Psalm 22:1-2: My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? [Why are You so] far from helping Me, [and from] the words of My groaning? O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent.
Having a relationship with God as a normal human being is difficult. Sometimes, our relationship with the LORD can be vibrant and genuinely intimate. There can be seasons where the LORD speaks to us clearly; where we can see the movement of His hand; and where His comfort and encouragement are obvious and tangible. There are also times in our walk with the LORD, that His discipline can be equally obvious and real, so that the convictions He pours into us because of sin, can make us miserable. God’s correction can be just as real as His comfort. I’m sure a lot of you know exactly what I mean!
Still, during THESE seasons our connection to God is clear and tangible. There are other times in life however where our relationship with God can seem distant, seemingly for no reason. Sin can indeed cause distance and separation from God, but there are also times when it seems like God has gone silent and is ghosting us. Don’t let anyone fool you: there are real, strong, faithful Christians who experience times when they seek God in desperation, but get no response. The Bible clearly shows that there can be times when we humble ourselves before God to connect with Him, but hear nothing, see nothing, and feel nothing. It’s not because we have weak faith. It’s not because we’re practicing sin. It’s just a reality that we have to deal with as Christians. If we happen to be going through a season like this while we have problems, this can be REALLY hard!
The question is, why are things like this? Why does God do that? Why does it sometimes seem like our cries to God go unheard, or our pursuit of God is worthless? How do we reconcile the reality of these dry seasons, with the promises of God such as, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” God spoke this promise PLENTY of times in the Bible. Hebrews 13:5 quotes Deuteronomy 31:6 to state this exact thing, showing that God’s promise is an Old and New Covenant principle. Still, there are moments when it can seem like God is distant, and maybe ignoring us. Is that possible? Is it real? It sure does feel real, right?
The first part of this challenge that we should understand is that God is immutably faithful. What does that mean? He’s faithful all the time. He never changes in that sense. He WAS faithful, IS faithful, and WILL ALWAYS BE faithful. Since He frequently promised NEVER to leave or forsake His people, He won’t. Based on the integrity of God’s character, it’s IMPOSSIBLE for Him to do so. This is what the Bible teaches. We either believe it’s true, or we don’t. This means that, when it “feels” like God is distant, He isn’t. How do we know? The Bible says so – period. Our feelings have NO BEARING on God’s TRUE work or position. God is who He is, and does what He does, no matter how we feel about it. God is NOT obligated to work in certain ways to appease our feelings. When it seems like God is distant from us, we need to remember the truth of His Word:
Those feelings resemble us lying to ourselves when we compare those feelings, to the true testimony of the holy scriptures. God is near His people at ALL times. We have to understand why it SEEMS LIKE God is silent or distant.
The testimony of Psalm 22:1-2 helps shed light on this subject. Psalm 22 is a long Messianic Psalm that King David wrote, that points directly to the circumstances of Jesus’ crucifixion. The entire Psalm prophetically speaks of events that were later fulfilled at Jesus’ trial, beating, and crucifixion. Knowing this, it’s important to note that, the circumstances of David’s life at the time he penned Psalm 22, are directly tied to Jesus’ fulfillment of these particular passages. The most obvious statement that Jesus fulfilled is in the very beginning of it. Verse 1 says:
“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? [Why are You so] far from helping Me, [and from] the words of My groaning?”
Here, David cried out to God, and his tone illustrates how it seemed like God abandoned him. Even though David didn’t describe the specific details of his problems then, it’s clear that David felt sorrow because of his despair. So, he sought the LORD for relief, but his relief didn’t come immediately. That’s what made David feel as if God was ignoring his cries.
Since God can’t go back on His promise to stay connected with His people, God must have been present with David, even though David felt like God forsook him. The issue is that David wasn’t able to discern the presence of God, probably being overwhelmed by the difficulty of his circumstances, whatever they were at that time. David cried out to God but felt as if God didn’t answer him, either because he wasn’t IMMEDIATELY delivered from his problems, or because his circumstances seemed to worsen. Do you ever feel like God does the OPPOSITE of what you pray for? Believe it or not, the Bible shows that this type of dynamic is common in the lives of God’s people; but it’s important to think about this testimony, with the testimony of Jesus in mind, to understand WHY God does this stuff, and allows us to feel this way.
