"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Psalm 22:1). Jesus cries out these words on the cross. About the ninth hour, He cried out in a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" — "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (a paraphrase of Matthew 27:46).

Psalm 22 is called a messianic psalm because it prophetically depicts Jesus' suffering on the cross. Arthur W. Pink (1886–1952), a thoughtful and insightful commentator, reflected on these words of Christ in his book The Seven Sayings of the Saviour on the Cross, in a chapter titled "The Word of Anguish." I found his explanation of how these words reveal the basis of our salvation very helpful. In summary:

God is holy and cannot look on sin; God is just and must judge sin; but God is also love and delights in mercy. In His wisdom He devised a way for justice to be satisfied and mercy to flow freely to guilty sinners: substitution, the just suffering for the unjust. Only the Son of God could bear that curse and rise victorious over it.

At the cross, our sin and its penalty were transferred to Christ. His death was a death under the curse (Galatians 3:13), and the curse is alienation from God's presence. Pink traces this through several Old Testament foreshadowings: the sin offering on the Day of Atonement was burned outside the camp, away from God's dwelling (Leviticus 16:27; cf. Hebrews 13:12); the leper had to live alone outside the camp (Leviticus 13:46); and the bronze serpent lifted on a pole pictured Christ "made a curse for us" (Numbers 21:8–9; cf. John 3:14). Even the crown of thorns recalls the curse on the ground in Genesis 3.

The three hours of darkness at midday were no eclipse — Passover fell at the full moon, when a solar eclipse is impossible — but a sign that the Son was bearing sin and experiencing the withdrawal of the Father's fellowship.

For the believer, this is the meaning of Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ." He was our substitute, wounded for our transgressions. He was shut out so that we might be shut in with Him; He was forsaken for a season so that we might enjoy God's presence forever. He entered the darkness so that we might walk in the light; He drank the cup of wrath so that we might drink the cup of joy; He was forsaken so that we might be forgiven.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Many readers have noticed that Jesus quoted the first line of a psalm that does not end in abandonment. Psalm 22 moves from the cry of forsakenness through a vivid description of suffering — pierced hands and feet, bones on display, garments divided by lot (22:14–18) — to a sudden turn: "you have rescued me" (22:21), and then to praise in the great congregation and a vision of all the ends of the earth turning to the Lord (22:22–31). Verse 24 says God "has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him." In Jewish practice, citing a psalm's opening line could evoke the whole, and some interpreters believe Jesus was claiming the entire psalm, including its vindication.

Christians hold different accents on what the cry means. Many, in the tradition Pink represents, understand it as real abandonment — the Son bearing the Father's judgment on sin in His human experience. Others stress that the Trinity cannot be divided, and understand the forsakenness as Jesus' genuine experience of desolation as He bore sin, while the Father's love for the Son was never broken. Both affirm that Jesus truly entered the depths of the human cry of abandonment, and both hear the psalm's ending as the Father's answer at the resurrection. Hebrews 2:12 puts the psalm's later words — "I will tell of your name to my brothers" — in the mouth of the risen Christ.

The comment's closing contrast — forsaken so that we might be forgiven — is the note on which the psalm itself ends: "he has done it" (22:31).

The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him. For he laid the earth’s foundation on the seas and built it on the ocean depths. Who may climb the mountain of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place? Only those whose hands and hearts are pure, who do not worship idols and never tell lies. They will receive the LORD’s blessing and have a right relationship with God their savior. (Psalm 24:1–5 NLT)

The first verse of this psalm is quoted by Paul in his discussion on eating food sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 10. There he points out that an idol is nothing at all and all food could be eaten with thanksgiving because God made everything, and everything belongs to Him.

In the context of Psalm 24 God's supremacy over all creation is in view. He created everything and everything belongs to Him. Therefore, He has the right to our worship and we are beholden to Him to honor Him with a pure and undivided worship.

Both in the OT and the NT the message is the same. God is worthy of obedience in view of His power and authority as the Creator and Owner of all creation.

How should we worship Him? The rest of the psalm pictures Him as a king coming back from a victorious battle. "Open up, ancient gates" may refer to the triumphant entry and celebration associated with the greeting of a king returning from a victorious battle.

We serve such a King, who has disarmed every power and authority, and He even made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross (Colossians 2:15).

Now, let us understand that Paul extends the victory in battle motif beyond material triumph to include a spiritual triumph, whereby God achieved victory over the condemnation brought on by the Law. He achieved this through the cross of Christ. In Colossians Paul paints the imagery of God nailing the specific stipulations and regulations of the Law to the cross, so that the Law no longer has a binding influence over us.

So Paul continues in Colossians to say that those who have this freedom from the Law should not allow anyone to judge them by any of the provisions of the Law, because in Christ every provision is met. Instead, we are to focus on Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So we now submit to the Law of Christ and follow His example in everything. And whatever we do, whether in word or deed, we should do it in the Name of the Lord Jesus to the glory of God the Father.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Psalm 24 moves from universal ownership to the question of access. Because the earth belongs to the Lord, worship cannot be treated as an arrangement confined to one sacred location while ordinary conduct remains outside his concern. Clean hands and a pure heart join outward action and inward allegiance. The additional references to falsehood and deceitful swearing make that integrity concrete. A person cannot honor the King through ceremony while using dishonest speech or compromised conduct to secure advantage elsewhere. The NET notes on Psalm 24:4 reflect this connection between deeds, motives, and truthfulness.

