November 14
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MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?
My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
Far from my help are the words of my groaning.
2 My God, I cry out by day, but You do not answer;
And by night, but I have no rest.3 Yet You are holy,
You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel.
4 In You our fathers trusted; they trusted and You rescued them.
5 To You they cried out and they fled to safety;
In You they trusted and were not disappointed.
6 But I am a worm and not a person,
A disgrace of mankind and despised by the people.
7 All who see me deride me; they sneer, they shake their heads, saying,
8 “ Turn him over to the LORD; let Him save him;
Let Him rescue him, because He delights in him. – Psalm 22:1-8
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This psalm of David is directly spoken by Jesus according to Matthew 27:46, on the cross at about three o’clock. How can David have known that he spoke exactly what Jesus was going to experience over a thousand years later? This was a prophetic word that David which clearly was revealed to him by God’s Spirit. In the life of David, we witness many instances where he could have written such agonizing cry to his Lord. After all, he went through a lot of suffering, trials and attacks from his many enemies. While this psalm was certainly David’s agony in his life experience, it is even truer of Jesus the Messiah than of David. Jesus deliberately chose these words to describe His agony on the cross in Matthew 27:46. Boice comments that “We can be fairly certain that Jesus was meditating on the Old Testament during the hours of his suffering and that he saw his crucifixion as a fulfillment of Psalm 22 particularly.”
The repetition of My God twice must have expressed the deep pain and agony Jesus must have felt on the cross, something that King David must have felt as he wrote this psalm. It is amazing how God has known that all these same lines will be spoken by His one and only Son, whom He allowed to go through the ache and anguish to save mankind. Perhaps we are going through the same pain in our lives right now because of an illness or a death in our family. Could you imagine how much more painful it was for Jesus to carry all our sins?
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REFLECTION
• Why do you think Jesus uttered these same lines at the time of His death?