All those who see Me ridicule Me; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, “He trusted in the LORD, let Him rescue Him; let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!” – Psalm 22:7,8
He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him: for He said, I am the Son of God. – Matthew 27:43
While thus we see our Lord in His sorrow and His shame as our substitute, we must not forget that He also is there as our representative. That which appears in many a psalm to relate to David is found in the Gospels to refer to Jesus, our Lord. Often the student of the Psalm will say to himself, “Of whom speaketh the prophet this?” He will have to disentangle the threads sometimes, and mark off that which belongs to David and that which relates to the Son of God; and frequently he will not be able to disentangle the threads at all, because they are one, and may relate both to David, and to David’s Lord. This is meant to show us that the life of Christ is an epitome of the life of His people. He not only suffers for us as our substitute, but He suffers before us as our pattern. In Him we see what we have in our measure to endure. “As He is, so are we also in this world.” We also must be crucified to the world, and we may look for somewhat of those tests of faith and taunts of derision which go with such a crucifixion. “Marvel not if the world hate you.” You, too, must suffer without the gate. Not for the world’s redemption, but for the accomplishment of divine purposes in you, and through you to the sons of men, you must be made to know the cross and its shame. Christ is the mirror of the Church. What the head endured every member of the body will also have to endure in its measure. Let us read the text in this light, and come to it saying to ourselves, “Here we see what Jesus suffered in our stead, and we learn hereby to love Him with all our souls. Here, too, we see, as in a prophecy, how great things we are to suffer for His sake at the hands of men.” May the Holy Spirit help us in our meditation, so that at the close of it we may the more carefully arm ourselves with the same mind which enabled Him to endure such contradiction of sinners against Himself. – C.H. Spurgeon
He Hath Said 