What Jesus Really Felt on the Cross

I'm grateful to Brian Elsie for reading Psalm 22 for us. I ask you to turn there again. I spoke on this psalm recently, but in preparation for these days together, I had a clear sense that it's right for today.

My heart is overflowing with a good theme concerning the King. We're not going to read the psalm again, but just to give a little context as you look at it this morning, and as we remind ourselves what's here, it has a marvelous dividing point. The first 21 verses are about our Savior's suffering, atoning work.

But verse 22 through the end, what Dan just shared, the testimonies you just heard in Lebanon, is in the second half of the chapter. You are in the second half of the chapter. Because verses 22 through 31 show us the significant harvest that's been happening since the resurrection, and the ascension, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to the ends of the earth.

So let's just see the riches of what's here in this marvelous messianic psalm. Let's pray together before we begin. Our Father, we just say with the prophet David, Lord Jesus, that You are fairer than... In the first 21 verses of the inward, hidden to anyone else but Him, the Savior, the inner agonies and pain of the Lord while He's on the cross.

And in Psalm 22, this is given to us more than any other place in Holy Scripture. So anyone who accepts the divine authority of the New Testament must read this psalm as being only about the agonies and the triumphs of God's Son as the Messiah. It's become my conviction that the two most significant sections in all the Old Testament on the death and resurrection of our Lord are Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22.

You combine them. I challenge you to sometime lay Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 side by side and study it and see what's going on and compare. And you'll see that it is the fullest biblical theology on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ in all the Bible.

David shows the inner struggles of our Savior on the cross in these verses more than any of the gospels do. I mean, one of the gospel writers says just a short sentence, and there they crucified Him. What a profound statement declaring the fact, but it was not revealing what David does in this psalm.

You combine Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22, but they're coming from two different vantage points. Listen closely to me. Isaiah is declaring, if you go back and look, the objective reality looking on from the outside.

The Holy Spirit shows him the redemptive work Christ is accomplishing for us. He's bearing our griefs. He's carrying our sorrows.

He was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. And the Lord lays upon Him the iniquity of us all. And Peter echoes that when he says, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree.

That's all objective atoning acts Isaiah shows that Christ did for us, redemption accomplished for us. So Isaiah wrote biographically about the Lord by the Spirit what was revealed to him about the coming death of the Savior. On the ground, under the weight of the reality he's seeing for the first time, that he must drink this cup, and he knows what the cup holds, and he doesn't want to drink it.

And he prays three times in agony. He didn't want to drink it. But his human will was not in line with his Father's will.

And he had to get it in line. He said, Father, if there's any way, let this cup pass from me. And thank God for this next word.

Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done. The agony was overwhelming in Gethsemane. And he comes forth.

Psalm 22 is autobiographical. It's our Lord's internal experience of agony expressed by David 700 years before the cross. That's why the Bible is inspired and inerrant.

It's astounding. Psalm 22 was our Lord's personal psalm cry while groaning on the tree as a cursed man. That's what we have before us.

While Isaiah 53 is a screenshot looking at the Savior, Psalm 22 is a recording of the internal human struggles and agonies and grief and pain that's overwhelming experienced on the cross as a terror and a horror of what he is going through. And he feels it all. Realize, brethren, he feels the full weight emotionally and mentally and physically of all of it.

He wasn't aided to make it. He couldn't take it. He didn't have any pain medication or any divine help to shield it from the brutal extent of the agony that he's going to suffer for six hours on the cross.

And we sing these hymns, but sometimes we miss these little emphases. O sacred head, now wounded, with grief and pain weighed down. Grief and pain weighed him down.

Mine, mine was the transgression, but thine the deadly pain. Was it for crimes that I have done? He groaned upon the tree. We must remember, dear brethren, that it was true agony for him as a real man.

It was terror, terrifying and traumatizing to the mental, emotional and physical life of our Lord. Dying in the agonies of atoning suffering, he's bearing and carrying our sorrows and guilt in his mind and in his heart as he's dying. Our Savior fully, more than any other human who ever lived, felt the painful agony of suffering.

