Book of Psalms - Psa. 22, vv. 9-31

Well, let's get started. We are in Psalm 22.

We got all the way through verse 8, but 8 is where we will start today. We are walking through perhaps the most difficult

Psalm we will ever read. This is Jesus on the cross. And if you'll recall, we talked kind of towards the end last week about the goal of the enemy is to vanquish our

Lord, to eliminate his faith. And so we're going to pick up right here in verse 8.

This is Jesus looking at his mockers and his torturers.

And he's reflecting on what is being done to him. He trusted on the

Lord. This is back up to verse 7. All they that see me laugh me to scorn.

They shoot out the lip. They shake the head saying he trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him.

Let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. So he's being mocked.

The mockers are attacking Jesus' faith. Oh, thank you. You brought me two, huh? Okay. And faith is the only thing that's left for a man to hold on to in the face of certain death.

That's it. That's all that there is left for you to hold on to. When you know that you're going to die, you can't hold on to the hope of healing so much, at least physical healing, unless you believe that there's healing on the other side of death.

You can't hold on to the hope of seeing the people around you again unless you believe there's the hope of seeing them again on the other side of death.

And so faith plays a huge part in somebody's transition from life through death and into eternal life if you believe in that, which

I do. But that's what they want to strip him of. Remember, Jesus is not just killed on the cross.

That's what we tend to think of it as, is he's killed on the cross. Death by the cross was meant to deter rebellion.

Like that's the whole point of the cross, right? The Romans would erect a cross with a human being on it and put it right next to the highway so that other people would see it and go,

I'm not going to do whatever he did. You know, I'm not going there. So the idea of the cross, it was to deter people from rebelling against the establishment.

But Satan takes it a step further. He does not just want Jesus killed.

He wants Jesus tortured. And you say, well, everybody who died on the cross was tortured, right?

The death by cross was torture. And it most certainly was, but the torture was for the purpose of the onlookers.

It was to send a message to the people who were walking by. Don't you do what this guy did.

Don't be like this guy. Don't do the things that you see him doing. Be completely different from this person.

Because if you do what they did, this will be you. It was always about a message to the other people, the people looking on.

But this torture was meant to send a message to the tortured. The purpose of torture in general is to instill hopelessness so that hope can then be used as a bargaining chip to achieve the desire of the torturer.

So whoever's doing the torturing, the goal of torture in general, if it's either to deter other people, which is why you do it very publicly, or it's that you want something out of the person that you're torturing.

And so if you're gonna get something out of the person that you're torturing, you have to instill hopelessness.

There is zero hope for this to stop. There is zero hope for this to be over.

But guess what? I can give that hope back to you. So you take it away so that you can say,

I'm gonna give this hope back to you that you can make it end, you can make it stop. The pain can go away if all you do is

X, Y, Z. So Jesus still has something, even though he's hanging on the cross and his enemies have accomplished the betrayal, they've accomplished squelching the rebellion, right?

Because here, this is the guy who's supposed to rise up, they think, and destroy the government.

This is the guy who's supposed to rise up and be the king of the Jews. Let's put him up there and we'll scare everybody away.

And sure enough, that worked. Like even the disciples scatter, right? The closest of friends to Jesus, they are scattered and even denying him, in the case of Peter in particular.

And so that part has been accomplished, but Jesus still has something they want.

They want his faith stripped from him. Satan in particular wants

Jesus's faith stripped. He doesn't just want to squelch the rebellion, he wants the son of God's faith to falter.

But true faith cannot be tortured out of a man because true faith has no hope in the flesh.

That's not where the hope resides. All of its hope is in God and the healing that the flesh will experience when it is glorified by God, which happens after death.

So the very thing that you hope to take away, which is hope, right?

You're hoping to take away hope from this person by torturing them.

In reality, the more you torture them, the closer they get to the hope that they're holding on to.

True faith's hope is one of blessings and reward in heaven as a direct result of the torture they endure.

Have you ever had someone you've known for a short amount of time that slandered somebody that you've known for a long amount of time?

Like say you meet somebody who's, you don't even know them very well, you know that they don't know the person they're slandering very well, but they're like, they're going to backbite someone that you've known maybe your whole life.

You might hear them say, well, did you know this about that person? And you're like, you don't even know that person.

