D. Jeffrey Bingham, Research Professor of Historical Theology, and Jesse Hendley Chair of Biblical Theology at Southwestern Seminary, preached from Psalm 22 in SWBTS Chapel on September 19, 2024.
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
So this morning, my heart is both heavy and light because of the text that has been set before us. The text is both bitterly sour and yet sweet. The meat that sits on the plate before us is very tough and yet very tender. The poem that our author composes is full of lamentation and yet full of celebration. It portrays a believer in a relationship with God that is both unimaginably uncomfortable and yet is delightful. My heart, this morning, is both heavy and light. A relationship with God, this text informs us, can be both quite cold and yet wonderfully cozy.
My relationship with God began when it was my summer before my sophomore junior year of high school, we had just moved from Bangkok, Thailand to Tunis, Tunisia, and we were not yet in the home that we would live in for the next two to three years. We were staying at the Hilton Hotel. I was an unbeliever. My sister Marty had been faithful to share the gospel with me so many times. I knew the gospel by heart, but it did not reside in my heart. But one afternoon, I found myself alone in the Hilton Hotel while mom and dad were off doing something. I was just a kid. And the difficulty, or one difficulty, about being in Tunisia was that it was difficult getting English reading material. And I had read all the novels I had brought with me, all the comic books, and the only English piece of literature I had in the hotel room was a King James Bible that my sister Debbie had given me so many years before. And so I was reduced to reading the Bible. I opened its pages to the Gospel of Matthew, and simply began reading without faith, with without belief, without any confidence that these words were true. And as I continued to read, all of a sudden, for no explicable reason, I believed everything that Matthew was saying about the Lord Jesus Christ was true, and I remembered what my sister had told me so many times. And it was that afternoon in Tunisia at the Hilton Hotel that I was converted to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and began my relationship with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I then left the Hilton, the hotel, and went for a walk. And it was built on a hill, and I walked down the hill. I was just a kid, and when I got to the bottom of the hill, all of a sudden, this group of seven to ten young men surrounded me, and they assaulted me, and they took my belongings. I was mugged. Yes, my relationship with God began with a mugging.
But of course, the way in which my relationship with God began, the first experience that I was conscious of having with God pales in comparison to experiences that the faithful have had throughout the centuries. Imagine for a moment our brothers and sisters in 177 A.D. in the city of Lyon during the Roman Empire, where Christians from both Vienna and Lyon had been gathered into the amphitheater, and there they were martyred. Some were gored to death by bulls. Yes, their relationship with God involved being gored by bulls. Others were seated in an iron chair under which a fire was built until they were burned. And the aroma of their burned bodies ascended to the gods of Rome that do not exist. My experience pales in comparison to that of our brothers and sisters in India, who just recently, in a house church meeting, had a group of Hindus descend upon them and to upset their meeting, beat the couple that was hosting the meeting, and leave the local community in shambles. It pales in comparison to the 14 Nigerians who on New Year’s Eve, 2024, were coming home from a midnight church service and were there, on the roads of Nigeria, killed. This was part of their relationship with God. My heart is heavy this morning and it is light. It reflects upon the text, which is both sour and sweet. As our president read to us this morning, you heard some of the tartness of the text, because it begins with sorrow. It begins by describing a relationship with God that is desperately painful, desperately agonizing, desperately sour. The term that is used by the psalmist David as he writes this text is a very interesting term, and it is a very hard term, but it’s a term that we cannot ignore, a term that we cannot soften, a term from which we cannot walk away. Our text this morning flies in the face of any mythological contemporary popular theology that would try to argue that a relationship with God prior to the resurrection of our bodies upon the second coming of Christ does not involve suffering, persecution, and tribulation for the saints. It faces that myth straight up by going straight in.
