Good Friday: The Forsaken King

[0:00] Well, if you've joined our live stream since we first started, let me just extend to you a warm welcome again to our Good Friday service.

[0:12] And to those of you who might not be familiar with who I am, my name is Pastor Brian. So let me just make sure that I give you a warm welcome before we continue in our service. Right now, we are going to continue to pray.

[0:25] And I'm going to pray a prayer based on Colossians 1. So would you join me again in prayer? Our Father, we thank you for your Son this Good Friday.

[0:43] We thank you that he is the perfect image of the invisible God who reigns supremely over all creation. Thank you that in him all things were created.

[0:55] Whether in heaven, on earth, visible and invisible, thrones or powers or authorities, that it is all for him.

[1:06] And the whole world is held together by him. In this anxious time, O Lord, please make it clearer than ever that Jesus is to be preeminent, that he is in charge, that he is in control.

[1:23] May he be exalted as the one who preserves and has mercy on this world. And we pray, O Lord, that many will come to know Jesus as the one through whom you want to reconcile to yourself all things.

[1:42] Thank you that Jesus, through his blood shed on the cross, brought us who were your enemies and built bridges of peace with you, reconciling us to you.

[1:55] We do pray now, O Lord, that as those reconciled to you, we will truly live as those who are holy, those who will walk blamelessly, those that live freely, knowing that the devil can no longer bring any credible accusation against us, because the Lord Jesus has justified us.

[2:20] And so during this time, Lord, will you establish us and keep us firm in the faith, never ever moving from the hope held out in the true gospel.

[2:33] And we pray that this gospel will be proclaimed, both today and every day, so that every creature under heaven will hear the good news that Jesus is Savior and Lord and trust in you.

[2:50] We want as many as possible to know and enjoy the fruits of resurrection life. And so this we bring now to you in prayer. Hear and answer our plea today.

[3:04] For the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, over the past couple of weeks, we've been in the book of Psalms.

[3:18] And even today, in this Good Friday, we're actually going back to the Old Testament to help us to see Jesus clearer this morning. And we're going to turn to the book of Psalms again, and this time to chapter 22.

[3:33] And that's where our sermon will be based on this morning. So can I encourage you now to turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm chapter 22. And I'm going to read it.

[3:52] For the director of music, to the tune of the dough of the morning, a Psalm of David. My God!

[4:03] My God! Why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me? So far from my cries of anguish? My God!

[4:14] I cry out by day, but you do not answer. By night, but I find no rest. Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One.

[4:26] You are the one Israel praises. In you, our ancestors put their trust. They trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried out and were saved.

[4:37] In you they trusted and were not put to shame. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people.

[4:50] All who see me mock me. They hurl in souts, shaking their heads. He trusts in the Lord, they say. Let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.

[5:05] Yet you brought me out of the womb. You made me trust in you, even at my mother's breast. From birth, I was cast on you.

[5:16] From my mother's womb, you have been my God. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near, and there is no one to help. Many boos surround me.

[5:30] Strong boos of Bashan encircle me. Rarring lions that tear their prey open their mouths wide against me. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.

[5:45] My heart has turned to wax, it has melted within me. My mouth is dried up like a porch shirt, and my mouth sticks to the roof of my mouth.

[5:57] You lay me in the dust of death. Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircle me. They pierce my hands and my feet.

[6:09] All my bones are on display. People stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.

[6:21] But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength. Come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life, from the power of the dogs.

[6:33] Rescue me from the mouth of the lions. Save me from the horns of the wild oxen. I will declare your name to my people.

[6:45] In the assembly, I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him. All you descendants of Jacob, honour him. Revere him, all you descendants of Israel.

[6:57] For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one. He has not hidden his face from him, but let's listen to his cry for help.

[7:09] From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly. Before those who fear you, I will fulfil my vows. The poor will eat and be satisfied.

[7:21] Those who seek the Lord will praise him. May your hearts live forever. All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord. And all the families of the nations will bow down before him.