What's the word? What's the phrase? Felicia, please, or something like that, right?

Like I could just imagine Ashton saying that or her saying that, Felicia, please. Like you don't know what you're talking about.

That's exactly, I think, I mean, I don't want it to sound too casual, but I mean, it's almost that ridiculous.

The thought that goes through Jesus's mind here, watch this, verse nine. But thou art he that took me out of the womb.

Thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breast. So here they are trying to get me to stop believing in you.

They're trying to slander you and pull my faith away. They don't know you.

I know you. They're asking me to give up on you.

I was cast upon thee from the womb. And then he reaffirms, no,

I'm team father. I'm not team people here.

These people who are trying to eliminate my faith, trying to get me to just give it up,

Satan, with all of his minions, they don't know you.

I know you. And that's a big statement if you think about it, because Satan's been around a long time. If you go just by time,

Satan should certainly know the father because he's been around for a long time. But he does not know the father the way the son knows the father.

So when Satan tortures Jesus on the cross and does so with the hope of getting

Jesus to just give up on the father, he doesn't know what he's doing.

And that's what Jesus is saying here, like, Felicia, please, you don't know what you're talking about.

So he then reaffirms, thou art my God. He clings to the father.

And then he makes his request, reminding God, you delivered our fathers.

Remember, we talked about this last week, like he identifies so much with the people that he loves, the people he came to save, that he calls their earthly fathers, our fathers, as if they are his earthly fathers.

And of course, he's called the son of David, right? It's just a really cool way he phrases that because he wants to be so much one with us.

Even though he was born of a virgin, he completely takes on the lineage of David.

And he says, basically, I'm clinging to you as my fathers did.

So then he makes a request. Remember, he's been tortured. He's been crying out.

He's been to the point of almost sounding like an animal with his cry.

It's just so visceral, so intense. And it's been really kind of hard to read.

Last week was pretty tough, is really graphic. What I love here is that we're gonna see a switch, kind of like a change in the way

Jesus is talking. We're gonna see two switches, actually. He almost goes from like a hopelessness to a determination.

He says, but he asks for this one request, be not far from me.

For trouble is near, for there is none to help. And remember, that's the worst blow to Jesus is he feels far from God.

So the thing that he asks for over and over again in this Psalm is be with me, be near me.

He has almost, in a sense, stopped asking for this whole thing to stop and is, at this point, asking just for God to be near him.

That's the part he really wants to stop. Forget the lacerations in the blood, the bones feeling out of place and stuff.

Like, all he really cares about is he wants God near him. Spurgeon said, in our

Lord's case, none either could or would help him. It was needful that he should tread the winepress alone.

And yet, was it a sore aggravation to find that all his disciples had forsaken him and lover and friend were put far from him?

There is an awfulness about absolute friendlessness, which is crushing to the human mind, for man was not made to be alone and is like a dismembered limb when he has to endure heart loneliness.

Jesus has endured friendlessness to the deepest degree.

I've been through something where I would say I had no friends. I've been through a time like that, and it was devastating.

I had one friend for a little while. Her name was Miss Patricia. She was the lunch lady at Letourneau University.

What? Well, this was before you and I became pretty good friends,

Jen. This was early on, very early on in my college career.

Then one day, God brought Jen into my life with a big fat burrito in her purse, and we became friends pretty fast.

And then I met her cute little sister. Hmm. But friendlessness is terrible.

It's hard to endure, even for a short amount of time. Imagine friendlessness to the degree that even though all you've ever done is make the lives of the people around you better, they just abandon you and deny you in your worst, your deepest time of need.

He's not just gonna go through the cross and have people going, hey, it's okay.

You're gonna pull through. No. Whatever's gonna happen, you've got this,

Jesus. I don't know why you're doing it this way, but we believe in you, and you can do this.

None of that. I don't understand it either. Oh, this is terrible. It's more just like, no, who are you talking about?

You think I know that guy? Complete abandonment. And so who does he want in that time?

None other than God. That's who he wants. So here's the significant change in tone.

There's no longer a question at this point. Now it's as if he has resolved to go through it, but he wants his father to be with him as he does.

So he directs his attention to the task at hand. Here is seen determination of Jesus, like the hero of a good movie, right?

Who's left with the simple choice to give up and die or press on. We see him begin to look his future just dead in the face with sheer grit, with determination.