Unjustly poured upon him. All his life he was misunderstood and rejected and misrepresented. And he felt the sting and hurt of it fully every time.

But with Gethsemane, it's ramping up. Significantly increases the agony and the pain and the struggle on a scale of one to ten, goes from three, becomes a five, and then further, five becomes a nine, and it becomes almost unbearable. He's sweating great drops of blood, and he felt like the Gospel writer's hint that he thought he was going to die there.

So these first 21 verses reveal to us, under inspiration of David's writing, four different kinds of agony that our Savior went through. I want you to see it. Number one, the agony of abandonment.

Abandonment. Look at verses 1 and 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. Oh my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not hear.

And in the night season, and am not silent. The agony of abandonment. Now remember, our Lord had never experienced this abandonment, this being forsaken by His Father from all eternity.

They had, we know of course, the relationship they had within the Trinity. But He comes in the days of His flesh, and the Father is with Him. He's full of the Spirit without measure.

He's always doing that. He is pleasing to the Father. He's always in communion with the Father.

He's never experienced this. And yet He cries out and experiences suddenly these terrible experiences of horror, and He cries out in agony, Forsaken, why have you forsaken me? Why have you abandoned me? He's abandoned truly and fully because He's cursed and condemned. As a sinner, and as a transgressor.

He's counted and treated as a full criminal of His day. And He feels in the moment, the guilt, and the shame, and the condemnation, and the sorrow. And you think about it, the crowd and the mob, they wanted Him crucified.

They got what they asked for. And yet, they don't stop. From the ground, He's hanging helplessly on the cross.

And they're still railing at Him. Mocking Him. Fraud, you're a fraud.

You claim to be the King. If you are, come on, prove it. Come on down and save yourself.

And He takes it and feels all of it. The answer is not a word. Seven sayings from the cross, and they were all redemptive.

The Father forgave them. Today you'll be with Me in Paradise. The God-man forsaken by God His Father.

His words, My God, My God, clearly shows relationship at the deepest level. Covenantal relationship. And now the relationship is broken.

Jehovah places the divine curse on the one who was faithful to the covenant and to His law. And He cuts off His Son and abandons Him and treats Him in those moments as a transgressor, condemned as a sinner, counted fully guilty. Our sins have separated us from God, but here our sins separate Christ from God.

The agony as a man, emotional, mental agony unleashed upon Him without restraint. Upon all His senses, His mind, His conscience, His emotions, His feelings without restraint. The felt distance of God He had never known.

God has completely withdrawn from the man Jesus. And He knows He's been forsaken. And He fully feels it and experiences it in the weakness of His frailty.

Now there's a great mystery here, brethren. It's an astonishing mystery that in these moments, the Father and the Holy Spirit abandoned the Son as far as Him having any relational aspect. Was the Father really forsaking Him? Well, He never loved Him more than in that moment.

Had the Spirit fully abandoned Him completely? Well, Hebrews says that He by the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God. So even though He was abandoned with any sense of the Father and the Spirit's presence, and even His own divine nature that He experienced when He was here as a man, all of that is gone from Him. No aid rendered.

He was alone. Cursed. Suffering.

What love truly cost is exquisite, unbearable pain being forsaken by God. That's the first agony. Number two, the mental and emotional agony.

Look at verses 6 through 8. But I am a worm and no man. The picture is a very, very low condition. I am a worm and no man.

I'm a reproach of men and despised by the people. All who see me ridicule me. They shoot out the lip.

They shake the head saying, He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him. Let Him deliver Him since He delights in Him. So the language is one of utter helplessness and frailty and humiliation and feeling the human rejection and condemnation of an evil world.

The very world that He came to redeem. He's dehumanized by the language. Treated less than any human should be treated with scorn and mockery.

Look at verses 12 and 13. Same kind of language. Many bulls have surrounded me.

