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CHAPTER SIX

THE CALAMITOUS TRIUMPH

IN THE PSALMS

PSALM 22

THE GREATEST GRAPHIC OF ALL TIME

3 Aspects

I The Funding for the Lost Psalm 22:1-18

The Son IS the cover, the atonement

2 The Finding of the Cost Psalm 22:19-25

The Father pays in power to resurrect the Redeemer

3 The Fishing for the Found Psalm 22:26-31

Praise in the Great Assembly has much ground
for their heart will live forever: the payment being made, this the assured result

6 Phases as below,

starting with THE OUTSET

1 Result in 2 Divisions as seen in the end

The Funding for the Lost Psalm 22:1-18

in SIX PHASES, starting with THE OUTSET.

THE OUTSET 1-8

1 Isolation

Sin isolates (Isaiah 59:1-2). It is not as if God's power is limited, but "your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden My face from you."

The cause, once and for all is NOT in God but in man when ANYONE is EVER in the end, without God. There is no other ground, and as Christ was offered for One, so for all (I John 2:1-2). This vast, tragic triumph was NOT to give anointing to the privileged, those with the crucial X-factor in their souls, in their spiritual genome, but to issue chiding, challenge, stimulus and grace to all; and as it was foreknown who were His, so for those HE was their sin offering, for to secure it to any other not only degrades the offering and misses the mark (as in Malachi 1:10 with Isaiah 1, Romans 8:32), but contradicts the word of God.

HE suffered then the isolation, not to get HIS way, but to secure for us THE way, where love sated in horror's temporary but devastating ruin, triumphed in power and purity. Nor was it any love, but the love of God both in the heart of Christ, for man, and in His holy will, when He was enshrined in flesh for the securing of selected (but not select) persons, those who will to do the will of God, so foreknown, so found before sin contributed its cargo of sin, spiritual retrogression and concussion (John 7:17, I Corinthians 2:14). The crucial consequence of this vast and tragic suffering by Christ, is that there is NO ONE who is to be blamed but man (John 3:19). It is in him that lies the crucial exclusion. For God, there is no limit to the outset of His love (Colossians 1:19ff.), making an offering, as was the atonement day sacrifice for ALL Israel, adapted to and sufficient for all of mankind.

This too was effective for only some (Deuteronomy 29:19ff.); for the rest, the offering was explicitly unacceptable because of misuse (Malachi 1:10, Isaiah 1). God's purity is perfection itself, and His desire cannot be countermanded by the convenient if impudent philosophies of man; for what do these know, but the back of their own hands! We do not encompass the mind of God, but He in perfect consistency encompasses ours, showing in words impregnable to contortion, the wonder of His divine heart with which it is surely privilege immaculate to be placed ... for ever! His bounty is infinite, is kind, delicate in application and robust in security (John 10:9,27-28).

Where however, the scope of this outgoing love fails to equal its attainment, it yet succeeds, for God is gulled by no man; and He knows His own (II Timothy 2:19), where His love has settled and His understanding has found them out. To get to hell you have to overstep the cross, by dedicated unbelief, go through the barrier in Christ (John 15:22-24) and secure your own forlorn exclusion. It is WELL that it is all settled in advance, then, not in principle to exclude (John 3:17-18), but to include those where His vast passion finds its rest.

Praise God then for His isolation, that we might not be isolates, separated from God. This He has experienced on our behalf, but WE must imbibe it. Those found in heaven, are moved to volunteer on earth (Psalm 110), through His distinguishing mercy, in passion calling all, in pity finding some. Those found in heaven, when on earth are moved to volunteer (Psalm 110), through His distinguishing mercy, in passion calling all, in pity finding some.

2-6 Degradation

AS He, the Lord sent from heaven (John 3:13, 17:1-3, Philippians 2) is degraded before the brutal, His body decommissioned into the form of a corpse, by those who hate God and therefore despise Him and His saving work (John 8:42-44), SO those who are the redeemed receive the upgrade. Some deem it downgrade to the post of servants, but it is not so, for these who know Him, know Him as a friend, purging, faithful in His sword-wounds from His work, capacious in fellowship, fresh as the dew in His presence (John 15:14, James 2:23.

