This morning, I heard a minister say something that stopped me in my tracks.
He reminded me that the Bible’s chapters and verses are very new additions. In that era, if you wanted to draw someone’s attention to a particular passage, you’d quote the first words – similar to how we often mistake a song’s first line for its title today.
During Jesus’ days, the Bible was shared orally, and memorization was important. The psalms would have been well known by those who stood watching. According to this minister, and the idea rings true, when Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?,” He wasn’t merely crying out to God in anguish: He was intentionally pointing their hearts towards Psalm 22, a song that begins in devastation but ends in victory and a changed world.
Psalm 22 is written by David and ostensibly about him, but it is definitely prophetic and depicts the Crucifixion in astounding detail.
Anyone who, on that day, went in their thoughts to that particular psalm, and paid honest attention to its words, saw it playing out before their eyes.
But here’s the beautiful thing.
This psalm begins with suffering, with the devastation of being without God’s presence, but it ends in hope, in victory, in redemption.
Here is Psalm 22:27-31 in the NET version.
Let all the people of the earth acknowledge the LORD and turn to him! Let all the nations worship you! For the LORD is king and rules over the nations. All of the thriving people of the earth will join the celebration and worship; all those who are descending into the grave will bow before him, including those who cannot preserve their lives. A whole generation will serve him; they will tell the next generation about the sovereign Lord. They will come and tell about his saving deeds; they will tell a future generation what he has accomplished.
When at last Jesus shouted, “It is finished!” He knew the best part of our story was just beginning. Or, as I noted in the margin of my Bible, “The Cross was unimaginably horrific for Jesus to face, but He faced it knowing what would come as a result.”
And that’s why Good Friday is truly good.
Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C