Psalm 22: Michael Brown & James White This Messianic Psalm in Light of Jewish and Muslim Polemics

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Dr. Michael Brown joins James today on the Dividing Line. They will be doing an in-depth analysis of Psalm 22 in light of Jewish and Muslim apologetics and evangelism, and will especially be looking at the כארוּ/ὤρυξαν variant in v. 16/17. Visit the store at https://doctrineandlife.co/

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We have a special program for you today, as we have announced a special, pretty in -depth subject of study.
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A number of years ago, Dr. Michael Brown joined me and we did, I don't know, about an hour and twenty minutes, hour and a half, on the subject of Isaiah chapter 53.
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Today, in light of some recent debates that I did, one in Birmingham, and some materials that are being produced and promoted, primarily amongst
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Muslims, in regards to prophecies as they relate specifically to the crucifixion, this is one of the odd things here, is that when we deal with the subject of Islam, and Muslims begin utilizing the same types of argumentation used by Jewish apologists, you end up with this real contradiction.
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The contradiction being that the term Messiah appears in the
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Arabic of the Qur 'an 11 times, and Jesus is identified as the
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Messiah. And so, normally, when you're dealing with Jewish apologetics, you're dealing with prophecies concerning Jesus as Messiah, and His work as the
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Messiah is the suffering servant, so on and so forth. But when dealing with Islam, the
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Qur 'an accepts that Jesus is the Messiah, and it assumes that its readers already know this, and in fact, assumes that its readers know what the
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Messiah is, what that term means. The Qur 'an never even bothers to flesh it out, to explain what it is.
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It just simply accepts it, utilizes it, calls Jesus that. And so, when you start using
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Jewish apologetics to argue against an aspect of New Testament teaching, specifically crucifixion, and the work of Christ salvifically, you end up really with a major contradiction on your hands, because on the one hand, your text assumes that there is
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Messianic prophecy of Jesus as Messiah, but that it doesn't include
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His salvific work. And this, of course, I'm going to flesh this out a little bit more later on, but first, in this first hour, we are joined by Dr.
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Michael Brown. Again, Michael, I very much appreciate your taking the time to do this.
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I know that you've already done your program today. That makes for a very long day for you, but we really appreciate your joining us on the program today.
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Oh, always great to do it, and I love digging into the Word together with you, so let's do it. Yeah, definitely.
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So what I wanted to do, and I guess we're not going to be able to have the video. We had it 10 minutes before the program started, and now we don't have it.
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And it's not your fault. We have new software and stuff, and evidently it can work for 10 minutes and then not work for 10 minutes.
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So maybe something will pop up later on, I don't know, it's a shame. I really wanted to have you there.
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But we will, we certainly have a good, clear audio from you, and I will be putting things up on the screen.
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I have the Greek and Hebrew texts available and things like that, so I can throw that up there as well.
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But what I wanted to do, and I wanted to tap into your expertise here, obviously your series of books called
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Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus. You've been dealing with this subject for a very, very, very long time, and in dealing with the 22nd
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Psalm, I know at our church, for Lord's Supper nights, we will either,
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I do the reading, I will either read Isaiah 53, actually
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I start in 52, as you would probably guess, or I read the 22nd
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Psalm. They are both so rich in their Messianic content.
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And so, I would assume that this is a subject that you have dealt with many, many times, especially in your many debates with Jewish rabbis, is that correct?
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Oh yeah, of course. The very first days that I started talking with rabbis, this would be one of the things that would come up, that I would be told that Psalm 22 is mistranslated, they pierced my hands and feet, is not what the
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Hebrew says. So immediately you take out your King James Bible, which was the Bible, the only
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Bible for me as a new believer, and take it out and you look, and even though it's not quoted in the
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New Testament, that part of the verse, other parts of Psalm 22 are clearly quoted in the New Testament with reference to the crucifixion.
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But that particular verse is not, it pierced my hands and feet, there it is, I'm looking at it in King James, and it says that, and they're showing me in the
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Hebrew Bible, look, that's not what the Hebrew says, and you know, just read the Hebrew yourself, you can see it doesn't say they pierced, so the
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Christians changed it. So aside from the larger question of, is Psalm 22 a prophecy, is it a
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Messianic prophecy, how does it apply to Jesus, there's the specific challenge that we get, that Christian translators changed the
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Hebrew to make it look like the crucifixion. This is how dishonest the Christian translators are.
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It is a regular part of, I guess what you would sometimes call the anti -missionary movement or whatever terminology you might want to utilize, and certainly that particular aspect
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I want to get to, but I think it would be very helpful if before we get to that particular subject and whether that has anything to do with Christian translators or anything along those lines, we don't live in a day where, well,
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I've often said, I think many people in the Church today are canonically challenged, that is, they have 22 books that are fully canonical and 39 books that are really good for coming up with stories and flannelgraph and things like that, but not necessarily on the same level, and we can't assume that everyone has a really good, solid grasp of what the
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Tanakh says and what the Psalter says. You know, my church, we preach through the
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Psalter on Wednesday evenings, and we start with Psalm 1, you go through the end, and then you go back to Psalm 1, and we've been doing that for decades, and so the
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Psalter is the hymnbook of the people of God, and so the 22nd
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Psalm is a, you know, most people probably know the 23rd, but for theological significance, the 22nd is astounding in its context and its content.
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So I'd like to go through it, and I'd like to ask you to help us to understand the
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New Testament writers did quote from Psalm 22, they just didn't quote that one verse that we'll look at later on, but they did quote from it, and from my perspective, it seems to me that it is the, looking at it in its totality, similar to looking at the
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Servant Song in Isaiah 52 -53, it's one thing to look at a particular verse and say, well, you know, it could mean this, or it could mean that, but God's truth doesn't come at us, you know, it's sort of like when you're in an avalanche.
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If every rock came at you one at a time, you could get out of the way of all of them, but avalanches don't come at you that way, and God's truth doesn't come at you that way either.
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And so it is the whole testimony of the text that needs to be looked at if a person wants to honestly struggle with the text.
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Now, you know, we can't stop anybody. I was listening to a presentation you did, I think back in 2014,
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I think it was at the Ratio Christi group at Ohio State University or something, and you had a
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Jewish objector in the audience, and you went back and forth for a very long time, you were very patient.
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And it just struck me how often I've heard people like this, that you kept trying to get to the big picture, and he didn't want to go there, he'd rather look at, well, but it doesn't necessarily mean this over here, or it doesn't mean over here.
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That's really, as far as I can see, where the Spirit of God comes in. You can't force somebody to listen to the entirety of the text, but once the
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Spirit of God begins to work in someone's life, it is that entire witness that is used to really ground them in coming to understand who
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Jesus is. Yeah, absolutely. It's a multifaceted witness, and obviously if none of the specific planks were reliable, if it was what the counter -missionary rabbis claim, zero plus zero plus zero equals zero, well, then it doesn't matter how many they are.
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But when in point of fact, you have a symphonic witness, and one pillar of truth followed by another, followed by another, followed by another, then the cumulative evidence really is overwhelming.
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Of course, it still takes the Spirit of God to open people's hearts and minds. You know, it's just like you watch some detective movie, some whodunit thing, and the next time you watch it, it's so clear to you who the criminal is, but the first time through you didn't see it.