7 Humiliation

Many delighted to despise Him, each shaking the sophisticated head, galling Him as a bull gores, glorying in His physical infirmities, even while He was being offered for the sins of the world (I John 2:1-2), as befits love, dwarfs hatred: yet for these also He prayed, though the ache of perdition was in them, the distinguishing mark before God; and their special sin alone was its cause before the heart of the Eternal (John 3:19), come to flesh to be bullied by sword, cuffed by hands, met with mous by ironic mouths.

8 Denudation

Indeed, it was still worse, for now the very name of God is used against Him, as if trust in God (if genuine) is only the way to shame, so that they might as well, precisely as in the mechanical machinations of bored priests in Malachi, trust REALLY in their own society, their handling of it and in their own broken morals and fallen spirits (Malachi 2:17).

THE APPEAL 9-11

Yet the Lord is not interested in bored sophisticates whose hearts loathe Him because they love their own, and though neither His power nor His heart (Ezekiel 33:11, Colossians 1:19ff., Jeremiah 31:18, 48:29-36, Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42ff.) would let them go, go they will if such is their divinely perceived will, where all things were made sure and steadfast before time was (Ephesians 1:4).

Whether it be in Israel, or in the Gentiles (Malachi 1:11, Jeremiah 16:18, Isaiah 49:6,42:6), His name will be great, His love unaccusable, man inexcusable, His depth and height of love without limit (Ephesians 3). Therefore the appeal is from the crushed body of the slowly executed Christ, to His father who sent Him (Isaiah 48:12-18), with the divine foreknowledge that despite it all, there would be lamentation, even from the heart of God. Powerless ? He denies it. It is not power that lacks.

Is the Messiah to be given a role as brigand to capture the chosen with force, and so spiritually rape the recalcitrant ? God forbid, for He SO loved the world that life, even eternal life sprang from the dead ready for believing reception. In the equation, God's love plus one world, plus one effectual saving sacrifice once made by His one begotten Son, minus condemnation equals salvation (John 3:15-17): the rest is a technical question of saving in integrity the sinner in whom sin rules. Yet God, nothing being impossible, HE can penetrate where man is incompetent, as in many another kind of accident, to save himself. God loves and acts, and on these incorruptible and illimitable principles, giving rest to hope and joy to faith. It is with THIS God the saved sinner dwells. Praise God for that.

But POWER IS NEEDED to resurrect that same body, precluded from rotting (Acts 2:2-31), and so confirm, authenticate and consummate the offering, as well as congratulate the Offeror; for THIS offering is not only to God but that OF GOD! The cry will surely be heard, for the love of God is not fractured. Yet this appeal of the crucified Christ is not yet total, for there is more to come. The finale comes at verse 21.

THE ONSET 12-18

12-13 Intensification

The bullish immoral mafia gape at Him, with slavering mouths, odious breath and intense villainy, to surge around Him to produce submission to their evil, teeth bared.

14-15 Desolation

The physical realities of hours of nerve pinching, socket dislocating, tongue drying, strength draining enables Him to be brought to "the dust of death," its unhallowed presence pressing like a dagger at the throat, but this more like the case of a wounded man slowly ebbing away in agony in the sands, forgotten, enfeebled, 'fixed' by the enemy.

16-17 Realisation

He witnesses the actions, bones still intact, an important point because it is here in the millenial long prediction at that time, hand and feet are duly pierced in the prescribed manner, fulfilling that point. The congregation of the wicked was very willing now to listen to Him! strange are the ways of unwise man!

Healing and help were so, but hatred was stronger, and holiness was impressive but the unhallowed ways of the pursuit of power, even in the congregation, was greater. Corrupted was the nation, though some remained true, and great was its inheritance in blood, who were so keen to have it accorded to them, if only HE might GO! GO AWAY GOD, in effect, was the cry. He listened! He called, but did not rape; He offered but did not commandeer. He lamented as in Isaiah 48, Luke 18, Matthew 23: He WEPT FOR THEM, but not for Himself; for Him the resurrection ended the agony, and the anguish had been well worth while, for as God is love, so love is thus met!

18 Exploitation

Meanwhile the devil works a treat for the children to see: the soldiers find SOMETHING of value in His apparent doom, and so gamble to see who will get His nice unseamed robe. Christ was frequently made use of: in the Victorian Age, many used Christianity to boost their credentials and to boast their desirability for work or in society; and indeed there are advantages. But hypocrisy is often interested with Judas in stealing from the bag, and a Christian society is NOT formable by decree, nor is the Church capable of having a substitute in society, however well-intentioned the desire.

