress. It's a cry of abandonment. Now it's interesting as I'm going through the different commentaries on Psalm 22, and I always like to pick up commentaries across the spectrum.

Joel Brooks: 09:37

And one thing that they're all in agreement of is that this happened. From the most liberal scholar to the most conservative, they have all said Jesus said these words. He had to have said these words because nobody would make up the leader of their faith crying out at the end that God had abandoned them. It has a stumbling block if you're trying to start a faith. This statement was certainly problematic for, some would be followers of Jesus in the 1st century.

Joel Brooks: 10:16

And really, if you look how people of faith have died over the years, many have died seemingly much better deaths than Jesus did on the cross. I mean, yes, crucifixion was a terrible death, but we actually have throughout church history many people who died on a cross, and they never screamed, God, you've left me. Matter of fact, Peter, who we've just been going through 1st Peter for months, Peter asked to be crucified upside down according to church history. He went to it bravely. When John Huss was burned at the stake for his faith, he cried out, we praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, God.

Joel Brooks: 11:03

Thomas Beckett's last words before he was executed were these. He says, I am ready to die, my lord. That in my blood, the church may obtain liberty and peace. Latimer and Ridley were burned at Oxford in 1555. And in the midst of the flames, Ridley cries out, be of good comfort, master Ridley.

Joel Brooks: 11:27

We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England, that I trust it will never be put out. Those are pretty awesome inspiring words. Words that make you proud of, but then you come to Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith. Jesus, when he's on the cross, it looks like he just loses it at the end. I mean, after living by all counts, a remarkable life of love and trust in God here at the end.

Joel Brooks: 12:01

He's like, God, you've left me. You've left me all alone. Yet this isn't the case. Never have you seen such courage and faith as we see when Jesus cries out these words on the cross. He cries out the very first words of Psalm 22.

Joel Brooks: 12:28

Now you you have to keep in mind in that day that in their Hebrew Bible, they didn't they didn't have it marked like we do with all the chapters and with all the verses. They they would allude to a Psalm by simply calling out the first line. So Jesus wouldn't have said, you know, Psalm 22, he would have said, my god, my god, why have you forsaken me? But instantly, he is saying, read this Psalm. I am appealing to this entire Psalm here.

Joel Brooks: 12:58

Jesus on the cross, what he is saying is, if you wanna understand what's happening to me here, read Psalm 22. That's where you go if you wanna know what's happening. This is why every gospel writer refers to Psalm 22 and their account of the crucifixion. The New Testament writers refer to this Psalm 24 times making it easily the most quoted Old Testament passage we have in the New Testament. So if you wanna understand the gospel, if you wanna understand what's happening to Jesus on the cross, we need to unpack this.

Joel Brooks: 13:42

Well, Psalm 22 is a Psalm of David. It says so at the very beginning of the Psalm, if you were to read it. And when you come to understand that you you quickly run into some problems trying to figure out how David could have said these words. I mean, because David certainly he suffered. I mean, we went through the gospel through the life of David a couple years ago.

Joel Brooks: 14:06

David suffered, but he he never experienced anything like this that we read here. I mean, verse 14 says that his heart is melting like wax. Verse 15 describes his tongue as being swollen and sticking to the root of his mouth because he's so dehydrated and he is dying of thirst. Verse 16 says his hands and his feet have been pierced. Literally in Hebrew, it just says a lion, my hands, my feet.

Joel Brooks: 14:38

And the image is, well, what does a lion do? A a lion either through his claws or through its teeth would would pierce hands and feet. And so what's being described here is not just death, but an execution. Verse 18 says that they divided up his garments. They cast lots for them.

Joel Brooks: 14:58

This is something that would happen at executions. So so when you just kind of glance at this psalm, you see that here's a man whose whose hands and feet were mauled. He's dying of thirst. He's being stripped of his clothing. People are mocking him, and he cries out to God and is abandoned.

Joel Brooks: 15:23

Now David never experienced anything like this. He never faced a public execution. He certainly didn't see his suffering as somehow securing the salvation of the nations. So what we see here is David is speaking of a greater king. He is speeding speaking of a greater suffering.

Joel Brooks: 15:51

Jesus, he he he cries out the Psalm because he identifies with the Psalm. He says, King David was talking about me. I'm the greater king. I'm the greater sufferer. I'm the one who felt real and complete abandoned.

Joel Brooks: 16:13

You know, Jesus, when he when he cried this out from the cross, He didn't cry out what maybe we would have cried out. You know, my hands, my hands, they hurt. Or my feet, my feet. Or my head with this crown of thorns being beaten in, or my back with all of the lashings. But he doesn't cry out any of those things.