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Now the second time through, it's like, oh, there it was. So that's how it is, you know, when Jesus opened his disciples' minds to understand the
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Scriptures, it's not that suddenly they were brainwashed or zapped, it's suddenly that they could see what was always there, and that's what happens.
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And you know, Psalm 22, of course, is one of those great examples that when you see it, you see it, and it's hard to imagine not seeing it once you do see it.
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Now what this does raise, though, is when we're looking at Messianic texts, whether it be here or Isaiah or, you know, any of the minor prophets, whatever it might be, very often the objection is, yeah, but there's stuff here that had an immediate fulfillment in the psalmist's life.
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So how can you apply it outside of what the psalmist himself experienced?
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And in my experience, what I'm hearing a lot from my Muslim friends is, well, look, look at so many of these texts that are cited by the
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New Testament writers. They're about the psalmist who was in sickness, and the Lord lifted him up and delivered him from death, but Jesus wasn't delivered from death.
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So obviously it couldn't have anything to do with Jesus, because Jesus, you say, actually died, and so he would have had to have been delivered from death, and this type of argumentation.
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You get the same thing from, you know, Jewish objectors, too.
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How do you respond to that when people present it? Yeah, so Jesus says he didn't come to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill.
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He didn't just say the law, but the law of the prophets, which is shorthand for the entirety of the Hebrew Bible.
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So he's telling us that everything that came before him, in one way or another, was pointing towards him.
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So that he's what it's all about. So as it happened to Israel in its infancy,
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Israel is God's son in its infancy. So what happens to the Messiah? So for example, Hosea 11 .1
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is quoted in Matthew 2 .15, and when Matthew quotes it, he only quotes the second half of the verse, out of Egypt I called my son, with the understanding that a
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Jewish reader would know the whole of the verse. What's it saying? The verse in Hosea is not a prophecy.
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It's looking back. When Israel was a child, and I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt, but as often as I called, he rebelled.
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But what it's saying there is, just as Israel, God's firstborn son, went into Egypt as a child and was called out, so also the
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Messiah, God's greater firstborn son. Or Psalm 41, which is David in sickness, and David even in sin, and needing forgiveness and mercy, he says, you know, my close friend, the one who ate bread with me, he's betrayed me.
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Well, as it happened to King David, so it happens to the Messiah. So the authors of the
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New Testament understood that, you know, the same way there was the attempt to kill the Deliverer, Moses, when he was coming into the world by Pharaoh.
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There was an attempt by Herod to kill the Deliverer, Jesus, coming into the world. That the whole book, the whole
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Old Testament is his book, and it's pointing towards him. And in that context,
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Psalm 22 is not a direct prophecy. It doesn't say the Lord says this will happen in the future or something like that.
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What it says is, here's an account of someone's acute suffering, but when you read it, you realize it goes beyond any suffering of David or any other figure we have in the
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Old Testament. And this one is literally delivered from the jaws of death in such a way that praise comes to the ends of the earth.
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So you go back and say, who fulfilled that? To whom does it fully apply?
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Only the Messiah. And it's very important right there, because the fundamental presupposition that is being used by many of these individuals is the fulfillment can be no greater than the actual experience of the original context.
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They won't come out and state that and say, I'm going to presuppositionally assume this, because we can all see, well, wait a minute.
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If that's the case, then there can be no prophetic announcement of anything greater than what
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God has already done in the past. There can be no, you can't tie a bunch of things together from different sources and have a great fulfillment.
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It just has to be limited to whatever you have in the context of the
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Tanakh. And again, I'm making application here to the
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Muslim context. They don't even do that in regards to the text where they say Muhammad is prophesied.
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Yeah, exactly. So again, the inconsistency is great. And by the way, we need to put on the plate for doing these things.
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I would love to do another one of these sometimes on Isaiah 42, because that seems to be, hey,
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I see you now. Hello. You don't know that, but you just popped up on the screen.
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And so I'm thankful that we were able to get that to work for now. How long it'll be there or how good it'll be,
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I don't know. But hey, at least they have something to look at other than me now, which is really, well, neither one of us are going to be winning any beauty contests anytime soon.
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But you put the two of us together and it's pretty bad. But hey, it's good to have you there. We need to do something on Isaiah 42 because that text is really, really utilized by them as being fulfilled only in Muhammad.
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And so it'd be really interesting to spend some time on that. But we're not going to get into Psalm 22 if we don't get into things.
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It starts off, of course, with a text that over and over again,
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Michael, I can't tell you how many times. I'm not sure if you've ever seen this happen, but especially during Q &A periods after debates,
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Psalm 22 comes up as quoted by Jesus from the cross. Well, if people realize that that's what
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Jesus was doing. And I get excited when
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Muslims raise this because it gives me, depending on how much time I have to answer the question, you know how debates are, you have 90 seconds to two minutes.
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And it's exciting to me because that means I'm going to have at least an opportunity to open up this text at least briefly enough to introduce them to what
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Jesus is doing here. And what I've said over the years is, look, if I say, amazing grace, how sweet the sound in a
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Christian context, I don't need to continue and quote the rest of the song. We all know it.
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It is a part of our common heritage. In the same way, the Psalter is the hymn book of the
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Jewish people, the people of God. And so when Jesus, from the cross, utters the first words of the text here, and I know it comes across in the
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New Testament in sort of an Aramaic form rather than the specific Hebrew form, but it's, it's, my
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God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The Muslims understand this very often as a sign of, they don't believe that Jesus would ever have said this because they interpret it as weakness and as lack of faith on Jesus's part, because they don't know what
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Jesus is doing here. And I point out to them, you need to understand, he is quoting
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Psalm 22. He wants us to think of the entirety of this psalm and everything that it states.
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I can't think of, I mean, other than maybe Psalm 110, is there, do you, can you think of any place else where Jesus directs someone to a specific psalm in essence saying, here's the fulfillment?
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You want to see the fulfillment of this? You want to see, here it is. Right, right here, right now. I mean, this is the
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Messiah's own interpretation being provided to us right from the cross. Yeah. And we have to understand, and our
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Muslim friends that are listening and watching have to understand that everything Jesus is doing, he's doing for us, that he is purposeful in what he says when he says it is finished.
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And, you know, he's conscious of the fact that he's finished everything that had to be accomplished, you know, in John's gospel.
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And, and father, to thy hands, I commend my spirit. He's saying these things for the benefit of others.
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He doesn't have to make this announcement for any other reason. So the same one who dies in intimate relationship with his father, saying it's your hands,
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I commit my spirit, wants us all to go to Psalm 22 and wants us to recognize that what is happening to him on the cross is the fulfillment of this passage.
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And yes, it is one of the loudest and clearest times that he actually does this.
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And to me, as you pointed out when you dealt with Psalm 22 both in your book, and then
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I picked up some videos that you did on it as well, you read all the way through the psalm, and the psalm ends with the vindication of this servant, with the worldwide recognition of what this suffering one has done.
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And that's what Jesus is directing us to. And in fact, I'll, you know, I haven't, this is a little dangerous because I haven't talked to you about it, but I have made the point in writing, in the
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Forgotten Trinity, that I'm extremely uncomfortable with a number of, with a lot of sermons that start off with that text.
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Because people posit, in essence, a disruption in the
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Godhead, as if God the Father at this point in time turns his back on the suffering servant, and this is somehow a disruption because Jesus is becoming sin or something.