[7:35] For dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations. All the rich of the earth will feast and worship. All who go down to the dust will kneel before him.

[7:48] All who, those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve him. Future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn, he has done it.

[8:06] This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray as we come to his word. Father, I pray now that this Good Friday your word indeed will speak powerfully to us so that, Lord, it will accomplish and achieve what you have sent it out for it to do.

[8:29] So work in our hearts by your spirit this morning. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Today is Good Friday. But it's hard to find what is particularly good about this Good Friday, is it?

[8:48] As of yesterday, the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide are approaching 1.6 million people with at least 88,000 deaths. Some of us even know personally someone who has died from the coronavirus.

[9:03] The world has already been pushed into an economic recession. In the United States, in the space of one week, at least 3.3 million people filed for welfare claims as a result of losing their jobs.

[9:18] The previous record was 695,000 people. On Malaysia Guinea, I read about a 74-year-old former hawker store vendor who lives in one small room with no job after the restaurant she worked in closed down, with only instant noodles to eat and no ability to call anyone for help.

[9:42] And I felt helpless. And no one really knows what sort of world is going to emerge after the initial pandemic has passed, but clearly our social relations will be reshaped amongst other things.

[9:57] And a world where touch now communicates danger, not warmth, a world where physical embodied presence is a bad thing, not a good thing.

[10:08] Well, that surely can't be according to God's design, can it? Where is God anyway? Just last week, a friend mentioned the town of Samchilk in South Korea.

[10:20] They are famous for their gorgeous yellow bright canola flowers, which attracts a large number of tourists every year. at the beginning of this month, they deliberately Budo's all the flowers so that the tourists wouldn't come.

[10:40] That's what our world has come to. Beauty being Budo's, guests formerly welcome, now being asked not to come.

[10:52] And so this Good Friday, we feel particularly abandoned, forsaken. cast off. Well, we are perhaps a little closer to the original Good Friday than we realise.

[11:08] This morning, we are looking at one of the more famous psalms in the Bible. It's sometimes been called the Psalm of the Cross. For at that moment when Jesus cried out his last words on the cross, this psalm is the psalm that pours out from his lips to describe to us what is actually happening to him.

[11:29] He cries out the very first line of this psalm, Eloi, Eloi, laba sabachthani, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And if you are familiar with the stories of Jesus being led to the cross to be crucified, you would no doubt have heard familiar details in this psalm.

[11:51] The pierced hand and feet, the clothes being divided up, the insults and mockery, all mentioned in Psalm 22, and all of which happened to Jesus.

[12:05] And even if you are not familiar, I trust you would have heard the echoes in all the readings earlier. Indeed, nine times alone, this psalm, Psalm 22, is quoted or alluded to in the accounts of Jesus' suffering and death, more than any other psalm.

[12:27] And so it's no surprise that so many Christians have echoed what Eusebius of Caesarea, the Christian historian who lived in the 3rd century, concluded. This psalm refers to Christ and no one else, for its contents harmonise with none other but him.

[12:46] And so to get into the meaning of Good Friday, we need this psalm in our heads. to get Good Friday into our hearts, we need this psalm on our hearts. And to understand why Good Friday is good, we need to understand why this psalm is good news.

[13:05] Because how can this psalm be good when it starts off the way it does? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's a cry from the heart that resonates chillingly with us right now, doesn't it?

[13:18] that feeling of being forsaken is one of the most painful experiences of human life. It's the pain a child feels when he discovers that his father has walked out on his family.

[13:33] It's the pain a husband feels when the wife sits down at the dinner table, looks at him, and says, I've met somebody else. It's the pain a wife feels as she walks into the hospital with a bruised eye, her wedding ring still attached to her broken fingers, and the brokenness is not the result of an accident.

[13:57] It's the pain the refugee feels as he sits in a makeshift quarantine centre, stateless, jobless, homeless, friendless.

