1st Day of Lent
Dear friends in Christ. Today we begin the holy and penitential season of Lent. Lent has a two-fold purpose that dove-tail nicely into each other. First, we use Lent as a time especially to look into God’s holy Law as a mirror and there see all of our sin and that by them we have earned and deserved nothing but God’s wrath and damnation. Secondly, we use Lent as a time to look to Jesus and His work to save us from our sins. We follow Him in spirit as we once again hear the account of all that He has done to bring us salvation. We see His agony in the Garden; we see Him betrayed arrested, beaten, put on trials and finally crucified. In Christ and His great sufferings we see our hope and our rescue from our sins. Lent’s two-fold emphasis is really another way of describing repentance—sorrow over sin as we recognize our sin and what our sin has earned us; and faith in Christ as we put our trust and confidence in Jesus and His work for us, trusting in the forgiveness and reconciliation with God He brought about for us.
To focus our attention rightly this Lenten season, we will spend out Lenten services examining Psalm 69. This is right in line with what Jesus told His disciples when He came to them after His resurrection [Lk. 24.44]: These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me. Jesus very clearly tells the disciples and us that also the psalms prophesy His work, His death and resurrection. Psalm 69 is clearly one of those psalms—and, in fact, is the third most quoted psalm in the NT. We will certainly have rich blessing and profit when we take opportunity this Lent to study this prayer of our suffering Savior.
1. This psalm brings us in right to the height of Good Friday. What we have in the Good Friday accounts in the Gospels is a description of the outward events of that day, a description of what Jesus is suffering and enduring, things that can be seen and heard. But what we have in our psalm is what is happening to Jesus internally, His thoughts, His inward sufferings and anguish, His prayers. As we examine the first few verses of this Psalm tonight we will see both the magnitude of Christ’s suffering and then the cause of His suffering.
Our text: Save Me, O God! For the waters have come up to My soul. I sink in deep mire, Where there is no standing; I have come into deep waters, Where the floods overflow Me. I am weary with My crying; My throat is scorched; My eyes fail while I wait for My God. Those who hate Me without a cause Are more than the hairs of My head.
Our psalm begins with the startling cry for help: Save Me, O God. Who is the man who now from the depths of His woes calls to God for help? It is our Lord Jesus Christ, a Man mighty in deed, a man about whom when He was on the cross the Jews in ridicule said [Mt. 27.42,43], “He saved others; Himself He cannot save….He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” Although this psalm was written by David these are the words of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, that He spoke already in prophecy in the OT times through David His penman. Although David writes these words, it’s not that he is experiencing them but Jesus is speaking through him. That’s why it’s a prophecy—it announces beforehand the suffering of the Savior and again, not just the outward facts but the very thoughts, emotions and prayers of the Savior in His suffering. It shows us the magnitude of Christ’s suffering that first Good Friday who in His suffering does not know where to turn next, who is at a loss with His anguished heart. His anguish already began earlier that evening; He prayed: O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; now His anguish is greatest on the cross Save Me, O God.
Listen again to how Jesus in prophecy describes His suffering: For the waters have come up to My soul. I sink in deep mire, Where there is no standing; I have come into deep waters, Where the floods overflow Me. The anguish of His soul is greater than all human experience. Jesus uses the imagery of water that comes up to His soul, of being in deep waters where the waves of the waters crash down upon Him trying to drown Him. This is a picture describing being in trouble so great that it cannot be overcome alone. The sufferings that Jesus endured as on the cross He was burdened, loaded down with our sin, the sin of the whole world, oppressed His life and filled His heart and soul with darkness and with the terrors of death. His was a deep, unbounded suffering.
What makes this suffering so great and so incomprehensible to Jesus on the cross is that He is holy, sinless, and yet He is suffering. But here He is, the flood of God’s wrath over sin is overwhelming Him. Like waves one after another, it comes crashing down on Him and there is no let up. In His heart He feels nothing but God’s wrath and anger. He feels the very depths of hell and He must now drink the cup of God’s wrath down to its very dregs. He feels the terrors of death and hell. He feels no comfort of His dear heavenly Father as He always had before.
Here we see beyond any shadow of a doubt what God thinks of sin, of our sin. We dare not think of our sin lightly as if it is no big deal. We dare not think that since God forgives us our sin that it must not be anything all that bad. Jesus was on the cross loaded down with our sin. What we see Jesus here endure, the suffering and the anguish—that’s what God thinks of sin, of your sin and my sin. That’s why we have the great call of Lent to repent and to turn away from our sin, to hate our sin and by the power of the Holy Spirit to root it from our hearts and lives. As Christians, how can we delight in or take lightly what God must so earnestly condemn and punish? As we ponder our Lord’s suffering, how we are now led into a deep sense of how serious and damnable our sins really are.