Joel Brooks: 16:34

What he cries out is, my God, my God. Because that was the source of his suffering, the ultimate hurt and pain. It had nothing to do with the physical pain that he was enduring there. When Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane, and he's praying, and he is sweating drops of blood. It's not because he fears physical suffering.

Joel Brooks: 17:06

What he fears is abandonment. Now it's interesting when you go through the gospels to see all the details that the writers give concerning the crucifixion, the ways they describe it. One of the things that really stands out, I encourage you to read through it again, maybe this week the accounts, but the things that we would focus on are the things that are almost completely absent from what they focused on. You know, if if a modern writer would have described or written about the crucifixion, you would have gotten all the gore. You would have you would have got the squirting of the blood.

Joel Brooks: 17:50

You would have gotten the the way the whip slash through the skin. You would have gotten all the physical agony described in perfect detail. Yeah. Picture the movie, The Passion of Christ. Okay?

Joel Brooks: 18:08

Focusing on that physical suffering. I know when I was in college, I can remember I had a a visiting preacher at our church, and he preached on the crucifixion. And he went through every possible gory detail you could about how the whips were made, you know, the the cat of 9 tails, the pieces of bone or glass in the back, and how it rip open the back, and and just he went on and on, and then finally, he gave a nail to every person in the congregation. And and there's there's nothing wrong with that. But it's just not what the new testament writers focused on.

Joel Brooks: 18:48

It wasn't what they were interested in. And the reason they weren't is because that doesn't help us understand what's actually going on on the cross. That can actually be a all the writers describe are these words of abandonment. They all describe the mocking that Jesus receives. Jesus's words of abandonment reveal this, the extent of this suffering.

Joel Brooks: 19:23

I've I've mentioned this before a couple years back, but if I'm here preaching and, and y'all get up 1 by 1, and like, you know what? This is a bunch of garbage. I'm out of here. And 1 by 1, every one of y'all leave this place, except for my wife. I I would be I'd be pretty sad.

Joel Brooks: 19:44

Okay? You know, I'd be like, wow. Wow. Every everybody just left. It it would be a blow.

Joel Brooks: 19:49

I'm I'm not diminishing that. But if my wife then got up and left, and if she said our marriage is over and she just walked away, it would be a devastating blow to me. Because a lot of you I hardly know actually. I've I've maybe I've met you a little bit. Some of you I've known for a few years, but I've been married for about 18 years.

Joel Brooks: 20:17

We dated another 7, so I've been with Lauren for 25 years, and there's a depth of relationship there that goes far greater than any of you, our relationship. And if she left me, if she abandoned me, it would be devastating. Think of that when you think of Jesus, who for all of eternity has had perfect union with his father. Always a perfect love. Free flowing love to each other.

Joel Brooks: 21:01

Never has been broken for eternity. So, so a 1000 years back, they were together. 10000 years back, a 1000000 years back, 10 1000000000 years back, they they are were 1. They've always been 1. Now, now can you kind of get a picture of the heart of the suffering there when when that eternal relationship fractured, And he can no longer feel his father's joyful presence and his face shining on him.

Joel Brooks: 21:37

That's been cut off. That's that's the cry of dereliction. That is the cry of abandonment. That's the source of his pain. What you're seeing in Psalm 22 and when Jesus is crying this out is Jesus is experiencing hell, which is separation from the father.

Joel Brooks: 22:03

It's It's one of the reasons we read through the Heidelberg catechism and what it means he descended into hell, and you don't think of this as something happening after the cross. This is something that happens on the cross. As Christians, we we believe we have sinned. We believe we deserve hell, and by that, we don't mean we just deserve a terrible death. And so the the only way that Jesus could take on the punishment that is due us, which is hell, is not for him just to die, but for him to take on hell.

Joel Brooks: 22:39

And so when somebody says you've you've been in church, those of you been in church for all your life, you've probably heard the phrase, hey, Jesus died for you. Jesus died on the cross for you. Don't don't think, oh, so I guess I needed to die on a cross, and if I could have somehow died for on a cross, I could have paid for my sin. No. When we what we mean when we say Jesus died on the cross for you is Jesus went to hell for you.

Joel Brooks: 23:05

He suffered the abandonment of his father. The Psalmist goes on and he says, and when people hear this cry and they see this suffering, they begin mocking this person. Look at verses 6 and 8 again, But I'm a worm and not a man. Scorned by mankind. Despised by the people.

Joel Brooks: 23:44

All who see me mock me. They make mouths at me. They wag their heads. He trusts in the Lord. Let him deliver him.