Strong bulls of Boshen have encircled me. They gape at me. They gaze at me, in other words, with their mouths like a raging and roaring lion.

This brought a tremendous emotional suffering to our Savior. Hostility unleashed at the cross, on the cross. He's surrounded by men.

Hateful, condemning words hurled at Him while He's bearing the sins of the world. Now, when you see this language of strong bulls and roaring lions, what all could that mean? It could mean a number of things. It could mean demonic forces.

But it certainly meant evil men whose jobs were, their job was to do nothing but crucify bad guys. And they were hardened by this. They saw it all the time.

And others, crowds unleashing venomous words on Him. All mental and emotional agony that He was feeling fully and He couldn't escape from it. Why? To fulfill all Scripture and to fulfill all that He must bear to be able to say in a few hours, it is finished.

So, this emotional, mental trauma of our Lord. Think about it. When you're weak, when you're deeply discouraged, when you've been betrayed by someone, when you've been gossiped about and slandered and misrepresented and you're weak and you're hurting, what do hurtful words do to us at that time? They traumatize us.

They hurt us deeply. They make us want to retreat. They make us want to lash out.

That's our dying Savior on the cross. He's a traumatized man emotionally and mentally and He's doing it for those He loves. He's taking it.

He doesn't turn away from any of it. He's yielded to it under the agony. There's no escape.

He's bearing it internally, His thoughts, feelings and emotions. It's crushing Him. So, you have the agony of abandonment.

You have the agony of mental and emotional trauma. The third agony, physical agony. Look at verses 14 and 15.

I am poured out like water. All my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax.

It's melted within me. My strength is dried up. My tongue clings to my jaws.

You have brought me to the dust of death. Bones out of joint. Meaning, His pain is so extreme that it's like all His bones are broken or completely out of joint.

Anybody ever had your shoulder out of joint and somebody had to pop it in? Can I see those hands? I mean, I've watched it, but I'm thankful I've never had to experience it. His body, wounded, hurting, aching, throbbing. Remember, His back had already been beaten to a bloody pulp.

The extremity of pain is far beyond the nails in His hands and feet. Now, you go back 350 years ago to Scotland, the persecution by the Catholic Church and the state church of Christians. If you wouldn't go to the Episcopal Church, you could get arrested.

And if you kept trying to go, you could be thrown in prison. And if you kept going, you'd be executed. So they invented a bishop, of all persons, an Episcopal bishop, invented what's called a boot to go on your thumb.

It's a little wooden pieces nailed together. They would insert it over your thumb or one over your knee or one over your foot, a boot. Nailed together.

And then the soldiers, if you wouldn't recant and swear allegiance to the king, they would drive nails into your thumb, three or four, into your knees, into your feet. There was one covenanter man, they did this to him for an hour and a half and he would not recant and he passed out from the pain. They called it exquisite pain.

That's what our Savior felt. That was our Lord in His physical agony for six hours. No relief.

No comfort. No escape. He's hanging alone in agonizing pain for six hours and He does not in His mind and heart turn away.

He, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame that He felt for the joy that was set before Him. He does not turn away from one bit of the full-on experience. No self-pity as He feels it in the extreme.

He's drinking down every drop of the cup and as He comes to the place of execution for the six hours, He lays down on the cross. Think about it. His back was whipped and ripped open and He lays down on a hard piece of wood on the cross and He feels then the exquisite pain of multiple blows of the hammer.

How many nails in each hand and foot? One? Did it take two? How many blows? He faced the abandonment agony, the mental and emotional agony, the physical agony. There's a fourth agony. I call it the agony of unanswered prayer and desperate faith.

The agony of unanswered prayer and desperate faith. He says here, I call to you, but you do not answer. You remember in the Gospels He said, Father, I know that you hear me and you always hear me.

This was the first time His Father turned His ear away to mete out full justice. I call to you, but you do not answer me. Oh, do not stay far away.