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I understand what people are saying when they say that, but the very next words from the cross, from the
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Son to the Father, are, as you pointed out, intimate fellowship, into your hands
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I commit my spirit. There is no concept on Jesus's part of having been separated from the
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Father, anything along those lines at all. I really think that once we interpret it in its
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Jewish context, how the Jews would have heard that particular, those words from the cross, if they had looked to their own scriptures, that's the first context that we have to utilize there.
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And that leads us to a recognition of what comes after this in the 22nd
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Psalm and what it says. So, as you look at it, it's not a long psalm.
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Would you like me to read through it and stop me when you want to make a comment on something? Sure thing, and let me just insert one thing very, very quickly.
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A very important principle from Messianic prophecy that I only learned meditating on the text for many, many years and interacting with the
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Jewish community. We're constantly told, well, this prophecy had application in Isaiah's day or in Moses' day or in Jeremiah's day.
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So how can you apply it to Jesus? And there's no question that there were prophecies that were spoken at that time as if they were about to happen.
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Psalm 2 is clearly a coronation psalm for the king. It could have been when David was installed. These things were said over him.
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And today you've become my son and I'll give you the nations for your inheritance. That this was a coronation psalm and God pronouncing these wonderful things.
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And yet the fullness is not realized. And now you get past the time of David.
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You're now the time of the exile. You don't even have a throne of David. The children of Israel ruled by others.
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You read that psalm. You say, well, who's it talking about? Well, it must be more in God's intent.
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There must be even more that's being spoken of. So I believe someone wrote Psalm 22 inspired by the spirit, but out of their own experience and speaking in words that were even beyond, you know, poetic words and phrases to describe their suffering.
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And yet it literally applies in its fullness to the Messiah. That's how, again, he fulfills it.
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It would be like speaking of James. I see the dividing line, you know, reaching 10 billion people.
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And, you know, maybe in your lifetime it reaches a million. But then, you know, 100 years later, it's being used and reaching a billion.
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You know, the prophet spoke things. And remember, first, Peter tells us that the
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Lord had to show them, though, this is not for you. You're prophesying about the sufferings of the Messiah that will come.
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So that's also how I see this. So there's definitely in the psalm, there's an agonizing experience.
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And it seems I'm crying out and you're not answering. And, you know, there could have been, in a sense,
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Jesus crying out to his father and not the normal sense of a fellowship or not the normal sense of answer because he's now carrying the sins of the world.
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And yet, as you say, there's no actual disruption in the relationship between father and son.
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Obviously, it's another thing to explore, but just worth considering as we go. So, my
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God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning. Oh my
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God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I have no rest. Yet you are holy, and you are enthroned upon the praises of Israel.
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There is clearly a statement of faith, a recognition of faithfulness.
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And in the psalmist experience here, since it says day and night, this wasn't just a one -time experience.
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This wasn't just a few -hour difficulty or experience that the psalmist was experiencing.
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This was something that extended over a period of time. In you, our fathers trusted.
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They trusted and you delivered them. To you, they cried out and were delivered. In you, they trusted and were not disappointed.
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So there's expression of faith and a recognition of the faithfulness of God to the people of Israel over time, expressed by the psalmist.
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Anything you want to add to that, or do we get into the application here? No, let's keep going. Yeah, but I am a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and despised by the people.
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All who see me sneer at me. They separate with the lip. They wag the head saying, commit yourself to Yahweh.
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Let him deliver him. Let him rescue him because he delights in him. So immediately, we are into a portion where we're starting to see all sorts of connections.
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Yeah, so for example, when we look at the end of Isaiah 52, it says that the servant of the Lord will be disfigured more than a man.
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It tells us in Isaiah 53 that he'd be the type that people hid their faces from.
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And that you people, you see, you look away so disfigured, so horrific. You don't even want to look at this person.
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And obviously, this is what happens now as Messiah bears our sin. So it's a spiritual thing. But then it's a physical thing.
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The disfigurement of the beating of the cross, the horrific suffering. And this is what he's now saying.
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I'm a worm and not a man and people want to look the other way.
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And then the mocking that comes in. So here's what's interesting. Somehow his suffering is visible and known.
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So that people are mocking him and saying, oh, well, he looked to God. Why didn't
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God deliver him? And there's something again, this is mysterious. We'd have to wrestle through the incarnation and various things.
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But we know in Hebrews 5, it says that Jesus cried out with tears and he was heard because of his reverential fear.
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Obviously, he is in harmony with his father and everything he does. Could it be that for days, for weeks, for months, he's praying into this very event and for the purposes of God to be fulfilled and to be saved from death?
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Obviously, through resurrection that he had to pray for these purposes of God to be fulfilled.
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And this is now when it's all being realized. So just as we pray for things over a period of time that are then maybe suddenly realized the same with the
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Messiah. But here it is unfolding. And it's one of these pictures where it looks like someone at the cross sat down and started writing what was happening because it gets very vivid just like that.
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It gets very vivid. And in fact, even the language itself, reproach of men despised by the people.
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This is Isaiah's language, is it not? Yep. Yes, it is. Absolutely. I mean, a direct parallel in the language.
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In fact, have you ever encountered anyone who has suggested that one is dependent upon the other?
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I'm not aware of that being stated in a major way, but it is conspicuous.
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It is very conspicuous. If they're not related, then you have to ask the question, you have two different sources coming up with the exact same language to describe something that we then see fulfillment of in the
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New Testament, which is fascinating. Absolutely. Yeah. All who see me sneer at me, they separate with the lip, they wag the head.
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Again, in your studies of the 22nd Psalm, what's the date range that you're comfortable with?
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Well, it could be anything going back to Davidic, which would then place it to be a thousand years before the
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Messiah and several hundred years, obviously, before the book of Isaiah and Isaiah 53. You know, some
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Jewish exegetes look at it as a prophetic picture of the exile and Jewish suffering through history, so it's almost dateless, but it doesn't give us enough specifics.
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In other words, there's not key vocabulary that's used or key historical references that are used.
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So I'm really at home with a wide range of possible dates for it. I don't know that we can lock it in specifically.
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The reason I ask is when we consider verse 7, this would be a period of time before crucifixion becomes something that would be in the experience.
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Oh, it has to be, because crucifixion is invented as a method of death that we know by the
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Persians. And by the time it's invented, it's clearly after any logical date for the
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Psalm. And then, of course, it's borrowed. The Greeks learned from the Persians. The Romans learned from the Greeks. And imagine this.
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It's so barbaric that ultimately the Romans outlaw it, which is telling you something. Oh, there's no question that wherever we date the
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Psalm, the invention of crucifixion and the picture which really seems to describe crucifixion, even aside from the debated verse, is definitely after any plausible date for the
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Psalm. No question about that. So people have to consider that we're looking at ancient words that have their most consistent fulfillment in a methodology of execution, fulfillment in the
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Messiah, that the author could not have pictured in his own experience.
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So that's hard for people to get through. It just seems to me that even amongst
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Christians, there is such a deep imbibing of naturalistic materialism from our culture today that we just sort of skip over these exceptionally supernatural elements of Scripture and sort of filter them out, like, well, okay.
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But it's there. When I look at the Isaiah scroll and I read those words in Isaiah 53 and I realize these words were written long before the fulfillment, you have to allow the weight of that to strike you.