Joel Brooks: 23:55

Let him rescue him for he delights in him. And what you find in every gospel account of the crucifixion, you see Jesus being mocked by people. Matthew says that the religious leaders spat in his face, that they struck him, then he slapped him, and they said, prophesy to us, Messiah. Tell us who hit you. The Roman soldiers mocked Jesus by weaving a crown of thorns and putting it on his head and putting a reed in his hand and and bowing down before him.

Joel Brooks: 24:37

Matthew 28, we see that they mocked him saying, hail, king of the Jews. They spat on him. They then took the reed back, and they struck him on the head, And then when they had mocked him, they stripped off all his clothes. Stripped him of that robe. The the the mocking continues all the way to the cross.

Joel Brooks: 25:05

Also, in Matthew, we read and those who pass by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in 3 days, Save yourself. If you were the son of god, come down from the cross. So also the chief priest with the scribes and elders mocked him saying, he saved others, but he cannot save himself. He's the king of Israel. Let him come down now from the cross, and then we'll believe him.

Joel Brooks: 25:43

He trust in God, well then let God deliver him now. The robbers who were on the crosses next to him, they also mocked him and reviled him. All of the gospels, when you read it, you you you keep hearing all of this mocking, all of this scorn, all of these insults being cast on Jesus. And when you hear that mocking, that that's that's an indicator. That's a pointer to us of who Jesus really is.

Joel Brooks: 26:18

If you don't understand the mocking, then then you don't understand why Jesus died, because why do you mock Jesus? Was he mocked for telling people you need to love your neighbor as yourself? Was he spat on because he healed people? You know, did did people shout at him and deride him because, you know, he gave money to the poor? Why do people mock him?

Joel Brooks: 26:51

Why was he stripped of his clothes? Hey, we're gonna do this because you are a really good teacher. It's interesting, but if you were to ask leaders of different religions all across the globe, their thoughts on Jesus, they're gonna say really kind things about Jesus. They're gonna call Jesus a humble, a good teacher. Probably the most common things was he was a man of love.

Joel Brooks: 27:25

But those things don't get you killed. You don't mock those things. You know, if you were asked secular historians about Jesus, they too would also describe a man full of compassion, really a good teacher, man full of love, But once again, you don't mock that Jesus. Yet, make no mistake as the gospel writers share over and over and over, Jesus was mocked. And the reason that he was mocked, it was because he made a claim that he was the son of God.

Joel Brooks: 28:01

He was mocked for that claim, and it was the reason people hated him. Perhaps some of you are familiar with the writer Anne Rice. She wrote, you know, it's an interview with a vampire. When she wrote that, she was not a Christian, But it's interesting. She, she was writing a book, and she was gonna use, parts of the book.

Joel Brooks: 28:25

She needed to know a little bit more about Jesus, and so she thought she would investigate Jesus. And, and about the resurrection, simply so she could really put it down in her book and and make fun of it. And, she came to know the Lord. She actually read, NT Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God. It's 800 something pages.

Joel Brooks: 28:50

There's there's better ways to become a Christian than to do that, but she read through all 800 of these pages. In addition, she interviewed just a lot of scholars, and let me read. This is an excerpt from her. Somewhat long excerpt, but it's it's worth reading. The skeptical arguments that insisted that the gospel writers were suspect or perhaps written too late to be of eyewitnesses, All of those arguments lacked coherence and were full of conjecture.

Joel Brooks: 29:25

Some of the books that I read were nothing more than assumptions piled upon assumptions. Absurd conclusions were reached on little or no data at all. This whole case for the non divine Jesus who somehow stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified had nothing to do with Christianity's founding which came later. That whole picture, which had been floating around in the liberal circles that I had frequent in for 30 years, that case was never made. But not only was that case not made, I've found something even more surprising.

Joel Brooks: 30:08

I discovered that these scholars, so many of them who had devoted their life to new testament scholarship disliked Jesus. Some pitied him as a helpless failure. Others sneered at him and showed outright contempt. Now I have never ever come across this in any other field of research that I have studied. For example, the people who go into Elizabethan studies are not out to prove that Elizabeth was an idiot.

Joel Brooks: 30:42

People in Elizabethan studies do not make snickering remarks about her or spend their careers trying to pick apart her historical reputation. Occasionally, scholars will study a villain in history, but even then they tend to argue for the importance of this or his or her place in history. But in general, scholars don't spend their lives in the company of historic figures who they openly despise. But these new testament scholars detest and despise Jesus Christ. She began to ask question, why?