As the psalmist begins his account, which is both descriptive of his own suffering and predictive of the suffering of the Son of Man, the Son of God, Jesus, of Nazareth, the pronoun emphasizes that the God to whom he calls is a god with whom he is in personal relationship. This is not an address to their God. This is not merely an address to the god. This is not a pagan address to a god, but it is the address that David begins with the first person pronoun, my God. This is the God to whom he is bound, the God in whom he believes, the God with whom he is in relationship. But notice how, from the beginning, you hear the painful– how you hear the painful groan, you hear the agonizing, weeping, desperate voice of the believer in pain, my God. My God. Why have you abandoned me? Other translations prefer the word forsake. Why have you forsaken me? Abandoned or forsaken.
We cannot run from this difficult term. It is used frequently in the biblical text. It is used to describe the relationship that God has with the nation of Israel when He disciplines it and allows the nation to go into hardship. It is used to describe God when He judges the sin of Israel and allows the pagan nations to overcome it. And it is used here for the psalmist’s description of the way in which he feels treated by the Lord. In this moment, he describes his current situation as one in which he is forsaken by God, in which he is abandoned by God. My heart is both heavy and light this morning. Why are you so far from my deliverance? He asks, and this is an interpretive sentence. It is interpreting the first sentence, which is a rhetorical question. David is not looking for an answer as much as he is making a point. Lord, for some reason, you are not delivering me from my painful, awful circumstances. This is what it means for the believer to be abandoned, what it means for the believer to be forsaken. It means that for whatever reason, perhaps he is disciplining the believer, for whatever reason, perhaps he has a goal of sanctification for the believer that he is not sharing, for whatever reason, God is allowing his beloved to experience the pain of suffering, and he is not intervening to end it. He is allowing the suffering and the agony, the tribulation and the trouble to continue. And so David asked the same question again, but in different form, why are you so far from my deliverance? In other words, why aren’t you delivering me? Why aren’t you stopping this trouble? Why aren’t you ending my pain? Or again, another rhetorical question, which is simply making an affirmative point, Lord, for some reason you’re choosing not to deliver me. Why are you so far from my groaning? We find it here in its Hebrew form in Psalm 22 but this is a biblical, theological term in in its Greek form. We find it in Romans, chapter eight, a chapter which concludes with the great expression of the glory that will be ours. But before Paul gets to the wonderfulness of the glory, before Paul gets to the sweetness of the glory, before he gets to the tenderness and the wonderfulness of the glory, earlier in Romans, chapter eight, he has written these words, in which he tells us that it is not only the creation which is groaning prior to the Second Coming of Christ and prior to the resurrection of the body, but it is also the believer. Romans 8:22, For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now. Not only that, but we ourselves, who have the spirit as the first fruits, we also groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. You see for Paul, groaning unfortunately is one of the conditions that accompany the believer prior to resurrection. And Paul’s great hope is the promised resurrection of the body, where the bone and flesh of the believer will be raised from the dead and made incorruptible and glorious. This is his wonderful hope, but even indwelt by the Spirit as the first fruits of the blessings of salvation, groaning is part of the experience of the believer. And so when David declares that he is groaning, he anticipates the unfortunate, or perhaps fortunate, reality that the Christians, too, come will also indwell a situation in which they too will groan.