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And it is definitely an amazing thing to consider. Especially then, verse 8, commit yourself to the
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Lord, let him deliver him, let him rescue him because he delights in him. And the bringing of accusation of faithlessness, mockery of Jesus's faithful life there upon the cross by individuals who themselves may possess the
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Word of God but sin against it all the time, this would have been an extremely painful thing not only for the
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Lord but for especially the women at the foot of the cross to hear that kind of mockery.
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And yet, here it is in verse 8 in regards to delivering him. Yeah, and we know, for example, that when someone would be smitten, an
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Old Testament thought, you're severely sick, you're going to die, that that would be an indication something wrong, especially if you're not an elderly person.
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Well, something's wrong. God must be smiting. You must have sinned. And so, for example, in Psalm 41 that we mentioned earlier, the enemies of the psalmist would say, aha, there you're falling.
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You see God's against you. And the psalmist would say, well, God's going to vindicate me. But here, the nature of this challenge is a little different.
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It's normally, you know, where is your God and so on. But this, again, the phrasing of it, the biting nature of it is one of those things that has an exquisitely direct fulfillment with the
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Messiah. And as far as naturalism, let me just throw something out. There's the common argument that, well, the
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New Testament writers rewrote things, told a different story to make it in harmony with the
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Hebrew Scriptures. And then, of course, we're also told, well, it doesn't really line up anyway. So, you know, which is it? Did they rewrite it or does it not line up?
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But what you're saying is that, look, forget what the New Testament says. Just the idea of painting a picture that really sounds like crucifixion, when crucifixion didn't exist, is something that needs to be taken into account.
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It's true. It's true. Yet you are he who brought me forth from the womb. You made me trust when upon my mother's breasts.
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Upon you I was cast from birth, and you have been my God from my mother's womb. Again, more faithfulness expressed even in the light of the attack that is in verse 8, in verses 9 and 10.
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Our Muslim friends would say, oh, well, see, that you have been my God from my mother's womb. That Jesus can't be
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God, ignoring the incarnation, the distinction between the Father and the Son issues along those lines.
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I just mentioned those in passing. Yep. Be not far from me, for trouble is near, for there is none to help.
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Many bulls have surrounded me, strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me.
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So what's the picture of these strong bulls? Yeah, so if you're just trying to look at it in the natural, right, before we understand what he's getting at—so here you are, you're all by yourself, you're surrounded by these powerful animals that are all going to destroy you, and you have no help, but he's obviously not speaking of powerful animals.
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We understand that. So the powerful animals are images of the powerful wicket of people who have the power to take his life, and he is defenseless against them.
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And what's fascinating is this will then turn into a very physical description of his own suffering.
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So once again, if you're just saying, all these guys are surrounding me, they're trying to kill me, okay, that doesn't say that I'm sick or dying or in pain.
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That would be a different thing. If I say, boy, all my bones are hurting, that would be one thing.
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But here there's a physical outside attack that is causing this horrific bodily suffering.
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Again, one of these pictures that makes the most sense when you understand it's a description of a crucified man.
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And by the way, for Jesus to say these words, you know, and don't be far from me, again, he prayed when he was on earth.
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He was fully man and fully God when he was on earth. He could pray the Psalms. Obviously, there are things about forgiveness he wouldn't have to pray, but he could pray these
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Psalms and ask for God to be near and God to be with him because he had a relationship with his father as a man.
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So all of this makes perfect sense in terms of the Incarnation. It does. Obviously, these strong bulls are then personalized.
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We knew that they were people in the first place. They open wide their mouth at me as a ravening and a roaring lion.
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Now, it is very important. We need to catch what's being described here.
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So there is a ravening and a roaring lion.
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No question about the use of the term lion here, right? Correct. Correct. And so when it says they open wide their mouth at me, there is an attack going on.
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There is threatening going on, like a lion that roars before it pounces upon its prey.
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There is a threat against the life of the psalmist that is being described here in a poetic fashion.
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Absolutely. Yeah, and the Hebrew is perfectly clear. Yeah, so it is these angry people, these murderous people, these wicked people surrounding me.
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I'm alone. I have no hope. I have no way out. I'm on the edge of death here, needing deliverance, seeming to be forsaken by God, disfigured, despised.
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And the people attacking, they are vicious, as a result of which he now begins to describe his own physical suffering in the verses that follow.
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Exactly. And this is where it becomes very specific.
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I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within me.
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My strength is dried up like a pot shirt, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws, and you lay me in the dust of death.
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For dogs have surrounded me. A band of evildoers has encompassed me. New American Standard says they pierced my hands and my feet.
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I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me, they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.
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So, obviously, here we have a bunch of things we have to look at. Yeah, so let's start with the fact that, all right, so he's surrounded, he's poured out like water, all of his bones out of joint.
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I mean, what's that got to do with anything? You know, again, if this is not a prophecy of the crucifixion, right, he's surrounded by enemies, why are all his bones out of joint?
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What does he say? He's poured out like water. Why is his tongue parched? And what happened to his clothes?
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How did his clothes get divided up? So, again, if you say, okay, well, if you think of the cross, then the cross, your bones are out of your joint, you're absolutely thirsty, you're dying of thirst in the midst of it, you're in agony because you have to push up to breathe, and then you're suffocating slowly, and then on top of that, you're crucified naked, so your clothes are auctioned off.
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I mean, what other setting is there that applies to this? You have to come up with like five or six different settings, none of which answer to all of it.
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But the cry of a crucified man, and look at this, you say, yeah, well, he actually died.
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Well, hang on, if he is delivered from the jaws of death, which is a more lasting deliverance from death, that a few years later you die a natural death or you rise never to die again?
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I would say that is a greater deliverance from death, but here, if you're just reading this and you understand crucifixion exists, you'd say, yeah, that sounds like the cry of a crucified man surrounded by his enemies and mockers.
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That would be the most natural way to read it. And then as we go down to verse 17, so dogs surround me, the assembly of the wicked can pass around me.
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Then the Hebrew, as we have it in the vast majority of our Masoretic texts, it says, which, if you just translated it literally, would be like a lion, my hands and my feet.
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So there's a slight issue that this is Ari, whereas lion earlier was Arie, just different spelling, but leave that out.
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If it is like a lion, my hands and feet, remember, it's like a lion tearing and biting.
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So here's what major rabbinic commentaries say in explaining it. Rashi, who's the foremost medieval
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Jewish commentator, said this, the meaning of like lion at my hands and feet, it is as though they are crushed.
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My hands and feet are crushed in a lion's mouth. Another famous commentary, Mitzudat David, they crush my hands and my feet as the lion, which crushes the bones of the prey in its mouth.
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So even if this was the correct reading and there are strong Jewish reasons, not
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Christian reasons, strong Jewish reasons for questioning this is the right reading, the verb is missing.
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Okay. It is like a lion, my hands and feet, the verb is missing. What are they doing?
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So these rabbinic commentators say they're either crushing my hands and feet or biting my hands and feet. Even if that was the reading, another very vivid description of crucifixion and the suffering of the cross.
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But there are strong Jewish reasons for questioning if that is the right text.
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And so, so the evidence that we have, the oldest Hebrew manuscript carrying this psalm from the
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Dead Sea Scrolls does not read Ka 'ari with a final Yud, but Ka 'aru. The letters are very close.
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One is just longer than the other final Va versus final Yud. And Ka 'aru could mean to dig through, to bore through, hence to pierce.