He begins to face the abuse, face the punishment, and he describes the pain and the ones who inflicted on him.

I went through a week of what I sometimes refer to as torture.

It was my black belt test in jujitsu. I didn't tell mom the things

I had to go through because she would have made me quit. We had the police called on us a couple of times because the neighbors thought that my jujitsu instructor was torturing people in his backyard.

And at the time I denied that there was any kind of torture going on. I'll look back and say it was pretty torturous.

But there comes a point when you're going through pain that you can make stop, you can quit, you can quit, but then you won't have accomplished the goal.

And Jesus refuses to quit because he's going to accomplish his goal.

But there comes a point in that process where the beginning mentality is don't focus on the pain.

Like you jump into a cold plunge. Tyler and Noah and I did this cold plunge with Matt too, did this cold plunge at a

Myron Golden event. And it's pretty extreme. You get into a tub with tons of ice and water in it and it's extremely cold.

You just try to get as far down as you can into it. And Myron tells you just focus on the breathing, right?

And it's don't focus on the pain, focus on the breathing. And that works, it really does. You focus on something else and the pain starts to, you don't notice it as much.

If you focus on the pain, it's intense, it'll get you. That's kind of the beginning mentality when going through pain.

But when you get to a point where you are resolved to not let it ever stop, like it's going to continue until you die, right?

Or until you accomplish the goal. There comes a point when focusing on the pain becomes a part of the process.

You begin to take note of the pain and you think through the pain. You don't just feel it though, you think through it, you analyze it, you begin to make the feelings of the pain become the driving force to get you through the process.

Like, what else can my body experience? What else is it going to feel?

And it almost becomes this weird place of curiosity. And it sounds similar to that what's going on in Jesus here because you'll see he starts to describe his torturers but then he turns to his own pain and analyzes very detailed the way he analyzes his pain so verse 12, many bulls have compassed me, strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.

The bulls of Bashan are a reference to strength, wealth, and power. The priests, the elders, the scribes, the

Pharisees, the rulers, the captains, they're all there. He has the most powerful people in the land just surrounded him and they are all there to add to the torture.

They're all there to add to the mockery. They've compassed him about.

They gaped upon me with their mouths as a ravening and roaring lion.

The powerful enemies that are compassing him foam at the mouth as they prepare for their death blow.

Have you ever watched Discovery Channel? I know

Matthew Eats who has, he used to watch that a ton. You're watching it this morning, he still watches Discovery Channel.

You know how when you see the lion that's about to get its prey, his mouth, he'll have his mouth open and it almost looks like he's drooling and stuff.

Like that's the picture here. Like that's what the enemy is like with Satan.

He's got him where he wants him. There's not gonna be an escape. I'm about to eat and it's just, yeah, yeah.

When the lion gets to that point, the praise, it's done. The lion knows I'm about to eat. So he's describing his enemies.

He's describing all these powerful people around him that are just ready to kill him. They're ready for the death blow and they can feel it's coming.

We've got him where we want him. He's a goner. And this is just as satisfying as we hoped it would be.

But then he turns to the pain and he starts to analyze what he's going through. I am poured out like water.

Jesus gave every ounce till nothing remained of effort. His sweat was running out.

The precious, innocent blood that we sing of, dripping. All that was left to give was his very life, his spirit, what remained of his power.

It was being poured out from him. It wasn't spilled, by the way. We tend to think about Jesus' love being spilled.

It wasn't sucked away from him. It wasn't taken. It was all poured.

You pour something out with purpose. If it's not intentional, you don't say,

I poured it out. You say, I spilled it. But he says, I am poured out like water.

It was purposeful. It was intentional. It was with willingness that Jesus did this.

And all my bones are out of joint. Your muscles work to keep your bones all in place.

If you strain a muscle, causing it to lose strength, skeletal misalignments will often follow.

Trust me, I have been through quite a few of those. Now imagine every single muscle in your body losing strength to the point at which none of them can hold a single bone in place.

If you were laying in bed, that might not be the end of the world. You know, you'd simply rest.

Let those muscles repair and you'd get up the next morning and you might be a little sore, but you'd be okay.

But if you were instead nailed to a cross and hung up in the air as if you were just a piece of plyboard, if you were hung in the most unnatural position with no strength left, every bone would slip, every vertebrae would misalign, every joint dislocate.

