12 Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. 13
Roaring lions tearing their prey open their mouths wide against me. 14
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart
has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. 15 My strength is dried
up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me b
in the dust of death. 16 Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has
encircled me, they have pierced c my hands and my feet. 17 I can count
all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. 18 They divide my garments
among them and cast lots for my clothing. 19 But you, O LORD, be not far
off; O my Strength, come quickly to help me. 20 Deliver my life from the
sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. 21 Rescue me from
the mouth of the lions; save d me from the horns of the wild oxen. 22
I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you.
- Psalm 22:12-22, The New International Version, (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan Publishing House) 1984.
Irvin had come to
It wasn’t far from the
ground to the foot of the cross either.
Maybe at the most Jesus’ feet were three feet off the ground. Maybe his head was eight or nine feet from
the ground. But what Jesus saw from that
cross and what others saw from the ground were two different worlds. The Psalmist tells us what Jesus saw when He
looked down from that cross. If David
was the author of this psalm then these words were written a thousand years
before Jesus was put on the cross. It
amazes me that these words have all the accuracy and all the power of some one
who is an eye witness. He knows what he
sees. He feels what he is saying. Look with me then through the eyes of Jesus
as He hangs on the cross and see three things.
See the final battle. See the
deliverance in the battle. See the
response to the deliverance.
People who have near brushes
with death will say things like, “I dodged the bullet that time. Boy, that was a close one. God was with me or I wouldn’t be here
today.” All these comments indicate that
the people who had this frightening experience understand that they escaped. They
know they have gotten by to fight for another day. But behind that understanding is another
understanding that somewhere, some day there will be a final battle and we will
die. There is no doubt in Jesus’ mind
that He has come to His final battle and that His death is imminent. He knows He is dying because of the enemies
He sees around Himself and because of what He feels happening within His own
body. He sees His enemies as bulls,
lions, and dogs. Those of you who know a
little about animals know that bulls are very aggressive animals. They are large and many of them have large
horns. They chase their prey and gore
them with their horns and trample them under their hooves. Lions open their huge mouths and tear their
prey with their big teeth and their strong jaws. The dogs are mongrels. These are not tame dogs. They are not lap dogs. They slink around hunting for the weak and
the defenseless. Banding together like a
band of wolves they circle and move in for the kill.
As we see the church leaders
and the Roman soldiers and the Roman officials standing around Jesus’ cross; As
we hear the jeers that come from their lips and the cruelty of their laughter;
As we see the enjoyment they derive from driving home the nails and watching
the effects on Jesus’ body and face we see that these are the bulls and the
lions and the dogs that Jesus is speaking of.
As they mock him and as they
throw dice to win his clothes not even waiting until He is dead to take His
belongings Jesus also sees His body breaking down from the wounds and the
stress. He is poured out like water. He feels His strength ebbing away. His bones pull apart from the strain of
hanging on the cross. His heart starts
to give out from the pain and the dehydration.
He is drier than a broken piece of pottery. His tongue clings to the roof of his
mouth. His thirst rages. His muscles disappear. He can count every rib in His body. He knows there is no escape this time.
But what really makes this
final battle tough for Jesus is that this is pay day. Do you ever hear how glibly people speak of forgiveness? They minimize their wrongs and then they say,
“Oh, God will forgive me. It’s not a
problem. Lighten up.” How easily we rationalize and minimize the
consequences of our actions as we say, “It didn’t really hurt anybody. It’s my body and I can do what I want with
it. We are consenting adults. They’ll get over it.” It seems to me that the popular conception of
sin is that somehow it vaporizes and just disappears into the atmosphere. Well, think of sin being like manure. As the farmer empties the manure from his cows
into one of those liquid manure tanks it doesn’t vaporize. It fills up and then it has to be emptied and
everybody in the neighborhood knows when it is being emptied. Sin has consequences. It collects and gathers and multiplies and
the only way it can be forgiven is if some one pays. Some one has to take it. Some one has to haul it away. As Jesus looks at the bulls around His cross
and His body breaking down He sees above Him a tank larger than any dairy
farmer has on his farm tipping over and spilling its contents on His head. The sins of Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin,
Caesar Augustus, Osama Bin Laden, and every human being come pouring down upon
Him. Every fantasy you and I have
had. Every lustful and hateful
thought. Every time we failed to lift a
finger to help some one. Every time we
failed to speak a word of truth or comfort.