Many false prophets today also exploit the Cross, even His crucifixion, speaking of death to self and inclining the head to life for the pocket, for the pride or their presumption as they re-write their own Bibles and keep their own lives: false prophets now as before, and now to their perfection, as Jeremiah 23:20 prophesied for our time.

The Word of God is a Rock, to be built on (Matthew 7:21ff.), not imaged or imagined. The Christ of God is THE ROCK (Psalm 18,62, I Corinthians 10), to be found or else a sign in the distance, of being confounded. HE was not confounded, and He in His profundity and in His humiliation has exalted the love of God, its freedom, its compassion and its pity, its strength even to death. Next Sunday, Lord willing, we see that the strength is greater yet. to consummate the glory of the crucified Saviour.

THE CALAMITOUS TRIUMPH

IN THE PSALMS

PSALM 22

THE GREATEST GRAPHIC OF ALL TIME

PART II

II The Finding of the Cost Psalm 22:19-25

THE UPSET 19-21

19-21 Application

It is now ready for action: the tableau is set. To be sure, a Roman centurion and his companions will see Him as He is and confess the Christ (Matthew 27:54), just as one of those crucified with Him did; but those are outcomes. It is still a matter of the divine investment, and the income from it, for the situation to yield the complete victory. Pity is not assassinated; and if the donkeys hee-haw at Him, yet "Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing!" is the historic cry of the enduring love of the heart of Christ. There are no qualifications, exclusions on the fervour and ferment, the force and the depth in this entreaty; for the love that sent is the love meant, for one as for all (Luke 23:34).

You can add to the word of God, but you cannot subtract from His heart!

Equally you can add to those saved and redeemed, but you cannot secure more than God has done. He gave all for all; but only in the places where it is received is the essential payment of redemption made as in Deuteronomy 29. As it was in Israel, so is the transfer principle amid the Gentiles (Romans 8:32, cf. Matthew 26:28). When the gift is received for those in whose place Christ was delivered up, then as directly stated, these have all things. Reception at this level is redemption, and this is eternal (Hebrews 9:12, 10:10,14, 6:19, John 5:24, Romans 5:1-2), despite the will-o'-the-wisp flickers of a false faith that never comes to flame (Matthew 13:14,18-20). Accordingly, the 'delivered Him up for us all' of Romans 8:32 represents those reached, chosen and paid for, in company with Paul, precisely as in Isaiah 53:1-6, those healed by stripes ('we') are that group whose sins He bears ('the sins of us all').

Christ is offered TO all, but when it is true He is for you actually delivered up, that is final. It is as useless to add to the word of God in order to add to His kingdom, as it is to subtract from His love to make the chosen into mysteriously eligible souls, with a dark hinterland of mere abandonment sadly left out. The actual case: those passed over are the very ones perceived to prefer darkness in the very presence and knowledge of God from before time, deeds or the sins of mankind were there. Light has converts not conscripts.

God is who He is; and making Him what He is not, this is an abandonment, not of souls, but of His word. He gave all for all (I John 2:1-2), and it has reached many according to His word, with eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12,15). Sacrifice did not avail without the point of the hands of faith, laid on the lamb, as it does not without faith, redeem any. Nor is it at the hands of any, but God who knows all, acts, finding from the all sought, the some saved (John 1:12, 3:15-17, Romans 8:29ff.).

The agony of the Messiah, in the predicted realms of the vindictive, the vicious, the swaggering cursers and the dark-souled detractors, is at this point nearly completed ({s.22:1-21). The height of virtue having been viewed as vermin, and the wonder of truth as fiction, the glory of sacrificial love as weak, the cry goes up, and the curtain is about to fall, not only on His act of redemption, but as torn apart in the Temple; for it is HE who NOW has made open the way to the holy of holies where the blood has been placed for centuries: His own now once and for all the payment. Time is now nearly up, so He cries to His Father, "Save Me!"

21 Answer

"You have answered Me."

Never forget that call and answer. In it lies the base for spiritual life and the pathway for faith in His disciples. In Him it was perfected. As He called on His Father WHO ALWAYS HEARD Him, at the tomb of Lazarus, not that there was then any doubt about that delayed and therefore more sure resurrection of His friend, a call made so that the people might see the due sequence and be taught a laboratory lesson about prayer and its efficacy: so now He calls for His own sacrifice to be concluded.

