If you’re going through a hard time of one kind or another, it helps to have company – people around you who can give you companionship, support, love and care. It helps not to be alone. But it helps even more if the people who are with you have had some kind of experience similar to yours. It means they can relate to what you’re going through. They can begin to see life in your shoes and to empathise. Then you’re truly not alone.
Of course, nobody can actually empathise completely, and that’s because nobody is exactly you. There is nobody else who has your exact personality, your exact history, who is in your exact circumstances facing the same hardships that you do. But nevertheless, if we’ve had broadly similar experiences as we go through life, we learn how to get alongside people and support them as best we can.
As Christians, it’s a wonderful comfort for us to know that the Lord Jesus has himself suffered. The Lord Jesus himself, a full human being just like us, truly does know what it’s like to be in our shoes. But, whilst it’s comforting and whilst it’s easy to say, it can feel a bit remote – a bit theoretical. You think to yourself, does Jesus really know what it’s like? What was it like to be Jesus, suffering? After all, Jesus was fully God as well as fully human.
One of the things that’s hard about any kind of suffering is the sense of powerlessness – I’m not able to fix the situation I’m in. Jesus was not in that position. Do you remember he said, “Would I not be able to call down however many thousands of legions of angels it was, and they would come to my assistance?” So, at any point he could have ended it, which is not something that we’ve got.
As Jesus hung on the cross, must there not have been a bit of a thought at the back of his mind that said, I didn’t actually do anything wrong? I don’t actually deserve this. I’m only doing this as a favour for this lot. But it’s not actually because I’ve done loads of wrong stuff that means I need to be punished. Can Jesus really relate, or is it all a bit theoretical?
This morning’s psalm is here to give us a window into what it was like for Jesus to suffer. What this psalm will do for us this morning, I hope and pray, is two things: it will lead us to Jesus’s feet in worship, but also it will help us as Christians whenever we face hard times.
If you’re here this morning and you’re not yet a Christian, let me say to you: you are about to meet the real Jesus. No other religion in the world worships a sufferer. People broadly want a God who is full of power and miracles. Jesus is all of that – just in case you’re in any doubt – to raise yourself from the dead, that is pretty big. But for all of that, someone who was humiliated, who suffered, who died, seems weak, and people are put off worshipping him because of that.
If you’re a Christian, you might think, “Really?” Yes – loads of people, especially people from other faiths, look at this and go, “What kind of a God is that?” We’re going to meet him properly this morning.
A psalm about David
This is a psalm by King David. We’re told that in the heading. Mostly it’s a lament, as David pours his heart out to God about his suffering. But as well as being a lament, it’s also a prayer. At the beginning and at the end, David asks God to act.
So, here’s the prayer at the beginning of the psalm. Verse 1: “Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.” And then at the end – verse 21: “Lord, do not forsake me. Do not be far from me, my God. Come quickly to help me, my Lord and my Saviour.”
It turns to prayer also in the middle at verse 15: “Lord, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God.” He’s not actually asking God to act at that point, but he’s addressing God directly and he’s expressing his faith and his trust.
But this isn’t just a prayer that David prayed. This is a prayer that David recorded. It’s included in our Bibles because he shared this prayer with his people, and that’s because it’s a resource for his people – for David’s people – to have for their own prayers. This psalm will allow us to express our faith as we go through hard times, in the same way that David was able to give voice to his sufferings and express his own faith in God.
As we’ve looked through various psalms, we’ve seen again and again how King David, from 3,000 years ago, anticipated his descendant, King Jesus. Once again, we have a psalm here that Jesus would have prayed. It describes great suffering, and it describes Jesus trusting God his Father through all of that suffering.
When you think about it, this is not depressing – although I completely get why, on first reading, it sounds that way. This is awe-inspiring. We are getting to hear Jesus’s thoughts, feelings and prayers as he suffered. If we didn’t have the book of Psalms, there’s so much of what it would be like to be Jesus that we would not know. But we have it.
So, what I’m going to do for us this morning is draw out from this psalm three ways in which Jesus suffered – both to give us a window into his soul to lead us to worship, but also to give us a resource for our own prayers.
