When God Is Distant - Mark 15:34 And Psalm 22 Series

Mark 15:34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"--which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Introduction

What can you do when God is far away? You cry out to him and receive no comfort, no strength, it just seems like your prayers bounce off the ceiling. That actually happened to Jesus, and when it did, he quoted a psalm that teaches exactly what to do in times like that. Psalm 22 gives us insight into what was going on in Jesus’ mind during the worst of his agony on the cross, and how we can follow his example when we feel abandoned by God.

The Fulfillment of Human Suffering

So far we’ve looked at the numerous references to Psalm 22 in the crucifixion account in the gospels. But there’s also one in the book of Hebrews that we haven’t looked at yet, and that one is especially interesting. And Hebrews 2 is a fascinating chapter. The context is about how Jesus fulfills all that God intended for humanity to be even though the rest of humanity falls short. He brings up Psalm 8, where mankind is supposed to rule over the whole creation, but you look around and you don’t see man ruling all the creation. How do we explain that? Answer: Jesus rules over the whole creation. Jesus fulfills all that hu-manity is supposed to be.

Just as Jesus fulfilled God’s purposes for Israel as the ultimate Jew and the embodi-ment of Israel, it’s the same for humanity as a whole. God created the human race for a purpose. And everything that mankind fails to accomplish, Jesus fulfills as the ultimate human. Just as Jesus is the embodiment of Israel, he’s also the embodiment of the human race. He’s the last Adam, the representative of the humanity, and so when he reigns over all the creation, that fulfills the promise that mankind would rule over all.

That’s the context leading up to the part where the writer of Hebrews quotes Psalm 22. So what does Jesus fulfill on behalf of the whole human race from Psalm 22? Psalm 8 was about how the human race was created to rule over the creation. What does Psalm 22 say the human race is supposed to do? Answer: suffer.

Part of what it means to be human in this life is to suffer, and Psalm 22 (along with a whole bunch of other psalms) teach us exactly how we are to handle that suffering. All the psalms that teach about how the righteous man should handle suffering—all the passages in the whole Old Testament about how the righteous should respond to suffering—all those passages put together paint a picture of the ideal righteous sufferer. But when you look at all the characters in the Old Testament, even the most godly ones, none of them fulfill that model. David and Job and other OT saints were a kind of prototype of the righteous suffer-er, but they didn’t fulfill that role perfectly. And it built up the hope that someday the ide-al, perfect human will come and fulfill all that God intended for humanity, including all that he intended to accomplish by allowing human suffering.

One reason there are so many connections in the crucifixion account pointing us back to Psalm 22 is to make it clear that on the cross Jesus finally fulfilled the role of the ideal righteous sufferer. Somebody finally came and suffered the right way. And he did so on behalf of the human race.

We Join Him

And here’s what’s so interesting about the Hebrews 2 passage. The point he draws out there is the fact that in Psalm 22, which describes Jesus’ perfect suffering, that righteous sufferer calls us his brothers!

Hebrews 2:11 Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. 12 He says, (now here comes the quotation from Psalm 22) "I will declare your name to my brothers; in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises."

That’s from section 2 of the psalm, and that entire section is all about how the right-eous sufferer calls all of God’s people to join him in praise. And what the writer of He-brews is saying is that everything the Messiah accomplishes in psalm 22, we’re involved as his brothers.

By calling us brothers, Jesus is drawing us in to his victory.

That’s an amazing truth. It means not only does Jesus win all the victories of accom-plishing everything God intended for humanity on our behalf in our place, but he also in-vites us into that victory.

Jesus says, “I’ll be perfect humanity for you.” But he doesn’t just leave it at that. Sometimes when preachers talk about how Jesus accomplished everything for us and we contribute nothing, they just leave it there as if our response is, “Oh, thanks for handling everything for me Jesus. I’ll just sit here and turn on the TV.” No. He doesn’t just say, “Sit back and watch me fulfill everything humanity is supposed to be.” He says, “I’ll fulfill it…” then he extends his hand and says, now, come join me in this victory as my brothers. I’ll be the ultimate human on your behalf, but then I want you to join me as co-humans.” And he draws us in to share in that ideal humanity trail that he’s blazing ahead of us. We follow him down that trail.