Please come quickly. Save me and snatch me from these dogs and these lions. That's found in verse 2 and in verses 19 and 21.

So when you're hurting, what do you need? You need to see the Savior praying. In the wilderness temptation, we know He cried out in Gethsemane on the cross. Hebrews 5-7 gives us this glorious picture.

It says, Who in the days of His flesh poured out strong crying and tears unto Him who was able to rescue Him and carry Him through this, and He was heard because of His reverence and His fear of His Father. Loud crying and tears. Eager cries for help.

Verses 19-21. Lord, You do not be far from me. Oh, my strength, hurry to help me.

His desperate praying were prayers of faith. Go back and look at verses 3-5. This is so good what happens here in verses 3-5.

He prays, but you are holy. He's praying to His Father. You are holy and thrown in the praises of Israel.

Our fathers trusted in You. They trusted You and You delivered them. They cried to You and they were delivered.

They trusted in You and were not ashamed. What's He doing? He's taking His place among His own brethren that He's going to redeem as one of them and having to trust His Father when He's in great need. He cries out and it sustains Him as He reminds the Father of His own heritage.

The Lord Jesus prayed, Our ancestors trusted in You and You rescued them. He's using this as a means of trusting God Himself in His agony. He's pleading God's faithfulness in the past toward all the elect of God.

And He's taking His place among us as our kinsman Redeemer. Having to trust His Father to make it through what is yet set before Him. He endured full six hours of agony by faith.

By faith. By faith. Stricken, smitten, and afflicted.

See Him dying on the tree. Tis the Christ by man rejected. Tell me, ye who hear Him groaning, was there ever grief like this? Alone, abandoned in agonies, He prays in faith.

The hymn writer said, It was alone the Savior prayed. Alone He drank the bitter cup and suffered there for me. Alone, alone, He bore it all alone.

Fernando Ortega is one of my favorite singers and the favorite song he ever sings that's become my favorite of his, says this, O great love, love beyond all measure, that you would lay down your life for faithless sinners. You did not turn away from those who struck your face. O great love, O love beyond all telling, may my cold heart be broken by your suffering.

Brethren, why do we so often have dry eyes when we ought to have wet eyes? O great love, struck down but not destroyed. Now who can look upon that sight? The Son of God now crucified. Desperate faith.

Prayer. The agony of abandonment. The agony of mental and physical trauma.

But then you come to verse 21. Look at it with me. It's amazing what happens here.

Verse 21. The last, in my version, New King James, the last four words. Notice the transition.

It could not be a more radical transition contrasted in all the Bible. It's like the second half of this psalm, people would think this has nothing to do with the first 21 verses. It absolutely does.

It could be a stand-alone psalm, but look at the transition. You have answered me. Whoa! I thought he wasn't answered.

He hadn't been answered. Here he cries out, You have answered me. You have heard me.

New Testament meaning it's finished. New Testament meaning, Father, now into Thy hands I commend my spirit. You have answered me.

The work's done. It's over. They didn't kill him.

He released his own life when the work's finished. This is transition. Six hours of agony is over.

Now joy is coming in the morning. It shifts from our Savior's agonies on the cross to His triumphs resulting from the cross. And the rest of the psalm is the spoils and the rewards and salvation working to the ends of the earth.

There's a book over there on the table, Calvin's Missionary Vision and Legacy, to the ends of the earth. Somebody ought to buy it. Here David shifts from our Savior's agony on the cross to His triumphs from the cross.

Triumphing over them. You remember a verse in the New Testament that uses that language? Colossians 3. He disarmed all evil powers and made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in the cross. Glory to God.

What a Savior. What an accomplishment. The agonies of the cross result in the triumph of the cross.

The suffering one becomes the conquering one. Here the terror turns to triumph. The agony turns to accomplishment.

No chapter in the Bible has a more radical contrast than this one. As horrifying and awful and terrible as the first 21 verses are, the last verses are equally wonderful, glorious and triumphant. What do we see here? Well, let's see what's here.