Christ suffers for his sin
Heading number one is that Christ suffers for his sin. Let me read the first eight verses again:
“Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. Your arrows have pierced me and your hand has come down on me. Because of your wrath, there is no health in my body; there is no soundness in my bones because of my sin. My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly. I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning. My back is filled with searing pain; there’s no health in my body. I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart.”
Those verses are very clear – the reason for David’s suffering is his sin. Take verse 3 as an example: David, why are you suffering? The second half of verse 3: “Because of my sin.” Which leads to the first half of verse 3: “Because of your wrath.” David has sinned, so God is angry, so David is suffering. Very clear.
You might wonder what verse 1 means: “Don’t rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.” After all, God is already disciplining David, is he not? So he must be asking to be spared the full force of God’s anger – the full, final and total judgement. It’s painful enough, David says, to be trained and disciplined by God through suffering. Don’t, please, turn the dial up to max and let me feel the full force of your anger.
Verse 4 reminds us of Jesus: “My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.” Idiomatic – more literally, like a burden others carry for me. Do you remember Jesus carrying the cross, who was too weak to carry his own crossbar up the hill, and so Simon of Cyrene had to carry that burden for him?
We can see how David suffered because of his sin. But how about Jesus? How can Jesus pray verse 3: “Because of your wrath, there’s no health in my body; there’s no soundness in my bones because of my sin”? Jesus was sinless, was he not? Or verse 18: “I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin.” Really?
Here are two other verses of Scripture that will help us:
2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21 – “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
Or Isaiah 53:6 – “We all, like sheep, have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Here’s a wonderful truth – so wonderful we talk about it often. The reason Jesus died was to pay for our sins. He took the penalty. The punishment for the things that his people have done wrong fell on him. But here’s what those two verses I just read tell you – he didn’t just take the punishment, he took the sins themselves. This is why Jesus’s death was not a miscarriage of justice. Your sins, if you’re a Christian, and my sins became his sins, and then he paid for them.
As he suffered and died, your sins and mine were paid for because they had become his.
Let me tell you about a tourist from Florida in the United States called René Remond, who travelled to Switzerland and, whilst there, discovered he had run up a mobile phone bill of $143,000 US. Just imagine that – you get back from your summer hols, there’s a letter on the doormat or an email in your inbox: “You owe us $143 grand.” That’s more than my house!
Wouldn’t it be lovely if someone just said, “Oh, sorry this happened, I’ll pay your bill”? It would be nice! They could do that, though, because the phone company does not care who pays the bill – they just want it paid. So it’s not a legal problem if somebody else was to pay your bill.
That’s why this analogy is different, because actually you do have to pay for your own sin. It is a matter of justice that somebody else can’t pay it for you – you have to pay yourself.
But here’s the thing – even though it breaks down at that point, Jesus didn’t say, “I’ll pay the bill.” Here’s what he did: he rang the telecoms company and said, “I want you to make that bill out again, please. I want you to put my name at the top. I made every call, I sent every SMS – whatever that is – and I used every byte of mobile data. That was me making those calls. Therefore, I owe you.” And then he paid it.
As Jesus suffered and died, there wasn’t a little awareness at the back of his mind that said, “I haven’t done anything really wrong.” No – he suffered as he did because he had become the worst sinner in history. Jesus was worse than Hitler, worse than Myra Hindley, worse than Pol Pot – worse than all of them combined.
I don’t know how many Christians there are in the world – estimates are probably between one and two billion. I don’t know for sure how many Christians there will be at the end of time who have lived all through history – a large, large number. The combined sin of that number of people was written to Jesus’s account, signed over into his name, and he paid in full.
Christ suffered for his sins.
Christ suffers alone
Second, Christ suffers alone.
“All my longings” – verse 9 – “lie open before you, Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you. My heart pounds, my strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes. My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbours stay far away. Those who want to kill me set their traps; those who would harm me talk of my ruin; all day long they scheme and they lie.”
Not completely alone – God was with him. Verse 9: “All my longings lie open before you; my sighing is not hidden from you.” And yet, verse 11: “My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbours stay far away.”