[14:10] It's the pain the world feels as it is ravaged by an invisible coronavirus. virus. And it's the pain King David feels as he enters into almost unimaginable depths of suffering.

[14:26] Because to feel the full impact of this psalm, we must remember that yes, this psalm is ultimately about Jesus, it's going to point to Jesus, but it is first of all a psalm of David.

[14:40] He wrote it, he experienced it. And so with apologies to Eusebius, he isn't quite right to say that this psalm refers to Jesus and no one else.

[14:52] It will become the psalm of the cross. It is the psalm of the anointed one, the king, but in the first instance, King David, and then finally, King Jesus.

[15:06] And it is also the experience of a true believer. And when we bring all these three dimensions together, well, this psalm will speak to us in an especially powerful way this Good Friday.

[15:21] Now, this psalm can be divided into two sections, the forsaken verses 1 to 21, and then the triumph, that's verses 22 to 31.

[15:33] And the first section is really where I'll concentrate on for today, the forsaken. Although we will briefly touch on the second section to shape our response and offer a preview for Easter Sunday.

[15:47] And so let's consider the first section of this psalm, the forsaken. For that's exactly how David feels, forsaken. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

[16:02] It's hard to know which episode in King David's life is in view here. Now, there were times in David's life when he was hunted. His predecessor, Saul, had determined that he was a threat and wanted him out of the way.

[16:18] There were times when he was hemmed in and almost exterminated like an insect about to be squashed. Just look at 1 Samuel 23, for example, if you have time later on.

[16:32] But it's hard to find an exact episode that describes what's happening here. Perhaps we're not told. Perhaps it's a combination of several episodes.

[16:43] But the precise historical event is not the interest of this psalm. It is the experience, the pain, the anguish of forsakenness that he wants to convey.

[16:57] And so, to what extent does King David suffer? First of all, there's the silence, verses 1 and 2. Why are you so far from saving me?

[17:12] So far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you did not answer. By night, but I find no rest. You know, it's a sense, isn't it, when you've been sending your good friend text messages, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, your friend stops replying?

[17:31] It's when you're visiting, and you're sure that he's in, and you're banging on his knock door again and again, but there's not even a whisper. The Turkish theologian Zia Meral was reflecting on persecuted Christians, and he said this, for persecuted Christians, suffering turns into affliction when they internalize the horrible feeling that they are alone.

[17:59] When the persecuted Christian begins to believe that most of the global church does not care, and will not be there to share his pain, loneliness moves from the physical dimension to an inner anguish.

[18:16] So how much more anguish then, if the Christian begins to believe that not only does the rest of the church not care, but God himself, especially when the psalmist is meant to be the king, anointed by God himself?

[18:33] In the words of the Christian singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson, it's enough to drive a man crazy, it will break a man's faith. It's enough to make him wonder if he's ever been sane, when he's bleating for comfort from Thai staff and Thai rod, and the heavens only answer is the silence of God.

[19:00] Perhaps the Malaysian columnist Joakim Ng was right when he wrote in the sun a couple of weeks ago suggesting that God might exist, but he's the kind of God who doesn't intervene in nature, and so we're basically left on our own.

[19:15] Certainly David is perplexed as to why God doesn't intervene, and we might be perplexed as to why God doesn't seem to be intervening at this time.

[19:26] But there's more. Second of all, there's the scorn, verses 6-8. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people.

[19:42] All who see me, mock me. They hold insults, shaking their heads. He trusts in the Lord, they say. Let the Lord rescue him, let him deliver him, since he delights in him.

[19:54] Now, it's bad enough when you're suffering inner anguish, isn't it? But it gets much worse when it goes public, when there's not just affliction, but humiliation.

[20:07] Just a few Psalms ago, David was glorying in God's rescue, saying things like, he rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes who were too strong for me, in 18 verse 17.

[20:19] 18, and then he brought me out into a spacious place. He rescued me because he delighted in me, 18 verse 19. But now, the people turned his words back against him, saying, well, okay then, you trust in the Lord, let him rescue you.

