Psalm 22 (22 Reasons for Worship and Missions, Jeff Kliewer)

Psalm 22 and the Call to Worship and Missions

Let's pray. Father, thank you so much that you have at a point in time forsaken your son, that turning away from him you allowed my sin and the sin of all of us who believe to be credited to his account and he bore those sins away in his body on the tree.

Thank you for that love, that redeeming love. Without it we are lost. We pray that you would open our eyes anew once again this morning to see the value of your suffering and that by some small way we could return to you the reward of that suffering.

In Jesus name, Amen. John Williams and James Harris in 1839 set out as missionaries to the new Habredes, which is in the South Pacific, a string of islands 400 some miles long inhabited by a people that were not known until a few hundred years ago.

John Williams and James Harris prepared as missionaries. They worked hard. They learned the scriptures. They did everything they could to prepare their bodies, their minds, their souls for the work of missionary service and they got off the boat on the new Habredes Island to encounter a people that had never heard the name of Jesus.

Within minutes they lay fallen beneath the swords and the spears of the natives. They were martyred within minutes of the beginning of their mission trip. They laid down their lives for the gospel. That's not the most horrifying part of the story.

It turns out that the people that lived there were cannibals and these two missionaries were eaten by the cannibals. They gave their lives and their bodies for the gospel. Almost 20 years later a young zealous missionary named John Patton approached his elders at his church and said that he felt called to go to the new Habredes, what is now known as, I forget, I have it written somewhere.

It's not called new Habredes anymore. It's now called Vanuatu. That's a new name for it. At this point in time it was still 0 Christian, not a known believer in that part of the world, and he told his mission board and his elders in the church that he felt called to go back to where John Williams and James Harris died.

Some of them considered it but one Mr. Dixon said, you will be eaten by cannibals, supposing that that would dissuade him from going. To which John Patton answered, Mr. Dixon, you are advancing in years already now and your own prospect is soon to be led in the grave, there to be eaten by worms.

I confess to you that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus it will make no difference to me whether I'm eaten by cannibals or by worms. That's the heart of a missionary. That's the zealous heart of a missionary.

But I ask you a question, why go? That's the question this morning, why go? What was in that burning heart that made him desire to go even at the prospect of being eaten by cannibals? What was in John Patton's heart?

Why go? Before I answer that question I want to share with you a little bit about the last couple days of my life. I was down in Atlanta at a conference called G3 and like drinking from a fire hose, 10 or 12 men of God preached for an hour each.

So if you feel bad about having to listen to one 50-minute sermon, one after another they preached and the Word of God came forth with power and it gave me some good wounds and it stirred me up. One of the speakers is one of my lifelong heroes.

I didn't get a chance to meet him because after he spoke he departed. His name is John Piper. But he gave three reasons by age group why it's hard to go. So before I answer why go, I would like to share with you what he told us about why people don't go by age group.

The young people which he defined, this is his definition not mine, was up to the 30s. So children, teens, 20s, 30s. He said the problem in that age demographic is called politically correct cowardice.

He used the example of a recent speaker at a Christian college and that speaker spoke about the subject of abortion and called it for what it was, the murder of the unborn. And he even made the connection that it's a disproportionate targeting of the African-American people.

Even as Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and the whole abortion movement, was a racist and wanted to extinguish a race. He made this point which is absolutely true and it needs to be considered because there is a devastating and horrible thing happening in our country, the killing of the unborn.

But how did this Christian college react to the sermon? They reprimanded the speaker. They turned against the deliverer of the news and all the students rose up in opposition. They could not handle, they demanded that he be silenced and repudiated because for them it wasn't a safe space.

John Piper makes the point, if people are unable to hear and to listen to what someone has to say, how will that person ever dare to go lay down their life for the gospel in a foreign land? The young generation, according to Piper, is being raised under this politically correct cowardice and it's a hindrance.

But the younger generation isn't the only one with the unique obstacle. He said those of us who are in the middle years, which he defined as your 40s and 50s, we tend to struggle with unquenchable consumption.

Always wanting more, always trying to get a slightly better house and a slightly better car and just a little more stuff and move up the ladder, the corporate ladder at work, constantly on the march to consume, consume, consume and that that desire is unquenchable.