Because of the wounds – remember them? They were in verse 5: “My wounds fester and are loathsome.” Literally, they rot and they stink because of my sin. Because of the wounds – rotting, decaying, smelling – he describes someone unpleasant to look at, just nauseating to get too close to, so everyone hangs away.
When I was learning to drive, I found myself at one point driving along a road, and there was a van in front of us just belching large amounts of black diesel smoke. He wasn’t going desperately fast, so I ended up on his tail – not dangerously close, but quite close. The driving instructor just said to me, “Don’t get too close to him – he smells.” So I took my foot off the accelerator – or the gas, as he called it – and just dropped back a little, and the air in the car was more pleasant.
That’s what people say to David; that’s what people say to Jesus: don’t get too close to him – he smells. There’s an awful irony in the second half of verse 11: “My neighbours stay far away.” The word for neighbours is literally “those close to me”. The close ones are the ones who stay away.
Yet he was not all alone – but this doesn’t help. Verse 12: “Those who want to kill me set their traps; those who would harm me talk of my ruin; all day long they scheme and they lie.” His friends have all left, but his enemies are there as they mutter, as they plot how they can do further damage – can they end his life? His nearest and dearest are no longer near or dear, whereas those who want to harm him, to take his life, are up close.
Once again, this reminds us of Jesus. You may remember that in the garden, as he was arrested, his disciples ran in all directions – one of them, possibly the person who wrote Mark’s Gospel, was so desperate to flee he would rather leave his one item of clothing in the hands of the person who grabbed him and run away stark naked than risk being anywhere near Jesus. At his trial, Peter denied him. Peter was physically, well not in the room – just outside the room, looking through the window at Jesus. “Jesus? I don’t know him – nothing to do with me.” He was there, but he was gone.
Of course, he wasn’t completely alone, because Jesus did have the women who, we’re told, stayed near him on the cross – praise God for that. But nevertheless, abandoned, deserted, while, as we heard in our other reading, Pilate, the Jewish leaders and the soldiers were right up close, doing their very worst.
Christ suffers alone.
Christ suffers unjustly
Third, Christ suffers unjustly.
Verse 13: “I’m like the deaf who cannot hear, like the mute who cannot speak. I’ve become like one who does not hear, whose mouth can offer no reply. Lord, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God. For I said, ‘Do not let them gloat or exalt themselves over me when my feet slip.’ For I am about to fall, and my pain is ever with me. I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin. Many have become my enemies without cause; those who hate me without reason are numerous. Those who repay my good with evil lodge accusations against me, though I only seek to do what is good.”
David is suffering all of this even though he has done nothing to deserve it. Don’t confuse that with the first point I made. David was clear that he had sinned against God, but yet he has done his enemies no harm. They were repaying his kindness with evil.
Similarly, Jesus may have taken our sin and made it his, but he had done no wrong himself. He’d done nothing to hurt the people who wanted him dead. What happened was utterly unjust.
Jesus quotes a couple of psalms in John 15 – not actually this one verbatim – but this is very, very close in what it’s saying. So just listen to John 15:24–25:
Jesus says, “If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, and yet have hated me and my Father. But this is to fulfil what was written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’”
As Jesus is accused of doing things he did not do, by people to whom he had only been good, what’s his response? Verse 13: “I’m like the deaf who cannot hear, like the mute who cannot speak. I’ve become like one who does not hear, whose mouth can offer no reply.”
Or Isaiah 53:7, a great prophecy that speaks of the Lord Jesus, describes him like this: “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”
As Jesus is on trial, those trying him were astonished that he said nothing to them in reply.
What an awe-inspiring window into Jesus’s suffering.
As we look at those two petitions at the beginning and the end of the psalm – verse 1: “Lord, don’t rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath”; verses 21 and 22: “Lord, do not forsake me; do not be far from me, my God. Come quickly to help me, my Lord and my Saviour” – well, Jesus would have prayed verse 1, but he did face the full force of God’s anger.
Jesus would have prayed verses 21 and 22, but he was utterly forsaken.
But this psalm is also here in our Bibles to give voice to our prayers when we suffer. We can pray in ways that rhyme with Jesus’ own prayers.
We suffer for sin-free
Let me say something that is slightly controversial, and then I’ll explain it: all suffering is the result of sin.