It's an intense amount of discomfort and of course pain, all while enduring the wrath of the

Father. Imagine that. And it's little wonder that Jesus says, what he says next in this verse, my heart is like wax.

It is melted in the midst of my bowels. Dr. Gil Wisely observes, if the heart of Christ, the lion of the tribe of Judah melted at it, what heart can endure or hands be strong when

God deals with them in his wrath? I mean, if the heart of Jesus, who was perfect and holy and pure, melts at the wrath of God, we don't stand a chance without Jesus.

Verse 15, my strength is dried up like a pochard. It's like a kiln baked pot that has every single ounce of moisture expelled from it by fire.

Jesus endured the fiery wrath of God and that justice left him with nothing else, like nothing left to squeeze from him.

He says, and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.

We call it cotton mouth, except that would be such an understatement.

When we're thirsty, we're like, oh, I got such bad cotton mouth. You know how it feels just kind of like dry and sticky and at the point of death, apparently that's a pretty common thing too, an extreme amount of cotton mouth.

People often get thirsty right at the point of death. I know I will be.

I'm thirsty all the time. I always wanted to drink water. That's, man, that may be one of the worst parts of death for me, to feel like there's no water left in me.

Well, that's how Jesus felt, but to a much greater extreme.

For dogs have compassed me. The assembly of the wicked have enclosed me.

So we already talked about the rulers and the Pharisees and the scribes and the captains that are compassing him.

You know, they may count themselves worthy to strike the King of the Jews. And in their own minds, they certainly felt like they were, but even those of less estate, the dogs, if you will, the people who are of,

I mean, the other dying thieves on the cross, the scum of the earth, as many would call them, they took their shot at him.

The dogs have compassed him, not just the bulls of Bashan, like everything is against him.

Everyone is against him. They pierced my hands and my feet. This is an interesting verse here because who wrote this

Psalm? David. But these are certainly the words of Christ, right?

This is, make no mistake of it. This is without a doubt the words of Christ here. Verse 17,

I may tell all my bones, they look and stare upon me. In other words, he's very aware of each and every bone.

It is said that hanging a man on the cross would stretch the skin so that the bones would become visible.

Like you could just see them all. And he either means, oh, I'm aware of every single bone and look, everybody else can see me and see the bones of my body.

Or he means, I can see my bones and they're looking right back at me. Like, it is that bad.

Like I can look down and see every bone in my body.

He must've looked aged by who knows how many years. Other parts of the scripture talk about his wrinkles.

And yet he's only 33 years old here. They part my garments among them and cast lots upon me.

Cast lots upon my vesture. I mean, imagine Jesus hanging there on the cross, looking at all these people and describing just how bloodthirsty they are.

And then looking down in his body and just seeing everything. And then looking back at them and going, they're parting my garments among them.

They're playing games with my stuff. So he's looked at his body and he's looked at the people around him.

What a time to play. I mean, it's just a perverse thought. They're out there playing games.

And not just games, games with a human being. Verse 19, what does he want?

But be not thou far from me, oh Lord. Oh, my strength has thee to help me.

Be close, hurry and help me. It's amazing, that's all he cares of.

When we get in a tough situation, what we tend to only care about is the situation to be resolved.

I need this injury to be healed. I'm injured right now.

I wanna play basketball and I don't get to play for three to six months. Tyler, every time he sees me, he's like, you got like three, two months under your belt already,

Dave, right? And I'm like, yeah, it's been two weeks, but let's call it two months. All I want is that knee to be healed so I can go play and stuff.

All Jesus wants in his times of hurting or his times of frustration or his times of discomfort or his times of pain, all he wants is the father to be there with him through it.

Deliver my soul from the sword. What sword? It's the fiery sword of God's justice.

He says, my darling from the power of the dog. My darling is a reference to his soul.

If you look it up, it means my only one. At first, when you read it at its face value, you think, oh, he's calling the father darling, but what he's actually doing is he's saying, rescue my soul from the dog, from the power of the dog.

And it's neat that he calls it his darling because think of what he's done for 33 straight years. He has protected his soul from sin.

He has treated it like a precious jewel. It's his darling, his life, his soul is perfect and pure and holy, and he has protected it.