The funding of the cost now reaches to the power of God in the resurrection of Christ. This seeming rag of ruin, despatched, despoiled, degraded, butt of impudence, scene for horror aghast, vicarious ruin of sin, its very display unit, is now to be resurrected, in normal intense purity and utter vindication; and more, index of our future who believe in Him (cf. Isaiah 26:19, I Corinthians 15, Romans 1:4)! What then did He do ? He cried to His Father. And what did HE do ? He held His Spirit and resurrected His body, as predicted, three days later with the utmost resolve and despatch.

The answer met the cry, as left hand meets right hand, when the hands are clasped.

III The Fishing for the Found Psalm 22:26-31

THE TRIUMPH AND THE PRAISE 22-29

22 His Declaration

This feat of God is to be featured, focussed. So when God heals you, as He has done at various times some of my own bodily vulnerabilities, you should not hide it. My right eye was in imminent danger, and the specialist confessed he had no adequate answer. But on the third day, in answer to prayer and anointing as in James, it was fully restored and has been ever since, an excellent thing for vision, which he has assessed (admittedly with glasses), in the figure, 100 out of 100. Praise God.

Then, many years later, my heart became irregular in test after test. Confidently and assuredly the specialist prescribed the often used rat poison with its close medical supervision. But in my heart, I was able to see no way such a life could allow the work for Christ that I am doing. Then again in our small church, we cried to the Lord: IF you want these things done, please give the heart required. The technical tests showed the situation restored, indeed excellent. There was no need for any drug, for the heart was now both regular and strong as shown in the delving ECHO test, and further cardiogram work. In both cases my GP confirmed, Yes, it was a miracle.

It is good at times to have testimony meetings in Church, for God is marvellously kind, and if He tests, it is not without limit, and if He humiliates the saved sinner, yet it is not without a great product. Blessed be God both for His travails and His triumphs, for His disciplines and His tests, for wisdom is His, and we are here to serve in whatever way, so that the wheat be the more readily harvested.

As predicted, CHRIST TOLD THE BRETHREN WHAT HAD HAPPENED and so the proclamation of the Christian Gospel proceeded, and has done so ever since.

23-24 His Repatriation - glory to God

Look at what the Lord has done! He challenged. Take heart, you afflicted , "for He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted." This is the love there is the power, that was the outcome, after pain, triumph, after ignominy, elevation. Cry, don't sigh. Seek Him in heart, and do not swerve from His holiness in depths, but surfacing, rejoice!

25 His Praise

Praise God then, and do not enter into the swamp land of ennui, disenchantment, but rather praise Him who calls you, and serve Him who sustains you, and rejoice in the Lord, for it is fitting for such a God as HE IS.

Rejoice that He can rightly say, I AM WHO I AM, so that we might rightly say, WE ARE BECAUSE HE IS, and this, We are saved because He has paid, and faith has taken what the offer was, in the profound wisdom of God, who has swept what wept to the arms of love. In the great assembly (as with the 500 brethren as in I Corinthians 15), and all but innumerable times since, it has been declared, and it is Christ who by His Spirit sends the news, and has done, for some 2000 years. Short ? not very. Long for His longing ? assuredly, but it ends and the time comes, and it is now near (Answers to Questions 5).

26-30 Prediction of Outcome

The world in its entirety will remember, whether by the very dating system so many use, founded with His birth as the target, or the Christmas which celebrates His birth, valued even where it is not understood, and not dissociated yet broadly, even where Satan rules, from His name. From every nation, His worshippers come. Rich and poor alike find in His memorial, the symbol of His satisfaction of death's claim and guilt's goad (Isaiah 53, I Peter 2). None has the answer but He, for life and death, as in His ministry and in His Person, are in His hands (cf. John 2).

Posterity ? does He have a posterity ? Yes He does, it is a generation, not of a few, but of millions down the ages, wrought in many, seen as one: THEY will be accounted to Him as a generation, the regenerate, begotten by the Spirit through the word (I Peter 1:23-2:8).

THIS generation, spread over centuries, will come and declare what God has done; and in missions and milling cities alike, in jungle and entangling weeds, over rushing rivers and in the deserts as with missionaries, Mildred Cable and Francesca French, they go.

There is the witness, that He has done this.