Joel Brooks: 31:28

Why all of the mocking? Why? You know, it's the claims of Christ that make us mock him. Because if he is who he says he is, then there is nothing left to do except to throw your lives down before him in absolute surrender. And if he isn't who he says he is, there's nothing left to do, but to mock him, spit on him, kill him.

Joel Brooks: 32:01

Any person who is given this serious thought, not not just a passing thought, but serious thought will come to that conclusion. CS Lewis perhaps wrote it the best way when he said, I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus. Quote, I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is one thing you must not say. A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said, that would not be a great moral teacher.

Joel Brooks: 32:40

He would either be a lunatic on the level of a man who says he has a poached egg or else a madman or something worse. You can either shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher because Jesus did not leave that open to us. He did not intend to, and this is why Jesus was mocked and why he was so hated while he is still mocked and he is still hated. Anytime you treat the teachings of Jesus as just mere, you know, good teachings instead of authoritative life changing words, you mock him.

Joel Brooks: 33:39

Anytime you think Jesus can't be working through sufferings and hardships, you mock his own suffering and his own hardship. Anytime you think that God has abandoned you and no longer hears the cries of your heart, when you mock the time when Jesus truly was abandoned by God. If Christ is who he claimed to be, then he, then it's either all or nothing when it comes to him. All or nothing. There's no picking or choosing which words you want to believe and which words you want to leave out because that's a mockery.

Joel Brooks: 34:23

You know, one of the central reasons for the mocking of Jesus found in both Psalm 22 and in the new testament was the claim that he could not save others. There was the claim that he could sorry. The claim that he could save others, and people mock that. Because how can he save others when he's here dying? He can't even save himself.

Joel Brooks: 34:46

And of course, they miss it because he's actually saving others by not saving himself. And this is such in contrast to other religions. Do you all remember a few years back was it the, it was the Danish cartoon that depicted Mohammed. Do you remember that? And the the uproar in the Muslim community, the Muslim world was in a uproar.

Joel Brooks: 35:14

They they stormed the embassy. They rioted in the streets. They demanded apologies from everybody because no one insults or mocks the leader of their faith. You can't do that. Christians though embrace the one who was mocked and insulted as the leader of our faith.

Joel Brooks: 35:43

We embrace that. And when we are mocked for believing in him, God uses that too to bring others to salvation. The final contrast to other religions is found in the last words of Psalm 22. This is the tattoo part that I talked about last week, if I could. Jeff Hines sent me, the word in Hebrew so I could get it tattooed.

Joel Brooks: 36:11

I won't. But the final words of Psalm 22, he has done it. Does that sound familiar to you? It should. It's the last words that Jesus cried out on the cross.

Joel Brooks: 36:36

It is finished. He has done it. It is finished. When Jesus cries out that it is finished, what he's saying is I started with Psalm 22. I'm ending with Psalm 22.

Joel Brooks: 36:49

I'm saying Psalm 22 is finished. It's over. I've come here to do what I have set to do. I've taken on the abandonment. I've taken on the mockery that that you deserve, and I provided salvation for you.

Joel Brooks: 37:10

I mean, compare this with, with Buddha's last words, which were strive continuously. Jesus is the opposite. You don't strive for anything. I've done it. It is finished.

Joel Brooks: 37:24

There is no work left to do. I've done it. I've lived the perfect life that you should have lived. I have done it. I went to hell.

Joel Brooks: 37:36

I died the death that you should have died. I've done it. I was rejected as a son so that you might be called a son or daughter. I've done it. The final cry of Psalm 22 means that all of Psalm 22 has been accomplished.

Joel Brooks: 37:55

The nations have been bought. He is bringing people to himself who will rejoice in his presence. Martin Luther rightly pointed out, and when Jesus cried out, my God, my God from the cross, it's the only time ever he prays and he doesn't call God father. And it's because at that moment he no longer felt the privilege of being a son. Yet he doesn't lose faith.

Joel Brooks: 38:28

Even though he doesn't feel that, he's still crying out, you're my God. You're my God. He's still calling out. But he no longer felt the joy of being a son so that we might be brought in and be called his children. He has done it.

Joel Brooks: 38:47

Pray with me. Lord, there's a lot there. Your word is so rich. Well, right now I pray that you would anchor these things in our heart. Jesus, you were right.

Joel Brooks: 39:07

You were right when he went to Psalm 22. Lord, he took on our abandonment, but then God did not keep you in the grave. He did come and save and deliver, and he had brought salvation to us all. You have done it. Thank you Jesus.

Joel Brooks: 39:29

Lord, and I pray that we would remember this now as we partake of your table. Spirit, you're welcome to come in our midst. Move, have your way with us. Lift up the name of Jesus, and it's in his name we pray. Amen.