So how will you ever give everything to follow him when you have this unquenchable desire in your heart? And then Piper also took aim at those he defines as older, 60s and up. He said the danger there is acceptable comfort.

The idea that you've worked hard, you've paid your dues, you've saved and now your acceptable comfort called retirement is something that you've earned. And so how will you ever leave everything behind and go to the ends of the earth?

With these kinds of obstacles, it's no wonder that the missionary force being sent out from this country has been dwindling. Less and less people willing to go and lay down their lives like John Patton for the gospel.

This morning if you would turn with me to Psalm chapter 22. I think there we'll find an answer why go. The sufferings of the Savior are foretold 22 times in this Psalm. Psalm 22, at least that's a count that I found.

These sufferings, the death of Jesus on the cross need to be told to the ends of the earth so that a people will be gathered to praise his name. Why go? The first reason that we'll see from these sufferings is that the message that we bear is true.

It is absolutely true, not in the postmodern kind of way. I'm not talking about true in the sense of it's true for me because I was raised as a Christian but Buddhism is true for someone else and Hinduism is true for someone else and Islam is true and everybody has their own truth.

No. Psalm 22 will show us that the message of Christ crucified is true in the real sense, in the way that you believe in gravity, in the way that you believe in the laws of physics, in absolute certainty.

There was a missionary who went to India and encountered a Hindu priest in a temple that was actually called the temple of the dead and this man was sweeping up this priest, not just an ordinary Hindu, and the missionary boldly walked to him and he said, have you found satisfaction in Hinduism?

And do you have a hope for the next life? And the man was very quiet and then answered back, I haven't found satisfaction and I have no hope for the next life. The various and competing religions of the world are but made by man.

Psalm 22 reveals to us that God himself has revealed the truth, not a truth that comes from the mind of man and the imagination of people, but here's what I want to show you beginning in Psalm 22. Now about three years ago I preached this so I'm not going to go through it with the same depth in the first 21 verses because time wouldn't allow it, but I want to draw out some highlights to make this main point that what we preach that Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead is not the invention of any man, it is the very truth of God and we know that because unlike anything else done in the history of the world God spoke the truth of what he intended to do thousands of years before he did it and then eyewitnesses saw him do it.

Peter, James, and John, and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, they walked with Jesus and they ate with him and after he rose from the dead they sat down and ate a meal with him and they touched where the nails went through his hands.

They saw the risen Savior and they recorded and that's the documents that we have in the New Testament, but here in Psalm 22 we are not reading an eyewitness account that comes after the time of Jesus.

Psalm 22 was written a thousand years before Jesus died. Let that sink in. A thousand years before Jesus died. I've actually seen some some books that date back prior to the time of Christ. Anybody go to see the Dead Sea Scrolls when they came to the Franklin Institute?

A number of years back a number of you saw it. I went there and when I tried to look in at through this glass that was about this thick you could see this the psalm that dates back to before the time of Christ.

One of the security guards pulled me by the arm and said don't get too close the heat from your body might damage the scroll underneath. That's how sensitive they were about the Dead Sea Scrolls. So I stepped back but I could see written in Hebrew the Psalms and I looked at them and made them out as best that I could.

These were written hundreds of years before the time of Christ. Turn with me now and I just want to point out a few things. Verse one, my God my God why have you forsaken me? This is the cry of Jesus on the cross.

A thousand years later Jesus will call these words out and many people have said when Jesus yelled my God my God why have you forsaken me? He was confused. He didn't know why. God wasn't rescuing him when he was being pinned to the tree.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Jesus himself said I go to Jerusalem. He set his face like Flint and he said and there I will be handed over to sinful men and be crucified and rise from the dead.

And he said no one takes my life I give it willingly. Jesus knew why he was dying. He was not confused. Rather he was calling out the first line of this song. The forsaking that he was experiencing if you'll look ahead in chapter 22 to verse 24 is resolved in the 24th verse 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.

The cry of Jesus to the Father as he was forsaken there does not mean that Jesus was confused. It doesn't mean that he didn't know why he was suffering. Rather he was yelling Psalm 22. They didn't have numbers back then.