David is a prayer warrior. He is crying out to God repeatedly to be delivered. But God does not answer here. He just simply makes the point. He doesn’t ask a rhetorical question. He just makes the point, which helps us again to understand what David means when he says that he has been forsaken or abandoned. It means that although the believer is crying out for deliverance, for whatever divine reason, he is choosing, at this point, not to deliver his child from suffering. Somewhere within him, David finds the faith to affirm that even though the Lord is not delivering He is holy and He is mighty, He is exalted, and then he says, Hey, our ancestors trusted in you. They trusted and you rescued them. What is unspoken, perhaps, is David’s silent remark that you delivered my ancestors, Lord, but why in the world aren’t you delivering me? Because the Lord continues to allow David’s suffering to go on. My heart is burdened this morning, and it is light, but David’s text begins with the deep, heavy burden. Notice how he characterizes himself in verse six, as a worm, as one who is scorned, as one who is despised. This is both David’s description of his own experience, but it is also a prophecy of the Son of Man, David’s great, great, great, great grandson that will also be scorned and despised. Notice verse seven, he is being mocked by his enemies again, a description of his own experience, and yet also a prophecy of the Son of Man’s experience at his passion. They sneer and they shake their heads at him. They say of David that that he relies on the Lord, and yet, look, the Lord is not rescuing him from his circumstances. Again, both a description of David’s own experience and a prophecy of the experience of the Son of Man. Notice in verse 10, somehow he finds the ability to emphasize that he has been in relationship with this God, the God of Israel, the one and only true God, since he was in his mother’s womb. How deeply it must hurt David, how agonized David must be, how pained and how cheated He must feel, that the God that he has been attached to, related to, had faith in from his earliest existence, has chosen, for his own reasons, not to deliver him from his suffering. Or, in David’s hard, hard words, to abandon or to forsake him. He describes his enemies in verse 12, as bulls. He describes them in verse 13 as lions that want to tear him, to maul him. He describes them in verse 16 as packs of dogs. Verses 13 and following, he gives us a peek into just how badly he feels. Judge just the depth of his suffering, which is emotional […] His heart is like wax melting within him. He is utterly, completely discouraged, perhaps depressed, clinically depressed at this point. He is physically at a point of suffering. All his bones are disjointed. He is hurting, not only emotionally and not only perhaps with with a degree of mental illness, but but also physically. He is dehydrated. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. This is also descriptive of David’s situation, of David’s trial, but it is also prophetic of the Son of Man’s passion and crucifixion.
This is the same experience that Jesus will undergo. Notice verse 16, he uses predictive language about the crucifixion. His hands and His feet pierced. Verse 18, David’s own enemies have stripped him naked and and they are gambling for his clothes, as they will for the garments of Jesus. Verse 21 again, he cries out in prayer. Where he finds the strength, where he finds the faith, I do not know, but David cries out in verse 21 as he has before. Remember in verse two, he has told us that he cries by day and by night, and yet God is silent. Save me from the lion’s mouth, from the horns of the wild oxen. This metaphorical language again, picturing his enemies, those who are physically apparently beating him, emotionally accosting him, leaving him both physically and emotionally, psychologically drained and worn, as the enemies of Jesus will leave the incarnate Son of God on the cross. And so again he puts them, he describes them metaphorically, his lions and his wild ox. The entire Psalm, from verse one up to 21A, is a description of David’s experience of trial and tribulation, which he characterizes and poetically describes in the very difficult language of abandonment, of being forsaken and of not being delivered, a situation full of the response of groaning. Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters in Christ, this was one of David’s experiences as a son of God. As we can see in Matthew 27, it was the experience at the passion and crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. And my heart is heavy this morning, because the Lord does allow the godly to suffer, and you are among the godly. For his own reasons, yes, sometimes which are manifested, many times which are not, the Lord allows the godly to suffer, and sometimes he allows them to suffer when he does not rescue them from the suffering in their own timetable and in which they reach the point of wondering if they have been abandoned, forsaken.
