March 26, 2003 Psalm 22:9-11, 19-21
Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you even at my mother’s breast. 10 From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God. 11 Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help. 19 But you, O LORD, be not far off; O my Strength, come quickly to help me. 20 Deliver my life from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. 21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen.
It was a Sunday morning - and the church had once again been packed to the brim. With the modern music ministry and play acting, the pastor had attracted people from all around to come and watch the drama. There were over 2,000 members to this congregation, and the church seemed to be going places. All was going well, until one Sunday morning that the pastor would never forget. Just before the sermon, two men came barging into church in sky masks with semi-automatic machine guns by their sides. With a loud voice they proclaimed, “alright, whoever wants to take a bullet for Jesus stay seated, the rest of you can leave.” Hundreds and hundreds of people fled for the doors, as fast as they could. At the end of the melee, there were only about 10 people who remained seated in their pews. At this, the two gunmen took off their masks. To the pastor’s surprise, they were the elders of his church. They turned to the pastor and said, “we got rid of the hypocrites, now you can begin your sermon.”
What does this story prove? It is easy to cheer from the sidelines. It’s easy to come to worship and call yourself a follower of the Lord when there is nothing to lose. But when it comes time to put your life on the line - that’s what separates the men from the boys.
Some of the greatest accounts in the Bible are of people who trusted in the Lord for help and stuck with Him through difficult times. You may think of David’s trust in God when he fought Goliath, or Daniel’s trust in God as he faced the Lion’s Den, or the Wise Men in the Fiery Furnace. These are all great examples of what it means to really trust in the Lord. Today we’ll see that Jesus had an even greater trust in God than any of these did. This will become evident as we look at Psalm 22. Today we’ll see how -
Jesus Would Have A Perfect Trust
I. Based on His relationship with God the Father
David starts out, you made me trust in you. That’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it? “You made me trust in you.” How can you MAKE someone trust in you? Did God the Father make Jesus trust in Him by twisting His arm behind His back? Did He do it by yelling in His face, “TRUST ME!” Of course not. So what did Jesus mean by this?
I can remember a time when I was quite young that I went fishing with my father. For some reason, I had just read a fishing book on how to put muskellunge on a stringer. It just so happened that my father had caught a good sized musky that day. He was accustomed to stringing a fish through the gill. But I had recalled reading that a musky needs to be strung through the mouth by poking a hole through it’s bottom mouth. I told him what I had read, but he didn’t think that was necessary. Shortly thereafter, while the fish was still in the boat, it jumped up and undid itself from the stringer. After that, he had the musky strung through the mouth. Luckily, we didn’t lose that fish that day.
Why didn’t my father trust me in that instance? Probably because he had gone fishing much more than me and knew a lot more than me - and had never heard of doing such a thing. He had probably put plenty of fish on the stringer the old way, and it had worked fine. I could have told him to trust me, but my experience didn’t have the reputation to build that trust. I’ve experienced that a lot in life - no matter how much I tell people to “trust me” - it doesn’t do any good. It has to come with experience. If you don’t have it, they won’t give you their trust. The point I’m making is that trust needs to be built over time. It doesn’t come overnight.
What’s neat to me is walking into a hospital room of an elderly person - someone who’s been through plenty of surgeries already. I might walk in a little bit tentative, concerned over what will happen in the upcoming surgery. I know that I am supposed to be there to help give them confidence in the Lord, but it is hard for me to convey that confidence at times, since I haven’t been through surgery before. What’s neat is that the elderly person whom I was supposed to strengthen, sometimes ends up strengthening me. After talking with an experienced veteran Christian - you can sense the confidence that they have in the Lord. God has used every stitch, every bill, and every drought to slowly but surely build their confidence in the Lord. And so they convey their confidence to me - confidence that the Lord will guide them through and take care of them if it is His will. I end up being edified and strengthened from the person in the bed, instead of vice versa.
How did God the Father “make” Jesus trust in Him? It was Jesus’ vast experiences with God the Father that made Jesus trust in Him, because of the way He had treated Jesus all through His lifetime. After Jesus had been protected time and time again from danger, He knew that God could be trusted. He had no other choice - God had built a reputation with Jesus as being very trustworthy.
II. Throughout His Whole Life
Jesus points to his past to show how God had built His reputation throughout Jesus’ lifetime. First of all Jesus says, you brought me out of the womb. Childbirth was a lot more precarious and dangerous back then than it is now. They didn’t have monitors, sterile cloths, drugs, caesarians or nice hospital beds. And so many women and children died at birth. Many children didn’t even make it out of the womb.
Jesus then proceeded to go from the womb to his mother’s breast. Right now we are in the midst of experiencing this age in our own household, and what a precarious age the first few months of life are! Infants are so helpless - just one slip of the hands, one wrong food, or one wrong move - and the child could die. The worst part is when you hear stories of children dying in their sleep from Sudden Infant’s Death Syndrome and many other diseases! Think of how much more dangerous life was back then - with no immunizations - with no aspirin pills or xray machines or modern God given gadgets.
Think about how much easier it is for us to trust in God. We can say I trust in God for heart surgery, knowing that many make it through safely nowadays. We can trust in God through child birth with monitors and caesareans on our side. We can trust in God to give us our daily bread, with a freezer full of food in our basement. In other words, it’s easy to say “I trust in God” when facing a lion with a loaded machine gun in my hands. But when God takes away the ammo, it’s not so easy. When the freezer is empty, and our ability is taken away from us, that’s when the real test comes. Do we still have the confidence in these instances? Or is our confidence only based on our abilities in the first place? What’s my point? Jesus trusted in God even when He didn’t use all of His power. Even in the womb and at his mother’s breast he trusted that God would protect Him from harm.
