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Father, we come again to thee because we need thee. And we come again at the end of this last day of this session together. We thank thee for all that thou hast done to us, for us, and been with us. And we praise thee for thy word, which we've read and thought about. We need the gracious help of our spirit again this morning and today, as we look at thy word in the interpretation of the sacred page, and we just pray that you will help us. And we pray, Lord, that again, as we look at the scriptures and investigate them, our hearts might be enraptured by the wonder and the beauty, the glory of the one who we love, the man whom thou delightest to honor.
So, Lord, grant thy help to us now, we ask in our Savior's name. Amen. We're going to look this morning, first of all, at Psalm sixty nine. Psalm three, Yitjovi to the chief musician upon Shushan Im.
Psalm of David. Save me, O God, for the waters are coming to my soul. I sing in deep mire where there is no standing. I'm coming to deep waters where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying. My throat is dried. Mine eyes fail while I wait for my God. They that hate me without a cause more than the hairs of my head. They that would destroy me, be mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty. Then I restored that which I took not away.
O God, thou knowest my guiltiness. It's a word which is, uh, better than the word foolishness, and, uh, uh, you might find that some other translations have it that way. O God, thou knowest my guiltiness, and my sins are not hid from thee. Let not them that wait on me, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake. Let not those that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel. Because for thy sake I have borne reproach, shame hath covered my face, and become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother's children. For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up, and the reproaches of them that reproach thee are fallen upon me.
When I wept and chastened my soul with fasting, that was to my reproach. I made sackcloth also my garment, and I became a proverb to them. They that sit in the gate speak against me, and I was a song of the drunkards. But as for me, my prayer is unto thee, O Lord, in an acceptable time. O God, in the multitude of mercy, hear me in the truth of thy salvation. Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink. Let me be delivered from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters. Let not the water flood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me.
Hear me, O Lord, for thy loving kindness is good. Turn unto me according to the multitude of thy tender mercies. Hide not thy face from thy servant, for I'm in trouble. Hear me speedily. Draw nigh unto my soul and redeem it. Deliver me because of mine enemies. Thou hast known my reproach and my shame and my dishonor. Mine adversaries are all before me. Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none.
They gave me also gold for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Let their table become a snare before them. And that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap. Let their eyes be darkened that they see not. Make their loins continually to shake. Pour out an indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. Let their habitation be desolate, and let none dwell in their tents. For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten, and they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded. That iniquity unto iniquity, and that will not come into thy righteousness, that will be brought it out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous.
For I am poor and sorrowful, that thy salvation, O God, set me up on high. I will praise the name of God with a song, will magnify him with thanksgiving. This also shall please the Lord better than an ox or bullock that have horns and hooves. The humble shall see this and be glad, and your heart shall live that seek God. For the Lord healeth the poor and despiteeth, despiteeth not his prisoners, that the heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moveth therein. For God will save Zion and will build the cities of Judah, that they may dwell therein and have it in possession.
The seed of his servants shall inherit it, and we that love his name shall dwell therein. Now, we were looking, uh, there so at Psalm twenty two, and and this Psalm closely parallels the twenty second Psalm, but uh, there is a difference of emphasis. In Psalm twenty two, the main theme is the fact of being forsaken by God. Here, the main theme is rather that of being reproached by men, and you will notice that the word reproach comes in a number of occasions, and it is, uh, reproached, uh, and it comes from from men.
Uh, the Psalm, like Psalm twenty two, touches the profoundest depths of, of sorrow, and those depths which are in this Psalm were only trodden by one person, uh, and, and that was the Son of God himself. Now, this is one of the Psalms which is quoted many, many times in the New Testament. Um, some think that this particular Psalm is quoted more than any other in the New Testament. Uh, certainly it's quoted often in the New Testament, and uh, you can pick out those quotations. For instance, when you look at verse four, uh, it says that they that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head.
