What probably took a lifetime of suffering for David to feel this deep sense of God-forsakenness, the Lord Jesus experienced on a single day, in the span of about three hours on that first Good Friday. Then and there he did not just feel forsaken by God, like we do at times; he was forsaken by God—his own Father—in a way that we, that David, never experienced. And it was at the end of this outpouring of God’s dark wrath on the cross that Jesus cried out with a loud voice, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

That Jesus was so forsaken by God ought to humble us to the very core; sometimes it should cause us to tremble. The darkness came, God’s wrath came upon my Saviour and Lord because of me! My sin, my failures, my pride, my discontentment, my covetous desires, and unwillingness to love and serve others as I ought—that is why he was forsaken by God. Ashamed I hear my mocking voice, call out among the scoffers. I hope you hear your own voice among them too. And it wasn’t just my sin. It was yours, it was ours. Every failure on our part to obey God fully, every callous word, every refusal to honour our parents and others in authority, every look of lust or unchaste act we have committed, every gift we have squandered, every relationship we have broken, every word we have twisted, all the gossip and slander, all the grudges we hold on to, and whatever else—is why that God-forsaken darkness fell upon Jesus. It was all bottled up and then poured out onto Jesus during those three wretched hours of darkness! No wonder,he cried out those haunting words of Psalm 22:1, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Beloved in the Lord, you are the reason, I am the reason Jesus was forsaken.

For David, much of what he describes in Psalm 22:1 is figurative language. We know of no instance where his bones were ever out of joint, or his hands and feet ever being pierced. That is not to minimize his suffering. That he describes his suffering in this way reveals how deeply David suffered at the hands of evil men. But after reading Psalm 22:12–18 we realize that when it really comes down to it, this is a prophetic psalm. It is more about David’s Son than about David. The Holy Spirit has so guided David in this psalm so as to point God’s people to Jesus, the one who would actually suffer in such a horrific way.