If only we thought of our soul in that manner and how perfect and precious and amazing of a gift it is that God gave us us, he gave us a soul.

And we have an opportunity to protect that soul from the destruction and death of sin on a daily basis.

We could protect it moment by moment, and yet we don't. The dog is either

Satan and his minions or just the entire host of the enemy. And he is now gone from looking at his enemy to looking at himself to looking at God again.

And if we would just do that in the times of temptation, the enemy's in front of you, look at it, realize it, now self -reflect because it's right there.

Do you wanna experience the death and the destruction that it is bringing to your doorstep?

And the enemy can look like an angel of light. It can actually look pretty good. And yet you've gotta recognize when the enemy's there, and then you've got to recognize that the enemy is actually attacking.

He wants to bring something that destroys your soul. And then if you'll just look at yourself and go, that's my soul, like God gave me that.

That's something I've gotta protect. I've gotta be careful with this. And the only way you're gonna get past that is to look at him and ask him for his help.

Save me from the lion's mouth, that mouth that's gaping open. It's already too late, like Daniel in the lion's den.

Like he's there, he's trapped. The lions have him, right? There's no escape.

And yet God can shut the mouth of the lion. We read in an earlier

Psalm that even though the lion may have you in his mouth, God can pull you back out and save you.

Save me from the lion's mouth, for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. Look at there, unicorns really do exist.

They don't really know what this term unicorn means. They say it's probably one of the great aurochs, which is a type of cattle, which is a wild and untamable type of cattle.

It's now extinct. Although they're trying to reverse engineer to bring them back into existence, and they have something that's very similar to it.

Over in the UK, they're trying to do that. They're trying to bring aurochs back into existence through reverse engineering.

I'm not really sure how that works. It won't be the exact same thing, but it's a wild, untamable animal with great strength and agility.

Sometimes this word M for unicorns is rhinoceros.

Sometimes it's called a rhinoceros. Can you imagine trying to tame a rhinoceros?

Those things, I know that people have to some degree, but even, you know how you can have a wild animal and you can tame it to some degree, but there's still this wildness that never actually leaves it.

I mean, you think of the tigers with the two magician guys.

What were their names? Siegfried and Roy, right?

Siegfried and Roy, is that right? I think that's right. Yeah, so Siegfried and Roy, for decades, they did these magic shows with these tigers that they had tamed, and yet one of them ends up killing his master, because they're just not completely tame.

In any case, this is just a very dramatic statement from Jesus. He has been in the presence of the most untamable sin with wild beasts of destruction preying upon him, even though he didn't invite the sin into his own heart, like he took on yours and my sin and experienced the destruction of our sin.

That's what God had saved him from for 33 years. He had never once experienced the death and destruction of sin until this point, and then he experiences it more than any other man ever will in the history of the world or in the future of the world.

The devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus, with the help of his

Father, has kept his darling soul from evil. Verse 22,

I will declare thy name unto my brethren. In the midst of the congregation will

I praise thee. See the change? Like he's gone from the terrible self -reflection of pain that he's going through and looking out and analyzing just the sheer awe of all of his enemies, mouths gaped, ready for the death blow, chanting for his death, to talking to the

Father and just praising him and getting determined. Like there's a grit here that's better than any other movie you've ever seen, by the way.

It's always the inspiring part of the movie or the inspiring part of the book when the hero finally accepts that, you know what,

I might die killing this enemy, but I'm gonna do it anyway, right? Like that whole concept, the whole idea that we get that in all stories from, that comes from Jesus, who did it perfectly.

He said, here's the enemy. I'm going to destroy him, and it's gonna kill me, and I don't care because all

I care about are the people I'm gonna save. So check out what he does next, after looking at his enemies and then looking at himself and then looking at the

Father, he turns his eyes to you. Ye that fear the

Lord, praise him. All ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel, for he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted.

Neither hath he hid his face from him, but when he cried unto him, he heard.

In other words, listen up, those who fear the Lord. My God hears me when

I cry, so you will hear me when I praise him.

We talked about how Jesus was speaking as a man at the beginning of this

Psalm. My God, my God, why hath thou forsaken me? As a man, he was 100 % forsaken, and yet the unity in spirit that he has with the

Father was never broken because he is still a part of the triune

God, and that never changed, that never stopped. And so while he spoke as a man at the beginning, he speaks in the spirit here towards the end.

