"Songs for Weary Shepherds: Joy has Dawned" Psalm 118:1-29 Sunday Morning Worship Service

This morning in our worship we are looking at Psalm 118.

It isn't a very long text, but an incredible Psalm.

And so I think we would cheat ourselves if we didn't read the whole thing.

So indeed, I'm going to read the entirety of Psalm 118.

Let me invite you to look down at Psalm 118 and follow with me as I read from God's Word, beginning in verse 1.

The Word of God says this.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

Let Israel say, His steadfast love endures forever.

Let the house of Aaron say, His steadfast love endures forever.

Let those who fear the Lord say, His steadfast love endures forever.

Out of my distress I called on the Lord.

The Lord answered me and set me free.

The Lord is on my side, I will not fear.

What can man do to me?

The Lord is on my side as my helper.

I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.

It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.

It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.

All nations surrounded me.

In the name of the Lord I cut them off.

They surrounded me, surrounded me on every side.

In the name of the Lord I cut them off.

They surrounded me like bees.

They went out like a fire among thorns.

In the name of the Lord I cut them off.

I was pushed hard so that I was falling, but the Lord helped me.

The Lord is my strength and my song.

He has become my salvation.

Glad songs of salvation are in the tents of the righteous.

The hand of the Lord does valiantly.

The hand of the Lord exalts.

The right hand of the Lord does valiantly.

I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of the Lord.

The Lord has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death.

Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.

This is the gate of the Lord, the righteous shall enter through it.

I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

This is the Lord's doing.

It is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the Lord has made.

Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Save us, we pray, O Lord.

O Lord, we pray, give us success.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

We bless you from the house of the Lord.

The Lord is God, and he has made his light to shine upon us.

Bind the festal sacrifice with cords up to the horns of the altar.

You are my God.

I will give thanks to you.

You are my God, I will extol you.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

This is the word of the Lord.

This Advent series in our church, we've been going through a sermon series called Songs for Weary Shepherds.

Songs that perhaps the shepherds were singing to themselves as they kept awake, watching their flocks the night that Jesus was born.

Each week, a pastor has selected a psalm that you have seen promises that God will appear to his people and will bring them salvation, as indeed he did in the person of Jesus Christ that night.

And that's because this is a song that was integral in the life and the worship of ancient Israel.

Psalm 118 is the last of what are called the Halel Psalms.

Halel is just a word that means to praise.

Psalm 113 to Psalm 118, these six Psalms together were sung at all of the corporate feasts of Israel from very ancient times, probably even in Jesus' day.

And in fact, these are the only songs that were sung at all of the major festivals of Israel, at Passover and at tabernacles, and at weeks, and even at Hanukkah.

And so if there's any song that the shepherds would have had at the tip of their tongue at the front of their memory that they could have sung to themselves as they were watching their flocks, I suggest to you it could have been Psalm 118.

In fact, Psalm 118 is the song that is most quoted in the New Testament.

In Matthew 21, we see even the little children in Jerusalem know this song because this is what they sing to Jesus when he comes into the temple.

Now, just incidentally, you might recall a couple weeks ago as we started this series, Jesse said to you that at the end of it, you can decide which pastor's song was most likely to have been sung by the shepherds, and I suggest to you, I've just won.

So tell Jesse when he plays the game, man, play to win.

Psalm 118 is indeed a song that promises divine deliverance.

But it's a song that as we study it this morning, we'll see that it's in the voice of a king, a Davidic king.

And this Davidic king reflects on the reality that God has brought him deliverance, and through saving the king, God is going to bring all of his people to participate in that deliverance.

And so this is a song that frames our worship, even in the New Covenant, as believers in Jesus Christ.

We, like this Davidic king, look back on God's deliverance, not just for the world, but in our own lives, and look forward to the day when God will bring a fullness of deliverance in the day of Jesus' second coming.

So we're going to study the psalm this morning and see that it breaks into three distinct parts.

And the first is in verse 1, it's a call to praise.

Look down at your Bibles at verse 1.

And in verse 1 we read, Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

And let me invite you to look at the last verse of the Psalm, verse 29, and we read in verse 29 the same words.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.

This is a very simple literary device in which you repeat the same line at the beginning and the end of the psalm, and these bookends are intended to teach you very clearly, this is what you're supposed to take away from this psalm.

The psalm is given to us in order to cultivate in our hearts an assurance that God is good and his love endures forever.

And I use the language of cultivate assurance because we know there's a difference between merely saying that God is good and tasting and seeing, as the Psalms say, that God is good.

We know this in all of our life.

