Over the last four weeks we’ve sought to answer the question of why we worship God. This week, we come to the final answer to that question: The cross of Christ demands our worship. To see this, follow along as I read Psalm 22. This morning, I want you to see two points from our text: The Lord rescues the oppressed, and the Oppressed rejoice in the God of Salvation.
First, I want you to understand that the Lord rescues the oppressed. We Americans have it better than we realize. While something like 90% of the world’s population subsists on a dollar a day, even the poorest among us enjoy at least 200 times more than that. In many countries, tap water is not drinkable, but here we think nothing of drinking water right out of the hose. We know very little about oppression, and I think that is what has made this past year so strange. For the first time in many of our lives, we’ve known what it is to go without. Now, likely, the worst we’ve gone without is toilet paper and theater tickets, but even so, we’ve come to have just a small taste of what it is to give up our everyday comforts. We’ve given up our everyday freedoms. Some of us have bristled at being told what to wear or how far apart to stand because we aren’t used to being told those things. We’ve had a small sample of oppression, and we haven’t liked it one bit. Hopefully, this little taste of oppression has reminded us of one hard truth: we cannot escape the fact that life in this fallen world is full of oppression.
Everyone experiences oppression at some point in life, whether it is from an overbearing parent, an inconsiderate boss, an abusive spouse, or a heavy-handed government. And, some groups know oppression more acutely than others. My grandfather, Ben Kilpatrick, while in Virginia for Navy basic training during World War II, he regularly saw signs in yards and on businesses that said, “No Sailors, No Irish”. Unfortunately for Granddaddy, he was both! African Americans have lived with a history of 300 years of oppression, with 200 years under the horrible institution of slavery, and then another 100 years being denied the most basic of civil rights.
The fact that oppression is such a common experience has led some scholars to devise a way of seeing the world known as Critical Theory. By this philosophy, individuals are placed into groups based on their identity (race, gender, sexual orientation), and then each group is given the designation of “oppressed” or “oppressor”. So, if you are part of a minority group, for example, you would be labeled as a member of an “oppressed” group. But, if you are in a majority group, you are an “oppressor”. What this naïve theory fails to recognize is that every human is simultaneously oppressed and oppressor. I’m sure that each of us in this room could think of ways in which we have experienced oppression by another human being. And, whether we will admit it or not, each one of us have oppressed others in some way at some point in our lives.
You see, oppression is a part of our human nature, and we find it as far back as the first generation after the sin of Adam and Eve when Cain slaughtered his righteous brother in jealousy. We find it in the people before the Flood, who were full of violence. We even find it among the chosen people of Israel. Abraham and Sarah used a slave girl named Hagar for their own ends and then drove her into the desert when they were done with her. The brothers of Joseph sold him into slavery out of jealousy for their father’s love. Even the great king, David (the author of this Psalm), took another man’s wife and then had him killed to cover his own sin.
There is no one who can call for God’s vindication against their oppressors without also having to fear that God will judge them in the process. There is no one who can earnestly pray Psalm 22 and say without any hint of hypocrisy, “On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.” There is no one, except for Jesus. Jesus alone fits the description given in verse 9, “you took me from the womb and made me trust you at my mother’s breast”, because Jesus was born of a virgin, set apart from his conception to wholeheartedly serve the Lord. And, it is Jesus who, in Matt. 27:46, as he is hanging on the cross, prays the very first line of this Psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” Donald Whitney points out that one of the things we miss in this cry of Jesus from the cross is that it was a common practice in the weekly worship of the Jews, for the leader to read the first line of a Psalm, and then the congregation would recite the rest of the psalm together. So, when Jesus cries out the first line of Psalm 22, it would have been natural for the Jews around him to think through that Psalm as they watched him die. And, as they did that, they would have seen, in real time, the fulfillment of this Psalm as the one true Son of God took on the oppression of the world and the wrath of God. I want you to consider three types of oppression that Jesus took in his crucifixion that are prophesied in this Psalm.