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The Septuagint, which is the oldest translation we have of the
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Hebrew into another language, reads they pierced. And then we talk about the
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Masoretic text as if there was just one text is the Masoretic textual tradition with thousands and thousands of manuscripts.
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And there are about a dozen of them that have variant readings and read
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Karu or Ka 'aru, which again would be saying that the reading that we have from the Dead Sea Scrolls is even preserved in medieval
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Hebrew manuscripts. So this is an entirely Jewish translation issue. It has nothing to do with later
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Christians changing anything. It's simply a matter of saying, which is the most accurate original
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Jewish text? And you could make a strong argument for something they dug through, they bore through, they pierced as being the original
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Hebrew reading. Okay, so let's make sure people understand, because this is where a lot of the argument comes up, and you spent a fair amount of time in your work on this subject responding to Jewish apologists on this subject who argue that, in reality, this is a
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Christian perversion of the text. When everything you just said, you are referring to either
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Masoretic texts, including from the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the
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Greek Septuagint. Now, is it the position of some of the Jewish apologists that the
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Greek Septuagint is Christian in origin rather than Jewish? You have some.
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This is not a scholarly perspective. This is a counter -missionary perspective, which often is scholarly, but sometimes is not.
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So, according to rabbinic tradition, it was only the five books of Moses and the Septuagint that were supernaturally inspired and in perfect agreement, which of course we know is not the case anyway.
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And that the rest of it is not to be used, and it's full of error. And then some would even try to argue that Septuagint manuscripts as we have today reflect
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Christian interpolations and so on, so that the Septuagint, where it seems to read in harmony with Christian views, is because later
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Christians changed that. But that's not the view of Septuagint scholars. That's not the view of the academic community, which recognizes that Septuagint, say
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Septuagint of the Psalms, is completed somewhere in the third century BC. Right.
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So this is a Jewish production, known primarily through Christian copying later on, historically speaking, but it was originally a
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Jewish production. And so what people need to understand is, when we mentioned one of the most ancient manuscripts of this particular section,
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I have it here, we can put up on the screen, what you were pointing to was the final form.
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I'll sort of—actually, you can see that. Look at that. You can see the form here, and the best way of reading that actually fits with the
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Greek Septuagint reading, which has oroxon, which means to dig at this particular text, to dig or to pierce.
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And so if this was not a matter of dispute in Jewish apologetics or in Islamic apologetics, if this was some other subject that didn't have a whole lot of significance to it, everybody would look at it and go, oh, here's a place where the
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Greek Septuagint is indicating that its source material, its tradition, is one of those places where it differs from the
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Masoretic and, in fact, may go earlier than the Masoretic history does.
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And nobody would—I mean, there's lots of places like that in the Old Testament text.
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And we wouldn't look at any of these. We just say, okay, here's in our text -critical work, as we're seeking to understand the earliest, most accurate manuscripts.
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So say, for example, you have in 1 Samuel, and let's just say the Masoretic text said a third bull, right?
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And then why does the Septuagint say a three -year -old bull? Or what is the
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Syriac, which is now after New Testament, but an Aramaic translation, why does that say a three -year -old bull also?
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And then you discover in the Dead Sea Scrolls, three -year -old bull, you say, oh, that's most likely the original reading.
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So here you have a reading from the Dead Sea Scrolls that would be in harmony with the
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Septuagint, because otherwise you say, where did they get dig or pierced from? Well, it seems to be the oldest Hebrew manuscript says that.
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And then the Syriac also says that as well. So normally, when you have that three -fold witness, and then also, on top of what you don't normally have, some manuscripts, some
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Masoretic manuscripts, a tiny minority, but still some reflected, then you'd say, oh, yeah, that's the most likely reading.
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So from a text -critical viewpoint, the most likely reading of Psalm 22 is they pierced or they dug through, they bore through my hands and feet.
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That's the most likely original reading of the Hebrew based on Jewish sources and Jewish scholarship.
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That's A. And B, even if it said, like, a lie in my hands and feet, the meaning is they're doing violence to my hands and feet.
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Why mention hands and feet? So, I mean, if we could even get distracted and forget, either way, why talk?
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All my bones are out of joint. My mouth is dry. I'm naked here on the cross.
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I'm hanging here naked. And there's been violence done to my hands and feet. It's like, do you need anything more?
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The fact that the most likely reading is they pierced just pushes it one step further. Well, and I think, as I think you put it in your book, lions do not lick hands and feet.
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Exactly. Excuse me. So when you put together, then, the earliest
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Jewish sources and you allow the Greek Septuagint to speak, it refers to all this.
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But let me remind everybody what you pointed out from the beginning. The New Testament doesn't cite this verse.
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So the idea that somehow there is, well, if it doesn't say that, then it can't have anything to do with crucifixion or the
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New Testament's proven wrong. The New Testament doesn't cite this text. It cites Psalm 22 .1. It cites a number of the other texts in this area, obviously, but not this particular verse.
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So no matter how you decide the textual variant, it's not going to impact the accuracy of the presentation in the
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New Testament one way or the other. Yeah, I was doing a live TV debate with a couple of rabbis and Messianic pastors, and this one ultra -Orthodox rabbi said that the
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New Testament misquotes Psalm 22. And I said, actually, the New Testament doesn't cite it.
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He goes, it doesn't?! And it was live TV. And I really quick just ran through, did the method concordance thing.
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And I said, it doesn't. And I mean, he was shocked. And it was one of those TV moments.
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But here's what's also interesting. The New Testament does not get into a detailed description of everything that happened with the crucifixion.
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So it's not like, well, they were describing and then they pierced his hands and then they pierced his feet and they left this out.
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You know, Isaiah 53, you know, piercing language used as well. It's not that every possible thing that could have been quoted was quoted, but enough is quoted to get us to look at the text and to say, oh my, this text is speaking of the
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Messiah. It's always fascinated me that the Gospel writers record the actual act of crucifixion with a subclause each time.
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They're not trying to focus upon that. And I think part of the reason they can do that, A, is the
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Church's proclamation was focused upon the cross in the first place, so it was already there. And secondly, with the prophetic clarity of Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, they didn't need to.
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There wasn't a reason to do that. And then, of course, they divide my garments among them from my clothing.
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They cast lots, which is cited for us. I think Matthew's the one that does that.
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But you, O Lord, be not far off. O you, my help, hasten my assistance. Here you go.
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Deliver my soul from the sword, my only life from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth. They're really into lions here.
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From the horns, the wild oxen. And by the way, that's Aryeh, again, spelled in full. So you would have had it misspelled differently, a defective spelling in the verse we were just looking at,
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Aryeh versus Aryeh. So you have Aryeh two other times, but it's always spelled that same way. So again, just another point to make you wonder, oh, was it originally
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Aryeh or maybe it was Ka 'aru? So, okay, back to you. So here's the objection.
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We've already addressed it, but some people need to hear it over and over again. How can you say that these passages are fulfilled in Jesus when
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Jesus dies? And as you pointed out, but I want to make sure to emphasize this very strongly, because this is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for our
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Muslim friends, is they really see the death of Christ in a very unbiblical fashion.
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I'm not talking here about the Muslim apologists who read up on this stuff and are going and meeting with Jewish rabbis and utilizing their information and stuff like that.
