My God, Why? Series

INTRODUCTION — THE PSALM WE HEAR BUT RARELY ENTER

Psalm 22 is one of the most famous passages in Scripture, but ironically, it is one of the least understood. We know its opening line because Jesus cried it from the cross. We quote it during communion, on Good Friday, in moments of grief, and in times of spiritual darkness. But few Christians have ever sat inside the Psalm long enough to feel its weight.

This is not a gentle Psalm.

This is not a polite prayer.

This is the soul of a righteous sufferer laid bare before God.

Psalm 22 is what faith sounds like when faith is bleeding.

And the surprising thing — the thing preachers must recognize — is that this Psalm was not written by Jesus. It was written by David, around 1,000 years before Calvary, in a moment of such deep anguish that the Holy Spirit used his suffering to prophetically paint the crucifixion.

Psalm 22 is both:

David’s pain and Christ’s passion.

Human lament and divine prophecy.

A cry from earth and an echo from heaven.

It is the most Christ-saturated lament in all of Scripture.

But before this Psalm is about Jesus, it is about someone who feels forsaken by God.

And that is what makes it so difficult to preach.

How do you stand in a pulpit and say,

“God inspired a Psalm where the righteous man feels abandoned by God”?

How do you wrestle with a Psalm where the prayer is not answered immediately?

A Psalm where the suffering is not removed instantly?

A Psalm where the pain is so real, so raw, so intense that the Messiah Himself chose those exact words to express His agony?

Psalm 22 is difficult because it forces us to walk into the holy ground of suffering — not just Jesus’ suffering, but our own.

Let’s enter the Psalm carefully, reverently, and honestly.

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I. “MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?” — WHEN GOD FEELS FAR

The Psalm begins with a cry that shocks the reader:

“My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?”

This is the language of distance.

This is the prayer of someone who believes, but cannot feel.

This is faith in the dark.

Notice something important:

David is not turning away from God.

He is turning toward Him.

He doesn’t say, “There is no God.”

He says, “My God…”

It is a cry born out of relationship, not rebellion.

It is the agony of someone who knows God and cannot reconcile his circumstances with the promises he has built his life on.

And that is where suffering becomes most painful for believers —

not merely in the experience of pain,

but in the experience of divine silence.

David is saying,

“Lord, I know You.

I have walked with You.

I have trusted You.

So why does it feel like You’re nowhere to be found?”

Some of you have lived in Psalm 22:1.

You prayed and the heavens were silent.

You sought comfort and found emptiness.

You believed God was near, but felt only absence.

This Psalm tells you that faith can ask “why?” without sin.

Jesus sanctified that question by making it His own.

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II. “I CRY OUT… BUT YOU DO NOT ANSWER” — WHEN PRAYERS SEEM TO FAIL

Verse 2 continues the theme:

“I cry by day, but You do not answer…

and by night, but I find no rest.”

This is the exhaustion of unanswered prayer.

The weariness of waiting.

The spiritual fatigue of crying out and hearing nothing in return.

There is a pattern in Scripture we often forget:

God’s closest servants often walked through seasons of silence.

Abraham waited decades.

Joseph languished in prison.

Moses lived forty years in Midian.

Hannah wept before the Lord.

Jeremiah cried rivers of tears.

And David — the man after God’s own heart — wrote Psalm 22.

Silence is not abandonment.

Delay is not denial.

Darkness is not distance.

Sometimes God is nearer in His silence than He is in His speech.

Psalm 22 gives us permission to acknowledge our weariness —

our unanswered prayers,

our long nights,

our loneliness,

our fears.

Because the Psalmist does not hide his pain, the Christian does not need to hide theirs.

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III. “YET YOU ARE HOLY” — THE TURN OF FAITH

In verse 3, the Psalm turns:

“Yet You are holy…”

This is one of the most powerful words in Scripture.

Yet.

My circumstances are awful…

yet You are holy.

I feel abandoned…

yet You are faithful.

My prayers seem unanswered…

yet You are enthroned.

This is faith not built on feelings,

faith not built on outcomes,

faith not built on circumstances —

this is faith built on who God is.

The Psalmist remembers:

God has been faithful in the past.