[20:37] You delight in him, let him deliver you. All said with a heavy dose of sarcasm, of course. You know, it's that same feeling you get when you read a news article on Facebook about how the latest cluster is from such and such a church, and the Facebook commenter sarcastically writes, oh, church, ha ha ha ha, you know, don't worry, their God will take care of them.

[21:02] And you can just feel the sting of what the commenter says. He's mocking Christians. Again, what more here, a king who is an even more visible representative of God.

[21:18] And yet he is dying by the sting of a thousand scornful remarks. But then the psalmist steps up a gear. Third of all, that's what I'll call the suffocation.

[21:33] David's anguish feels more and more prolonged and heightened as this time he speaks in a flood of words in verses 12 to 18. He talks about all sorts of animals, boos in verse 12, lions in verse 13, dogs in verse 16, wild oxen in verse 21.

[21:54] And these animals are surrounding him and circling him ready to tear him apart. But it soon becomes clear he's not talking about a national geographic program, but his enemies, people who are so beastly, so empty of humanity that he basically has to describe them as animals.

[22:18] They are the bulls of Bashan, known for their large size, ready to move in and nail him with their large horns. They are the lions that rip open their prey, and he is the prey.

[22:33] They are the dogs who are wanting to chill on his arms and on his legs and spit out the bones. And so there is great fear. Verse 14, my heart has turned to wax.

[22:47] It has melted within me. It's as if he is being suffocated. Verse 15, my mouth is dried up like a pot shirt.

[22:58] My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You lay me in the dust of death. And the dust of death might not even be just a metaphor. Look at verse 17, all my bones are on display.

[23:11] People stare and gloat over me. And so the psalm is painting a picture of a forsaken king. And to really understand how forsaken David feels, we need to understand that the nature of his suffering isn't just physical, although it is physical.

[23:30] It's not just psychological, although it is psychological. But what really lies at the heart of his torment is spiritual. It's theological. Come back again with me to verses 1 and 2.

[23:43] And I want you to notice the big thing that the psalmist says about God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?

[24:00] My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer. By night, God is far away.

[24:12] God is far away. And you know, that's the mystery that he's grappling with. Many of us Christians are familiar, aren't we, with the verse where God says, I will never leave you, nor forsake you.

[24:25] Perhaps we can even quote the verse referenced in Hebrews 13. But it's not actually from the New Testament. The writer of Hebrews was quoting the Old Testament at that point in Deuteronomy 31 verse 6.

[24:37] And so David knows that verse full well. I will never leave you, nor forsake you. But he's now facing a theological crisis because he knows that verse.

[24:49] But right now God seems far away. Indeed, I said that the first section of this psalm stretches from verses 1 to 21. And notice that at the beginning, the midway point and the end of this section, that's what David repeats about God.

[25:07] Verse 1, why are you so far from saving me? Verse 11, do not be far from me. Verse 19 again, do not be far from me.

[25:19] And it's especially bad that God is far away because verse 11 again, trouble is near and there is no one to help. And so he's appealing to God to come near.

[25:34] But there's no sign of the Almighty. But how can it be? He's asking. Everything I've been taught, everything I've ever known tells me the opposite. Look at verses 3 to 5.

[25:46] Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One. You are the one Israel praises. In you our ancestors put their trust, they trusted and you delivered them.

[25:57] To you they cried out and were saved, in you they trusted and were not put to shame. I know my family history, David cries. I know very well why there are so many songs of praises about God and sung to God because over and over again the pattern has been as God's people trust him, God delivers them.

[26:18] As God's people cry out to him, in Egypt, in the wilderness, they were not put to shame. But why is it I trust David cries and am not delivered?

[26:30] Why is it I trust David cries and I am shamed? If God has acted in this way in the past, then surely it must be true in the present. Isn't God unchanging?

[26:42] After all, David doesn't just know his family history but he knows his biological history. You know, God's closeness to him isn't just a story passed down from his dad and granddad, but it is true in his own experience.