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I had a friend who went to Uganda a number of years ago, and he related a conversation he had with a
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Muslim who just came out of the bush. I mean, he just was living in the jungle, and he comes out and finds out that my friend is a
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Christian, and they start talking, and he just says to him, he says, I just don't understand why you
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Christians would believe that Allah would allow such a wonderful prophet to die in such an ignoble way, because in their mind, for God to allow that to happen reflects on Jesus's dearness and standing in God's sight.
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And so we have to be so careful to emphasize, Jesus said, no one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord.
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He does this in perfect harmony with the Father. This is so important to lay these things out, but especially here, this idea that, well, and all these prophecies, even when you quote it from Hebrews, he cried out and was heard.
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Well, how was he heard? And we can very easily say, well, he was heard in the resurrection, but it's very hard for Muslim friends to see that.
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And you made a very good point. You said, which is a greater fulfillment, to have a temporary extension of physical life, but still experience death afterwards, or to have resurrection as the first fruits of them that slept, as the one to whom all those who place their faith in you, they're going to be joined to you, and that's how they're going to have eternal life.
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It's such a greater fulfillment, but that's where they struggle, is with that idea of greater fulfillment.
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And think of this also. If God wanted to demonstrate that Jesus was the
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Messiah, what would have been a greater proof that, like many other people at the edge of death, got delivered last minute, maybe there was a reprieve and they weren't executed, maybe some people came and rescued them, maybe they escaped, somehow they were delivered from the jaws of death, that or you actually die a horrific death and three days later, rise from the dead, never to die again.
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Which would be a greater proof? Which would get the eyes of the world? And what we have to realize is, as we go to the end of the psalm, to just say, okay, they almost killed me.
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I was at the edge of death. I thought God had abandoned me. But the last minute he came through and he saved me.
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That is not going to result in the ends of the earth turning to God and worshiping him because of the great deliverance.
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So that story falls way short. The deliverance of the Messiah, literally from death itself, he breaks the power of death.
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He overcomes the power of the grave. And all of this is he is willingly laying down his life on our behalf.
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He is taking our sins, our guilt on his shoulders. So here's the other question for a
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Muslim to think of. How guilty is the human race? What kind of punishment do we deserve from Allah?
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Well, if he's going to take it, how could he not literally die when we deserve the death penalty and destruction from God?
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So he literally takes our penalty. But then, because he was the righteous servant, is raised from the dead.
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It's the only way it could have happened. If he stopped short, he never pays the price. We never see the fullness of God's justice against sin and punishment of sin.
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And then, okay, he gets delivered from death. David did a bunch of times. Others did a bunch of times.
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Happens every day. Someone is going to get killed and they get delivered from death. No, this is a greater deliverance.
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I will tell of your name to my brethren in the midst of the assembly. I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him.
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All you descendants of Jacob, glorify him and stand in awe of him. All you descendants of Israel, for he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, nor has he hidden his face from him.
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But when he cried to him for help, he heard. There again is that same concept.
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He heard. And how did he hear that? He hears that in the fact that we have an empty tomb.
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And just jumping in on a couple of language things here, that word despise, we've had it yet again.
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So I think it's at least the third time here. You've got it a couple of times in Isaiah 53. And then people hide their face from the servant of the
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Lord in Isaiah 53. But here the Lord doesn't hide his face. Right. So more parallel imagery.
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And then remember, this is present tense. While the psalmist is suffering these things, he's making this declaration of faith.
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It's not after he's delivered. He's like, whew, that was bad. No, this is actually happening to him at present.
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He is in agony and suffering while he's making this proclamation of future deliverance.
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Now, this is interesting. From you comes my praise in the great assembly. I shall pay my vows before those who fear him.
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From you comes my praise in the great assembly. Do you have an insight into that?
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Well, I mean, I don't know that I've delved into it beyond the obvious that it's
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God's vindication of him and God's work through him that enables him to give praise in the assembly.
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It's not his boast, but the boast of what God has done through him or God's faithfulness to him that enables him to proclaim in the great assembly the faithfulness of God.
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Which, of course, in the resurrection is the greatest. It's that empty tomb, once again, that demonstrates that everything
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Jesus said of himself was true. The afflicted will eat and be satisfied. Those who seek him will praise the
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Lord. Let your heart live forever. And then here, of course, in the ending of the psalm, you have this great fulfillment theme.
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All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord. All the families and nations will worship before you.
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Remember what? Remember what? What do they remember? Yeah. This massive deliverance from the jaws of death.
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It can't just be that the psalmist is so egotistical to think, you know, I get delivered from death and the whole world is going to turn to God.
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And remember the faithfulness of God. No, it's bigger than that. And all the families of the nations will worship before you.
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I mean, this is really starting to pull together all sorts of themes of the blessings of Israel upon the world and everything else.
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For the kingdom is the Lord's and he rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth will eat and worship.
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Those who go down to the dust will bow before him, even he who cannot keep his soul alive. Posterity will serve him.
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It will be told of the Lord of the coming generation. They will come and will declare his righteousness to a people who will be born that he has performed it.
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I mean, this to me is what, that's the end of the psalm, that the beginning from the cross is meant to communicate to us.
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Don't be fooled by what you see here. This is vitally important. This is
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God's purpose, but don't stop here. Continue on all the way through.
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And the result is, look, God has performed this. This is, God is in charge of all this.
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And this is the vindication of the suffering servant in great clarity.
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And when it also mentions a seed will serve him, Hebrew Zerah. Remember when I say at 53, he will see
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Zerah, he will see seeds. Some say, well, that meant he had to have children. No, it could mean a future.
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He will see a future generation serving. And as you mentioned, some of the language, you know, all the families of the nations and things like that, it is quite remarkable.
01:00:03
And so you look at it and you say, who does this describe in the Old Testament?
01:00:09
What event in Old Testament history? And ultimately, there's none that lives up to this.
01:00:15
That's why some Jewish interpreters said, well, it's a picture of the Jewish people historically in exile.
01:00:20
Of course, there's not a stitch of evidence for that, nor can the specifics be applied to Jewish people through history, the way they're applied to Jesus specifically here.
01:00:30
So in a sense, it's the end of the psalm that confirms to us the messianic nature of it.
01:00:37
And then when you mentioned cumulative evidence, which way do you want to come at it? Do you want to come at it that it describes a crucifixion before crucifixion existed?
01:00:46
Do you want to say that it points to this deliverance from death so great that the ends of the earth will turn to him? However you look at it, it's fulfillment, it's full significance as messianic and a clear example of the inspiration of Scripture.
01:00:59
I'm very thankful that you pointed out the use of Zerah at verse 30, well, 31 in the
01:01:07
Hebrew, 30 in the English. And just in case people are following along, this is
01:01:14
Psalm 21 in the Septuagint, so you can get lost with some of the numeration differences between the various translations.
01:01:20
But that is one of the arguments that, again, the Muslims have picked up as well, which has historically been a
01:01:28
Jewish argument in regards to the use of seed. Well, how can this be of Jesus if what you say is true and so on and so forth?
01:01:36
Even though that does end up leading to some interesting questions about how that ends up with fulfillment within the
01:01:42
Islamic view of who Jesus is and that Jesus is coming back and things like that, and that gets really, really, really complicated.
01:01:49
But yeah, I said in the debate with Adnan Rashid a couple weeks ago in Atlanta, when
01:02:00
I went through Isaiah 53, I said, you want to see the seed? Look around this room. Here we are on the other side of the planet, and 2 ,000 years later, and this room is filled with people who name the name of Jesus Christ and follow after him and trust in him, and they're seeing his seed.