It all comes down upon Him. And
that is what really hurts. The father
lets the tank tip on Him. The Father
remains silent while it happens. The
skies darken. Can even Jesus handle such
a load? Can He handle such an
injustice? Can He not be washed away in
the flood of this filth?
If I were Jesus at the
moment that all this comes down on me I would see no hope. I would be filled with terror and despair and
rage that this would be my final hour.
But Jesus sees beyond the bulls and the flood that sweeps toward Him
like a tidal wave. He remembers that He
and the Father talked about this. They
had decided that there was no other way.
The cup had to be drunk. He sees
that the Father will deliver Him. “Come
quickly to help me,” Jesus cries. “You
can rescue my soul from the dogs and the horns of the bulls.” With eyes that see beyond what earthly eyes
can see. Eyes that can see the throne of
God and the councils of God and the heart of God Jesus is able to see that even
from the flood of the sins of all people who have ever lived on the face of
this earth there is deliverance.
Jesus responds to that hope
of deliverance. He speaks words of
comfort to His mother. He promises
heaven to the thief beside Him. In a
couple of days He will stand with His brothers in a locked room and praise His
father by saying, “Peace be unto you.”
In every place and to every person Jesus will speak of sin forgiven, sin
paid for, sin’s power broken. Death
turned from punishment to the passageway to eternity.
As I minister to the dying I
see the bulls that the Psalmist speaks of in our text. For most dying people those bulls are their
conscience. As people see their life
coming to an end they inevitably think of what they have done and their
conscience accuses them. They know that
they have done things that have hurt people.
They have failed to do what they should have. They know the damage has been done. They feel hemmed in and surrounded by these
things. They feel the breath of the
bulls on their faces. What makes their
dying and our dying different from Jesus is that Jesus faced those bulls and took
their power from them.
So as Barbara and I talked
about dying this past week Barbara expressed doubts if there was a heaven or
not. “No one really knows do they?” She
said. I said, “It is true that no one
has come back to tell us about heaven.
The details are not spelled out as to what it will all be like but Jesus
said, ‘In my father’s house are many mansions.
I go to prepare a place for you.’”
And then I asked Barbara, “What would you like in your mansion that
Jesus has prepared for you?” Barbara’s
face lit up and she said, “Oh, I would like a waterfall in my room and trees
and flowers.” And then her face became
serious and she said, “I was baptized as a child but I have never really gone
to church. Would God let me come back to
Him now?” Barbara could feel the bulls
circling around her. Because I knew that
Jesus had sent those bulls packing and Jesus had told the story of the prodigal
son I could tell Barbara, “Oh, yes, you can come back. God has a robe for you and a ring for your
finger and a room for you to stay.”
We all have a story to tell
don’t we? We have seen the view from the
cross. We have seen the battle and the
cost of it. We have seen the deliverance
and we have people that we can tell this story to. Every one of us knows some one who is in a
nursing home. Every one of us works with
some one who may have serious health problems or personal and family
problems. They are overwhelmed by the
stresses they face and they are looking for some one to talk to. They want to tell some one of their
pain. They want to ask the questions
that have come up in their hearts. They
want to ponder the meaning of life. They
want to find some purpose in their situations.
And they can’t find any one who will sit with them.
I think one of the reasons
why this is so is that pain and suffering are scary. It is so intense when people let it out. It is like standing in front of a blast
furnace. That is why I think it is so
important that we stand before Jesus’ cross.
We have to face the intensity of what happened there if we are going to
face the intensity of what is happening in the lives of people around us. Seeing Jesus’ suffering. Understanding Jesus’ suffering helps us to
enter the suffering of those around us.
So don’t let this Lenten season go by without offering your heart and
your ear to some one who is hurting so they know the bulls have been killed,
the dogs have been banished, the lions mouths have been shut.
This old cross that is
standing here in our church is pretty ugly, isn’t it? But it isn’t half as ugly as the one that
Jesus died on. And yet this cross is our
foundation. It is our source. It is our glory. May this old song stick in your head and help
you remember this truth. It goes like
this: On a hill far away – stood an old
rugged cross – the emblem of suffering and shame. – And I love that old cross –
where the dearest and best – for a world of lost sinners was slain. – So I’ll
cherish the old rugged cross – till my trophies at last I lay down. – I will
cling to the old rugged cross – and exchange it some day for a crown. Amen.