My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation. I will pay my vows before them that fear him.

He'll pay his vows. See, the bridegroom's vows will be said only to the bride.

There's this exclusivity here when he says, I will pay my vows before them that fear him.

It's not God loves everyone. You know, it's not that Jesus came to save all.

He will pay those vows to the ones that fear God. That's who he came to save.

That's who he came to marry, if you will. Verse 26, the meek shall eat and be satisfied.

They shall praise the Lord that seek him. Your heart shall live forever.

These are the vows, guys. This is the promise. This is what he came to accomplish.

And this is why there is no way that Satan is gonna be able to strip him of his faith because it's because of the faith of Christ that he's able to do this for us.

All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.

You know what's interesting about this? The way Jesus is talking is just like a king.

If you think about what kings do, they make decrees. They say, this is how it's gonna be.

This is what's gonna happen. Let it be known because I'm the king and I said so.

So here he is hanging on a cross, all of his bones out of joint. You can see every one of them.

Blood dripping from his body. He has poured out everything. He's got a crown of thorns on his head as a symbol of mockery for the king.

And yet he doesn't stop acting like the king because he is the king.

And this verse 27, it's not just a decree about something great that's gonna happen.

He tells you how it's gonna happen. All the ends of the world shall remember. What's that?

It's reflection. Wait a minute. I see that in front of me.

There's a standard that I don't meet. And if I don't meet it, I have fallen short of the glory of God.

And they'll turn unto the Lord. There's repentance. And all the kindreds of the nation shall worship before thee.

There's praise. So not only does he say, I'm gonna give my vows to my bride.

Here are the ones that are gonna get the promise, the ones that fear the father, the ones that fear

God. That's who this is for. Those are my people. I'm the king and those are my people.

He says, here's what make them my people. It's when this happens. Or rather I should say, here's what they look like after I make them my people.

That would probably be more theologically correct. Because all of those are just effects, right?

Reflection, repentance, praise. Verse 28, for the kingdom, king is always talking about the kingdom.

The kingdom is the Lord's and he is the governor among the nations. All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship.

This is interesting because we typically think that, oh, those that are fat upon the earth are the bad guys.

Because often you hear people growing fat in scripture. But these are even wealthy type people who will be brought to the

Lord. I think it's a great verse because there are some people who would say, well,

I don't wanna be rich. I don't wanna be rich because it's harder for me to get to heaven if I'm rich.

People take those verses out of context all the time. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Oh, well then I wouldn't wanna be rich, right? Well, if you don't really wanna be rich, it doesn't necessarily mean rich the way you understand it.

You are a child of the king. If you wanna be the child of the king, guess what?

You are rich. And he is an abundant God and he gives blessings freely.

Blessings you don't deserve. You know, the kind of thing that the world looks at and says, oh, you're so entitled.

I mean, I'm the child of the king. No, can't help the fact that the king loves me.

Like he just does. I'm gonna get great things. I'm gonna get love. I'm gonna get compassion.

I'm gonna get mercy. I'm gonna get grace. And sometimes I get earthly treasures as well because he's the king and he's got a lot of treasures.

All the fullness of the world is his. The wealth of the righteous, or the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous.

So even all the money that all those evil wealthy people have, that's just getting stacked and packed for me.

Eventually, all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him.

You see, it's not just the wealthy, even the poor. It's just another great picture of the fact that he saves all kinds.

He may not save all men. It didn't come to save absolutely everyone on earth, but he certainly came to save some of all types, rich, poor, and everything in between.

And none can keep alive his own soul, which means it doesn't matter if you're wealthy.

It doesn't matter if you're poor. Poverty isn't piety, and wealth doesn't bring you salvation. You can't save your own soul.

Nothing that you can do can save you. So it's God who's gonna have to save you.

A seed shall serve him. It shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation. I think this is really cool, because what's a seed do?

It grows. It grows into something much bigger, and that something much bigger often produces many more seeds.

And what does it take for those many more seeds to be exposed? Consumption.

Consumption results in production. You take an apple off the tree that grew from a seed.

You bite into the apple, and you find three or four more seeds, but the apple had to be consumed.

Jesus was completely consumed on the cross as the initial starting seed.

