Our Worship
pastor has the members of the choir going through the book of Psalms for our
devotions with the hope of preparing our hearts to lead in worship. This week, one of the Psalms was Psalms 22,
one of my favorite Psalms because it is a Messianic Psalm, or in other words, a
Psalm that prophesies about what Jesus will do.
This gave me the idea to write a blog on Psalm 22 showing the
fulfillment of these prophesies in the New Testament. I want to dedicate this blog to Josh Stewart
our Worship Pastor because he wanted the Psalms to inspire us to worship God,
and when I re-read this Psalm, it inspired me.
Thank you Josh.
Psalm 22
1 My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me,
and from the words of my roaring?
Fulfillment
by Christ
Matthew 27:46
46And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice,
saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me?
I will try not to spend too much
time on this, but there are many controversies about this statement. Jesus cried this out while on the cross. Most people do not realize that He is quoting
the Bible. They believe that God leaves Jesus on the cross. This cannot happen because Jesus is fully God
and fully man, so if God comes out of Jesus on the cross it would be impossible
for him to be sinless, thus he could not be the substutionary sacrifice that
allows us to enter heaven. I develop
this principle much more in my blog “My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?” I will repost it so you can read that also if
you like.
The focus is that Jesus is trying
to get people to look at Psalm 22 and see that it was happening right before their
eyes. You see that in the Biblical times,
the Psalms were not numbered, that did not happen until the 12th and
13th centuries. The psalms were like the
Jewish Hymn book, and they would call out the first line of the Psalm to
announce which one they were going to do.
Just like today, the name of a hymn is usually its first line. Thus, Jesus was trying to get everyone to
look at Psalm 22 and see that it was being fulfilled in front of them. It was a final effort of Christ to get the
people to see. They of course missed
it. In fact Bible tells us ….
Matthew 27:47-49
47 Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said,
This man calleth for Elias.
48 And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and
filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.
49 The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to
save him.
Elias is Elijah in Aramaic, which is
the language Jesus spoke when he said, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” This was the common language of the Jews at
the time. It is a mixture of Hebrew and
Arabic and a few others of the area at the time. These languages originated during the
captivity in Babylon.
From the verses, you see that even the
ones standing there did not understand. Also,
remember that Jesus had been hit around the mouth several times in the last 24
hours and his face must have been swollen, he was also thirsty. These things
could have affected how well He spoke.