01:02:19
There's the posterity that he has had, and we have it here in Psalm 22 as well.
01:02:26
So two incredible texts. It is the cumulative case.
01:02:36
You've seen it. I've seen it. Like I said, I was listening to a video of yours this morning while I was writing.
01:02:45
Anybody who wants to try to find a way around anything can find a way around anything.
01:02:52
Unless the Spirit of God opens hearts and minds, we can present all the facts in the world.
01:03:00
But when a Jewish person reads these words and you give to them a proper, accurate knowledge of what
01:03:14
Jesus really did, what he really, really taught—you're talking about how, as a young person, you all were at Hebrew school arguing about whether Jesus was a
01:03:23
Jew or not. I heard a theory, and you just didn't know.
01:03:29
And so once you're given the truth about who Jesus is, then it just must be amazing to read these words and go,
01:03:39
I didn't know these were in our scriptures, in this sense. Yeah, and especially, again,
01:03:46
I didn't come to faith through the Messianic prophecies. So when I was born again, I heard the prophecies existed.
01:03:54
But I mean, what did I know? I was a heavy drug -using teenager in rebellion. I didn't have a strong Jewish background and familiarity with these things.
01:04:02
But I had heard from someone in the church that there was this prophecy hundreds of years before Jesus that described his sufferings, and I didn't know where it was.
01:04:11
And one night, I was talking to my father. We were all having dinner together, and I brought this up. He said, well, where is it?
01:04:17
Find it. So I went up and got my Bible, and it was not a reference Bible. We didn't have those then.
01:04:23
It just was a text, basically. Maybe you did have a Schofield reference Bible? Yeah, I got a
01:04:29
Thompson Chain reference. Oh, okay, okay. Sometime after, but anyway. So I just opened at random, because I was totally unfamiliar with the
01:04:38
Bible at that point. And there I opened to Isaiah 53, and I said, I think this is it.
01:04:44
And I remember my father, who was very mild -mannered, I remember as he read it, he actually got red in the face, and he got angry.
01:04:51
And it was so unexpected. One of my friends, when he came to faith, he was telling his father about Isaiah 53.
01:04:58
His father didn't believe him. He said, here, dad, look. And his father said, somebody change that. He goes, dad, look, this is the
01:05:04
Bible I was given when I was bar mitzvahed. So we have it for years. No, no, no, I don't want to read the
01:05:09
New Testament. That's how it's always read. And the same with Psalm 22. And I'll just say this last thing.
01:05:16
When I've taught on messianic prophecy, I do my best to raise the objections, raise the issues, and then to try to see the text through the eyes of those who don't agree with me.
01:05:28
And every time I've done it, and even today, to be honest, reading through Psalm 22,
01:05:33
I get excited again, because, like, how can you—and the more you dig, the more there's there.
01:05:39
It's just amazing. So the invitation to all of our friends, taste and see, the
01:05:45
Lord is good. And can it hurt to say, God, show me the truth about Psalm 22? How can that hurt? No, no, definitely not.
01:05:51
So, well, it is an incredible text. There's much more that could even be said.
01:05:57
We need to try to get through it in an hour. I kept you a few minutes beyond, even at that.
01:06:03
So once again, we deeply appreciate your investment of time. I know you've been traveling today. You've had your program today.
01:06:09
I want you to go home and see your family and get some rest. First, I've got night class to teach.
01:06:15
Then I'll go home. But I'm good. That's a long day. I don't want you to laugh too much, because that cough sounds a little haunting.
01:06:23
Thanks for all you do, man. It's great to be with you. Thanks very much for joining us today. And we hope the Lord will use this in many people's lives.
01:06:30
Amen. All right. God bless. Thank you. All right. Thank you for joining us. I'm not done.
01:06:39
I do apologize for the coughing. But I do want to make some further applications.
01:06:49
And I'm just going to move my Bible program over here, if you don't mind. Because there are some things
01:06:54
I didn't want to necessarily take up Michael's time with. He flew in from Florida, did his program, just did this with us, and now has to go teach.
01:07:08
That makes for a long day. That's a strong man. I've tried to keep up with him.
01:07:16
He's not 10 years, but what, about seven years older than I am or something like that?
01:07:21
He makes me feel bad. So can
01:07:28
I go full screen with that if I want to not see everything else? I have other things on my screen, man.
01:07:38
The problem is, it just gets so much text that I have to make everything super big.
01:07:47
But I wasn't necessarily planning. Actually, there you go.
01:07:56
All right, let me make some applications specifically to my
01:08:01
Muslim friends. I saw one on Facebook that noted the announcement of this program and said, well, this isn't good because I mentioned the term inconsistency.
01:08:15
Misinterpreting what I meant by it, I thought it was fairly clear at the time. And that is what I mentioned with Michael.
01:08:21
And that is, it is very evident that, let me just point a few things out.
01:08:30
It's fascinating to me. I have been calling for a long time for our
01:08:38
Muslim apologist friends, those who engage in giving dawah, to get past the
01:08:51
Akhmed Didat stage. Now, some refuse to do that.
01:08:58
We still run into folks who repeat everything that Akhmed Didat ever said, even though most of everything he said has been refuted thoroughly over and over and over again.
01:09:15
And, as a result,
01:09:21
I am thankful that there are especially younger men involved in doing
01:09:35
Muslim apologetics who have recognized we got to get past the
01:09:42
Akhmed Didat stage. Now, some of those individuals are going to lengths that I don't think will allow you to continue to be orthodox in your faith consistently.
01:09:58
I think what's going to happen is some of you are going to have to develop two lives.
01:10:04
You have your apologetic life, where you utilize one form of argumentation and sort of one worldview.
01:10:15
And then you have your theology life or your religious life, where you maintain your orthodox view of the
01:10:24
Qanon over against views you adopt to attack Christianity that would fundamentally undercut your faith in the
01:10:31
Qanon, if you were consistent and applied those things. I don't know how you can do that.
01:10:39
I don't know how you can do that long -term, but it seems that that's what some of you are being forced to.
01:10:46
Secondly, I also point out that those of you who are, for example, doing extensive reading in secular -based history, theology, not just liberal, but secular -based history and theology, to come up with various arguments against Christianity, you once again sort of prove a point that I've made, and that is to be able to make the arguments that you're making, you have to come to a significantly deeper level of knowledge of what
01:11:26
Christians and Jews believe than is ever evidenced by the author of the Qanon, than is ever evidenced.
01:11:33
In fact, those of you who are hearing this and are trying to read into certain texts, some type of an insight into, well, see, the
01:11:48
Qanon got this right, and you're trying to read something in there. I appreciate it, but I really think you're laying dynamite at the very foundation of your own system, and eventually it's going to go off.
01:12:11
Eventually it's going to go off. You just keep proving the fact that if you're going to make meaningful arguments, you've got to go beyond what you have in the
01:12:21
Qanon. But that aside, when
01:12:26
I said there was inconsistency here, the inconsistency was this. When you meet with Jews, to learn from them how they respond to Christian missionaries, the statement was made, well, we're just defending monotheism.
01:12:41
No, you're not. That's not what this is about. You may learn from certain
01:12:50
Jewish rabbis how to argue against Isaiah 9 -6, but Psalm 22 is about Jesus as Messiah, and the
01:13:05
Qanon 11 times uses that term.