First, Jesus took on the oppression of the rejection of God. In verses 1 and 2, the Psalmist calls out because God has forsaken him. When we talk about the crucifixion of Jesus, we tend to emphasize only his physical torture. But, the spiritual separation that Christ endured was far greater. Remember, Jesus is the eternal Son of God. He has only known the Father’s love and acceptance from all of eternity. But now, in this terrible act of judgment, the Father does not look on his Son with love or approval, but with all of the hatred that the sins of humanity deserved.
Second, in verses 7 and 8, we see that Jesus took on the oppression of the reviling of men. As Jesus hung on the cross, the religious leaders mocked him with almost the very words of Psalm 22. They called out, “he saved others, why can’t he save himself?” If you have ever been harassed or bullied or run down, you have a taste of what this would be like, but Jesus took all of this mockery with 10,000 angels standing at the ready. Jesus had all the power and authority of heaven, and yet he bore the oppression of the reviling of weak men.
Finally, in verses 12-18, we see that Jesus took the oppression of relentless abuse. As the bystanders watched the torture of Jesus on the cross, they would have recognized the fulfillment of these verses. Just as verses 14 and 15 prophesied, as Jesus hung naked on the cross, people would have seen his bones exposed from the lashings of the cat-of-nine-tails. They would have heard him calling for water as his tongue stuck to his jaws. They would have watched as the soldiers gambled over his clothes.
So, if Jesus was truly the Son of God with a band of 10,000 angels at the ready, why would he endure the wrath of God and man? For one, Jesus bore the wrath of God that he might give us his righteousness. 2 Cor. 5:21 says that “He made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” He also bore the mockery and abuse of men that he might cover our shame. Heb. 12:2 says that Jesus “endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
But the main reason that Jesus endured the oppression of the cross is so that he might glorify his Father by redeeming those afflicted by sin. This brings me to my second point: The oppressed rejoice in the God of Salvation. Starting in verse 19, the second half of Psalm 22 takes a turn from oppression to rejoicing, and it all hinges on what the Lord does in verses 19-21. In those verses we find that the Lord comes quickly to the aid of the one who is oppressed, delivering his soul and rescuing his body. As a result of this rescue, the Psalmist says, in verse 22, that he will “tell of your name to my brothers and praise you in the midst of the congregation.” It is hard to imagine such a great and immediate shift in the fortunes of this oppressed man. In one breath, his bones are out of joint and he is being bled out, and in the next, he is praising God in the midst of the congregation. You can imagine that it was just as hard for the disciples of Jesus to believe, when three days later, Jesus stood before them in a glorified body and charged them to be his witnesses. Jesus had gone from a bloody, beaten, rejected mess, to the resurrected and glorified Son of God because his Father is the God who is near to the oppressed.
And the fact that God rescues the oppressed should motivate us to praise him. Notice that the Psalmist calls us to that very thing. In verse 23 he calls on those who fear the Lord to praise him and notice the reason for that praise in verse 24: “For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted.” He goes on to say in verse 27 that the whole world will eventually praise the Lord who delivers them from their affliction. And, the Psalmist ends in verse 31 by saying that even those yet unborn will praise him for his deliverance.
Friend, you may think that the physical or emotional oppression that you deal with is the greatest problem you face, but your affliction goes far deeper than that. The greatest oppression in your life is that of your sin. Sin destroys relationships, it taints every good thing, and it will ultimately end in death and the judgment of Hell. But Christ has taken on the oppression of sin and satisfied the wrath of God for you. Won’t you trust in Christ today?
Brothers and sisters, the redemption that we have in Christ is the greatest motivation we have for worship. How can we who have been redeemed from the oppression of sin and know that our eternity is secure not help but praise the God who has delivered us? How can we live as though worship were just one option among many in our weekly list of things to do? If we truly understand what Christ has done for us, we can’t! Instead, we will find our truest delight in the God who has delivered us through the cross of Christ.
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