Meditation on the Text of the Week

Cries of Dereliction

But for Thy sake we are killed all day long;
We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.
Psalm 44:22

It has been truthfully said that the twentieth century was the most bloody in all human history. This was not due just to a higher global population, reflecting the same proportion of violent malevolent deaths. It was due to a greater outbreak of man's inhumanity to man. Two world wars and three large malevolent totalitarian societies (the USSR and its “Eastern Bloc”, Nazi Germany, and Maoist China) along with many small tinpot dictatorships led to millions upon millions of people being exterminated. If the blood of Abel cried to God from the ground, how much more the blood of the millions killed unjustly in our days.

It was also the bloodiest century for Christian martyrdom. In all of these dictatorships and totalitarian terror states Christians were singled out for persecution and extermination. But while we have seen in recent history the passing of these hideously malformed and tyrannical governments, the persecution and martyrdom of Christians has not ceased. It is estimated that from the early 1990's, approximately 150,000 Christians per year have been killed for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a rising trend.

Our text is deeply relevant, therefore, for our age. Around the world, Christians are regarded as sheep in the holding paddocks awaiting the slaughterhouse.

The psalmist is speaking of a time when the faithful were being overwhelmed by lawlessness and being killed almost at will. Psalm 44 is a psalm of anguish—believing, faithful anguish. God's people are regarded as fair game, yet not for one moment did the psalmist doubt that behind all this were the prerogatives and plans of the Almighty. None of these terrible things had occurred by accident, but by God's express will and plan. See how he confesses the hand of God bringing the suffering about:

Thou hast given us as sheep to be eaten
And hast scattered us among the nations.
Thou dost sell Thy people cheaply,
And hast not profited by their sale.
Thou dost make us a reproach to our neighbours,
A scoffing and derision to those around us.
Thou dost make us a byword among the nations,
A laughing stock among the peoples.
Psalm 44: 11—14

Mark well the active verbs. The Lord has given His people over, scattered them, sold them, made them a reproach, a laughing stock and a derision. But not for an instant does the psalmist wonder whether the Lord does not exist. Not for an instant does he think of turning aside to “more powerful” gods. He is unwavering in his belief that the Lord alone is God, and beside Him there is no other. In obedience to the first commandment, he will not give credence to, nor acknowledgement of, any other god. Rather, behind all of the calamity falling upon him and his fellow believers, he sees the hand of God Himself. Hence the anguish.

He confesses the unwavering loyalty to the Lord amongst His people. “All this has come upon us, but we have not forgotten Thee, and we have not dealt falsely with Thy covenant.” (Psalm 44: 17) Despite their suffering, the people had not turned to a strange god in search of better things.

This cry of anguish—of the innocent people of God suffering at the hands of God without cause—was uttered most loudly and trenchantly by our Lord upon the Cross. It was the greatest cry of dereliction ever heard upon the earth or in heaven. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Our psalmist, however, shows us that the cry of dereliction is not unknown amongst the saints. The experience of being forsaken by God, and left to face the marauding cruelty and spiteful hatred of the wicked had been known by God's people before the Cross. It is known by the Lord's people today, as thousands across the world are killed annually, mercilessly without cause.

But their cry of anguish and dereliction—while being of the same kind as the cry of the Lord Jesus—is nothing more than a faint echo of His. For He uttered His cry out of the depths of Hell itself as He bore the full brunt of God's vengeance and wrath for the sins of His people. And like the psalmist, our Lord—even while in Hell—did not apostasize. He did not turn away. He did not stop believing or clinging to His heavenly Father. He still called Him, My God.

Because of our Lord, continuing to believe in God and cling to Him amidst His apparent desertion of us, is not only made possible, but more compelling. For in His dying and rising, Christ established a bond of eternal, impregnable, unbreakable love between God and us. Nothing in heaven or upon earth can ever, now, separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

So, the Apostle Paul, acknowledging the suffering of God's people upon the earth which still remains while enemies are being put under our Lord's feet, acknowledging that we will still utter from time to time the cries of anguish and dereliction as God allows us to be overrun for His greater purposes, quotes our text: “Just as it is written, 'For Thy sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.'” (Romans 8: 36)

If the psalmist had cause to trust and cling, to believe and to keep faith with the Lord, while God afflicted them without cause, how much more we. For God has now given the most extreme and unshakable testimony that despite our anguish we are not cut off from God's love, but that it is ever extended to us, and will never be withdrawn. He has given unbreakable proof that our suffering is not due to God despising and rejecting us. He gave us His Son. Everything else is mere echo. Nothing, now, can ever separate us from the love of God.

The blood of the martyrs continues to flow. The cries of the faithful remonstrating with our Lord continue to be uttered today. And they are heard! For Jesus sake, they are heard louder than ever before. “Rise up, be our help, and redeem us for the sake of Thy lovingkindness,” cries the psalmist. (Psalm 44: 26)

In the light of our Lord Jesus, we can gloss this cry, so that it is now even more powerful and irresistible in the ears of our God: “Rise up, be our help, and redeem us for the sake of Thy lovingkindness in Christ Jesus, your Son, Who loved us and gave Himself for us.” This is a cry the Father cannot deny, for He cannot deny Himself.