And in the up- in the um passages in in in, John, which deal with the, well, Jesus uh talking to his own before the cr- before the crucifixion, in chapter fifteen, he actually quotes this, they hated me without a cause, almost at the end of his ministry to them there. Then if you look at verse eight, it says, I have become a stranger unto my brethren, alien to my mother's children. And, uh, if you take it on its wider sense, the, uh, statement in the beginning of John, which says he came unto his own, and his own received him not, but later on in John's gospel, it tells us in chapter seven, neither did his brother believe in him.
And so you have that fulfilled in the Gospels. In verse nine, the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. And of course, that occurs in John chapter two when he cleansed the temple, that is actually quoted there. And then again, you will find it not only there, but you find it in the Epistle of the Romans, for even Christ pleased not himself, but as it is written, uh, I'm sorry, uh, uh, you'll find another verse, um, here i- in this passage, and I've quoted the wrong verse for a moment, but you'll find another verse in the, uh, in in in in the Epistle of the Romans, which is quoted from this particular psalm, uh, when the Lord talks about the approach of those who approached God falling upon him.
The Apostle Paul quotes that in Romans chapter fifteen. So, verse nine, the second half of verse 9, that approach, then that approach thee are fallen upon me. First half is found in John two, and the second half Paul quotes in Romans chapter fifteen. Then, uh, in verse 12, they that in the gate speak against me, I was the song of the drunkards. And, uh, the picture that you have, of course, in the Gospels of that is of the people who are passing by wagging their heads, and of the comments of the soldiers at the foot of the cross. Uh, and, uh, the, uh, story is about soldiers who did, who crucified was because of the grisly nature of their task, um, they were given, uh, wine to drink, and, uh, the statements which are found in the gospel seem to indicate the, that was so in this case.
Then when you look down to verse twenty one, you will notice that it says reproach has broken my heart and full of heaviness. Uh, oh, sorry, verse twenty one. or you know, verse twenty there, verse twenty one, they gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. And John nineteen um, quotes that. Uh, it quotes it in saying that the Lord Jesus, knowing that all things were accomplished, the scripture might be fulfilled, set high first, and then they gave him that to drink. And then, uh, you'll notice that in verse eight, that they'll be blotted out of the book of the living and not be written of the righteous.
And that has, uh, a, a foreshadowing of a statement in hi- in the condemnation of, uh, Judas in Acts chapter one, let his habitation be desolate, no man dwell in, he should take another place. And again, in Romans chapter eleven, the apostle quotes this verse, uh, i- in that chapter and the tenth verse. So when you look down through this psalm, and I, there may be more than I looked at, but certainly those can be quote picked out as being quoted in the New Testament. So there's a psalm which is quoted of the Lord Jesus fairly frequently, very frequently in the New Testament, and passages in concerning his crucifixion, um, are indicated in the New Testament as being fulfilled.
We go look at this psalm then, and I want to look at it, uh, i- in a very briefly, if I can. Um, I want to look at it in this way. First of all, from verses one to twelve. And in verses one to twelve, I'm putting down the, the heading for that, despair of himself. Notice, uh, that in this psalm you have this sort of mingling of, uh, what I'm called despair, I'm not quite sure this is exactly what I want, but certainly you also have the, the balancing truth of, of trust. But in this first part, you notice how it starts, save me, O God, for the waters are coming to my soul. And, uh, in the first six verses, i- it is factual.
He's dealing with the facts of the case, what has happened, how he sees it. Save me, O God, for the waters are coming to my soul. I sink in deep mire and weary my crying, they hate you, of course, more than my head, and so on. So he's dealing with the facts of it, and it's a very factual description. Notice the words here, mire, deep waters, no standing, floods. And along with those words, there goes the, there go the prayers, the pleas for deliverance. Save me, O God. Uh, I wait for my God. Um, uh, and you have let them not that wait on you, O Lord, not be ashamed for my sake.