There's a difference between saying that it would be great to get that job, but then the day you actually get the job, that's different.

We're saying that marriage is a great gift, but the day that you are married and receive some of the taste and see some of the blessings of the union and the intimacy and the love and a marriage, and yet we also know that in life, not all of the things that we desire, all of this experience that we chase are actually accessible to us, are they?

But in this text, we are invited to taste and see the greatest experience that a human heart can know, the knowledge of the living God and his goodness and love and your life.

And the psalm then follows up and says, That is available to you.

I want you to see that in verses two through four.

Look at verse two.

Let Israel say, His steadfast love endures forever.

Let the house of Aaron say, His steadfast love endures forever.

Let those who fear the Lord say, His steadfast love endures forever.

We have kind of expanding circles here.

The whole nation of Israel and their priests, through whom their worship comes, are supposed to taste and see the Lord is good and know that his goodness is in their life.

But in verse 4, that circle is even expanded to those who fear the Lord.

They are to taste and see the Lord's goodness and say his love endures forever.

But who then are those who fear the Lord?

You might say, well, maybe the God fearers are a kind of like subset within the people of Israel.

Maybe they're the super religious or something along these lines.

And yet I think there's a much better interpretation offered to us.

The Psalms are arranged in an intentional order, and these particular Psalms 113 through 118 were always sung as a set.

And so if you're singing the halal, these praise psalms, you would have just finished reading Psalm 117.

Look up in your Bibles to Psalm 117 and look at what we find there.

Psalm 117, verse 1.

Psalms 117:1

Praise the Lord, all nations, extol him, all peoples, all nations and all peoples, verse 2, are to taste and see that great is his steadfast love towards us.

I think the best way, in context of the Psalter, to understand those who fear the Lord is those from all the nations who come to the Lord with fear and trembling, with awe and reverence, who have believed in him, trusted him, and now experience that he is good, and his steadfast love is in me.

What two through four, these three verses, when their repeated refrain, his steadfast love endures forever, are supposed to show us is that the greatest of all human experience is accessible to you when you come to the Lord.

Let the house of Israel and all who fear the Lord say, His steadfast love endures forever.

And the rest of the text then narrows in on one individual speaker who assures his heart that God is good and his love is forever, and he does this by remembering a time that the Lord delivered him and through him brought deliverance to his people.

And that's what we're going to see in verses five and following.

I want you to look at verse five, where the psalmist quite simply says, Out of my distress I called on the Lord.

And the Lord answered me and set me free.

The language that's used in this text, out of my distress I called on the Lord, and he answered me and set me free.

The ESV has rendered these two Hebrew words, distressed and free, rather based on their broader meaning, which is a perfectly good and appropriate translation.

But some of our older English translations render these Hebrew words a little bit more literally, and it's interesting to look at them.

Perhaps if you're using a King James, your text might say something out of my narrowness, I called to the Lord, and the Lord answered me and put me in a broad place.

So conceptually, here what's happening is that the psalmist is saying his distress is a narrow, confining, restricted place where he had no freedom of movement and he was approaching death, calls upon the Lord, looks beyond his experience, calls to the Lord, and the Lord brings him out of his confined space and sets his feet on a broad plane where there's freedom.

And it's just interesting to note that if you think about this for a moment, you'll notice that the same kind of language that we find in this thousands of years-old psalm is still used in 21st century America when people talk about the kind of life they want.

When people talk about the kind of life that they want, if they're explicit about it, which usually we aren't very explicit about what we're doing, we just do what we want to do.

But when people do want to articulate what they're doing, they tend to articulate what they're after in 21st century American life along the lines of a quest for self-expression and authenticity.

I'm looking into myself and I'm finding my desires, and there I'm going to find freedom and authenticity and be able to live out what I find within my heart.

But this text and all the scripture, and in fact, all genuine Christian life would actually say the opposite is the case.

Looking into your heart, the more you look into your heart, the less you're going to find freedom, and the more you're going to find the walls of your experience and your desires pushing in upon you and making your life narrower and narrower and narrower.

What is narrower than yourself?

In fact, the only place you're going to find breadth and freedom is when you look outside of yourself, as the psalmist says, and call upon the Lord.

When you take your eyes off of your own desires and your own heart and you look outward to the Lord, the Lord brings you out of your confining place and puts you on a broad path.

The whole Christian experience, the whole Christian life is coming out of the narrowness of our own desires, our own way of thinking what is right and what is wrong, and finding ourselves lost in this pursuit of knowing the breadth and the depth of God Himself.

It's in this broad plane of knowing the living God that true freedom is found.