They just had songs and he began to sing it my God my God why have you forsaken me? So that we here 2 ,000 years later will say what is it that Jesus wanted us to know and these are the very verses he was directing us to.

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. From this point on Jesus abandoned to die willingly for a purpose to lay down his life for us.

This is the whole meaning of the gospel. The righteous Son of God laid down his life on the cross to pay not for his own sins but to pay for our sins. It's a substitution. The death of a righteous one in place of a sinner like me who deserves to die.

The soul that sins shall die and here in the 22nd Psalm we have details galore. 22 of them. Let me point out a couple of them. In verse 14 Jesus says speaking prophetically by the Spirit of Jesus David writing down these words but these words do not apply to David.

He's speaking of his Son. He's speaking prophetically of Jesus. I am poured out like water. All my bones are out of joint. In crucifixion Jesus's bones were pulled out of joint. His shoulders to be hung upon the cross.

My heart is like wax that is melted within my breast as he heaved upon the cross to gain air and then fall back down again. His heart heaving until it gave way and then finally and ultimately pierced by a soldier's spear melted within his breast.

My strength is dried up like a potsherd and my tongue sticks to my jaws. His tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. Remember what he said one of the seven sayings of Jesus on the cross was I thirst but he couldn't quite pronounce I thirst because his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth and so they thought he was calling for Elijah.

They didn't know fully what he said. They were confused by what he said very often on the cross because his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth as he dehydrated in the dust of death. In verse 15 you lay me in the dust of death.

Notice some more details in verse 18 as Jesus is dying on the cross, the soldiers are gambling for his clothes. Read the gospel story. The narrative records that that's exactly what happened. Rather than tear it and ruin it, they cast lots for his clothing.

Verse 16, dogs encompass me. A company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and my feet. A thousand years before the crucifixion we were told prophetically that the Messiah would be pierced and Jesus was.

By spikes through one wrist, a spike through one wrist and one in the other and through his ankles he was pierced for our transgressions. This is a picture of crucifixion and the big idea that I want you to see from these first 21 verses is that the message that we preach is true because only God can foretell a thing before it happens.

How do I know that Jesus really died on the cross? Because the prophets foretold it. When Jesus rose from the dead he had a couple doubting friends who didn't believe the women who came back and told him and these two guys were on a walk on the road to Emmaus and discussing the things that had happened in Jerusalem and there appeared to them a stranger who walked alongside them for a while and their hearts were strangely warmed but as they walked along the way he began to tell them about the Old Testament prophecies that had been fulfilled in the dying of Jesus.

They didn't know it at the time but they were walking with Jesus and Luke 24 verses 44 to 48 explains that everything that happened to Jesus was foretold by Moses and the prophets and the book of Psalms.

As Jesus walked along the road to Emmaus he surely stopped in Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Pierced through the hands and feet. Don't you understand? It was necessary for the Christ to suffer and after suffering to rise from the dead.

The Command to Go and the Need for Worship Among the Nations

It's true and then after he appeared to them he came back and gathered the twelve having risen from the dead and he's explicitly told them what to do. Why go? Because we're commanded to go. The message is true and the command is forthright.

Go make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. The first reason is that we're commanded to go.

I'll get to the second reason but I want to pause for a second. This will be an aside. This is a rabbit trail but it's a necessary one especially if you realize what happened yesterday. The march for life where thousands and upon thousands went to Washington DC to protest about the killing of unborn children and they were ignored by the media of course but the message that they preached and reminded the world of is still true.

It's here in our text this morning. Turn back in Psalm 22 to verse 9. Jesus is pictured here. David speaking of himself but prophetically of the Christ. Yet you are he who took me from the womb. You made me trust you at my mother's breasts.

On you was I cast from my birth and from my mother's womb you have been my God. In Hebrew parallelism one thing will be said and then repeated in a different way. Some people used to think that A did not equal B.

That the first saying is something different than the second saying. Other interpreters have taken parallelism in Hebrew to mean A equals B. They're just exactly the same but the right interpretation of a Hebrew parallelism is that A more than that B.