And so you have these pleads which come in along with these other words which indicate, uh, his suffering. And so it indicates quite graphically for us the desperate straits into the, into which the Lord Jesus, uh, descended on behalf of those he loved. Now let's think of some of the phrases. The waters, and when you talk of those, in the Psalms generally, you get this picture of waters as being, uh, an image of great danger. Uh, you remember in Psalm forty two, in the Psalm when the psalmist is quite depressed, he talks of all thy ways and all thy billows come into my soul, and it's a picture of grave danger, extreme danger.
And then the phrase into my soul is an interesting one. Uh, in the prophecy of Jeremiah, the, the prophet uses it as a phrase to describe a, describe something which is endangering one's life. And so it's expressive of a peril which is threatening the life of the person who says it. And then, you know, again, as you look at it, his enemies have no cause for their enmity, because he says in verse four, they that hate me without a cause. There was no cause for in enmity. In in him there was no sin. Uh, he never wronged anyone, and that's why he never had to apologize, never had to say he was sorry.
He never did or said anything that was wrong. And uh, because he had no sin, because there were no these things in him, his enemies did indeed hate him without a cause. Now, he then surprised the reason for his being so treated, and uh, being in deep mire. And verse five tells us, O God, thou knows, knows my guiltiness and my sins which are not hidden from thee. Now, I said something about the, the, the same idea which is expressed in another psalm yesterday.
Uh, and I just want to repeat something of that in a moment, uh, about, uh, it here. But one of the things which is, is, uh, is said in the previous verse, end of verse four, is that he restored that which he took not away, uh, and he restored to God the love and obedience of which man had rebelled him. But at the same time, when you come to verse six, you have this, verse 5 rather, you have this verse, oh God, thou knows my foolishness, my sins are not hidden from thee. And yesterday I said that when he had no sins of his own, he was sinless and holy.
And I mean, we hold very firmly to that. Uh, we believe in the intrinsic holiness of Christ. We believe that he was impeccable, not simply sinless, but impeccable. And the only way you can really look at this here is that, uh, he voluntarily charged himself with man's guiltiness and sins and called them his own. But in actual fact, he had them, but he was made as Bishop Lowy's translation of, uh, one verse in Isaiah fifty three says he was made accountable for them, and in that sense is the only way you can look at these.
This is very startling language in verse five. and it can be regarded only as the Lord, as he is viewed as voluntarily identifying himself with his people's sins, confessing their guilt as his own. More actually, of course, he didn't know sin, was he never sinned, but he was made sin on their behalf, and so by his vicarious suffering, he made full atonement, restoring that at the end of verse four, which he took not away. But there was an added in- ingredient to his, this bitter cup, and it comes in the next verse.
Let not them that wait on me, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed for my sake. Let not those that seek me be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel. And here's an added agreement. Uh, what he's saying here is this, that it might appear to some that God is inactive in response to his prayer, inactive in delivering him out of his deep distress. And that is coupled with the causeless hatred of the Hans onlookers, and these two facts give him some concern because he is concerned for the divine honor, for God's honor, for the honor of God's name, and he's concerned lest the thought might be in people's minds and the onlookers' minds that God's mercy was unusually slow.
They hadn't come to help him, and even unavailable for one who was in desperate need. And so he doesn't want them to have that thought, and he feared that believing souls, uh, should be deflected from faith and delivered, uh, and and uh God's name dishonored because of what they saw in his sufferings. It's amazing the way to look at it, but that's how he was said, what he's looking at that. You see, again, like these great men of old, his chief concern was for the honor of his God, and that God's name might not be dishonored by what they must might have misinterpreted in his sufferings.
And then I want to go on from verses one to six and look at the next little section, and we're going to look at the next six verses, and now he analyzes it, and so it's now not factual, but sorry. Yeah. Uh, just uh, that, that verse has always been something to my heart, you know, Yeah. different things explode, and uh, let not those who wait for thee, O Lord, go, you know, God won't be ashamed of me, and I, I, Peter is a title that. Uh, they all forsook him and fled.
