But in the last part, from verse 22 on, He has brethren who are associated with Him, and so in verse 22 we enter into His resurrection life, the work of the Cross all in the past. There are enemies reproaching Him, but He is alone as He bears our sins before God. In the first twenty-one verses the holy Sufferer is alone. The Psalm divides into two parts, the first twenty-one verses stand together, and then from verses 22 to 31 we have the second division. In the Hebrew the neuter and the masculine pronouns are exactly the same, and this is in the middle voice so that actually it could be translated, “They shall come, and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that it is finished.” So it begins with the cry that speaks of Him as the great sin offering, and it ends with the cry that tells that His work is finished. This Psalm begins with what someone has called “Immanuel’s orphaned cry,” “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” And in the Hebrew text it ends with His cry of triumph, “It is finished!” You will not find this in our authorized version but will find the words, “They shall come, and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that He hath done this.” You will observe that the word “this” is in italics which means that there is nothing in the original text answering to it. It tells us that it is a Messianic Psalm and when we turn to consider it, we find that it gives us the thoughts of the heart of our blessed Lord during those hours of darkness when He was taking our place, when He was made sin for us. That immediately carries our minds back to this 22d Psalm. In the sin offering we have the Lord Jesus Christ made sin for us “that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” The New Testament does not tell us a great deal of what went on in the heart and mind of our blessed Lord when He was undergoing the awful judgment of God against sin, but we have something that guides us and helps us to understand in the fact that just as the three hours of darkness were coming to an end the Lord Jesus cried in the agony of His soul, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt. Psalm 40 is the Psalm of the burnt offering, Psalm 85 is that of the peace offering, Psalm 69 that of the trespass offering, and Psalm 22 is the Psalm of the sin offering. The other offerings are the burnt offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering. Every act of that holy life of His went up to God as something in which He could delight. We have seen already that in Psalm 16 we have the blessed Lord Jesus presented as the meal offering, and this speaks of the perfection of His life. The one in which there was no sacrifice of life is called the meal or the meat offering, the word “meat” being used there for food, the food offering. Four of these involved the sacrifice of life the other one did not. In the early part of the book of Leviticus we have five different offerings. In John 10 He says, “I am the good Shepherd.” In Hebrews 13 He is called “the great Shepherd” as “brought again from the dead” and in 1 Peter 5, looking on to His second coming when the under shepherds will give an account to Him, He is spoken of as “the chief Shepherd.” Some one long ago suggested that in Psalm 22 we have the Good Shepherd-giving His life for the sheep in Psalm 23, the Chief Shepherd in resurrection life guiding His people through the wilderness of this world, and in Psalm 24, the Great Shepherd coming again in power and glory to bring in everlasting blessing. It has been pointed out often that our blessed Lord is referred to in the New Testament as the Shepherd under three different aspects.
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