01:13:11
Now, I did find it interesting, I'll mention this in passing. It's fascinating to me that that phrase, well, that word, is found in Surah 3, 4, 5, and 9 only.
01:13:35
3, 4, 5, and 9 only. And if you're thinking with me, Surah 3, all sorts of important material in regards to the people of the book, specifically
01:13:48
Christianity, that maybe might have the meeting with the Christians from Najran in the background. Surah 4, obviously 157, 171, 172.
01:14:00
Surah 5, 17, very central, do not say 3, used twice there.
01:14:11
572, twice, 575, again, a key section about do not say 3, etc.,
01:14:17
etc. And then 9, 30, and 31. Nowhere in any of these texts is there any meaningful development of a doctrine of Messiahship in the
01:14:33
Quran. It is simply assumed that if you're reading the Quran, you're going to know what
01:14:40
Messiah means, which means that the Quran is assuming that what has come before in both the
01:14:48
Torah and the Injil is a part of the foundation that you're going to have.
01:14:59
And what likewise means is that the Quran is taking a side against the
01:15:07
Jews in the dispute over whether Jesus is the Messiah. There's no question about it.
01:15:16
So the question becomes, how could anyone know Jesus was the Messiah?
01:15:24
And once you ask that question, then you are brought to these very texts.
01:15:31
And yet, I remember listening to Jamal Badawi's lengthy, lengthy series on Muhammad in the
01:15:45
Old Testament. And I'm not sure if some of our younger proponents of Dawah, whether they accept this perspective or not, but there was almost no messianic prophecy of Jesus that he did not apply to Muhammad instead.
01:16:10
In fact, I think if you took all of the texts that he used, he even used Isaiah 9, 6 of Muhammad.
01:16:16
He skipped the part about everlasting God, but he still did it. If you take his perspective,
01:16:25
I don't know how you could know Jesus was the Messiah, let alone have any idea of what the Messiah was supposed to do.
01:16:33
And so we have this inconsistency. If you are borrowing from Jewish arguments against Jesus, while confessing
01:16:47
Jesus is the Messiah, this is a massive contradiction. You can say, well, we can listen to what they have to say about, you know, arguing it's the deity of Christ.
01:16:58
But, well, do you have a discussion with them about the prophecies of Jesus as Messiah? I've never met a
01:17:07
Muslim that had any meaningful, developed theology of Messiahship.
01:17:13
Because the Quran doesn't have anything. It just assumes that it's true. Now, when you keep that in mind, then what we pointed out, what
01:17:27
Michael and I pointed out, has to be emphasized here.
01:17:32
And that is, when we look at Psalm 22, we're looking at Jewish sources, and what was presented to me by Zachar Hussein in Birmingham, with all due respect to Zachar, I don't believe
01:17:52
Zachar reads Hebrew. I don't think he reads Greek. And therefore, what we mentioned in passing,
01:18:00
I want to emphasize here. If this were, and Michael used a good example, if this were over in Zechariah someplace, if this were in one of the historical works, and you had a reading that is a minority reading in the
01:18:20
Masoretic text, but has Dead Sea Scroll support, that is then found consistently in the
01:18:31
Greek Septuagint. And I do want to show you one thing here. This is what
01:18:36
I posted on, in a graphic today.
01:18:47
And everybody's like, you need to interpret the tongues and stuff. I was going to get around to it. This is the
01:18:54
Gertrude Septuagint apparatus. And here is verse 17.
01:19:02
Remember, in the Greek Septuagint, the text where I pierced my hands and my feet, is 22 .16
01:19:12
in the English, 22 .17 in the
01:19:19
Hebrew, and 21 .17 in the Greek Septuagint. Because of a difference,
01:19:25
I think it's what, 17, 18, or somewhere in there is divided differently. The point being that if you look at verse 17 here, there is no variant for the word pierced or dug.
01:19:45
The Greek Septuagint manuscript tradition is unified in its testimony to that reading.
01:19:54
So you have a divided Masoretic. Majority reads one way, but everybody knows once you have a pre -Masoretic period testimony, which is almost always going to come from Qumran, Dead Sea Scrolls, it's going to be something from before the time of Christ.
01:20:19
Those earlier manuscripts carry tremendous weight. But the question is always, when they vary, do they match the
01:20:32
Targums? Do they match the Syriac? Do they match the Septuagint?
01:20:38
And what do you have? You have the match with the Septuagint. And then as Michael pointed out, with the later
01:20:44
Syriac as well. So if this was any other text, there wouldn't even be an argument here.
01:20:55
This would be in the footnote. It would be, oh, hey, we need to really consider the possibility here.
01:21:01
And there you go. You Muslims can't allow that because of Surah 4, 157 and what has developed theologically in your tradition since then.
01:21:13
But once again, that's from 600 years after the time of Christ.
01:21:24
600 years after the time of Christ. And so you have to recognize that when it comes to handling the scholarly material on textual critical sources,
01:21:51
I would suggest that you're in the same position as my
01:21:57
King James Only or Ecclesiastical Text friends. And only a few of you even bother to listen to what
01:22:04
I say to those guys. And I understand that. I get it. Okay? But the point is, you have an external authority that determines where you can and cannot go when it comes to textual critical issues.
01:22:19
And that is your theology. And if Jesus doesn't die on the cross, and that's what the
01:22:24
Quran says, and that's your ultimate authority, then, well, we're not going to worry about the
01:22:31
Greek Septuagint matching with early texts. Instead, we're going to say, well, it can't possibly.
01:22:37
That's just a miswritten yod there. And it's not really a wow.
01:22:43
And you're going to have to do all that stuff. But don't pretend that you're being fair with the information.
01:22:52
Just be up front and saying, we don't believe it because the Quran says we're not to believe it.
01:22:58
Just be straightforward about it. And so, when you borrow this stuff, especially from Jewish sources,
01:23:12
I see that inconsistency. And when you have the presupposition, well, it can't be this because of our beliefs.
01:23:23
This really, for me, shines a light. Because I'm talking to the people who are doing the best work out there, right?
01:23:33
Now, the best work from your side. But I have
01:23:39
I've been saying this for a long time. There is a presuppositional nature to the
01:23:47
Muslim approach to these texts. And that presupposition is not only supplied by what the
01:23:53
Quran says, but by what the Quran didn't say and the author didn't know.
01:24:03
And for me, that is,
01:24:08
I think, one of the greatest arguments against Islam. If you are the fulfillment, that chasm of knowledge that exists between the
01:24:22
Quran and the New Testament, that chasm, to me, is destructive of the truth claims of Islam.
01:24:33
We can continue to discuss it. We can continue to seek to do so in a proper fashion.
01:24:45
But we can't ignore it. We can't pretend like it's not there. So anyway, there you go.
01:24:53
So there's nearly an hour and a half on Psalm 22 and especially its application there.
01:25:01
Lots of other things to be talking about on the next edition of The Dividing Line. It's lots of stuff going on in Western culture right now that honestly, you get up each morning and you just, again,
01:25:17
Lord, deliver your people and bring revival because it is truly, truly amazing.
01:25:27
So we'll get to some of those things, Lord willing, on the next broadcast. Thanks once again to Michael Brown for joining us.
01:25:36
It was hopefully something that would be very useful to you all, not only now but in the future as well.
01:25:43
Maybe we'll link them together somehow with the Isaiah 53 material, and hopefully that'll be helpful to folks as well.