And this is here, even in a psalm written thousands of years ago.

But this is what the Psalm says is available to those who call upon the Lord.

He sets us in a broad place where we taste his steadfast love enduring forever.

And as the psalmist reflects on his experience of the Lord's rescuing him from his narrowness, he comes to two resolutions in verses six through nine.

Notice them with me.

If you look at verse six, the psalmist says, The Lord is on my side, I will not fear.

What can man do to me?

The Lord is on my side as my helper.

I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.

If the Lord is on my side, then I don't need to fear anything.

And in fact, the language that's used in the Hebrew text rendered here, the Lord is on my side, is a good translation, but we could also translate it as the Lord is mine.

He's given himself to me.

And in knowing the Lord, I have nothing to fear.

And in fact, if the Lord has given himself to me, verses eight and nine say, I'm going to respond by putting my hope in him.

Look at verse eight.

It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.

It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.

Do you see the reciprocal nature here?

The Lord has given himself to me.

He goes into more details of the action that the Lord has displayed in his life in verse 10 and following.

If you look at verse 10, all nations surrounded me.

In the name of the Lord I cut them off.

They surrounded me, surrounded me on every side.

In the name of the Lord I cut them off.

Now, in this verse, I don't know if you'll remember or not, but a moment ago I said that this verse, this excuse me, this whole psalm is voiced in the voice of a Davidic king, that is a king of Israel.

And it's verses like this within the Psalm that lead us to that conclusion.

It's not the average experience of any run-of-the-mill individual to say, all the nations have mounted themselves against me.

Now, maybe you feel that way sometimes.

We probably do.

But that's at best hyperbole, right?

But here, there's an individual who says, nations surrounded themselves against me.

Now, for a Davidic king that is a king of Israel, he could say that with legitimacy.

And his duty in God's economy, the role that God has assigned him, is to rise up and to defend the people of Israel against the enemies that would destroy them.

And what he says is, the Lord enabled me to rise up and cut them off.

Recognizing that this is voiced in the mouth of a Davidic king is helpful to understand what's going on here.

Because if we were to, as we so often do, do our kind of Twitter exegesis, where we just cut out verses with 140 characters or fewer, and then we just interpret them however it feels good to me, it's very easy to read text like this and come away with a misunderstanding.

If you were to say, Man, you rise against me, I'll cut you off in the name of the Lord.

The text isn't saying that if you just add the tagline on, in the name of the Lord, you have carte blanche to just do whatever you want.

In the name of the Lord defines the activity here.

To say that I'm doing something in the name of the Lord is to say that I'm doing it specifically according to the commands and the will of God.

The word, this expression, in the name of the Lord, is used to define the priest's role in the Tanakh, in the Hebrew Bible.

The priests are supposed to exercise their ministry in the name of the Lord.

That is, according to everything that God has explicitly told them to do, according to the will of the Lord.

The king of Israel here is exercising his role in God's economy.

The role that God has assigned him is to protect the people of Israel.

And so he's going to do that in the way that God has designated for him.

So if anything, this text applies to us in the following way.

If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you're rightly related to the God of Israel, then you have responsibilities that God has called you to.

And when you exercise your responsibilities that God has called you to, as the priests exercise their responsibilities in the old covenant, and the Davidic king exercised his responsibilities in the Davidic covenant, when you, as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, exercise your new covenant responsibilities, the Lord will be with you.

What are your responsibilities?

Well, they're the whole gamut of all that God has commanded us in Christ Jesus.

They're take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the evil one.

They're to not return evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good.

The whole run of all of the commands and the will of God revealed to us in the new covenant, when you act in the name of the Lord, according to God's command and God's will, you will find I was pushed hard and I was falling, but the Lord helped me.

The Lord is mine.

What can man do to me?

Notice where the psalmist now lands is plain as he's reflecting upon God's deliverance in his life is in verse 14 through 16.

And in verse 15, look down at your Bibles.

In the middle of verse 15, what we find are he says, glad songs of salvation are the tents of the righteous, and then we get quotation marks in the middle of verse 15.

The right hand of the Lord does valiantly, the right hand of the Lord exalts, the right hand of the Lord does valiantly.

The quotation marks here in most of our English translations are signaling to us that the psalmist is quoting another passage of Scripture.

Here he's quoting from Exodus chapter 15, the song of Moses.

Exodus 15 · chapter mention

That's the song that the people of Israel sang when God delivered them through the Red Sea.

So as God redeems Israel from slave slavery in Egypt, he parts the Red Sea, they pass through the Red Sea, and when they get to the other side, they sing a psalm.