[26:55] Look at verses 9 and 10. Yet you brought me out of the womb. You made me trust in you. Even at my mother's breast, from birth I was cast on you.

[27:06] From my mother's womb, you have been my God. And so God has always taken care of him, even from childbirth when rates of infant mortality were still high.

[27:19] And so now he's struggling to understand. Why is it now that he's lonely? Why is it now that he's abandoned? Why is it by the looks of it he's forsaken? And so it climaxes into a desperate plea.

[27:32] Verses 19. And so the first thing I want us to notice before we see how this psalm points forward to Jesus is to see that this is the psalm of a true believer who feels abandoned by God.

[28:05] This is the psalm of a true believer who believes his theology is sound but whose experience doesn't match up. This is the psalm for a true believer struggling to make sense in a coronavirus age.

[28:19] And this is the psalm that Jesus himself speaks as he becomes fully man even as he is fully God to identify with us.

[28:31] He knows pain. He knows your pain. You see the psalm of the cross is a psalm for us. The psalm of a true believer even as it becomes the psalm for the saviour.

[28:48] It is a psalm we can use even as New Testament believers to express our sorrow and our bewilderment at what is happening when God seems silent, when we face scorn, when the pressure feels like suffocation.

[29:05] It is a psalm in the first instance whose words we can echo right now. And perhaps we should echo this Good Friday as we think about the current state of our world.

[29:19] So that could be where we begin. crying out in lament. But that's not where we end. And that's certainly not where the Bible ends.

[29:32] For make no mistake, it is right to call this psalm the psalm of the cross. In verses 12 to 18 in particular, these words sound so extreme, so exaggerated, that it seems to point to an experience that David himself did not undergo.

[29:51] The Old Testament scholar Dale Ralph Davis puts it this way, David spoke out of his suffering and yet beyond his suffering and into the suffering of another.

[30:06] For as I said at the beginning, this psalm profoundly shapes Jesus' journey to the cross. For let's watch Jesus now as he makes his way there.

[30:19] He pauses us in the garden of Gethsemane and Mark tells us he begins to be deeply distressed and troubled. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death he tells his disciples.

[30:37] But why? What could have caused in him such deep emotions? Why could he be starting to take on the experience of Psalm 22?

[30:50] You see he's about to do something that is the biggest mystery of all. The one who is fully God fully man is going to die. He's going to face the prospect of abandonment.

[31:04] He's going to go through the experience of being forsaken. Just pause and think about that. The Son of God is going to experience the absence of the Father.

[31:16] He will experience all David experiences and beyond it. David says God from birth I knew you. Well Jesus can say God from eternity I knew you.

[31:31] And now I'm going to feel the pain like I've never known before. And so no wonder he prays Abba Father remove this cup from me.

[31:44] He knows full well the cause. It's painful for us to hear the silence of heaven. But it's even more painful to hear the silence of heaven if you yourself came from heaven.

[31:59] And yet he goes on to pray yet not what I will but what you will. You know David prayed deliver me from the sword rescue me from the mouth of the lions.

[32:11] But Jesus is effectively praying send me to the lions and to the wild oxen. I'm ready to go through this. You see love moved Jesus to go to the cross.

[32:28] Love moved him to be hung naked and be mocked and insulted as his enemies shout love love him as his mouth was dried up like a pot shirt and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth causing him to thirst love move him as his bones go on display and people stare and gloat over him Luke 23 verse 35 love moved him as people casually divided his clothes and cast lots for his garments Mark 15 verse 24 love moved Jesus to suffer the horror of the cross in fulfillment of Psalm 22 but what sort of love is this was it merely to show that just as a human like David lamented so Jesus as

[33:29] God also laments well yes that's part of it but certainly not in food for when Jesus hung on the cross it wasn't merely to show solidarity with us if Jesus hung on the cross merely as a show of divine sympathy it's not enough for what ultimate comfort is it to know that Jesus is as overwhelmed as we are in the coronavirus age that will never provide lasting comfort but Jesus knew what he was doing when David laments he does so as a sinner he does so as one who knows he needs God's mercy I'll just read another one of his more famous psalms psalm 32 and that's crystal clear but when Jesus hung on the cross he did so as one who always trusted God from the very beginning to the very end he hung as one who always clung to the words and promises of

