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Introduction

In Forsaken For Us All Part 3 we will continue to examine the great Messianic text of Psalm 22 together. Our Memory and Meditation Verses as we prepare to Remember the Crucifixion on Friday April 18th, 2025 are Psalm 22:1-15. This series aim is to improve and guide our Christian meditation together. Read Forsaken For Us All Part 1 or Part 2 before going any further if you’d like.

Forsaken & Scorned

In Psalm 22, David is prophetically witnessing the Crucifixion. He sees it from the first-person perspective. His vision involves not only what Jesus sees but also what He felt. “My God, my God, what have you forsaken me? (Psalm 22:1)” is a visceral complaint. He is responding to the injustice committed against Him. He counters His feelings with the truth that He had gathered from historical theology. Jesus knew the stories of God’s faithfulness to His people. He drew them to praise God in His moment of greatest agony. “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them (Psalm 22:3-4).” In verse 6 Jesus shifts His focus, as we will see in what follows in Forsaken For Us All Part 3, from feeling forsaken by God to feeling scorned by men. “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people (Psalm 22:6).” 

Scorned By Mankind

In the OT, there is the sacrifice of the Scapegoat. We derive the term “scapegoat” from the Old Testament sacrifice. In the modern world we describe a situation as scapegoating when people blame someone simply because they need someone to blame. The crowd demands justice, and the rulers deliver it—targeting someone, guilty or not—because if no one pays for the crime, the rulers themselves risk facing the consequences. Scapegoats are plug-and-play justice. Authorities scapegoat others when they need to say, “Oh, that’s been dealt with.”

Another name we use for scapegoat is “Patsy.” A Patsy is somebody to blame so they can take the fall. Criminals frame a Patsy to take the fall for what they have done. You can’t charge them with the crime if somebody else is already being punished for it. 

The Day of Atonement & The Scapegoat

In Forsaken For Us All Part 3, let us return to the Old Testament and examine “the scapegoat” sacrifice. The priest offered the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement, as described in Leviticus 16. The day of Atonement is what the author of Hebrews describes in Hebrews 9:6-7. “These preparations having thus been made, the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties, but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people (Hebrews 9:6-7).” It is a blood sacrifice from one of two male goats. The priest offered one goat as a sacrifice. He laid his hands on the second goat, confessed the sins of the people over it, and then released it into the wilderness. The scapegoat carried Israel’s sins away on his back.  

Two Goats One Christ

The two goats are the same goat. The scapegoat sacrifice and release on the Day of Atonement tells us what the One Christ accomplished. He died for our sins and, in so doing, carried them away into the wilderness of the grave. In the Wilderness as they wandered for those forty years God provided water from rocks, manna from heaven, and meat from heaven, too, as the quail blew into their camp, falling from the sky. God had to provide these things because the wilderness has no life it. It is lifeless, like the grave.

Feeling Forsaken But Actually Scorned

The Father and Son agreed to send the Son to save us from our sins. Theologians call this the Covenant of Redemption. 

“Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; 6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. 7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. (Hebrews 10:5-7; Psalm 40:7)’”

When Christ asks the Father, “Why have you forsaken me?” He is expressing how He feels but knows it is not the truth, so He counters it with praise. In Forsaken For Us All Part 3, however, I want us to see that when Jesus complains about His treatment at the hands of men, He is not talking about feelings but cold, hard facts. We, humanity, scorned Him. Worse. We murdered Him. We charged the Holy Eternal Logos as a criminal and trampled Him like a worm beneath our boot heel. Not satisfied to just kill Him, we mocked Him in His death. 

Bearing Witness Against Us

Christ on the Cross, with the exception of the words He spoke to John and Mary, were all prayers. On the Cross, Jesus directs His focus toward Heaven. So when He says in Psalm 22:6-8, “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; 8 “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” He is bringing these things to the Father’s special attention. In Forsaken For Us All Part 3, we can see that Christ is bearing witness against us on the Cross, and to quote John, we know His “testimony is true (John 5:31).”

While We Were Enemies

Christ Jesus’ witness against us on the Cross should lead us to repentance. “Or” do we “presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead” us “to repentance (Romans 2:4)?” Consider the great kindness of Christ Jesus Who, while we were murdering him and scorning Him on the Cross, continued to willingly die for us as an offering for our sin, the chiefest of which we were committing at that moment. 

We wickedly and unjustly treated Him. If we were treated thusly by our enemies, we would desire bathe in their blood, not shed ours for them. “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:4-5).” 

As we close Forsaken For Us All Part 3, let me encourage you to Look to Christ’s “loving-kindness.” Where should we look for it? In His healing of our diseases and other miracles during His earthly ministry? No they attested to Who He is, along with His resurrection. No, the Apostles point to one place to see the loving kindness of God in all its wonder and glory: on the Cross where Jesus died. There, “while we were enemies (Romans 5:10)” and “children of wrath like the rest of mankind (Ephesians 2:3),” Christ Jesus saved us from the wrath that is to come (Colossians 3:6) by drinking the cup of wrath to its dregs and leaving none left for us. 

Forsaken For Us All Part 4

In Forsaken For Us All Part 4, we will move on to verses Psalm 22:9-11. Again, we get to continue the unbelievable privilege of listening to Jesus pray. The Apostles says, “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when He suffered, he did not threaten but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly (1 Peter 2:23).” In our next installment, we will Lord Willing, see what “entrusting himself” to God looks and sounds like. Stay tuned. 

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Go in peace to love and serve the Lord,

Pastor Jeremy

Additionally, you can read our previous Series Christ, His Church, & Marriage if the mood strikes ya!