There is to be a poor in spirit family who will be given abundant provision. Constituted of serious seekers, this will be a praise team indeed, for as it was to be, so it is. Eternal life is now as natural as terrestrial life was, in test times. This is a Psalm of divine provision, and we are not being exhorted to live forever, as if competent for such a result, but TOLD that this is the case, as in Ephesians 1:11, I Peter 1:5ff., John 5:24, 6:50ff., I John 5:11-12. "Those who seek Him will praise the Lord. Your heart will live forever." Again the Authorised Version has it right.

A vast crusade, Spirit-led and applied, will sweep the earth, and the memory of all this being now refreshingly set before the eyes, many will turn to the Lord. Indeed, all nations will be so occupied, for the Kingdom IS the Lord's and what was immanent is now permanently perceived. Such is the prediction. Such is the prediction of the rule of His return as in Psalm 73, Isaiah 11, 59:20. The sheer incompetence of going to dreamy hopes (cf. Jeremiah 23), while yet standing up for one's imaginary rights, when wrong, is now dismissed objectively, and worship will become earth-wide, the norm.

THE NEW SET AND THE GOSPEL 30-31
30 Generation and Regeneration

Let us take it more personally for Christ. There is as the Authorised Version without addition to the words of the text, correctly translates, to be a posterity which will serve Him. It will be accounted by the Lord for a generation, indeed the spiritual generation to come. Here are His children throughout the age. No children of His own leave this gap to be filled; but here is the regenerated crew of the Vessel of Christ, who are born not of the seed of the flesh, as with man, but of the seed of the word of God (I Peter 2), to make of them a spiritual generation, an enlarged family. It is the entire family of Christ, redeemed, to live forever, a generation OVER time, from every Age.

This is HIS generation, born by regeneration, the family of the Lord of which He and He only is the head, whether in heaven or on the earth (cf. Matthew 23:8-18, Ephesians1:22-23, Romans 12). He would have all but He DOES have all of these, a vast troupe! Now He sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied (Isaiah 53:10-11), yes for each by faith making of His soul, the substitutionary sacrifice: even that of Him who, 'heard', is bodily risen (Romans 10:9)!

31 Proclamation to the future world

This family will in every Age, declare what He has done to each successive generation who comes to the earth, a massive mission force, before as time comes for each, being transferred in spirit to heaven (cf. Col. 1:13, Eph. 2:6), in His presence to await the resurrection of the body.

CONCLUSION - THE LONG DIVISION IN THE RESULT

The declaration has an implication. There is the group which constitutes the new people, race, generation, found by their partaking of the triumph; but there are those who are not so found, for whom the exhibition of Christ on the Cross is a net description of what THEY face, if they reject Him, it and the goodwill of God beyond it.

The generation with its regeneration, to become a people, implies an isolation, also seen on the Cross in Christ, for those who wilfully reject His eternal cost, and so share with each other their own eternal loss.

For these: If HE took pity on you, is it too much to ask that you take pity on your own soul (Proverbs 1) ? All men are sinners, falling short (Romans 6:23), if not of their innate sense of self-glorification, a wanton and absent-minded sin, yet short of the glory of God in whom realism is undeviating, and who is the truth. None can save himself or herself, the fault being innate and endemic, so that His salvation is dependent in all things on the love, mercy, power and saving thrust of the Lord. We have nothing to contribute: He all!

As Jonah declared (Jonah 2:9): "Salvation is of the Lord!" (Revelation 7:10 echoes it). The swirling contents of the inner compartment of the great fish, the sea-weed wrapping itself about him, the sense of being in the belly of hell, with the bars of the earth closed about him forever, these left him in no doubt. Jonah could pout and complain (Jonah 2, 4), but of this there was no doubt: from that hell inflicted because of sin, only one escape was possible, and that itself, it was both a miracle of mercy and a work of intricate and vast power. He understood, he cried to the Lord, and was saved.

Yet some do not come and call upon Him as He is and has definitively revealed Himself in Jesus Christ to be, and refusing, their souls are swirled to their just and obscured result in everlasting destruction (II Thessalonians 1:9). If on the other hand, by faith you have found in Christ crucified, "yes rather, that is risen again,"(Romans 8:34), the very type, rule and task force of your mercy, then find in Him also the depiction beyond doctrine, in life, of what it cost to prepare you for eternity, and in that cost, glory (Galatians 6:14), for it is the final testimony of love, that of God, whose love is beyond all human love, its source and its benediction.