The testimony of Mark 15:34 shows that Jesus quoted these exact words. When He was on the cross, the Bible says that Jesus quoted Psalm 22:1 in the ninth hour of the day, after spending a couple of hours being tortured, humiliated, and hanging on a tree with nails in His hands and feet. The context of Jesus’ circumstances, helps explain the isolation David felt when he penned Psalm 22. When Jesus quoted Psalm 22:1, His circumstances were different than David’s. David might have been going through a situation, but David was NOT taking on the weight of the world’s sin at the time like Jesus was. David was NOT the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. David was NOT the Creator of the universe, being denied by His own creation. David was NOT the Messiah of Israel, rejected by His people. David was just David. Sure, David indeed went through some exceptional difficulty in his life that’s pretty unique to anything most of us will ever deal with. Still, David’s suffering was NEVER to the degree of suffering that Jesus endured as the Savior of the world, sent to pay the debt of all sin and reconcile the world to Himself.
This principle teaches us that, while there are similarities between David and Jesus because of the prophetic statements of Psalm 22, Jesus’ fulfillment of those prophecies, reveals a MUCH GREATER spiritual dynamic that we need to recognize in David’s initial writings. In other words, just because Jesus quoted David in Psalm 22:1, doesn’t mean that, everyone who feels isolated, can suddenly identify with Jesus. The relationship between Jesus’ suffering and Psalm 22:1-2, shows that God’s method of work, is constant and unchanging, because His purposes are SPIRITUAL in nature, as we see through the testimony of Jesus. Think about the full extent of Jesus’ suffering, AND THE RESULTS OF IT, to harmonize these ideas.
When Jesus went to the cross, He surrendered Himself and subjected Himself to torturous suffering, because there was a purpose to it all. Jesus endured EXCEPTIONAL suffering because Isaiah 53:5 prophesied that the world would be spiritually healed by the stripes that the Messiah endured. It wasn’t just that Jesus had to die, but that He had to die a specific way. If Jesus’ death was going to produce certain results, the method of His death had to be just as specific. That’s why the circumstances of Jesus’ death were so well documented WAY BEFORE Jesus came into the world, in the writings of the prophets, and even in the Law. The full counsel of scripture teaches us that, Jesus was shedding His unique, eternally transcendent, and supremely valuable blood, as God in flesh, to pay the full debt of ALL sin, that had accumulated since the beginning of the world. That’s a pretty major and unique deal. Right?
When God created Adam in the beginning, and warned him about “the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” God explained that disobedience would cause death. The death that God referred to was two-fold. God referred to both, spiritual and physical death. The testimony of Genesis Chapter 3 shows that Adam’s sin IMMEDIATELY resulted in spiritual death, pictured by the separation that Adam had from God. Remember that when God walked in the Garden, He called out for Adam, as if He didn’t know where Adam was. It’s not that God didn’t know where Adam was, but that God was proving that Adam’s disobedience, changed the dynamics in their relationship. This is the true cost of sin – separation from God.
For Jesus to pay the full price of sin, He had to die, but not JUST physically. He also had to die “spiritually” in a way, like Adam. If the penalty of sin is death, referring to separation from God, then Jesus’ physical death HAD TO account for the separation from the Father, that ALL human beings are born into. When Jesus cried out, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which is translated, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" He was not JUST quoting Psalm 22:1, to identify with David. He was quoting Psalm 22:1 to show that, He was addressing the weakness that David showed at the time Psalm 22 was written, AND the SPIRITUAL-ROOT of that weakness.
Jesus didn’t “feel” like the Father was distant from Him. Jesus was quoting Psalm 22:1 to show that He was indeed, paying the debt of all sin, as the Lamb of God. It wasn’t that the Father departed from the Son, but that the Son and the Father were somehow separated for the first time in all eternity. They had been perfectly and fully unified as One until that point in human history. How does that work? I have no idea. I’m not God. No one truly knows. I can’t explain every facet of God’s supernatural power and purpose, and neither can anyone else. I can tell you what the text of the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that the weight of all sin made it so that Jesus had to be separated from the Father for some time, so that His death could be TRULY effective AND FAIR, to pay for the SPIRITUAL effects of sin in the world.