And now, the Savior’s cry gets even worse. I am weary with My crying; My throat is scorched; My eyes fail while I wait for My God. At this point He cries out His fourth word from the cross [Mt. 27.46]: My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?, exactly as He prophesied in Psalm 22. This is beyond all our understanding and thinking—how can the holy God forsake, not answer the prayers of His dear, holy sinless Son? That’s the question Jesus asks from the cross. Even when we sinners are in trial and call out to God for help, He hears us and does what the godly desire—He helps them. But how incomprehensible this is to Jesus that the Father would abandon His Son, holy and perfect, to endure nothing but His wrath!
This is precisely the point that Jesus on the cross suffers the very pangs of hell—when He is forsaken by God. I am weary with My crying; My throat is scorched. Here is the urgency of Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane [Lk. 22.42]: Father, if it is your will, remove this cup from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done. And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. And His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. The apostle writes this way [Hb. 5.7]: Christ…in the days of His flesh…offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death. When Jesus says His fifth word from the cross [Jn. 19.28]: I thirst, we can think back to this psalm; for not only is He dry physically from His ordeal but we see it as a picture of His continued calling out to His Father for help only to find that He was forsaken by Him. Jesus is in greatest need and yet God His Father is so far away from Him. He keeps calling but God does not answer Him; the Father’s heart remains shut to Him. Then we read in our text: My eyes fail while I wait for My God. Jesus keeps looking but sees neither help nor comfort nor any hope for it; His hope and longing for rescue at God’s hands remains unfulfilled.
But notice even in these words of despair and hopelessness, Jesus’ continued perfect love of and trust in His heavenly Father. Jesus kept calling out to Him—such was His trust in Him; He kept looking for His rescue from Him. Never did He waver; never did He doubt; never did Jesus turn away from His Father but still, even in utter forsakenness, being judged, being punished, Jesus still called out from the cross My God! My God! Such is the Son’s perfect love for His Father all the way to the end—and that was part and parcel of His work to bring us salvation.
As if the magnitude of Jesus’ sufferings were not enough, with Him being rejected and forsaken by God, He was also rejected by man. Our text: Those who hate Me without a cause Are more than the hairs of my head; many are those who are destroying Me, Being My enemies who use deception. Jesus is also innocent of any wrong-doing against man, as Peter [Ac. 10.38] says of Jesus, He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil; as Pilate himself said [Jn. 18.38], I find no fault in Him at all. Yet, on that first Maundy Thursday evening in which Jesus was betrayed, He told His disciples that this verse was being fulfilled by the Jews who would not rest until they got Jesus on the cross using falsehood and deceit to get what they wanted: Jesus says, but not they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father. But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law, “They hated Me without a cause.”
2. But as we view the magnitude of Christ’s suffering let us not stop there and think “Poor Jesus! All He had to suffer!” Instead, for a blessed Lent, let us also view the cause of Christ’s suffering. Our text: Though I have stolen nothing, at that time I must restore it. O God, You know My foolishness; And My sins are not hidden from You. Did Jesus do anything wrong, any sin? Hardly! He Himself says in our text: Though I have stolen nothing. Remember even the verdict of Pilate is: I find no fault in Him at all. Although Jesus committed no sin, though I have stolen nothing, He is the one who pays the penalty: At that time I must restore it. To put it differently, in Good Friday terms, with His crucifixion Jesus paid for what others had stolen. So not only was Jesus innocent but He made good the sins of others. So here in our text when Jesus says, Though I have stolen nothing, at that time I must restore it, He is saying that He suffers that anguish, pain, forsakenness for sins that are not His; that He makes the perfect payment to the divine righteousness for the debt of sin.
But why, if He did no wrong, no sin, did Jesus have to pay the penalty? In fact, doesn’t Jesus in our text make a confession of sins when He says: O God, You know My foolishness; And My sins are not hidden from You.
But precisely here we come to the heart and core of the Christian faith. The sin and the guilt that Jesus here confesses and feels are not His own sin and guilt. It is ours that has been charged to Him. As our Substitute Jesus stood there before God in guilt and sin charged to Him as if it were really His own. When we see Jesus forsaken that first Good Friday, as our text describes and prophesizes, He felt in His soul the sin and guilt of all people as if it were His own. Jesus felt God’s wrath over our sin and guilt. Jesus felt God’s verdict of condemnation and rejection in His soul as if He had personally committed the sins of all of humankind.
Christ on the cross confesses that He is loaded down with the sins of the world: O God, You know My foolishness; And My sins are not hidden from You. How else could the sinless Son of God be punished in our place? How else could Jesus be innocent and yet still have sin. We committed the sin; Jesus took on our sin and paid the penalty. Scripture is clear [Is. 53.6; 2 Cor. 5.21]: And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all; and For [God] made [Christ] who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Viewing Jesus on the cross here in our text we see what our sins really are and how terrible the wrath of God is over sin. Let us wake up, fall on our knees, beat our breasts and say “God be merciful to me, the sinner!” But let us also see and behold God’s grace to us! Here in Christ is rescue, heaven and salvation.
Jesus paid it! Believe it! Comfort yourself with it when you feel the Law accusing you, when your conscience condemns you, when death and judgment terrify you. Paid! Glorious comfort. May we eternally thank Jesus our Savior for it! INJ