April 1: He Trusted in God that He Would Deliver Him
♫ Music:
Day 28 - Tuesday, April 1
Title: He Trusted in God that He Would Deliver Him
Scripture: Psalm 22:1–8, 12–21 (NKJV)
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning? O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent. But You are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in You; They trusted, and You delivered them. They cried to You, and were delivered; they trusted in You, and were not ashamed. But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people. All those who see Me ridicule Me; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, “He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him; let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!”...Many bulls have surrounded Me; strong bulls of Bashan have encircled Me. They gape at Me with their mouths, like a raging and roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all My bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it has melted within Me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue clings to My jaws;
You have brought Me to the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded Me; the congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierced My hands and My feet; I can count all My bones.
They look and stare at Me. They divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots. But You, O Lord, do not be far from Me; O My Strength, hasten to help Me! Deliver Me from the sword, My precious life from the power of the dog. Save Me from the lion’s mouth
and from the horns of the wild oxen!
Scripture #2: Mark 15:29–32 (NKJV)
And those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save Yourself, and come down from the cross!” Likewise the chief priests also, mocking among themselves with the scribes, said, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe.”
Poetry & Poet:
“A Confession to a Friend in Trouble”
by Thomas Hardy
Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I even smile old smiles—with listlessness—
Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.
A thought too strange to house within my brain
Haunting its outer precincts I discern:
—That I will not show zeal again to learn
Your griefs, and, sharing them, renew my pain. . . .
It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer
That shapes its lawless figure on the main,
And each new impulse tends to make outflee
The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here;
Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be
Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!
HE TRUSTED IN GOD THAT HE WOULD DELIVER HIM
Psalm 22 is such a dense psalm, thick and rich in meaning, and Mark 15 tells us clearly what it is all about, yet it has been hard for me to study these Scriptures. As I sink into them, the agony expressed here makes me want to turn away and do something else. Honestly folks, as I have meditated on this passage, preparing to write this devotional, I have been overwhelmed. I can hardly bear to read Psalm 22. This instinctual reaction, natural and human, is expressed in today’s poem: we don’t want to share others’ griefs, because sharing their pain renews our own!
But Jesus went into the pain of the cross on purpose—to redeem us from our sins. He did not turn away. He chose to share the pain of humans. He chose to suffer death. He did it on purpose.
And there’s the crux of it: He did this for me, for you, and because the Father told Him to do it. How could the Lord Jesus bear to do this for us? (And we know He did it willingly. He could have called legions of angels to rescue Him, remember!)
Jesus did this to save us.
And for this pain-filled sacrifice that bought our salvation, we adore Him.
Jesus went to the cross in relationship with His Father: “Abba [Daddy], not my will but Yours be done” (Mark 14:36).
So then, consider Jesus, doing this most difficult, excruciatingly hard thing in order to please His Father, trusting in His Father’s leading, obeying God His Father…only to experience His Father’s abandonment in the depths of agony and death.
Psalm 22 expresses this.
Here we see Jesus (fully God, fully man) experiencing His full humanness, drinking that cup of death that we must also drink.
And His death changed our death forever.
Because of Jesus’ agony, we brothers and sisters of Jesus have become a new type of human, a new creation, and now death is for us is a transition to the Home of our Father, not a horrifying solitary end.
But while we know the end of the story, our human experience of death is not easy, just as Jesus’ death was not easy. And like our Brother Jesus, we must go through the door of death and trust in the author of our story.
We do indeed have eternity in our hearts…
But here in these bodies? Here we will groan and cry.
And our Father gathers our tears.
He attends to our ways, but we limited humans can’t see Him fully—and like Jesus, we often feel abandoned at the times when we are being obedient and when we need Him most.
Here’s the mercy in this, my friends—He knows! Jesus knows, by experience, what it is like to be us: to be fragile and heading into a future we would rather not experience (“let this cup pass from me,” He said). Here we see Jesus tortured at the whim of evil men and mocked. And He did the holy thing that we too can do in this position—He cried out to His Father.
And He was heard.
Our part of Psalm 22 today is only the first half of the psalm that Jesus was praying while He hung on the cross. And (spoiler alert, as our music today informs us) later in Psalm 22, it says that Jesus was heard when He cried to the Father (v. 24), and that all the ends of the earth will turn to the Lord and worship the King and serve Him because “He has done it!”