David never had to endure this magnitude of suffering, for two reasons. First, David admitted in Psalm 51:5 that he was conceived in sin. David was born with a dead soul, and already spiritually separated from God, just like the rest of us human beings. David had never been peacefully and fully unified with God like Jesus was. So, the extent of their suffering was FAR different. And this is true of all people since all people are conceived as sinners. How can God separate from something He was never joined to? This is why Jesus will tell non-believers, “Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness, I NEVER knew you.” The text doesn’t say that Jesus knew them for some time and forgot about them. It says that He NEVER knew them. He was NEVER connected to them with a peaceful relationship through saving faith.
The second thing with David is that David’s relationship with God was based on God’s grace. God called David, not the other way around. God appointed David for a special purpose, not the other way around. God led, equipped, and protected David according to His purposes; not the other way around. David’s connection with God was because GOD initiated that relationship.
Now think about this carefully. Since God is the Almighty Creator of all things, AND the initiator of our relationship with Him, He can control and dictate the dynamics of that relationship any way He wants. That might be hard to hear and accept, but it’s true. This was different for Jesus though. Jesus is God-in-flesh. Jesus is the Word of the Father, incarnate. The Word existed WITH God, and AS God, before the foundations of the world. Jesus is the physical manifestation and fulfillment of the Father’s purposes, in the same way that our hands carry out the intentions of our minds.
So then, how does God separate Himself from Himself? Again, this is impossible to understand fully, BUT it’s also documented history. Since the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was planned and proposed by The Father since the beginning, it shows that there is a TREMENDOUS purpose for the times in our life when we feel like we’re isolated from God. Hear me out for a second…
We need to remember the results of Jesus’ death. Since Jesus is God in the flesh, His death was sufficient to pay the debt of all sin – mine, yours, and anyone else who will believe these things as true. Jesus DID reconcile the world to Himself, offering a peaceful relationship with Him, which is REALLY important if you don’t want to go to hell! Even though the Father and Son were separated for some time because of sin, the resurrection of Jesus Christ proves that NOTHING can eternally separate the Father from the Son. They were perfectly and peacefully unified before AND after Jesus’ death. There isn’t ever ANY factor that can change that. Jesus’ resurrection proved that PHYSICAL death is WEAK compared to His power. Well, the same is true for SPIRITUAL death. How do we know? When Jesus rose from the dead, He ascended back to the Father’s right hand in broad daylight, in front of eyewitnesses. It might have seemed like separation from the Father was dark and hopeless. But when we look at the full testimony of Jesus, things were not as they seemed. Jesus indeed had to endure HORRIBLE suffering, but His suffering produced the GREATEST profit known to mankind – forgiveness of sin, spiritual cleansing, peace with God, purpose in life, eternal life!
David was never really separated from God, even though he felt like he was. That’s because God doesn’t initiate relationships with people, so He can dip on them when He feels like it. Look, Jesus WAS ACTUALLY separated from the Father for a period of time, but that separation brought about the GREATEST gift known to mankind. No matter how things seem, God’s works ALWAYS produce good results, in time. If Jesus was ACTUALLY separated from the Father, but produced eternal life anyway, how much goodness will come to those ALWAYS joined to God, no matter how it feels?
Psalm 22 shows that David cried out to God in the daytime, and the nighttime, and still felt as if his cries went unheard; as if God was ignoring him. The full testimony of David shows that this was not true. God was well-entrenched in David’s life, even when it seemed like He wasn’t paying attention sometimes. When we inevitably go through these seasons, where it feels like God is distant or silent, we need to remember the testimony of our Savior and even the testimony of David. We will NEVER be separated from the love of God. Jesus was though, and He was separated on our behalf so that we could be assured of our connection with Him despite our feelings. Even though Jesus was separated from the Father, His love was so great, that He repaired the separation, as if it never took place, even producing GREATER glory, and the GREATEST gift ever known, in the process. This is the work God is ALWAYS doing. So, whether or not we feel or see the benefits of our salvation, we need to trust that God is doing good things behind the scenes. It’s only a matter of time until the glory of God’s works proves His Word true!
And, THAT’S what the Bible teaches about the One, WE know, as God.
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