Psalm 22 - What Will People Remember About You?

What do you hope people will say about you in future generations? I know, that’s a rather lofty idea to think any of us are THAT important but indulge me a moment. When enough time has passed that some of the details have slipped out of people’s consciousness and only the defining traits remain.  What are they? 

We’re in Psalm 22, a psalm that gives us depth of emotion and several movements.  It is the opposite of static.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:21

What do you hope people will say about you in future generations? Now, I know this is lofty, maybe even pretentious thinking. Not many of us are that important. But indulge me for just a little bit here. Let's say some time has passed and the finer details of your life have slipped out of the consciousness of people's thoughts. What are those remaining traits, those defining characteristics of you? While you think about that, welcome to Meet Me in the Word. I am genuinely glad that you have joined us today. We're in Psalm 22, and it's one of those Psalms that gives us a real depth of emotion and also gives us some really interesting movements as it goes through these different things that David is expressing along the way. It is the opposite of static. I'm going to read all of Psalm 22. It's longer than we would normally take for the reading portion of our time together, but I wanted us to appreciate just the fullness of its flow and kind of all of what's of what's taking place. So settle in and uh and read this with me. But before we do that, let's pray. Jesus, thank you for this amazing day that you have given us. God, thank you. Thank you for Mondays. Thank you that even a day like Monday that so many of us don't necessarily look forward to. God, we recognize it's a day given to us by you. Thank you for your word. May it sink into our souls today. Amen. All right. We're gonna read this here together. And I'm just flipping over to the scriptures. Psalm twenty two, for the director of music to the tune of the Doe of the Morning, a psalm of David. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest. Yet you are enthroned as the holy one, you are the one Israel praises. In you our ancestors put their trust. They trusted you and you delivered them. To you they cried out and were saved, in you they trusted and were not put to shame. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people, all who see me mock me, they hurl insults, shaking their heads. He trusts in the Lord, they say, let the Lord rescue him, let him deliver him, since he delights in him. Yet you brought me out of the womb, you made me trust in you even at my mother's breast. From birth I was cast on you, from my mother's womb you have been my God. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near, and there is no one to help. Many bulls surround me, strong bulls of Bashan encircle me, roaring lions that tear their prey, open their mouths wide against me. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax, it has melted within me. My mouth is dried up like a potchard, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You lay me in the dust of death. Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me, they pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display, people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment. But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength. Come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs, rescue me from the mouth of the lions, save me from the horns of the wild oxen. I will declare your name to my people, in the assembly I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him. All you descendants of Jacob, honor him, revere him all you descendants of Israel, for he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one. He has not hidden his face from him, but has listened to his cry for help. From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly. Before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows, the poor will eat and be satisfied. Those who seek the Lord will praise him, may your hearts live forever. All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. All the rich of the earth will feast and worship, all who go down to the dust will kneel before him, those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve him, future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring it or declaring to a people yet unborn, he has done it. Let's pause and listen to the Lord for just a moment. All right, let's uh let's dive into this. Now I wanted to ask you a question. I thought about prompting you about this beforehand, but I just wanted to see, and I won't have any idea what you actually came up with, but who else other than David came to your mind while we read this passage together? You see, Psalm 22 is quoted quite a few times in the Gospels, particularly as the uh as the Gospel writers talk about Jesus and what's happening there in the events of the cross. Uh so you may recognize a few of those phrases that came out uh along the way, and I think those are compelling and interesting because of the just the interesting dynamic of foreshadow, but also the way that Jesus must have thought about this particular psalm. So the first one that's obvious to me is uh verse one My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Uh that certainly is something that uh we hear from Jesus on the cross. It's a brutal moment. Uh and there are a few others, um, I think real quick. Uh verse 16 is illusion for sure. It says, Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me, they pierce my hands and feet. That's a pretty distinct image there. Verse 18, it says, They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment. Uh that's certainly uh there in the afflicted one, all of those things are certainly references to Jesus. But as we think about these ideas, you know, we the truth is we don't know. We don't know what was in David's heart or mind, whether he I would be surprised, right? If we get to heaven and find out, oh yeah, he knew exactly what he was talking about, that would be surprising to me. Did he think about the promised Messiah? That's possible. That he thought about that person in a general sense, maybe not, because he didn't know, right, about Jesus specifically yet. Um, but but regardless, these words are there. And then what we do see, and we can rest in for sure, uh, is that Jesus knew this psalm very, very well, and he used it in his own ministry. He certainly referenced it uh in those brutal last hours and those moments of of the passing of his life. Um the this was a psalm, uh, amongst others that came to his mind and that he he spoke out, and then certainly the references about him. So if this sounded familiar, it's probably because you've read it in the gospels. It pops up there and it gets alluded to, maybe not directly quoted, but it's definitely uh present in the New Testament. And sometimes, you know, when we're trying to figure out how I should treat this Old Testament text in particular, we can look at the New Testament writers, we can look at the New Testament people and see how they reflected upon it. Uh, it it really is uh a beautiful and powerful uh psalm and one that we should all heed. All right, I wanted us to move uh into the movements of this particular psalm, and I identified them, and I didn't spend just so you know I didn't spend a lot of time trying to like dissect exact moments along the way, but just kind of recognizing and trying to relate to what David is going through. Uh so what I saw that were these were moments that were pretty clear to me. Uh he goes from a state of loneliness and despair that transitions into trust and courage, and then it moves into praise. It begins with just personal praise, David praising God, and then he calls everybody uh to praise the Lord. Uh, and and so we see some of that. And I wanted to highlight uh some of these movements through the psalm just so that we can, I guess, uh enjoy them and appreciate them as they happen. So I wanted to pull out verses 14 and 15 to talk about loneliness and despair. By the way, I see it in verses one and two, and and there's kind of a little bit of a break from it, but certainly it's present in uh verses 11 through 18 as well. Uh but this is verses 14 and 15. Just listen. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is turned to wax, it has melted within me. My mouth is dried up like a pot chart, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You lay me in the dust of death. I can feel all of those things as I read them, right? Like on a hot, dry day when you really are dehydrated, you need water and everything, like you're just parched to the point that your mouth isn't even working properly, that sense of being poured out like water when he says, uh, my heart has turned to wax, it's just melted. It's it's not the good gooey I'm in love melting. It's the I've I've been sapped of hope and energy that there is nothing here for me, and and it's just that's the place that he's in as this begins. But then it moves, right? And we can see that, for example, in verses 19 through 21, talking about courage and trust, we see phrases like, you are my strength, speaking of the Lord, right? Again, deliver me, rescue me. All of those phrases come out in those three verses. And then we'll move into 22 through 25, and I see this expression of praise come out. I wanted to highlight verse 22. I will declare your name to my people, right? And when you think about what's happening, even in the context of this psalm, there's this beginning that says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's despairing, it's discouraging. But it's almost as if he's working out his his stuff, so to speak, like he's working out his thoughts with the Lord, and he's recognizing that that while that's how he felt when he started, things have changed. The Lord, it's like the Lord has been meeting with him in the writing of this piece. I don't know how he actually wrote it, but it it reads that way, doesn't it? So I will declare your name to my people. And then verse 24, listen to this. It says, For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one. He has not hidden his face from him, but has listened to his cry for help. Now at this point, David is for sure talking about himself. He's identifying as the afflicted one. And we can look at and recognize Jesus in that as well. It's true of Jesus, just as much as it was, or even more than it was of David. But but listen to that turn that's happened for him. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Right? I feel abandoned, I feel alone, all of that is there. And and then, and then we and then we see this, and this is like, no, he he hasn't despised him or scorned him, right? He has not hidden his face from him, but he's listened to his cry for help. So you know, all of a sudden there's this declaration of praise, there's this sense of of hope, and and then he begins to expand it, right? And it's there's nations included, and we could talk about those. I'm not going to spend time there. But verses 26 through 28, we see that the poor are invited to praise God and that they will, right? It says, the poor will eat and be satisfied. Those who seek the Lord will praise him. May your hearts live forever, right? It is just this joy, this delight of a full belly, and and recognizing that the Lord has been the one who's provided that uh for them, for us. And then the rich, right? Sometimes the rich, rightfully so, sometimes the rich don't get it. We'll just say it that way. But but here it's no, this is continued joy. Verse 29: all the rich of the earth will feast and worship, all who go down to the dust will kneel before him, those who cannot keep themselves uh alive. Everybody comes into the presence of God and all that takes place. And then I love this last part here in verses 30 and 31. Uh, posterity will serve him, future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn, he has done it, right? And so it's not just the poor and the rich and the nations and everybody, it's future generations. And I like to think that we are included in that aspect of future generations, people who who David had no idea what we would be like, what language we would speak, any any of those dynamics that that we experience today. And yet he's like, yeah, but even them, they're going to know. They're gonna know that God did it. God did it, God is the one who has done it. And I just think that's an amazing conclusion to this psalm. I'm gonna give us two things to reflect upon further. And uh, we've been doing the first one kind of all already as we've gone through. Uh, but the first one is just appreciate the spiritual foresight. And I'm really honing in here on that aspect of this psalm being featured in the New Testament. And as we look at the way that Jesus treated it, at the way that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all treated it, and certainly in other places Peter includes it in his stuff. I think the writer of Hebrews has an allusion to it as well. Just appre appreciating that that while David is speaking about himself, knowingly or not, he also spoke about Jesus. And that is astounding to me, that in God's grand design, in God's foreknowledge, in God's foresight, he understood what was taking place, and dots are being connected there for us. That encourages my faith. Uh my hope is that it encourages yours as well. And finally, consider your own legacy. Let's come back to that early question. What will future generations say about you if they do? How will they talk about you? What are the things that that define you? You know, when you think about the people who take up space in our history books, a lot of them are there because they were notorious. Maybe they were tyrants, maybe they were brutal. Some of them were brilliant, some of them may even have been kind, but for the most part we see people that are there because of either crazy things that they did or brutal things that they did. But the legacy of God is a totally different kind of a thing. It's the kind of thing where we look at the at the content and the context of our lives and we recognize fingerprints of God all over the place. My hope for whoever talks about me in the future, however many people that might be, uh, is that they'll recognize that it was God who did it, that it was God who took a pretty ordinary guy and left a legacy. That's my prayer for myself. I think it's a good thing for you to pray for yourself as well. Let's do that now. Jesus, thank you for today. God thank you for your word and for your scriptures. God thank you that you aren't finished with any of us. That each of us, whether we're going through times where we feel like we've been abandoned or we're alone, or we're having maybe some renewed hope and faith and trust in you. God, you're the one doing all of that. God help us just to not dis to not despise the things that you're doing in our lives today. We love you. Amen.