The psalms teach us how to pray. And so, from today’s psalm, we learn that we can ask God “why” in the suffering of our life! And we learn that God the Father is with us even we can’t see Him in the dark times.
We learn how to pray while suffering: we learn how to use the psalms to give words to our prayers of agony and petition.
God is here with you in the pain and darkness. You are not abandoned. He hears you and He is saving you.
You are not alone. This is not the end of your story. Our Brother Jesus has gone ahead of us here and He will bring us Home. He has done it, it is finished.
Prayer:
Heavenly Father, give us the faith to trust you in the dark, and the grace to persevere without sinning. Be near us and hurry to rescue us. We are waiting for You. Come quickly and help us! We ask in the name of our Lord Jesus, who loves us and gave His life for us.
Amen.
Dr. Betsy A. Barber
Faculty Emerita, Institute for Spiritual Formation
Talbot School of Theology
Supervisor, Biola Counseling Center
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Art #1:
The Darkness at the Crucifixion
Gustave Doré
1867
Etching on paper
Printed in: Heilige Schrift, 1867 by Stuttgarter Druck und Verlagshaus Eduard Hallberger
Darkness at the Crucifixion by printmaker Gustave Doré portrays the surrounding landscape and the supernatural events that occurred during and after the crucifixion of Christ. It shows a dark and ominous sky, with storm clouds gathering over a rocky and desolate landscape. The figure of Jesus is shown hanging on the cross in the background, but the main focus of the picture is on the unsettling atmosphere that surrounds Him. The gospel of Matthew records four phenomenal events that took place when Jesus died, including: darkness came over the whole land, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, there was an earthquake, and deceased saints were raised from the dead. Doré employs reactions of the horses and soldiers to emphasize the fear and bewilderment of these supernatural manifestations.
https://explorethebible.lifeway.com/blog/adults/4-phenomenal-events-that-happened-when-jesus-died-session-12-matthew-2741-52/#:~:text=The%20Earthquake-,What%20happened:,law%20were%20fulfilled%20in%20Christ.
About the Artist #1:
Gustave Doré (1832–1883) is considered one of the most successful and prolific illustrators of the late nineteenth century. A French artist, printmaker, illustrator, and sculptor who primarily worked with wood engraving, he began his career at the age of fifteen as a caricaturist for the French paper Le Journal Pour Rire and obtained a number of commissions to illustrate scenes from books by writers such as Balzac, Byron, Milton, Poe, and Dante. Doré also created epic canvases, enormous sculptures, numerous etchings and watercolors, but his production as an illustrator remains unmatched in its scope and ambition. His achievements as an illustrator brought him tremendous public praise and critical acclaim, and his work helped shape the world of today’s comic books and graphic novels.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gustave-Dore
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/person/103KYT
About the Art #2:
The Crucifixion (diptych)
Barry Moser
1991
Wood engraving on paper
20 x 15 in.
Print from the Pennyroyal Caxton Edition of the Holy Bible
About the Art #3:
The Crucifixion of Christ
Barry Moser
1991
Wood engraving on paper
20 x 15 in.
Print from the Pennyroyal Caxton Edition of the Holy Bible
As the new millennium approached, artist Barry Moser began working with a team of expert craftsmen and scholars, for more than four years, to produce the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible. It is the only twentieth-century Bible with illustrations for every book of both the Old and New Testaments that were executed by a single artist. There are two hundred thirty-two engraved illustrations. Owing to his use of live models and photographs of real people, Moser’s illustrations imbue ancient biblical characters with a contemporary and accessible quality. Moser has described his work as “a struggle to engage not only a sacred text but the greatest monument of our language; to grapple with typography and images befitting such sanctity and monumentality; and to wrestle with the devils and angels that reside therein.”