Uh, as they went on that road to Amaya, we had hope that it would be him. In other words, it seems like there were many who had believed in God and had believed that he was God's Messiah. Yes. And so as they, uh, saw what was coming upon him, the danger was that their faith would be broken and that sense. Yes. Uh, and so the two thoughts. One is that even when he was hanging on the cross, the concern of his heart was for the sheep and the bottle that he trusted. Yes. He was scared. Yes. That because of the horrendous reproaches that fell on him and the humiliation of the cross, their faith in the God of Israel might not be broken.
Yes. I, I would link that with what Israel's, uh, intent was in crucifying him. Yeah. You know, when they said it is not lawful for us to cruci- to put anybody to death. Obviously, that, that was a lie in the sense that they didn't care. They still did it anyway, like they did with Stephen. Mm. But when it came to the Lord Jesus, they were no longer just simply interested in putting him to death. They were interested in hanging him on a tree. In other words, a public declaration that this one, whom some had thought was the anointed, would be hung on a tree as evidence of dying under the curse of God, like Israel did to the kings in the land of Canaan.
They hung him on trees that those people they defeated might never believe that those kings or what they had stood for could ever stand before God again. So their desire was not just to kill the Lord Jesus, it was to crucify the Lord Jesus and hang him on a tree to break in any Jewish heart and mind, any imagination forever that that one could be in the morning. Mm-hmm. Yes, thank you, Andy. And of course, the, the title of which he became known thereafter was the Exer. Um, so you, you have that, and it's still anathema to, uh, um, uh, uh, serious, uh, rabbinical Jew to accept the fact that one who was crucified could pass.
The New Testament indicates that because it says it was stumbling block to them that the Messiah should be crucified. Um, the other thing in the verse, that that's the one side of it. The other thing in the verse is that in this verse it comes out the other side, and that is not only his concern for those who might be, might misunderstand what's happening, but also his concern that the honor of his ground is, is, is questioned, rather like the same thing that you had in the Old Testament, whereas Moses saying, well, you know, what would be honor your great name if also that you couldn't bring them in? You took them out, you let them die in the wilderness. You know, that sort of thing is there as well. Okay, let's go on to the, the, uh, second section, and it's actually from verse seven onwards.
Now, in the first six verses, then he's given the facts of the situation. But here he outlines the conditions which, uh, preceded this perplexing development of, uh, of his suffering and crucifixion. And outstanding amongst the reasons that he gives has been his crude allegiance to God. Uh, as you read these verses, you read of reproach, read of misunderstanding, of, uh, separation, of tears, of grief, of rivalry, derision, and they've all been his lot because of his zeal for the honor of the God of Israel and his zeal for the house of his God.
And so, what has happened is, and he's expressed in this way, is that he has subordinated all his personal interests and all his welfare to the glory of the name. And his sufferings are not due to any sin in himself because he's sinless, but his sufferings are due to his devotion to his God and to the house of his God. So you'll notice what he says in verse um seven, because for thy sake I have borne reproach. V- verse nine, the zeal of thy house hath eaten me up, eaten me up.
And what was the result? And the reproach is on that reproach shall fall upon me. So he looks at the cause, and he looks back and he says, but one of the causes here, the cause here is the fact that I'm concerned at the honor of thy name and because of my zeal for thy house. Now here we have a true Joseph. Uh, and uh, you notice what he says in verse eight: I become a stranger to my brethren. Well, Joseph experienced that so long ago. He was a stranger to his brethren, says the sufferer here, and an alien to his mother's children.
Then notice again, he says in verse twelve that he was rejected, and here you've got the two opposites of society. He was rejected by they that sit in the gate. They that sit in the gate speak against me. Who are they that sit in the gate? The judges. You know, the people to whom Boaz came when he was going to redeem Ruth. Those who sit in the gate are the judges, the gates of where's justice and judgment and administration was exercised. So you've got one ha- one part of society, the top part, he was rejected by them.
And then you write down the bottom part, because the next thing he says, and I was the song of the drunkard. So from top to bottom, they were rejected, they he was rejected. And all reproached him for his devotion and deity and piety. Now for a sin he had none, but he was reproached for his devotion and piety. Look at verse ten. When I wept and chastened my soul with fasting, so it's underlying piety here. What happened? That was to my reproach. They sack off my an- my my garments. He became a proverb to them, you know, a scornful proverb, that means.
And so in his devotion and piety, they were made grounds for reproach. And so he was reproached by men, and it is, he says again, you notice in verse seven, for thy sake. It was God's mission he was on, it was God's work he was doing, and that, uh, involved for him suffering and shame, even the shame of the cross, but it did not deter him from accomplishing that work. Now, the source of his reproach in verse nine is given them that reproached we, those who despised God, who they professed in Israel to worship him, those who despised God, despised his Christ, came unto his own, and his own received him not.
Then he indicates the nature of his reproach. Look at verse ten down. We were, we look at particularly, um, uh, at at the last, uh, at the, you notice what it says, uh, which I've commented on already, in fact, even his piety was made a basis of reproach. Later, he will speak of the manifestation of his reproach. Look at verse nineteen: Thou hast known my reproach and my shame and my dishonor. My adversaries are all before thee. So he speaks in the last phrase of the source of his reproach. His adversaries were before God, seen by God.
And so his enemies here come out in the open, and they publicly attack him. So, what the verses are telling us is that here is someone who is put to an open shame. And when you think of that, and of course the word reproach is cracked up again and again in these verses, and we want to hop out of those verses for a moment just to pick another word of reproach, which indicates the loneliness of his reproach. Read verse 20 with me. Reproach, he says, hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none.
All the awful loneliness that he experienced. We're looking at something of that in Psalm twenty two, but here it's expressed so poignantly in this particular verse. Yes, Larry. I have a question. Sorry, I thought the part of the question I had attended something, but you may have already covered this. This Psalm seems to focus on what we would call the emotions, particularly the reaction to the physical abuse.
Yes. And shame that Lord Jesus endured on the cross. I know that sometimes, I'm generalizing now, we tend to minimize that aspect Mm. that the Lord endured there. We understand that what he suffered spiritually, what he suffered on the cross as far as, uh, being made sin ultimately was the Yes. the dark hours that he endured and so on, but that the accomplishment of salvation. Yet sometimes I think that, generally speaking, we tend to just either gloss over or minimize this aspect that prophetically here is, uh, magnified.
Yes. Yes, um, I, I don't know if he or I said that, but, uh, said that what you have in these two psalms, i- i- in comparison to Psalm twenty two is basically in Psalm twenty two the picture which is given is suffering more at the hand of God, a- and his dead loneliness, which is there, forsaken. But it's the God, uh, the angle from God's point of view, mainly the main thrust, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Here you have the side for his reproach from men. It's the man's side, and you, you, you have much more, you have a lot, not so much of the, so much of the physical side, you know, being nailed to the cross, but that which affects a man's spirit and soul.
And his sensitive soul must have been touched profoundly by the fact he came to his own, his own received him not, and he was a reproach. Who wants, who likes being made a scorn of? You and I don't like being made, but he was made a reproach of all men. And, you know, yeah, that's, that's certainly what... And you and I can't unders- could can't, could never appreciate fully, because our, our natures are so near to this sort of thing, uh, how much it must have hurt his sensitive spirit. Uh, I mean, he was a song on the theme of angels worship, and he became a song of repentance.
Uh, the contrast is so great, ha- uh, Henry. Yeah, it's kind of in tune with what Larry's bringing in, and I know I'm shifting this in another direction, but I don't know if you've ever, or you've seen this or heard of this, but sometimes some of these songs Yes. are linked with a political office. Yeah. For instance, like Psalm twenty will be the sin offering. Yeah. Have you done that? Psalm sixty nine, I would quote that in my way, let an estimation be made in the harm thing, in the harm done to the whole. Yeah. Depress that offer, Psalm sixty nine, Uh, Psalm sixteen, uh, the the the trusting man, the meal offering.
Yeah. That man. Have you ever considered that? And if you have, do you? I- I- I've not done so, but I mean, I'm happy for you to carry on. That's fine. I just didn't know. And the reason I hear it because it helped, it helped me, Yeah. you know, to think of this Psalm 69, Yes. the harm that men did, Yes. and coming down, suffering under man, who exposed man's sin, man for what he is, in order that now, you know, Yeah. the restoration, bringing man up before man can be brought up, man had to be brought down. Yes. Anyway, I, I, I That's a- helpful to me. That's an interesting uh th- uh thought, and I'm sure, you know, something which you, which uh, uh, was in use to develop in your own thinking.
Um, it it's uh, it is an exercise which uh, has been done in Isaiah fifty three, where you can see we are. Um, but it would be a, an interesting exercise to, to approach the, the Psalm here. Psalm it's twenty two for second. Yes. Yeah, Psalm 69 for report of man. Yes. Yeah, that's good. So, uh, let's, let's go back to and, and, and gather up what we were saying then. Um, the last word here, incidentally, uh, refers to heaviness. Uh, the word heaviness is a very, very interesting word when you pick it up in, in, in the New Testament, because it's the word the Lord Jesus used in the New Testament when he talks about, um, being full of heaviness.
Uh, he talks i- in the Gospels, it says he came to the garden and he was very heavy. Uh, we don't use it in that sense today. Um, verse twenty, I'm full of heaviness, or in Matthew's gospel, he he was very sorrowful and very heavy. What does that mean? And basically, it means a deadly weakness, a deadly faintness, and somebody has expressed it as if there was just one faint thread, thread which kept between him and death. But here are sufferings endured in the Lord's sensitive spirit, as uh, Larry was indicating, and he feeling keenly felt that approach and the shame and the dishonor, and he felt it as none of us would have felt it, felt the lying and the, uh, insults heaped upon him.
And his heart must have been broken by the awful response to his ministry, which that ministry of grace had awakened. After all, if he had done evil, then perhaps you could have understood this treatment, but he hadn't. He had ministered in Israel in grace and mercy, and this was the response of the nation. And for all his blessings, all that they had responded with was cursing. And, uh, in those moments of poignant grief, he tells us he looked for sympathy.
And verse twenty tells us that there was not one pitying eye cast towards him. And instead of sympathy, all that happened was that there was aggravation of his situation because they gave him, he says, gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. And I write down there to verse twenty one where it says that. The next main section of the Psalm is verse thirteen to twenty one, and in these verses there breathes dependence, uh, upon God.
Uh, you notice how it starts, that as for me, my prayer is unto thee, O Lord. Deliver me out of the mire, let not the waterfellow flow me. Fear me, O Lord, hide not thy face from me, draw nigh unto my soul. Uh, and so you have in this section his prayer, and it expresses his dependence upon God. So for the malice of man, which is expressed in the passage we just looked at, he turns to the mercy of God, and the verses indicate that his trust in God was unshaken. He found his sanctuary refuge in turning to God himself in an acceptable season, as the word puts it, in a time that pleases thee.
He was misunderstood on earth, and the extent of that misunderstanding was that they said he was a blasphemer, they said he was the Son of God, and he deserved to be crucified. And that was the ultimate of their misunderstanding of who he was and of his mission. But misunderstood on earth, he was accepted and appreciated in heaven, and it is to God that he now turns. Uh, he longs for deliverance from his foes and from the floods. Deliver me, verse fourteen, out of the mire. Let me not sink. Let me be delivered from them that hate me.
Let not the waterfall overflow me. Rather let the deep swallow me up. Let not the pit shut her mouth upon me. Yet nothing was more overwhelming for him than, than this fact that all these things came upon him because of his zeal and his faithfulness to God. And so the end of this prayer section ends with that account. Thou hast known my reproach and my shame and my dishonor, reproach hath broken my heart, you gave me gall for meat, and so on. And so nothing is more overwhelming to his mind than this, uh, this fact that these strange and inescapable sufferings which he is enduring result from his faithfulness to God and his zeal for his honor.
Now, if you take a sensitive soul, and that sensitive soul is attacked with undeserved reproach. That will cut deeply into that person's spirit and feeling. The tears will come. And it is possible to inflict the most stupendous grief upon a sensitive soul by the words you utter, by undeserved attack and reproach. It's quite true that w- that words wound deeper than wounds, because you affect your body with wounds, but with words you affect the soul, the spirit of a person, the inner being of a person.
And wounds might heal, but it takes longer when the inner person is affected. And here, he bore the reproaches of sinful men, and his cup which he drank in this particular case of their malice and their hatred was would have particularly peculiarly affected his whole. holy nature and his sensitive spirit in a way which far went beyond anything that we experience. The touch of hellish manner, malice in what they were saying would have hurt him deeply.
There was something else, of course, in this passage which we, which, uh, which, uh, emphasizes that, and it is that when we're in trouble and problems, when we're griefs and difficulties, what we do, tend to do, apart from bringing the matter to the Lord, is we also turn to loved ones and friends for sympathy. Is that right? And that helps us to bear the problem or the suffering or the sorrow which they have. Uh, as Christians, if we have, uh, great difficulties, great problems and griefs, we we tend to turn to someone we can trust and, uh, uh, amongst, uh, fellow believers and and and share.
And they say, well, a burden shed, uh, is a burden halved, and so they do, that's what we do. But here, in this case, you notice in the verses that we read that there was no sympathy to give him sweet relief. He looked for someone to have pity, and there was no one. There was no one he could share it with. And this on the cross, we remember that he was forsaken of God. And so his deepest care, uh, deepest time, deepest war, no human hand was stretched forth to help him. He was alone. Verse twenty one needs just one or two explanations.
They also gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Now, one or two things ought to be said about that. The word gall, uh, if you look up the word gall in your Old Testament, you'll find that it's used on a few occasions, but it's translated differently on some of these occasions. For instance, in Job twenty, it's translated venom, uh, it's translated poison, sorry, and Deuteronomy thirty two, venom. So here you have a really, really poisonous cap, gall, poison, venom.
So his foes not only refused him sympathy, but they also sought to aggravate his misery. They gave him gall for his meat. And uh, and then of course they gave him vinegar to drink. Now, it is said that, that uh, in Jerusalem there was a group of charitable ladies who used to give, uh, a mixed drink of sour wine, um, to the, uh, persons who were being crucified in- because it acted as an anodyne and led into pain. And you remember the Lord Jesus refused that.
He accepts it here, uh, after he had cried finished, uh, after he, after he cried, um, when he cried I thirst, rather, they gave it to him before he cried finished, and they gave him, he says, vinegar to drink. The result of that, in fact, would have only aggravated his thirst. And so here is the, instead of sympathy, they gave him that which aggravated his situation. And yet, through all that, through all this section, there's still this undertone of confidence in God.
Look at verse eighteen: Draw nigh unto my soul and redeem it. Redeem is, has the idea in this context of rescue, and is used in that, uh, idea elsewhere. Um, you find it in relation to uh, the sentence which Saul passed upon Jonathan, but he was rescued, redeemed from it. A- and uh, here in this particular verse, it probably has reference to the bringing back of Christ's soul from the power of the grave. It's redemption by divine power, and the word deliver has the idea of setting you free.
So it's in the use of the idea of being delivered and set free, and so it looks on to his resurrection, uh, rather than his being set free from the sufferings which he was undergoing at that time. And then there comes this difficult passage, which, uh, I want to just briefly look at in verses twenty eight, twenty two to twenty eight. And here in this passage, we have an implicatory section in, in the Psalm, and, uh, the words start in verse twenty two: let their table become a snare before them, that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a snare, a trap.