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.
God delivered His people.
God heard the cries of the ancestors.
This is the importance of spiritual memory.
When you cannot feel God in the present,
you remember His faithfulness in the past.
Feeling is temporary.
Memory is forever.
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IV. “BUT I AM A WORM AND NOT A MAN” — THE DEPTH OF HUMILIATION
Now the Psalm descends into the valley of humiliation:
“Scorned by men, despised by the people…
All who see me mock me…
They hurl insults…”
This is not private suffering.
This is public humiliation.
This is pain intensified by shame.
In David’s life, he had moments of betrayal, slander, and ridicule.
But in Christ, these words become literal.
Psalm 22 is the only place in Scripture that describes the psychological crucifixion.
The mocking,
the shaking of heads,
the taunts,
the emotional cruelty.
And yet — David says it first.
This is why Psalm 22 is difficult to preach:
to preach it faithfully, you must step into the humiliation of the righteous sufferer. You must acknowledge that godly people sometimes endure not only pain, but mockery, misunderstanding, and misrepresentation.
Psalm 22 teaches us:
Suffering is not always quiet. Sometimes it is public and humiliating. And God does not abandon His people in either.
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V. “THEY PIERCED MY HANDS AND MY FEET” — THE PROPHETIC MYSTERY
Verses 16–18 are the center of this Psalm’s messianic power:
“They pierced my hands and my feet.”
“I can count all my bones.”
“They divide my garments among them.”
“They cast lots for my clothing.”
David wrote this centuries before crucifixion existed in Israel.
The Holy Spirit carried him beyond his own experience
into the very suffering of Christ.
Psalm 22 is not just descriptive.
It is prophetic.
It is divine foresight wrapped in human anguish.
It is the Old Testament standing at the foot of the cross.
This Psalm shows us that:
Jesus did not accidentally fulfill prophecy.
Jesus intentionally stepped into the script God had written long before the manger and long before Golgotha.
When Jesus cried, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
He wasn’t just expressing emotion.
He was intentionally quoting Psalm 22.
This was His declaration:
“I am the righteous sufferer David wrote about.
This Psalm is My story.
This is what I came to fulfill.”
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VI. THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL — AND THE GOD WHO ENTERS IT
Psalm 22 is the most complete depiction of what theologians call:
the dark night of the soul.
A place where the believer is not just suffering physically,
but spiritually and emotionally.
A place where God seems hidden
even though He is near.
A place where faith feels fragile
even though it is strong.
A place where you ask “why?”
even though you know “who.”
Jesus enters that place,
not as a distant Savior,
but as a companion in suffering.
He takes on the full human experience of abandonment —
not because He deserved it,
but because we did.
Psalm 22 becomes the theological hinge of atonement:
the moment when the Father allows the Son to drink the cup of divine judgment.
Not because of His sin,
but because of ours.
This is why Psalm 22 is so intense:
it is the Psalm of substitution.
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VII. “BUT YOU, LORD, DO NOT BE FAR FROM ME” — THE PRAYER OF A DYING MAN
In verse 19, the Psalmist cries:
“But You, O Lord, do not be far from me.”
This is the whole prayer in one sentence.
Not,
“Take away the pain.”
Not,
“Stop the suffering.”
Not,
“Remove the enemies.”
Just:
“Do not be far.”
This is the cry of every believer in suffering:
“Lord, I can endure almost anything, as long as You stay close.”
And God does.
He does not always remove the suffering immediately.
But He never forsakes His children.
The irony of the cross is that when Jesus felt most abandoned,
the Father was accomplishing His greatest work.
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VIII. THE TURNING POINT — FROM LAMENT TO PRAISE
Psalm 22 shifts dramatically in verse 22.
The lament becomes praise.
The desperation becomes proclamation.
The darkness gives way to light.
David moves from
“Why have You forsaken me?”
to
“I will declare Your name to my brethren.”
What changed?
Nothing around him.
Everything inside him.
This is the truth of biblical lament:
Lament is the path that leads to praise.
Honest sorrow is the doorway to healing.
You do not find restoration by denying your pain
but by bringing it honestly before God.
Psalm 22 teaches us that praise is not always loud,
not always joyful,
not always musical.
Sometimes praise is born out of pain.
Sometimes the clearest vision of God comes after the longest night.
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IX. A GLOBAL VISION — “ALL THE ENDS OF THE EARTH WILL REMEMBER”
Now the Psalm looks beyond David
and even beyond the cross
into the future of the gospel:
“All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord.”
This verse is fulfilled every time the gospel is preached.
Why?
Because the suffering of the righteous servant in Psalm 22
is what draws the nations into worship.
This is the mission of God flowing out of the agony of Christ.
The nations are saved not by His miracles,
but by His wounds.
Isaiah said it plainly:
“By His stripes we are healed.”
Psalm 22 shows us:
The cross is not just personal.
It is global.
It is cosmic.
It is eternal.
Christ’s cry of abandonment becomes the world’s cry of salvation.
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X. “HE HAS DONE IT” — THE FORESHADOW OF “IT IS FINISHED”
Psalm 22 ends with one triumphant declaration:
“He has done it.”
This is the Hebrew equivalent of:
“It is finished.”
The Psalm begins with a cry of abandonment
and ends with a proclamation of victory.
This is the gospel pattern:
Sorrow ? Joy
Darkness ? Light
Despair ? Hope
Cross ? Resurrection
Psalm 22 is the story:
From forsaken to fulfilled.
From suffering to salvation.
From lament to proclamation.
From “My God, why?” to “He has done it.”
This is why Jesus quoted it on the cross.
He was not merely expressing His anguish.
He was pointing us to the entire Psalm —
from the agony of verses 1–21
to the triumph of verses 22–31.
He was saying:
“Yes, I am forsaken now…
but the story ends in victory.”
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XI. WHAT THIS MEANS FOR US TODAY
Psalm 22 speaks to the believer who feels abandoned, misunderstood, or overwhelmed.
1. You can bring your “why?” to God.
He can handle it.
He preserved it in Scripture.
2. Jesus has already walked your dark night.
You are not alone.
Your suffering has a Companion.
3. Silence is not absence.
God may be doing His greatest work in the moments you feel least supported.
4. Lament leads to praise.
Honest grief is sacred.
It is not weak.
It is worship.
5. The victory is already written.
Your story will not end in verse 1.
God will bring you to verse 31:
“He has done it.”
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XII. APPEAL
If you are in Psalm 22 today —
if you feel forgotten,
forsaken,
or overwhelmed —
Jesus stands beside you.
He took the cry of verse 1
so you could share the triumph of verse 31.
Bring Him your lament.
Bring Him your wounds.
Bring Him your unanswered questions.
Bring Him your “why?”
He will meet you in the dark
and lead you into the light.
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XIII. CLOSING PRAYER
“Lord, You are the God who enters our suffering.
You hear our cries, even when we cannot hear Your voice.
Teach us to trust You in the silence.
Hold us when we feel forsaken.
Lead us from lament to praise,
from darkness to dawn,
from ‘why?’ to ‘He has done it.’
In the name of Jesus, our suffering Savior and risen King, Amen.”