Paul's quotation of verse 1 in 1 Corinthians 10:26 draws a particular ethical conclusion from that universal ownership. Food sold in the market remains God's creation and may be received without an anxious investigation into its history. But the chapter also forbids participation in idol feasts and calls for restraint when eating would communicate religious participation or injure another's conscience. God's ownership therefore grounds both freedom and responsibility. The original's appeal to thanksgiving is sound when kept with those contextual limits; it is not a license to ignore what an action signifies to others.

The psalm's closing summons to the gates gives worship the character of welcoming the victorious divine King. The precise original ceremony is not specified, so a procession returning from battle remains a plausible reconstruction rather than a narrated event. Christian reading can see an important resonance with Christ's victory, particularly where Colossians 2:13–15 joins forgiveness, cancellation of the hostile record, and the disarming of powers. The canceled document in verse 14 is best distinguished from a claim that every statement of the Mosaic law is itself hostile or devoid of continuing instruction. The immediate concern is the condemning obligation removed through Christ.

This victory changes the believer's relationship to accusation and coercive religious requirements. Colossians rejects judgment based on food regulations and calendar observances as though these could supply what is found in Christ. It then develops concrete practices of holiness, compassion, forgiveness, and love. Freedom is thus directed toward the Lord's character rather than independence from it.

The psalm and the apostolic application together ask whether our worship is undivided. Receiving creation gratefully, refusing idolatrous participation, speaking truthfully, and considering a neighbor's conscience are related acts of allegiance. The King who owns everything claims the whole life of the person who welcomes him.

I paused on Psalm 23 today and reflected on its structure. The first stanza presents God the way we most commonly expect — leading us to green pastures and still waters, into a kind of restful, dreamlike place (a paraphrase of Psalm 23:1–3). But the second stanza opens with an "even though": even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, surrounded by evil, I'm comforted by God's presence and strength (a paraphrase of Psalm 23:4). I appreciate that specific acceptance — that even under God's watchful care, I may still find myself walking through dark places, but God is with me there. The third stanza is the most interesting to me. It combines the first two: "I" am still before my enemies, and "I" am still with my God — and in front of enemies who'd love to see me harmed, the Lord almost flaunts His grace, preparing a table before them as if to say, "I am victorious" (a paraphrase of Psalm 23:5–6). I hadn't noticed this before, but the psalm builds three images, each one deepening the last: my God is a God of pleasure and goodness; my God is a God of protection and companionship; and my God honors whom He chooses, with no regard for those who oppose it — and He does all of this for me.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The structural progression this comment traces — from restful pastoral imagery, to an honest admission of walking through darkness, to a table set in the very presence of enemies — is worth noting as psychologically realistic in a way many comforting psalms aren't: it doesn't promise the shepherd will keep the sheep out of the dark valley altogether, only that He'll walk through it with them. That ordering matters. The psalm earns its confidence in verse 6 — that goodness and mercy will follow — only after first being honest in verse 4 about the valley, rather than skipping past difficulty toward comfort. Comfort that hasn't first acknowledged the valley tends to ring hollow; Psalm 23's comfort holds up because it doesn't.

It feels a little odd to call it a "missions trip," since our family didn't have to travel far to meet people of a different culture, language, and faith — we went to an outreach for the Bhutanese community living in San Antonio, Texas. We didn't know much about them beforehand, but learned they're Lhotshampa people, originally from Nepal, many of whom had gone to Bhutan for work in the late 19th century. The Bhutanese government expelled them in the early 1990s under a "One Nation, One People" policy, and roughly 100,000 have lived in UN refugee camps since then. In 2008, the US government offered to resettle 60,000 of them, with several other countries offering smaller numbers, and refugees have been arriving gradually ever since. The people we met in San Antonio had lived in refugee camps for about twenty years; the children and teenagers we saw had actually been born in those camps. Most of the people we met had been in the US for roughly a year, give or take six months — the government assists them for a few months before expecting them to become self-sufficient. It struck me that we don't have to travel to the ends of the earth to share Christ's love with people who've lived so long without a home, a job, healthcare, education, or peace of mind. I was personally challenged by how far New Song Church went to bring Christ into these people's lives. While I believe genuine spiritual transformation only comes through the Holy Spirit's work, I saw real willingness among New Song's members to obey the Great Commission (a reference to Matthew 28:19–20), so that the ends of the earth would remember and turn to the LORD, and all the nations would bow before Him, since dominion belongs to Him and He rules over the nations (a paraphrase of Psalm 22:27–28). Thank you all for your prayers — let's keep ministering to those who are lost, since nothing this world, or even this nation, offers compares to the hope we have in Christ.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The detail this comment highlights — that meaningful cross-cultural ministry didn't require international travel at all — points to a broader pattern worth naming: refugee resettlement has quietly made "the nations," in the sense Psalm 22 uses the phrase, geographically present in ordinary American cities in a way that would have been almost unthinkable a century ago. The Great Commission's call to make disciples of all nations no longer necessarily requires crossing an ocean; in many cases it now means walking a few miles across town. That shift doesn't make cross-cultural ministry easier — this family still had to learn, from scratch, about a people group and a history they knew nothing about beforehand — but it does mean the opportunity Psalm 22 envisions, nations coming to worship the LORD, is sometimes as near as a neighboring apartment complex.