https://www.moser-pennyroyal.com/pennyroyal-caxton-bible-about
https://special-collections.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2014/06/27/the-pennyroyal-caxton-bible-a-new-gift/
About the Artist #2 & #3:
Barry Moser (b. 1940), an American artist and engraver, and was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He put himself through his last two years of college as a Methodist preacher, but his calling to the ministry didn’t last long. He was accepted into the Theological Seminary at Vanderbilt, but he declined to attend. He moved to New England and devoted himself to teaching and to learning the crafts of etching and wood engraving. He later studied printing and typography at the Gehenna Press, one of the earliest limited edition fine arts presses in the United States. Since 1969, when he composed his first line of hand-set type, Moser has illustrated some of this century’s most beautiful private press books. Moser is world-renowned for his children’s illustrations, wood engravings, watercolors, and reinterpretations of the classics, including the Pennyroyal Press editions of Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Frankenstein, Huckleberry Finn, The Wizard of Oz, and the Pennyroyal Caxton Edition of The Holy Bible. Moser’s art is represented in numerous library and museum collections. His work has been published in more than two hundred books for children and adults. Moser, who lives in western Massachusetts, is represented at R. Michelson Galleries, the premiere source of his wood engravings, watercolors, and fine art books since 1982.
https://www.moser-pennyroyal.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Moser
https://www.rmichelson.com/artists/barry-moser/
About the Music: “Psalm 22”
Lyrics:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why have you abandoned me?
My God, my God, why are You so far away?
When I plead and plead.
My God, my God, every day I call to you.
Still You’re never answering.
My God, my God, every night I know
You hear my voice.
But I can’t quite seem to find relief.
Yet, You are holy enthroned in praise.
Israel they trusted You and they were saved.
They cried out to You and were shown the way.
Up out of darkness, up out of darkness into the place You made.
My God, my God, they’ve pierced my hands, my feet.
I can see the people counting up my bones.
My God, my God, they’ve divided what I ow,.
Among themselves and gambled for my clothes.
My God, my God, I’m captivated by a thirst.
That ties my tongue and dries up all the strength inside of me.
My God, my God, though I don’t know of who I sing,
Or what these lines so true foresee would You come quickly.
Yet, You are holy enthroned in praise.
Israel they trusted You and they were saved.
Could I cry out to You in the very same way?
Bring me up out of darkness, up out of darkness.
Up out of darkness into the place You made.
But He has not despised me
Or left me in affliction.
He did not hide his face from me,
He did not hide his face.
The humble will eat and be satisfied.
Those who seek the Lord will praise him.
The families of all nations,
The ends of the earth remember,
And people yet unborn proclaim.
He alone has all dominion.
He did not hide his face.
And He did not hide his face.
He did not hide his face. (x4)
About the Composers/Performers: Poor Bishop Hooper (Jesse and Leah Hooper)
Both hailing from small towns in central Kansas, Jesse and Leah Roberts began writing, recording, and performing together after their marriage in 2013. What began as a duo, weaving together a patchwork of melodies atop an upright bass and a guitar, has blossomed into numerous, multifaceted expressions of music, art, and ministry. Though they still often perform classic covers and simple tunes, they have been blessed to develop a vibrant musical ministry ranging from full-band, heavy mood moments like that in The Golgotha Experience, to the string-and-vocal-laden scores of Firstborn. Their most recent project, EveryPsalm, began January 1, 2020, and aims to release a psalm-based song each week until all the psalms are sung. They have shared music and conversation with thousands around the country, in venues ranging from the largest of concert halls to the smallest of living rooms. Their hearts for the Creator and the endless, bountiful inspiration He provides are ever growing. They say, “We’re thankful for all that we’ve been able to experience, and for all those who support what we’re doing!”
https://www.poorbishophooper.com/
About the Poetry and Poet:
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was a renowned and prolific English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially regarding the declining status of rural people in Britain. While Hardy regarded himself primarily as a poet, he initially gained fame as the author of novels including Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure. Innovative in his use of stanza and voice, Hardy’s poems pay attention to the transcendent possibilities of sound, line, breath, and the musical aspects of language. Hardy wrote in a great variety of poetic forms, including lyrics, ballads, satire, dramatic monologues, and dialogue.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-hardy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
About the Devotion Writer:
Betsy A. Barber, Psy.D.
Faculty Emerita, Institute for Spiritual Formation
Talbot School of Theology
Supervisor, Biola Counseling Center
Biola University
Betsy Barber has a clinical practice with specialization in the soul care and mental health of Christian workers. She has taught courses in spiritual formation, soul care, missions, maturity, and marital relationships. She has particular interest in spiritual formation and supervision of students in spiritual direction and mentoring. She worked with her husband as a missionary in Bible translation and counseling ministries for twenty-four years. In addition to being a licensed clinical psychologist, she has background and training in spiritual direction.