Now you remember Isaiah talked about in 53 the glorious triumph a little bit. Remember where he says he's a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. He will see his seed.

He will prolong his days and the pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hands. Isaiah is saying a little bit of what David is going to say a lot more here in these verses. So now what we have in these verses is Christ has purchased and now gathers a family throughout all the ages.

Look at verse 22. He is leading the worship in the assembly of all the people. There's only one true worship leader and it's Jesus Christ.

Sinclair Ferguson told the story that he was preaching somewhere in a church and he was asked to come in and speak to the staff and a 20 year old guy walked up to him and said, Hey dude, I want to tell you, I'm the worship leader here. Sinclair said, I resisted the temptation to say you don't have a clue what you're talking about. I might have yielded to the temptation.

There's only one worship leader in the church of Jesus Christ. Now there are gifted worship leaders who lead us in worship. There's only one true worship leader and that's the Lord Jesus Christ and Hebrews 3 and Psalm 22 shows us.

Look at verse 22. See it here. My brethren, he says, my brethren, I will declare, he's praying to the Father, I will declare your name to my brethren.

He's one of us in the midst of the assembly. I will praise you. This is a grand and glorious family that has resulted from the agonies of the cross.

The church which cannot be counted. David mentions this reality 15 times in these verses here. He's declaring and revealing.

Jesus says here prophetically, David says Christ is, that he's revealing the Father to us, his brethren. As Hebrews 3 says, Here am I and the children God has given me. The suffering Savior is now the risen Lord and becomes a brother to us by grace.

My brethren, he calls us. Verse 23, all you descendants. Verse 25, the great assembly.

These are the redeemed of all the ages. So the agony results in resurrection and Pentecost and then there's the global advance of the gospel. It's off to the races and it has been ever since.

Now Psalm 2 said this, didn't it? The Father promised to his son, Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession. Psalm 72 says it even more. He shall have dominion from sea to sea and to the ends of the earth.

Those in the wilderness will bow before him. All his enemies will lick the dust and the kings of the islands will bring offerings and all kings will fall down before him and all nations will serve him. Psalm 72.

It's a commentary on Psalm 22. And it says his name will endure forever and men shall be blessed in him and all nations will call him blessed. Now this is similar to what John writes in the Revelation chapter 5 about the final consummation.

John writes, you are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it for you have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tongue, tribe and people and nation. And there were loud voices shouting in heaven in unison. The world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he will reign forever and ever.

And then John says in Revelation 15, O King of nations, who will not fear you and glorify your name, for all nations will come and worship before you. This is the fruit of his redemptive agony. You are the fruit of his redemptive agony.

Verse 26. And I'm almost done. Verse 26 says it's a global gospel feast.

The poor shall eat and be satisfied. Those who seek Him will praise the Lord and let your heart live forever. For all the ends of the earth, the poor will eat and be satisfied.

Those who seek Him. And brethren, this has happened in every century. In the 18th century, David Brainerd, that weak missionary dying of tuberculosis, reaps a harvest just through a simple gospel preaching.

And a whole tribe is converted and they become a missional church and they send out preachers and evangelists. 18th century, John G. Payton, South Sea Island missionary from Scotland, off the coast of Fiji. He goes there.

And an entire tribe of cannibals are awakened and converted. I preached in Fiji and I met a young man whose grandparents were cannibals and now he's a gospel preacher and evangelist in Fiji. Glory to God.

The advance of the gospel is happening all because of the agonies of the cross. To the ends of the earth. To the ends of the earth.

The gospel is advancing. 20th century. Some of you are tired of me telling this story.

I don't care. Duncan Campbell was preaching in England. 1949.

He's on a platform like this to bring a closing message like Lee Dodd will bring Sunday morning. He had been asked to come to Scotland to preach. And he had sent a message months ago before, I can't come, I'm booked for two years.

And two little ladies, Peggy and Christine, right Don? Sisters, one's blind, one's crippled. They're prayer warriors. They're real, real praying women.