Up until the first part of verse 21, David has made this point, I have been forsaken. God has chosen not to deliver me. I have been forsaken. But now the entire Psalm changes, and my heart is no longer heavy. My heart now begins to be lifted up. The taste in my mouth switches from sourness to sweetness. The bite I take from the meat on my plate is no longer tough, but tender, because everything changes in the second half of verse 21. Somewhere, somehow, the suffering stops, the tribulation ends, the enemies disappear, the bulls and the dogs and the oxen run away, and David is no longer groaning or in agony. The last words of verse 21, You answered me! A swift, unexpected change, but a change from a lemon to a strawberry. Nonetheless, we don’t know how David knew. Perhaps, perhaps the guys just weren’t around the next day. Perhaps, perhaps a priest gave him a divine oracle. Who knows, but David knew, and he writes it in to his Psalm. Finally, after 21 and a half verses, who knows how many days that was, finally you answer! When we turn to Matthew chapter 27 we see that the Lord Jesus Christ undergoes the same difficulty on the cross. He utters the same words sourced in the Psalm. He he takes the words of his great granddaddy David and and states them, My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? And we see that the same way in which David’s enemies were treating the Lord treating David. They they treat the Lord Jesus. But the difference between the suffering and the Passion of Jesus, between the abandonment of Jesus, between the forsaking of Jesus, where God the Father does not bring him down from the cross, where God the Father does not end the severe punishment. The difference between David and Jesus is that God the Father allows the suffering of the Son of man to go to the point of death, as he did for Stephen, as he did for the martyrs of Lyon and Vienna, as he did for the Nigerians on New Year’s Eve, 2024. David’s suffering ended before he died, but not the Son of Man.
My suffering ended. Because what I didn’t tell you was that, as it was going from bad to worse, I looked up on the hill above me, and there was a Tunisian man in an ox cart being driven by a donkey, and I called out to him, and he saw what was happening, and he took the whip that he was using for the driving of the donkey, and he took it and he swung it around his head, and he ran down the hill, and the group scattered. Why? Because, as with David, prior to my death, the Lord had heard me. But not with Jesus. David’s response is that the only response to being saved from sin or or from tribulation and trial and agony is to proclaim verse 22: The name of the Lord, to the community of believers, to praise him in the assembly (verse 22) but not only that, to proclaim Him before the families of the nations (verse 27). In other words, part of global engagement involves a narrow narrative that describes to the unbelievers that, yes, Christians share in your sufferings. Christians enter, too, into groaning. We understand pain and suffering that you must undergo as well. But from time to time, the Lord enters in and relieves us, and when he does, we proclaim it communally. But as part of our engagement with the culture, we declare God’s deliverance to the unbelievers and to the nations. Matthew chapter 27, which is the story of Jesus’ passion, does not end with his deliverance from his suffering. Jesus dies in the end. Matthew 27 does not leave us with the same easing of tension that psalm 22 does. No we have to wait for Matthew chapter 28. And it is in chapter 28 that we find the celebration, where lamentation changes to celebration, because the Son of Man does not remain in the grave, but in flesh and bone, he is raised to life, no longer in mortal humanity, but immortal. He is now glorious and and risen. And so for some, our suffering will end in death, like Jesus. But Psalm 22 is no less true for us. Verse 21 does not hide from us. It’s just that our prayer will be answered in God’s own sovereign decision. For some of us, only when the Lord Jesus Christ returns in glory, and when he reaches down into our graves and grabs us by the scruff of the neck and hauls us out of the grave and shakes the dirt off of us and places us again on the earth, no longer mortal but immortal, no longer in shameful flesh but in glorious, no longer in corruptible flesh and bone, but incorruptible. And from that moment, we will say with David in verse 21B, Hallelujah, you answered me.
My heart is heavy and it is light. For I know that there are some of you, even now, that are undergoing suffering, perhaps even indescribable. And if you’re not, my heart is heavy. For I know that you probably will. You have families that are undergoing it even now. My heart is heavy, but my heart is light, because although I cannot promise you that your suffering will end prior to your death, on the authority of the Word of God, by, prophets and the apostles, I promise you, on the authority of the inerrant and authoritative word of God, that your suffering will end on the day that Jesus Christ comes to collect us and to raise us from the dead. And I can promise you that if it is God’s choice, as you continue in your agony, in your feelings of abandonment to pray, you might be wonderfully surprised when all of a sudden your suffering ends, because the Lord, in his own good judgment, answered you on that day. Praise him in the community of believers. On that day, praise him among the unbelievers of the nations. On that day. Praise Him.