His followers soon thereafter, some even on a cross, consumed.

We may someday be called to be consumed, but guess what? We're not supposed to live for ourselves, so we're supposed to freely give of our own lives, consuming our own thoughts, our own pleasures, our own desires, consuming them in a sense of relinquishing them, giving them up, and exposing the seed that's inside us.

In other words, we're supposed to already be dead to ourselves. We're supposed to already have been consumed, and nothing is left but that initial seed.

It is not I, but Christ who lives within me. And so when we lay ourselves open and allow ourselves to be a giving

Christian and laying down our lives for other people, that's when they can see the seed,

Jesus, and it will be counted as a faith that has posterity.

They shall come and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born.

This is a faith that's gonna continue. It's gonna last long after Jesus' crucifixion, thousands of years.

It's gonna grow bigger and bigger and bigger. It doesn't shrink.

It seems like it does for a time, but that's because, you know, just like a tree goes through times of winter when it's not producing a ton,

I've got peaches and plum trees that I've planted. It actually, in order for them to produce fruit, they have to endure a certain number of hours of winter in cold weather.

And the more trial or tribulation that tree goes through of winter cold weather, the more it will produce fruit on the other side of that.

So even in the times that we would say there's less production, it's actually cultivating something within us for more production.

Unto a people that shall be born. And then here's the final statement of this chapter.

They shall come and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born. He hath done this.

He hath done this. This can be translated as it is finished.

Which is interesting, because if you think about it, all the accounts of Jesus on the cross in the

Gospels, in the New Testament, they start by talking about how He said, my

God, why hast thou forsaken me? And then fast forward a little bit. They say, right before He gives up the spirit,

He says, it is finished. It is entirely possible and actually probable that Jesus didn't just quote the beginning of this chapter whenever He was on the cross.

It's entirely probable that He said the entire thing from beginning to end.

Now, they don't record that, but they may not need to, because these are certainly the words of Christ.

If He didn't say them out loud, we know He at least thought them on the cross. And that's what

Psalm 22 gives us a picture of, is like what was going on on the inside of Jesus while everybody else was looking at the outside.

The amount of torture that He endured, unfathomable. Psychological, physical, spiritual torture.

He came from heaven to earth, completely sacrificed His spiritual life.

He lived perfectly on earth for 33 years, sacrificed His mental life, and then He died on the cross, sacrificed

His physical life. And in the process of dying on the cross, He got to enjoy torture of all three.

Nothing enjoyable about it. But what was enjoyable was the hope

He had on the other side of it. Let us look unto the author and finisher of our faith who for the prize that was set before Him endured the cross, despised the shame, and is set down on the right -hand side of the

Father. So that's Psalm 22. What do you guys think? Cool, right?

We booked it through that second part, because we started on verse eight today, but we got through it.

Wasn't sure we could do a whole third week on such a heavy topic. So I wanted to get us through.

So, all right, well, anybody else have something you'd like to say or add? Any thoughts before we pray?

Yes, sir. Yep, that's interesting, isn't it?

Maybe that verse 29 where it says, you can keep alive your own soul, we should teach that to those who think works, preserve your soul.

In a sense they do, not in the way that we think they do. Jesus certainly preserved

His soul from sin and called it His darling. But it doesn't keep you,

I mean, unless you do it perfectly like Jesus did your whole life, then yeah, you can't.

So in theory, a man could preserve his own soul, but that's theory only, because no one ever will.

No one ever can, only Jesus did. That's a good thought, yeah.

None can't, I guess the word there is can, you just can't. It's not that it's not possible, it's certainly a possibility because Jesus proved it.

But you can't do it, so for you, it is impossible. I can't do it.

If you ever messed up once, it's too late, you already didn't do it, right? Any other thoughts?

All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the work you did on the cross. We thank you for not just doing it, but for taking the time to explain it all to us, to allow us to get a peek into your own mind as you're going through it, and just the grit that you had and the determination you had to do that for us, because you love us.

Thank you, Father. Lord, we ask that you help us to think of it often. This is the gospel, which is the power into salvation, as Paul put it.

So help us to think on it daily, because it is what gives us peace with God.

And if we want more peace in our lives, we've just got to think of this. Lord, we love you, and it's in your name we ask these things, amen.