And they said, Send for Duncan Campbell. The minister sent him a letter. He got a reply.

I can't come. The minister goes to tell them and one of them says, That's what Duncan Campbell says, but God says he's coming. Guess what? Campbell's on that platform.

He has this overwhelming conviction. I've got to go to Scotland. I know it.

He turns to the conference leader. Says, listen, I've got to leave. Panic sets in that guy's heart.

Who's going to preach? Campbell goes, catches a boat. He gets off the next morning. There's a guy standing at the harbor.

Mr. Campbell, are you walking with God? Or you're preaching tonight at the church. How did you know I was coming? How did you know to come? Campbell went and God came. Two years, three years.

Multitudes of people in the Hebrides Islands were saved. To the ends of the earth, the Savior is getting His reward. Two or three million in the recent years in Iran.

A huge revival. Many in Nepal, Indonesia. Millions in China.

The Savior is saving multitudes. He's gathering His family through the Gospel preaching by the church worldwide. All the fruit of six hours of agony on the cross.

The fruit of His suffering is the church of Jesus Christ, His elect. Let me close. I love verses 30 and 31.

Look at it. I'm a grandfather of ten. A great-grandfather of two.

So I like this part. Verses 30 and 31. A posterity, that is a future generation, shall serve Him.

It will be recounted to the Lord to the next generation. They will come and declare His righteousness to a people yet to be born, that He has done this. When I'm long gone and forgotten, until the Lord Jesus Christ comes, every generation, Christ is going to send labors into the harvest.

He's going to be saving people. He's working salvation to the ends of the earth. And it will not fail.

All glory to His name for the reality of this. By the pains which He endured, our salvation is secured. Who endured the cross and grave, sinners to redeem and save.

A great host. A great number. They're coming in.

Brethren. They're coming in. Jesus shall reign where'er the sun does its successive journeys run.

And each one of you are in this psalm. The triumph of the cross. Isn't this an astounding psalm? My dear friend Evan Jennings and his wife Adrienne had their baby I think Tuesday.

First baby. They sent me a picture. They weren't looking sad.

That's my alarm when to quit. You guys hear that? They weren't looking sad. Some of you related to that guy.

Some of you have known him since he was in Doppers. I've known him since he was in Doppers. So this week, what are Adrienne and Evan, what are they feeling? Amidst joy.

My child. That is a drop of what our agonizing triumphant Savior feels about you. Who you were born to Him through the birth pains of Calvary.

And He looks at you and He says My child. My own possession. My son.

My daughter. This is my bride. This is my body.

Purchased by the agonies of my suffering. His Gospel will go forth to every nation. He'll save all those given Him by the Father.

And His free offer of grace will reach every people, tribe, tongue, and nation. Glory to God. Let me close with Spurgeon.

He says this. Let your face wear a smile. For soon when your time comes, you will rise up where thy Jesus sits and reigns at God's right hand.

All because He was made to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Is this psalm not astonishing? Is it not astonishing what He suffered and accomplished? Astonishing that He has a people in every age who love and serve and even die for Him. And He is still the God who's working salvation to the ends of the earth.

And we are His. And He is ours. What a Savior.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank You for just the wonder of the Bible and what it gives us, what it says to us, what it reveals to us. Oh Lord, open our eyes to see the wonders of the cross and the great unifying message that it gives about redemption accomplished and applied and that this Gospel has been going all these centuries even to this day and will continue to the ends of the earth, to the ends of the earth.

Oh Lord, send forth the Gospel to the ends of the earth and save Your people and render men accountable in the day of judgment. Oh Lord, we pray for a great revival in Europe and in the Middle East we hear this morning. You're doing the work of salvation.

We pray for our nation in the midst of the darkness. Lord, You would raise up a standard against the enemy and pour out the Holy Spirit like the rain we've been getting last night and today. Oh Lord, we thank You for the glories of the agony and the triumph of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

We pray in His name, Amen.