Lenten Devotional - Week Four

Music and Art

Play the audio file and click on the image to enlarge it.

As you listen to the intensely beautiful instrumental music and look at the Crown of Thorns, what raw emotions do you feel?

Scripture

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?

My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest.

Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the one Israel praises.

Psalm 22:1-3 (NIV)

Poetry

Christ's sufferings and exaltation.

Now let our mournful songs record
The dying sorrows of our Lord,
When he complained in tears and blood,
As one forsaken of his God.

Religious leaders* beheld him thus forlorn,
And shake their heads, and laugh in scorn:
"He rescued others from the grave;
Now let him try himself to save.

"This is the man did once pretend
God was his Father and his Friend
If God the blessed loved him so,
Why doth he fail to help him now?"

Barbarous people! cruel priests!
How they stood round like savage beasts!
Like lions gaping to devour,
When God had left him in their power.

They wound his head, his hands, his feet,
Till streams of blood each other meet;
By lot his garments they divide,
And mock the pangs in which he died.

But God, his Father, heard his cry;
Raised from the dead, he reigns on high,
The nations learn his righteousness,
And humble sinners taste his grace.

Psalm 22 Poem (Issac Watts)

*Adapted from the original

Devotional

By Brady Randall

Jesus is the holy, suffering King. While Jesus was suffering in anguish as He was nailed to the cross, He quoted and identified with King David in Psalm 22 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” While only Psalm 22:1 is quoted, Jesus appears to identify with the entire Psalm from being mocked to casting lots for his clothing, to ultimately resting in and entrusting Himself to His Faithful, Holy Father.

Jesus was not just a forsaken King. He was the Holy King—the One who was set apart and forsaken so that those who put their trust in Him would never be. Psalm 22:3 proclaims the holiness of this God: “Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises.” Despite the agony of the cross, Jesus set His hope on the unchangeable holiness of God. There is no one like Him. Jackie Hill Perry in her book Holier than Thou contemplates the wonderous truth of knowing this holy God. “If God is holy, then He can’t sin. If God can’t sin, then He can’t sin against me. If he can’t sin against me, shouldn’t that make Him the most trustworthy being there is?”

When the storms of your own life come to pass, I invite you to lift your eyes to the only One who knows and identifies with your plight. Like Jesus, for those of us who hope in Him, our suffering in Christ will also result in glory. (1 Peter 4:13) As you prepare your heart this Lenten season, remember this: If this Holy King is for you, who or what could stand against you? 

Reflect

1. How does the reality of Jesus’ suffering and being forsaken in your place motivate you to respond?

2. Meditate on this quote from Jackie Hill Perry: Christians…are only able to be holy, a visible and discernable state of being, if they have been gifted with a holy nature. We can only be what we really are, and if born anew, we have an inner glory shining forth from the spirit of the living God who is the agent of our very own transfiguration. Bright enough for the world to see. Real enough to prove that to be a Christian is to be authentic and thus display the holiness of becoming a new nature.”