[34:35] God he hung as one who should never have been on the cross in the first place for the Bible affirms he alone never turned away from God and so he alone should never have to die love is the answer he hung on the cross not simply as someone feeling abandoned by God he hung on the cross as someone doing the work of reconciliation he hung there because he knew we were already far from God he hung there because he knew we were already dead in our sins even before COVID-19 struck he knew our true condition from the very beginning and he hung there to take that sin upon himself you see let me just take a couple of minutes to explain the reality of sin and death in our world because it's often misunderstood and let me draw a little from the argument of the philosopher

[35:40] Blaise Pascal at this point you know Pascal once said people's unhappiness stems from their inability to stay quietly in their own room as many of us are having to do during this MCO but he goes on to say the reason why people hate that is because if we have to sit quietly duduk with no distraction no entertainment no Netflix no anything then we eventually have to think about death and we hate thinking about death even though it's real and so we seek distraction at all costs and even now when COVID-19 has forced us to think more about death than we're accustomed to we try to think in terms of deliverance from death not death itself that's why we are so busy applauding and lifting up all the doctors and scientists right now as our saviors where previously we didn't do so because we just want death to go away so that we can go back to not thinking about it and we don't want to face the reality of death

[36:48] I think partly because to say death is real is to admit sin is real the punishment for sin is death and if all face death all are sinners now that's a word that many in our culture don't like because it sounds like the church is being judgmental when it pronounces that oh you're a sinner but we're not you know do better but no no no that's not what the bible says the bible says all have sinned people in church people outside church and when the bible says we have sinned all it really means is this we have run away from god we feel forsaken by god but in reality we have actually chosen to keep him at arm's length we say to him oh god it's nice to have you around but actually what i want to give me ultimate meaning is not you but status or power or control or comfort or health or sex or something else anything but you and god says okay but if you choose not to let me be your ultimate foundation your ultimate meaning then you are choosing to let death reign over your life because sin is reigning in your life because you're cutting off the source of life that's me and we've seen this vividly exposed during this covid-19 crisis you know some governments in this world proudly thought oh wuhan couldn't handle the virus but if it comes to us we can we human beings are indestructible we can send people to the moon so it's no problem to control this but we discovered that we're not in control our pride was our downfall our sin led to death and the reverse is also true the tangible presence of death simply exposed even more of our underlying sin people panicked began fighting over toilet paper stole sanitizers from hospitals abused each other online well those are all symptoms of the ultimate pandemic that has inflicted us from

[39:11] Adam onwards sin and every single person suffers from this problem whether we are pastors or doctors or the prime minister and Jesus hung on that cross as the one taking our place as a sacrifice for our sin he was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities he was reconciling us back to the one who is alive himself you know in Psalm 22 David looks as if he's near death but did you notice that he never actually experiences death his prayers are answered he was delivered he was saved but what of King David's greater descendant Jesus Christ yes we'll see in a moment that he was also delivered and rescued that's what Easter is all about but notice he went the whole way he went further than

[40:15] David he didn't just have a near death experience he went true death and he chose it he didn't just become human to sympathize with us he came to die in order to provide atonement for us the ancient theologian Athanasius says of Psalm 22 the psalmist in the end is speaking about the manner of the saviour's death and places this in front of us because the Lord suffered this not on his own account but for us and let me press this home what does it mean to say that Jesus Christ God's son was forsaken for our sake what does it mean that he went through this experience of abandonment for us it's quite simple really if Jesus faced that all for our sake that means we as

