A Rugged Faith for a Rotten World – Psalm 22
March 13, 2016Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Speaker: Jerry Cisar
“Has God abandoned me? Why does He ignore my prayers? Why does God allow me to be abused like that? Why has He allowed me to be treated like an animal? Does He not care?” Hopefully, you can’t relate to these questions. However, many can. Are these questions evidence of unbelief? Are they evidence of weak faith or misinformed theology? In Psalm 22, we discover that they are evidence of a rugged faith that can survive in a rotten world.
Questions like these can make us uncomfortable. Many want to change the questions, or instruct the questioner. These kinds of questions are not for every day kind of praying. They are questions born in experiences of great suffering and imminent doom. They are questions like the ones which the Psalmist of Psalm 22 asks.
It begins, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” As Christians we immediately recognize the relevance of this psalm to the cross. This may tempt us to view the whole psalm as merely prophetic of the crucifixion (since Jesus quoted it on the cross), rather seeing Jesus’ crucifixion as the ultimate fulfillment of it. In order to gain the benefit of Psalm 22 in our own walk of faith, we must first grapple with this psalm for what it originally meant before we an go to the cross and understand how the cross fulfills it.
As uncomfortable as we might be with questions like those in this psalm or at the beginning of this email, they are not questions that come from a fragile faith that is about to fail, but from a rugged faith that can survive in a rotten world. Join us as we explore the abandonment this psalm speaks of and discover how a rugged faith finds hope in the midst of it.