And the Father didn’t let Jesus down. God allowed Jesus to come out of the womb - in a cattle stall of all places - talk about a sterile nightmare - and God brought Jesus and Mary through safely. God protected Jesus from this most dangerous procedure, proving Himself to be trustworthy. God used Mary to protect Jesus and keep Him well fed. When Herod threatened Jesus’ life, once again the Father pulled through and had Joseph move the family to Egypt and Nazareth. Throughout Jesus’ life, God had proved Himself to be trustworthy. So just from Jesus’ life, He had good reason to trust in the Lord.
In the same way, each and every one of us can look back at our lives, and see how God has built a reputation as being trustworthy. We don’t have to worry when a big snow storm is coming. All we have to do, is turn our furnaces up. Every day we live in comfort in our homes. We have a great variety of food at our fingertips every day - shrimp, fish, steak, bread, corn, beans, potatoes - all of it. God has never left us begging bread. He’s never left us without a roof over our heads. He has built a reputation as being trustworthy.
III. When His Life was At an End
Throughout Jesus’ life - God had answered His prayers for strength. But during the end of His life, Jesus would face the greatest temptations to doubt. Listen to what Jesus had to face at the end of His life on the cross. But you, O LORD, be not far off; O my Strength, come quickly to help me. 20 Deliver my life from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. 21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen. David described in vivid terms what Jesus would have to face near the end of His life - sword, dogs, lions, and wild oxen.
Jesus had to face the “sword”. You may remember the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. After they had been banished from the garden, God placed an angel at the entrance so they couldn’t come back in and eat from the tree of life. Genesis 3:24 says, After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. So when Jesus knew that He would have to face the sword - He seemed to be referring to the fiery sword of God’s wrath. As you may recall this was the thing that troubled Jesus the most. As He prayed in the Garden, His soul was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death - praying so earnestly that He sweat drops of blood. God’s angry judgment of hell was about to flash down on Jesus.
Jesus also had to face the dogs and the lions and the wild oxen. Each one of these pictures are terrifying pictures. Dogs used to be used to tear Christians to pieces after they had been wrapped in animal skins. Christians were also thrown into the lions and Daniel was thrown in the Lion’s Den. Wild oxen are thought of to be the most fierce animals in Africa. When one gets injured, it will circle back around and wait in ambush of it’s pursuers. These terms seem to be referring to Satan, that old enemy who bruised the heel of the seed of the woman, the prince of this world, with whom he was to engage in close combat. The devil had tried to devour Jesus in the desert, but it didn’t work. And so, like an injured wild oxen, Satan would circle back and wait to ambush Jesus - trying to overcome Jesus while He was weak. Vince Lombardi once said, “fatigue makes cowards of us all.” When we are weak, then we cannot fight like we should. Job was strong in his faith, even when he had lost all of his possessions and reputation. But the devil started to chip away at Job by wearing him down physically - chipping away at his faith - trying to get him to “curse God and die.” The devil knew this had worked in the past. So Jesus knew that Satan would use Jesus’ weakness on the cross to try and get Jesus to doubt - just for a split second, God’s love for Him.
This is where we so often fail. When our health doesn’t hold up or our relationships fail, we begin to question God’s love for us. It might not be for long, but for a split second, we question that God has our best interest in mind. And so even though we try to trust in God, we often break the First Commandment which tells us, “we should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.”
Jesus asked if the cup could be taken away from Him - if He could somehow accomplish our salvation in some other way. But God answered Him, “you must go to the cross.” So Jesus willingly went through hell on the cross - even though He didn’t deserve it. After going through something so traumatic, anybody else would have assumed that God had deserted him, that God didn’t love her. But this Psalm shows us what Jesus did. Instead of despairing of God’s love, what would Jesus do? But you, O LORD, be not far off; O my Strength, come quickly to help me. Jesus, instead of despairing of God’s love turned to Him all the more. After Jesus had been deserted by the Father, what did He say? Luke 23:46 Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last. Jesus entrusted his soul into His Father’s hands, trusting that His Father would accept Him back home to heaven. Even though God had not delivered Jesus from death, God answered His prayer. He delivered Jesus from corruption, raising Him from the dead on the third day.
Now why is this prediction of the Promised One in Psalm 22 so important to us? Is this just an example for us, in how we are to trust God? No! Think about it. What if Jesus had just doubted God’s love for a split second? Some may say, “so what? What’s the big deal?” The big deal was that Jesus was acting as our substitute - not just by dying for us, but also by obeying God’s law for us. (Galatians 4:4-5) If Jesus had fallen into the devil’s trap, then we could never stand before God as holy. We would be 99% perfect, but not completely holy. Hebrews 12:14 says, without holiness no one will see the Lord. So if Jesus - in His weakness - had not trusted in God - had despaired of God’s love even for one second on the cross, our precious souls would never get to heaven. But Jesus did trust in God. And since Jesus continued to rely on the Father for help, even after He had been deserted, we can once again breathe easy. Jesus obeyed the First Commandment in our place with a perfect trust, and therefore we can stand before God as holy through faith in Jesus. God has credited us with Jesus’ perfection. So thank God for this third prediction of the Promised One. Once again it reassures us that Jesus is our Savior and we are on our way to heaven. Amen.
