Psalm 22 Devotional (The Nearness of Jesus)

Psalm 22
Key Verse: 24 “(24) For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from Him; But when He (Jesus) cried to Him, He heard.”

Spurgeon Insight: “Never was man so afflicted as our Savior in body and soul from friends and foes, by heaven and hell, in life and death…but Jehovah always loved Him, and in love laid that woe upon Him with a view to His ultimate glory and to the accomplishment of the dearest wish of His heart. Under all His woes our Lord was honorable in the Father’s sight.”[1]

Psalm 22 is a Messianic Psalm. It contemporaneously spoke of real situations which the Psalmist faced. But deeper below the surface it speaks of Jesus the Messiah. It describes His agony on the cross, the Father’s enduring love for Him, and His joy of glorifying the Father in the assembly of God’s people after His resurrection from the dead. All this was prophesied hundreds of years before the first coming of Jesus when He came to die on a cross for the sin of the world, which includes me and you.

Verse 24 communicates a key theme in Psalm 22. Though Jesus absorbed the wrath of God on the cross, the Father was never angry at the Son personally. He was judging humanities sin on the cross, not any sin of Jesus. Jesus was, and is, sinless. The Father felt the Sons affliction. He didn’t abandon the Son. He heard Christ in the midst of His suffering.

Jesus stood in the gap for me and every other human being when He hung on the cross in that spot of horrific suffering, and death. Amazingly, I am allowed to see here a glimpse of the love Jesus has for me when I suffer in this picture of the Father’s love for Jesus as He suffered. As I suffer in this life the love of Jesus never ceases to be mine. He never despises my affliction, as unworthy as it is to be compared to the suffering He endured for me. He never utterly turns His face from me, even when my heart tries to convince me that He does. He always hears me when I cry to Him. He feels my suffering as His own, as the Father felt the suffering of Jesus as His own (Acts 9:4-5). Jesus is that close to you today no matter what you're facing if you are His.

Thank You for the reality of Your love in the hard places, Lord. I thank You for Your comfort. I thank You that, as great as You are, You sympathize with my sorrow in such a way as to feel as if it is Your own. I thank You that You took the wrath of God on my behalf so I can have a relationship of comfort with You, which is totally undeserved on my part! I thank You that when the voice of culture and other people mock the idea of Your reality and allegiance to Your people, it doesn’t change the facts. You’re real, and You’re with me.

[1] Spurgeon. Charles. The Crossway Classic Commentaries: Psalms. Page 86.