Forsaken By God

Psalm 22

Forsaken.  It is one of the saddest and most depressing words ever! A wife or husband is left forsaken when their spouse walks out on them.  The little baby left forsaken, wrapped in a blanket on the steps of a church.  The elderly parent, left all alone as their children and grandchildren have forgotten them. It is terrible to be forsaken.

Our psalm today, written by King David, speaks about feeling forsaken.  David spent many years running from the murderous wrath of King Saul. He knew what it was like to feel alone and friendless.  Though David had a deep and personal faith in God, at times he felt as though God, too, had forsaken him. This psalm, probably written on one of the most discouraging days of his life, was also one of the most prophetic psalms, pointing directly to the suffering that our Savior, the Lord Jesus would go through for us.

During the worst days of our life, when the spouse and children are gone, when our friends are nowhere to be found, and even the church is a lonely place, we are not truly alone.  God has never truly forsaken one of His children (Hebrews 13:5). It may feel like it on those dark days, but He is always there, just as the sun is still there during the storm, always shining behind the clouds.

There was a day, though, when God did turn His back on, and close His ears to the cries of someone, and that was to His own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. When Jesus sacrificed Himself for our salvation, He took upon Himself the sins of the whole world. Every dirty, nasty sin ever committed was laid upon Him. The pure and holy God could not look upon sin, and thus had to turn His back on His beloved Son during those hours He hung upon the cross at Calvary. As Jesus hung, nailed to the cross, with all of our sins upon Him, He cried out, quoting verse 1 of this psalm (Mark 15:34).  Jesus was sinless, yet He took upon Himself the sin of the whole world (II Corinthians 5:21). He experienced the full penalty of all of our sins, including the separation that sin causes between man and God. Being separated from His heavenly Father was the heaviest weight Jesus bore for us!

Being forsaken is a terrible feeling, and being humiliated and scorned is not pleasant, either.  None of us like the shame and embarrassment of being publicly mocked. In verses 6 thru 8 we read where David’s enemies were mocking him when he was down, and again, this was a prophecy of the events of Good Friday.  As Jesus hung on the cross, the Pharisees, chief priests, and other religious leaders publicly mocked and derided their Messiah (Matthew 27:41-43). When we feel humiliated by people who look down on us, remember that Jesus went through the same thing (Hebrews 4:14-15).

Verses 14 thru 17 are further prophetic verses describing the crucifixion and physical suffering that Jesus went through for our sins.  In verse 18 we read of the further humiliation and indignity Jesus endured by having His clothes taken from Him and given to His executioners.  In times of despair and feelings of abandonment, in our times in the darkest of night, God is always there for us because of what Jesus went through.  When we feel like less than a worm (vs 6), know that Jesus did, too. God’s love and concern for us goes back to even before we were born (vs 9-10).

As children of God, bought with the shed Blood of His Son, we have a very real responsibility to tell the next generation about Jesus and His salvation message (vs 30-31).  As David proclaims, we can trust in Him and be delivered. Because of Jesus, we are never forsaken!