Laid in the Dust; Left for Dead

 

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?  Why are you so far away when I groan for help?  Every day I call to you, my God, but you do not answer.  Every night I lift my voice, but I find no relief.  
Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.  Our ancestors trusted in you, and you rescued them.  They cried out to you and were saved.  They trusted in you and were never disgraced.
But I am a worm and not a man.  I am scorned and despised by all!  Everyone who sees me mocks me.  They sneer and shake their heads, saying, “Is this the one who relies on the Lord?  Then let the Lord save him!  If the Lord loves him so much, let the Lord rescue him!”
Yet you brought me safely from my mother’s womb and led me to trust you at my mother’s breast.  I was thrust into your arms at my birth.  You have been my God from the moment I was born.
Do not stay so far from me, for trouble is near, and no one else can help me.  My enemies surround me like a herd of bulls; fierce bulls of Bashan have hemmed me in!  Like lions they open their jaws against me, roaring and tearing into their prey.  My life is poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.  My heart is like wax, melting within me.  My strength has dried up like sunbaked clay.  My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.  You have laid me in the dust and left me for dead.  Psalm 22:1-15

King David is the author of this Psalm, written under extreme duress.  The weight of his problems, personally, and with his reign on the throne, and even if he might live through the next week, were driving him to his knees to pray.  David felt abandoned and isolated, with his opposition ready to strike him down.

He flips back and forth in a see-saw fashion, first in the downward cadence, asking where, why, what, when, and the big one, why.  In the next swing, upward, he soars with declarations of faith and confidence in God.  Much of what he wrote became an echo on Good Friday afternoon’s cries from the cross.

The big “why” question also haunts me sometimes.  Why did Jesus feel abandoned?  Why cry out like that when He was God’s son?  If Jesus could predict Judas would betray him to death, and Peter would deny him three times before the rooster howled the next morning, why didn’t Jesus just look ahead to the resurrection?

The short answer, for us, is two-fold:

1.    This moment in time when Jesus cried out David’s words, why have you abandoned me, the Son of God was identifying with our worst fear, that somehow, we could never be right with God – never live into that for which we were created.  God would reject us, and we would be lost.  It was that identifying with us that made Jesus our sacrifice, the perfect Lamb of God. 

2.    This moment in time also was the first time since before time began that Jesus truly felt the absence of the Father.  Scripture tells us that, in eternity, Jesus the Son, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit are all one.  But, in this moment of becoming our sin, to be the perfect sacrifice, the Father, who will not even look on our sins, had to turn his back on His son.  Jesus became Isaiah’s despised and rejected lamb, with the sins of us all laid upon his back. 

Here is a severe, solemn, sadness:  when God Almighty rejects you, your soul will cry-out in pain and agony.  Jesus was willing to do that for us. 

That’s the cost of our salvation.

This leads us to Our Prayer

Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal One, have mercy on us.

For the glory, honor, and praise to which You alone are worthy, o Lord, we pray in the Name of the Son, cooperating with the Spirit, to honor and exalt the Majesty of the Father.  Let it be so in each of our lives…Amen!

Title Image:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation