By Pastor Rich Bitterman
Dust clung to the blood pooling at His feet. The dice clicked against stone, bounced once, then settled. A soldier chuckled and pocketed a threadbare tunic. Above him, the man on the center cross gasped, ribs rising slow and sharp beneath torn skin.
The sky had gone dark at noon. But this was no eclipse.
He opened His mouth. And the world tilted.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
A howl torn from the center of the universe. And it had already been written.
Psalm 22 had been sitting in the sacred text for a thousand years. A quiet timebomb waiting to detonate. Not a psalm of struggle, but a script of execution. Every word in that ancient song was about this moment.
This was not Jesus borrowing a line from a familiar psalm. This was Jesus finishing it.
A Psalm That Bled
David never had his hands and feet pierced. No crowd ever gambled for his robes. He never had his bones dislocated or his strength dried up like baked clay. This wasn’t David’s cry. This was Christ’s.
Peter tells us the prophets spoke not to their time, but to ours. And the Spirit of Christ moved their pens.
In Psalm 22, David gave us Christ’s last thoughts before death. Line-for-line agony.
He wasn’t just dying. He was quoting. Scripture was the marrow of His suffering.
Abandonment
The pain began in the soul. The Son called out to the Father and the Father did not answer. The God who had spoken galaxies into existence went silent.
“Why have you forsaken me?” The word forsaken carries weight. It means turned away, cut off, left.
He didn’t lose faith. He lost comfort. The warmth of eternal fellowship was gone. In its place came the cold weight of judgment. He bore the sins of the world and heaven shut its eyes.
“I am a worm and not a man.” The Hebrew word for worm is also the word for crimson. It was the color of shame. The shade of sin. Isaiah had once written that though our sins are like crimson, they shall be white as wool.
He wore our crimson. Literally. Our filth became His. The spotless became stained. The beloved became cursed. And He knew it.
Suffering
Then came the pain of the body. His joints gave way. His heart thudded, then slowed. His tongue swelled. His bones pressed against His torn skin. He could count each one.
The crowds stared. They didn’t cry. They didn’t turn away. They gloated. They drank in His suffering like wine.
And He saw them. He named them. He knew they would cast lots for His robe. And they did.
But at the end of verse 21, the horror shifted.
“You have heard me.”
It wasn’t shouted. It didn’t need to be. The silence broke. The Father heard.
And so the Son spoke peace. “It is finished.” Then He handed over His spirit, not in defeat, but in victory.
Resurrection Voice
The next line is resurrection in motion. “I will declare your name to my brothers.”
He didn’t just die for them. He rose to sing with them.
Hebrews 2 says He is not ashamed to call us brothers. He who was forsaken now gathers family. The cross became a pulpit. And the first words of the risen Christ were praise.
“All the ends of the earth will remember.” The cross was not forgotten. It became the turning point of history. Every tribe. Every tongue. Every broken heart.
Even the dead will kneel.
So will you.
The Final Sentence
Psalm 22 ends with a whisper that thunders through time.
“They will proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn, for He has done this.”
Not helped. Not tried. Not offered.
He has done this.
He felt the silence. He bore the weight. He finished the song.
And it split the sky.