So when you see in the Psalms for example over and over again in Psalm 22 a parallelism where the same thing is said twice. The first thing is established more than that the second thing. Look with me at verse 9.

Yet you are he who took me from the womb. More than that you made me trust you at my mother's breasts. Being born into the world God delivered him safely. More than that he gave him a mother to care for him and raise him and protect him.

Verse 10. On you was I cast from my birth. So at birth he was cast to God's protection. More than that and from my mother's womb you have been my God. Before birth in the womb Jesus knew the Father as his God and David the same thing could say that.

In fact John the Baptist before he was born was worshiping Jesus. Remember the story? When John the Baptist was in his mother's womb and Jesus was in the womb of Mary and they came into the same room we're told that John the Baptist as a baby pre-born in the womb of his mother leapt for joy.

She felt the kick she felt the stir this baby was celebrating in the womb. And so according to my Bible according to the truth of the Word of God a baby in the womb is not only a person but a person made in the very image of God and loved and to be protected and treasured as a child of God.

It's not an open question. Not for those of us who believe that God's able to speak. We have the truth that tells us these children in the womb are people. Brothers and sisters do all you can to fight the horror of abortion.

March if you'll march. Use your social media platforms. Post things and repost things and share things. Do everything you can to move public opinion until that dreadful decision of Roe versus Wade is overturned.

We could spend a whole other sermon and I think I will when we talk about Psalm 139 where the same thing is taught. We'll do that another day but like I said this is just an aside. We have two more important points to make.

Worship as the Goal of Missions

Why go? Verse 22 to 26. I will tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation I will praise you. Why go to the ends of the earth? John Piper says missions exist because worship doesn't.

We go because Jesus deserves the worship of his name. And there are places on earth, about 7 ,000 people groups, ethnic groups within countries that have never been reached with the gospel. To answer the question of why go, we have to answer the question why sing?

While we're here, why do we sing from hearts that are filled with joy and adoration to Jesus Christ? There was a Christmas play a number of weeks ago and one of my friends described his son who was afraid to go up and sing and so he convinced him that yeah you should go sing.

Do it with your class. Everybody else is doing it. And so as this boy came walking into the Christmas play, imagine what that looks like to a kid by the way. Have you ever seen the parents at a Christmas play?

Every one of them with cameras. It's like the paparazzi. You're standing there. Can you imagine being a little guy and all of these people are gawking at you and staring and taking pictures? That would be terrifying.

This boy as he was walking down the aisle took a sharp right turn and plopped in his daddy's lap and he just sat there and watched his classmates perform and he was happy there because to him the question is why sing?

Why sing? Brothers and sisters, I'll tell you why we sing. To give to the Lamb the reward of his suffering. To tell and retell again and again of what he has done. Those 22 details of his death are 22 reasons to praise him.

We praise him because his hands were pierced for me and his blood was poured out and it was his clothes gambled for. Did you notice in those 21 verses when you have a chance to read it the mocking? They taunt him.

They intimidate him. They mock him. When he dies and his body is laid in the dust of death they gloat over his dead body. He endured all of that for us and so we praise him. Those 22 details are one reason.

The suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's all the reason we will ever need to praise him. Forever and ever we'll remember the cross. And so there's parts of the world that don't have the message of Jesus Christ.

Worship doesn't exist there. The small island that John Chow tried to go to and was speared to death just a number of months ago, they don't know the name. They don't worship the King. Someone else will go.

Someone will go and tell them. Someone must go to tell them. Missions exist because worship does it. That's why we go. One final example of that. Hundreds of years ago there was a man named Ludwig, well Count Nicholas Ludwig, van Zinzendorf and one day he went on his tour of Europe.

He was a wealthy count. He noticed a picture called Behold the Man and it was a picture of Jesus bleeding and dying and underneath it said he did this for you what will you do for him. And this picture called Behold the Man mesmerized Zinzendorf.

He stood there and looked at it and as he contemplated that question he decided I will do everything I can for the Lamb of God. He went back and established a commune of Christians called Hernhut and they maintained a 100 year prayer meeting.