All suffering is the result of sin. Specific suffering is not necessarily the result of specific sin from the person who suffers. So, take Job in the Old Testament – a deeply righteous man who suffered intensely, and all his friends could do, time and time again, chapter after chapter, was say, “Come on, Job, think a bit harder – there must have been something you did.”
Or Jesus meets a man born blind in John chapter 9, and his disciples just assume, “If someone’s suffering, it’s because they’ve done something really bad.” Only this guy was born blind, so that’s a bit of a puzzle – how do you sin before you’re born? So they’re faced with only two options. They say, “Jesus, who sinned – this man or his parents – that he was born blind?” Jesus says, “Neither.”
So, specific suffering is not always tied to specific guilt. But, God uses our suffering to discipline us, to train us to be more like Jesus.
Ask this question: Why do car accidents happen. Because nobody drives perfectly. You may drive better than most people, you probably do, but your driving is not perfect. Why? Because nobody’s is. If we lived in a world where everyone drove perfectly, there would be no accidents. That doesn’t mean that if you’re involved in an accident, your driving was at fault. But nevertheless, all accidents are the result of bad driving. (Well, that’s nearly true. A deer could jump across a road with absolutely no warning, and cars have mechanical failure that can cause an accident. But you get the point.)
When we suffer, we should talk to God about it. Verses like verses 7-8 are good one to pray: “My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body. I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart.” But the point here is that it’s never wrong to pray verses 3 and 4: “Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; there is no soundness in my bones because of my sin. My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.” We need to learn that language in our prayers. And you don’t need to be able to find a specific sin in order to pray like that.
I have a wonderful bit of news for you: as we suffer and as we pray about our sin in the midst of our suffering, Jesus has transformed that prayer.
Listen to verse 1 again and ask how we pray this as Christians: “Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.” We pray verse 1 knowing that, because Jesus went to hell for us, if we belong to him, our sin will never take us to that place – and so verse 1 will always be answered for every Christian who prays it.
We suffer alone
Second – we suffer alone. We often feel alone when we suffer. Sometimes, like Jesus, we experience loneliness. Loyalty to Jesus can cost us. Maybe your work colleagues go out for a social event but sometimes just don’t bother to invite you because you just kind of don’t fit. Maybe your extended family gathers together but they don’t always include you. Other sections of the family gather, but you just feel slightly more on the edge of things because your priorities are different and you’re a bit less close. Sometimes following Jesus gives you a loneliness like Jesus experienced.
But, like Jesus, like David, we are never alone, and we can draw great comfort from verse 9: “All my longings lie open before you, Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you.”
We suffer unjustly
We suffer for our sin. We suffer alone. Third, we suffer unjustly. Not always – sometimes we deserve our suffering – but sometimes it is just not fair. At times like that, Jesus’s example for us is both a challenge and a help:
“I’m like the deaf who cannot hear, like the mute who cannot speak; I’ve become like one who does not hear, whose mouth can offer no reply.”
Or Jesus – take 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 19: “It’s commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”
When we’ve been treated badly – mistreated for having done nothing wrong – every bone in our bodies wants to set the record straight. We want the suffering to end, but we also want the world to know we never deserved it in the first place. Jesus did not say a word. Why not? Verse 15: “Lord, I wait for you; you will answer, O Lord my God.”
When you are treated badly by others, are you able to wait for the Lord – to know that he will answer in his own time? Trust yourself to the God who judges justly and say nothing? Jesus did.
Conclusion
What a privilege to hear our King’s prayer in the thick of his suffering. Brothers and sisters, we worship a suffering Saviour. But Jesus is not weak – he chose to take all of the sins of all of his people, and it crushed him to death. What strength it takes to bear that to the very end and say nothing about it.
Then Jesus shares his prayer life with us through King David, his forerunner, so we can learn to bring our sin before the Lord when we suffer. We can learn that we can be very alone when we suffer, and yet there is the precious, precious truth that none of our sighs and our longings are hidden from our God. We learn that God will come to our aid. We don’t need to prove our innocence or make things right – we can leave it all to him, and we can wait for him.
As the psalm ends: “Come quickly to help me, my Lord and my Saviour.”