The psalmist then wasn't there when the people passed through the Red Sea, but in quoting their very words, he's saying, the same God who redeemed Israel in the Exodus is the same God who is mine, who is near to me, who is on my side, who is there when I call upon him and delivers me into a broad place.

And there's a same similar pattern for us.

We could say, the God of the Exodus, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of David, and the God of the empty tomb is available to you, has made himself accessible to you, and can show his steadfast love to you when you look outside of the narrow confines of your life and your circumstances and your desires, and you call upon the Lord.

This is where the psalmist lands, with his heart being characterized by joy and delight in God and his salvation, because he has allowed the reality of who God is to shape his experience of the present.

And as he delights in the Lord, he comes into the city, and what we'll see in the rest of the text is he enables all those who look upon him and see his experience to participate in his salvation.

We're going to look at verse 19 and following, and as we read verse 19, what we're going to see is there's a real change in the Psalm through the rest of these verses.

Up until now, we've been reading a kind of first-person voice, me and I, as the Davidic king recounts his experience of God delivering him from what seemed like death.

Well, what we will see in the rest of the text is that there's a kind of dialogue going on between the Davidic king speaking of his deliverance and then the rest of the people of Israel looking at the Davidic king and saying that if God has delivered the king, then that's going to mean salvation for the rest of us too.

We're going to participate in the same salvation.

I want you to look down at verse 19.

In verse 19, the Davidic king says, Open to me the gates of righteousness that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.

After having been delivered from his near-death experience and triumphing over his enemies, he now approaches the gates of Jerusalem and says, Let me in and bring the salvation that God has wrought through me.

Verse 20 then is the voice of the people in the gates, and they say, Well, this is the gate of the Lord, and the righteous will enter through it.

And now the king has passed through the gates in verse 21.

The king says, I thank you that you have answered me and become my salvation.

And now the rest of the text is in the voice of the onlookers.

All the crowd, the people of Israel, look at this king who they thought was doomed, and through his death would come death for them.

But through his deliverance is going to come deliverance for them.

And as they ponder this, they're participating in the salvation, they become filled with joy.

Notice what they say, verse 22.

What does that mean?

You'll notice if you're using the ESV, there is a footnote on cornerstone that says the head of the corner, and this is the delightful way that it's rendered in most of our older English versions.

The stone the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.

I have no idea what a head of a corner is.

Until you do a little bit of work, and what you'll find is that this is probably a kind of proverbial saying in ancient Israel.

The way that architecture and building would have worked is that you would work with stones.

So if you're building a house or you're building a palace in ancient Israel, you're going to be working with stones, and the builders are going to gather some stones that have been quarried specifically for this task, others that have been assembled.

Or in a pile, and they're going to be drawing out the stones that best suit the appropriate levels of the building.

Some of the stones will be rejected as inappropriate and just not working, and so they'll be thrown on a kind of rubbish heap.

But sometimes what could happen is at the end of the building project, they'll get to the point where they need the capstone.

Perhaps you think of an arch, the very last stone that goes in the arch as the crowning achievement of the building project, but also the stone that gives structure to the whole project.

And they look on the rubbish pile and they find a stone that they initially rejected is actually perfect to serve as the crown of this whole project.

The people of Israel, as they're looking at the Davidic king, who seemed for sure being given over to his enemies and delivered to death, has now triumphed surprisingly over them, and has now ridden into the city and brought with him salvation.

They're looking at him and saying, We thought that he'd been rejected.

We thought that he was dead.

But now in fact, God has delivered him and has made him the crown of salvation, and through him comes salvation to us.

And as they reflect on this, they say, verse 23, surely this is the Lord's doing, and this is marvelous in our eyes.

So then they reflect more in verse 25.

They say, Save us, we pray, O Lord.

O Lord, we pray, give us success.

As you have delivered your servant, the king of Israel, bring us all the blessings that you have promised, salvation for us and all the nations.

So verse 26, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

We bless you from the house of the Lord.

The Lord is God, and he has made his light to shine upon us.

So you see the gist of this text is it moves from the Davidic king contemplating God's deliverance in his life, and it moves to the deliverance the Davidic king has experienced being shared with all of his people so that they participate in God's salvation as well.

God brings the king through death into life so that he can bring salvation to all of his people.

Well, it wouldn't take a whole lot of creative imagination to think about well, God has promised there would be a final king in the line of David who would bring salvation to the end of the age.

Maybe it would look something like this.

Maybe a Davidic king would pass through a death-like experience and bring salvation to his people.

