Jesus, Our Suffering Shepherd: A Journey through Psalms 22 & 23
“God, where are you?”
It’s become my most common prayer of late. The words slip past my lips in my darkest moments, floods of tears leading me to a place of utter forsakenness. The desperation seems to drown me. Hopelessness and grief shake me as I wonder, “How could my God leave me here?” The cry slips through my trembling lips again, “God, why have you forsaken me?”
My breath catches, and suddenly I am broken as I remember who first uttered this cry. I am overcome when I realize these words were said long ago as my Savior hung on a cross.
“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
This prayer slipped through the lips of the Messiah as he bore the most excruciating suffering anyone has experienced: utter separation from God. I am silenced when I realize his suffering was far weightier than my own. Moreso, I realize that when these words slipped past the blood-stained lips of the Christ, he was the only one who was honestly able to say them.
Jesus is truly one who knows what it feels like to be desperately alone in the midst of his suffering.
Psalm 22: A Lament
As I read through the psalms last summer, Psalm 22 stopped me in my tracks. You too might find the words to be eerily familiar. In fact, some scholars say Jesus might have quoted this entire psalm while hanging on the cross, beginning with the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and ending with “he has done it” or “it is finished.”
The psalm begins with the haunting and heavy words Christ uttered as he bore the weight of the entirety of mankind’s sins and experienced separation from God. And yet even as Christ lamented that God had afflicted him in this way, he cried out in unwavering trust in and submission to his Father.
I’m struck by the honesty of Jesus’s and the psalmist’s laments. I’m encouraged too by their model of expressing their outright brokenness before God. It gives me hope that I too can give voice to my deepest struggles and doubts, that I too can trust God is willing to hear my desperate cries. It reminds me, even in the darkest moments, that I am not alone.
As I continue reading this lament song penned by David long ago, I see more poignant parallels to the experience of Christ. We read the cry “be not far from me” (v. 11), followed by an exclamation that the sufferer is “poured out like water” (v. 14) like an offering before the Lord until, finally, the psalm concludes with the words “he has done it” (v. 31) or “it is finished” (John 19:30).
But as this Messianic psalm of lament ends, notice the words that immediately follow.
Psalm 23: A Promise
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
Psalm 22 leads right into Psalm 23, which holds some of the most comforting and well-known words in Scripture. The connection (or better put, the continuation) between these two psalms so clearly depicts the richness of the gospel message: the fact that because of Christ’s suffering and sacrificial work, we now experience intimate union with God.
“He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.”
Reading slowly through this familiar psalm, perhaps we might see our suffering Shepherd in a new light. This Christ—whose cries of pain we see so vividly expressed in Psalm 22—is depicted in Psalm 23 as the one who now leads us, restores us, and is with us always.
And the reality is, it’s because of what he endured that Jesus can now be our Shepherd. This Christ—the only righteous one who has ever been forsaken by God—bore the full weight of humanity’s sin so that we would never be forsaken in our wretchedness. Perhaps in this light his promise to never leave you takes on a new weight? His suffering secured our never-aloneness. Because of the bloody and painful death depicted in Psalm 22, we can experience the peace and pastures of Psalm 23.
We can experience intimacy with this Shepherd because on the cross Jesus functioned as the perfect sacrifice, the “lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:36), in fact, the “lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8 KJV).
The Gospel Hope
The psalmist continues with this familiar line, “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Ps. 23:4), and it is here that we see the connection between these two psalms—the song of lament and the song of comfort.
Because of Christ’s finished work, death is now described here as only a shadow. Because of his affliction, we can now truly not fear in death’s presence. In Christ, death is only a gateway to the experience of the fullness of Christ in eternity, where truly, as his children, we will “dwell in the house of the LORD forever” (Ps. 23:6).
In even our darkest moments, we can remember this gospel truth: that because of Christ’s painful death and utter forsakenness we are now invited into his fold, cared for as his sheep, delighted in, and sanctified by his Spirit. And it’s because Jesus bore every ounce of grief in the most desperate situation that our seasons of grief do not have to be clouded with utter hopelessness.
In bearing our sin and our pain, in uttering these words, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,” Christ made sure that every single ounce of pain and grief we have on this side of heaven would be tinged with hope. He cried these words so that you and I could walk through the darkness with full confidence that there is life and light on the other side.
The Easter Message
On Easter we celebrate a Savior who defeated death and rose to life eternal, a Savior who bore the full weight of sin, suffering, and forsakenness so that you would only feel its shadow. It’s this Savior who has given you a blood-sealed promise that he will never ever forsake you.
This God who was “despised and rejected” and “a man of sorrows” (Isa. 53:3). Who put on a frail human frame, who entered this broken and ransacked-by-sin world, who bore the full weight of its depravity. This God, who condescended in order that we might be made right before God, is a God of redemption, restoration, and nearness. He is the God who never leaves, who never forsakes (Deut. 31:8; Josh. 1:5; Ps. 94:14; Isa. 41:10).
So in our moments of darkness, when we feel utterly forsaken, we can remember the heart of our suffering Shepherd. Even in the midst of our fleeting sorrows—perhaps especially in these dark moments—we can find lasting joy knowing that our Savior went to the greatest lengths to secure our never-forsakenness. We can trust him.
May we cling tightly to this hope, recalling with thankfulness the work of Christ on the cross, realizing that in all things we can trust God and have hope because Jesus is risen and promises to come again. May we remember that Christ bore our sin, suffering, shame, and sorrow and was forsaken by the Father to ensure that even in our suffering and sorrow we would not be left alone, but that we would have hope.
Lauren Bowerman is a writer and a wife to Matthew. She writes as a way to care for people and to point to the Word and what is true about God. She is particularly passionate about writing on the intersection between suffering and faith, and writes openly about how God’s goodness and grace has met her during her experiences with depression, doubt, and infertility. You can find her writing at lauren-bowerman.com or on Instagram.