[41:17] God's people never will we might feel abandoned sometimes we might feel forsaken sometimes that's why I said earlier that we can still use the words of Psalm 22 but we will never actually be forsaken because the king was forsaken our king was forsaken Jesus was forsaken so that when we trust in him our forsaken king we will never be forsaken never be abandoned never be cast off not even in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic because the forsaken king is still the king and let me just very briefly touch on the second section of this Psalm the triumph for his suffering does give way to his triumph look at verse 24 for he has not despised or scorn the suffering of the afflicted one he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help and so

[42:22] God did answer Jesus God did hear his cry for help God was not far away for he rescued him from the dust of death he answered him by way of resurrection the Lord Jesus was not abandoned to the realm of the dead and neither are we who are in Christ we all have to go through death sometime but in Christ we won't be left abandoned to the realm of the dead psalm 22 verse 5 to you they cried out and were saved in you they trusted and were not put to shame and Christians can say the same thing today when they trust in Jesus and because Jesus is this forsaken yet triumphant king there are two ways we have to respond firstly we have to respond with worship that's the theme of verse 23 isn't it you who fear the

[43:29] Lord praise him all you descendants of Jacob honor him revere him all you descendants of Israel or look at verse 26 the poor will eat and be satisfied those who seek the Lord will praise him may your hearts live forever but you know what's especially striking is that it is the forsaken king himself who will lead us in worship come back up to verse 22 I will declare your name to my people in the assembly I will praise you and that is also affirmed in the New Testament in Hebrews 2 verse 12 you see as the one who makes us his brothers and sisters Jesus now leads the family in singing praises to God the father he can give first hand testimony that God does indeed hear and keep his word he can state clearly what kind of God we really serve you know notice the first three words of verse 22 I will declare

[44:30] I will reveal what God is really like and let me tell you he's going to say this is what he's like the eternal God has given you eternity with him because the king he sends now lives eternally and that's why the expression in verse 26 may your hearts live forever well it's poetic but it isn't just poetic it expresses what will really be true and then secondly we respond with witness as the people gather together to declare and to worship they don't do so privately for verse 27 all the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord and all the families of the nations will bow down before him God's act of reconciliation on the cross has a ripple effect across all generations all nations all populations the cross is the great leveling ground because it reveals our great sin regardless of whether we're rich or poor it reveals our great need for a saviour but when we accept

[45:48] Jesus as that saviour regardless of whether we're rich or poor well verse 29 look what happens all the rich of the earth will feast and worship and all who go down to the dust will kneel before him even those who cannot keep themselves alive for ultimately all must submit to his authority verse 28 for dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations for ultimately the forsaken king and the triumphant king is the one and the same as one preacher famously preached it's Friday but Sunday is coming and so my brothers and sisters this good Friday we can still worship on this Friday when the world seems forsaken when I sit in an empty church hall right now I stand here we can still worship for the king himself looked forsaken but it turned out to be for our very good at the moment in human history when

[46:55] God looked most absent he was achieving our salvation and that is the reason we can worship amidst a pandemic if God was revealing his grace and his mercy and his goodness when all seemed forsaken then while we can still trust him to be doing the same this good Friday otherwise if this was not true of God then how can we worship if we only can worship him when we feel his presence how can we worship how can we worship him if we only do so when things go as we want and what kind of God is that anyway but because God has resolved our deepest problem sin in this particular way well we know then that we can have resilience to face the coming days he's shown that he's more than worthy of our worship and this good

[48:08] Friday we can still bear witness we must people are struggling and feeling hopeless people are wondering if they can be any future apparently the number of Google searches for prayer to God has more than doubled in the past week but because of what Jesus has done we can bear witness to the peace of God if God did what he did on that first good Friday we begin to understand that every detail of his plan for the world is absolutely good and perfect even when there's a pandemic going on and yet we also bear witness to the coming judgment of God if one day all dominion belongs to this once forsaken king then the question is are we ready are we still mocking him or have we found refuge in him for God's judgment it is found at the cross of

[49:10] Christ whereby his wounds we are healed good Friday is still good even in 2020 because Jesus chose to be our forsaken king proclaim it go to