A hundred years there was constant prayer being offered and from that prayer meeting more than 300 missionaries went out to the ends of the earth. These Moravians took the gospel. The first 29 of them reached the shore and 20 of them died shortly thereafter yet they kept going and one of them as he was sailing off, 29 of them gone, 20 of those dead.

He looked back at his friends on the shore and he said to win for the Lamb the reward of his suffering and that became the rally cry of the Moravians. To win for the Lamb the reward of his suffering. Why do we sing?

He deserves every song we could ever sing and why do we go? Because he's worthy to be worshipped not just here in America but on every island and Pontata Ethne, every ethnic group. Read Revelation 5 and 7.

He's surrounded by a crowd of worshipers from every ethnic group on earth. That's why we go and there's one final reason. The children need to see it. Brothers and sisters, it's a shame if our kids ever grow up with the misconception that Christianity is boring.

That is a travesty. To grow up in a country where everybody claims to be Christian, this is supposedly a Christian country, and think that church is boring. Wow, we're missing it. But when you go on mission, when kids can hear the stories of John Patton, and the conclusion of that matter was this, today the new Hebrides is 90 Christian.

Vanuatu, the most Christian place on earth. These cannibals, kids need to hear that and more than that kids need to see it in their parents. And brothers and sisters, I need to see it. I get stirred up when I see your passion.

We have a sister that's ready to go to a 99 Muslim country. That fires me up. And we have a family here that's willing to go to a place that's, again, 99 non-christian. And that fires me up. We need to see it.

Verse 30 and 31, posterity shall serve him. It shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation. They shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it. It is finished.

The suffering of the Lamb, it's been accomplished. So in closing, why go? It's the same reason that we sing. Missions exist because worship doesn't. We go to the end of the earth to proclaim the name that is above every name.

First of all, we go because we're commanded to go. And the one who told us to go is trustworthy and true. Somebody here just needs to hear this part right now. When we tell you that Jesus was crucified and that he rose from the dead, this is not just the fanciful ramblings of another preacher.

This is the very truth of God. God told us that he would do this through the mouth of the Prophet David in Psalm 22, confirming what all the prophets said. And so if you believe that, guys, I think some of the reason we don't worship and serve, it's because doubts creep into our heart.

We're not convinced just of the the bare truth of this message. But if this message is true, which it is absolutely true, it happened, he died, he rose, he's King of Kings. Let every Muhammad and and Hindu priest and every man on earth fall down and worship him because he alone suffered and died.

He alone rose from the dead. He alone is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. There is no other. There's no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved. He is the way, the truth, the life. It's true.

So go tell people. If you think, okay, well there's other religions and other opinions and this is just my truth, I'm just kind of raised this way, you'll never go tell anyone because what do you have to tell?

But if you know him as the Ego Emi, the I Am. I am the living water. I am the light of the world. I am the bread of life. I am the resurrection in the life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. When they came to arrest him, the soldiers surrounded him and he could have fought them with a breath.

He said, I am, and the soldiers fell down. Nobody else falls but before the feet of Jesus. No one else commands that way. He's we go because we need to go. Lest we dry up, become weak, soft. If there's anybody here that's feeling called to missions, come talk to the elders.

Every one of us should be on board to support those who go. The Kamlins, Stocklands, the missionaries we have in India and all over the world. Support missions. Be on board a hundred percent. Let's close in a word of prayer.

Lord, I just feel like I barely scratched the surface of Psalm 22. So many rich details there to unpack. Thank you God for giving us your word. I pray that you would raise up in us a holy passion for your name that could never be contained by the walls of this church.

Send us out in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces. I pray you stir us up to share the good news. Thank you Jesus for what I'm reading about in Psalm 22. I thank you for every detail recorded there for me.

That your bones were pulled out of joint. You're pierced through your hands and feet. Your tongue cleaving to the roof of your mouth. Surrounded by dogs and wild men who mock you and taunt you and try to intimidate you.

This you did to take the sin, people like me, upon yourself. Oh God, I pray that you would open eyes today to realize that this message is true. And I pray that you would help us as a people to stand and worship the Lamb.

And then to go wherever you send us. In Jesus name, amen. Let's stand and worship.