And in fact, if you think about this text for very long, you'll also see there is another psalm in this Psalter that shares very similar language about a king approaching his city and bringing salvation to them, and that's in Psalm 24, where we read, Lift up your heads, O gates, and be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in.

Who is this king of glory?

Who is the king that's bringing salvation to his people?

It's the Lord Himself, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.

Do you see the resonances between these two texts?

If you're thinking about these texts, you ought to start to wonder: wait, is the king that's going to bring salvation to Israel and then to all his people a son of David?

Or is it Yahweh, the God of Israel himself?

Who is it that's going to bring salvation?

Well, on this side of the empty tomb, we can say the answer is yes.

What we celebrate at Advent is that God truly became a man, so that the man Christ Jesus is truly Yahweh and truly man, the son of David.

And it's this person who brings us salvation.

God has taken a human nature to himself so that he can share a divine nature with us.

Now, surely this psalm in the time of Jesus had already begun to be associated with the Messiah, this coming deliverer in the line of David who would bring salvation for God's people.

And I say that because this is the psalm that the people of Israel sing to Jesus when he enters Jerusalem the last week of his life.

After three years of publicly demonstrating that he is the Son of God through his miraculous power and his divine teaching, he mounts a donkey in Matthew chapter 21 and comes into the city of Jerusalem, and the throngs of crowds come to greet him.

Matthew 21 · chapter mention

And what do they greet him with?

They greet him with Psalm 118.

Matthew chapter 1 records the scene, saying the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

That's from verse 25.

Hoshiah in Hebrew, and it's transliterated in our Greek text, Hosanna to the Son of David.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.

Jesus seems to be this messianic figure, this individual in the line of David who's going to bring salvation for God's people, and they'll participate in God's salvation through this individual.

Now Jesus doesn't rebuke them.

In fact, he says, this is exactly the case.

I am this Davidic Messiah.

And yet, just a few verses later, in conversation with the religious leaders, he tells them that you've got the right psalm, but you've misunderstood it.

He says to them, Haven't you read in the scriptures, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone?

This was the Lord's doing, and it was marvelous in our eyes.

You see, when we read the text, we saw that the salvation the king brings to his people only comes after he has passed through death and then lands in verse 17.

And with deliverance in his hand, then he can walk up to the gates of God's people and bring salvation to them.

So Jesus says to the religious leaders, right psalm, wrong order.

First will come the cross, then will come the crown.

Now, if you're thinking about this for a minute, you ought to be able to have at least a little bit of sympathy for the religious leaders in this sense.

What kind of king takes off his crown to pick up a cross?

Only this God.

Only this God leaves heaven and condescends to robe himself in frail humanity.

Only this God willingly submits to torture and isolation and abuse.

Only this God willingly surrenders himself to death, so that through death, God can rescue him and bring him to the gates, and in his hand bring salvation for all who say, Hosanna, save us, we pray.

This is, Jesus would say, the order in which we have to read the psalm.

The crown only comes through the cross, but Jesus has indeed endured the cross, despising the shame, and now God has resurrected him from the dead and sat him at his right hand and promised one day he will bring him again and make all things new.

This is where we live.

In this time in which we are awaiting and hastening the coming of Jesus.

And in fact, that's the last verse from Psalm 118 that Jesus quotes in his conversation with the Jews.

He says, and just a couple chapters later, Matthew chapter 23, verse 39, Jesus says, I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Matthew 23:39

That's verse 26 from Psalm 118.

And this is where every believer lives, waiting and hastening the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, where we will get to say, Blessed is my king who has passed through death into life and will bring me into the city of God, where we will reign with him for ever and ever.

The king who said, I called upon the Lord and he answered me and brought me into a broad place.

Jesus went into the narrowest of straits.

He went into hell itself, in order that having been brought through the grave, into heaven, he can bring me likewise into the city of God.

So I don't know what the shepherds were singing the night that Jesus was born, but it would be appropriate that they would be singing something like Psalm 118, verse 26.

Psalms 118:26

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, and indeed he did indeed he did come, and indeed he will come again.

That anticipation looking and longing for the coming of the Lord is the position of the heart where you will taste and see, indeed, the Lord is good, and his steadfast love endures forever.

Lord, we thank you that you are good, and you have shown it to us through your death and resurrection on our behalf.

We pray that you would bless us as we contemplate the mystery of the incarnation, this advent, and that you would strengthen our resolve to love Christ with our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to serve him.

We thank you that we will not die, but indeed we will live through the death and resurrection of our Savior Jesus.

Father, strengthen our hands for service this week.

I pray that you would bless us to walk in a manner that is worthy of the gospel.

And we ask this in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.