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What Psalm 118 Actually Means and Why It Will Change How You Face Tomorrow · truthunedited

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  Speaker 1: Now today, we are going all in on Psalm 118.
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  Speaker 1: Before we read a single verse of Psalm 118, I
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  Speaker 1: need to take you somewhere. Because if you do not
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  Speaker 1: know where this psalm was born, you will read it
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  Speaker 1: like a collection of beautiful religious phrases. and it is
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  Speaker 1: far more than that. It is a war cry. It
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  Speaker 1: is a survival testimony. It is the cry of a
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  Speaker 1: people who walked through something that should have destroyed them,
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  Speaker 1: and came out the other side still worshipping. Close your
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  Speaker 1: eyes for just a moment and picture ancient Israel. Not
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  Speaker 1: the Sunday school flannelgraph version. The real version. A small
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  Speaker 1: nation surrounded by empires. Egypt to the south, Assyria and
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  Speaker 1: Babylon to the north and east, nations with armies so
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  Speaker 1: large that when they marched, the ground shook for miles,
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  Speaker 1: nations that had already swallowed larger kingdoms whole, and Israel,
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  Speaker 1: this small, stubborn covenant people, was perpetually in their crosshairs.
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  Speaker 1: Most scholars believe Psalm 118 was written either in the
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  Speaker 1: time of King Hezekiah, when the Assyrian army of Sennacherib
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  Speaker 1: surrounded Jerusalem with 185,000 soldiers, and demanded surrender, or after
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  Speaker 1: the return from Babylon, when the exiles came home to
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  Speaker 1: a ruined city and had to rebuild everything from scratch.
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  Speaker 1: Either way, the psalm was not written from a comfortable place.
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  Speaker 1: It was written from the edge, from the place where
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  Speaker 1: human options had run out, and the only thing left
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  Speaker 1: was God. And here is the thing you need to
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  Speaker 1: know about this psalm before you hear verse 1. Psalm
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  Speaker 1: 118 is the last of a collection called the Egyptian Hallel,
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  Speaker 1: Psalms 113-118. These six psalms were sung by Jewish families
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  Speaker 1: during Passover, every year, at the dinner table, with the
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  Speaker 1: lamb and the unleavened bread and the bitter herbs. These
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  Speaker 1: were the songs that every Jewish child grew up hearing.
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  Speaker 1: These were the songs that Jesus himself sang with his
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  Speaker 1: disciples the night before the crucifixion. Matthew 26.30 says, After
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  Speaker 1: singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
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  Speaker 1: That hymn was almost certainly Psalm 118. The last song
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  Speaker 1: Jesus sang before he was arrested was this psalm. Let
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  Speaker 1: that sit with you for a moment. The night before
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  Speaker 1: the cross, Jesus sang this psalm. which means every verse
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  Speaker 1: we are about to walk through together was in his
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  Speaker 1: mouth that night. He was singing about the stone the
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  Speaker 1: builders rejected. He was singing about the gates of righteousness.
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  Speaker 1: He was singing about not dying, but living. And he
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  Speaker 1: knew exactly what was coming. So this is not just
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  Speaker 1: a psalm. This is the psalm, the one that carried
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  Speaker 1: God's people through every exile, every siege, every impossible season,
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  Speaker 1: and every resurrection morning. And it is for you, right now,
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  Speaker 1: in whatever you are walking through today. Let us open
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  Speaker 1: it together. Before we go verse by verse, if this
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  Speaker 1: kind of deep, historical, verse by verse teaching is what
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  Speaker 1: every book of the Bible, not surface level, deep, the
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  Speaker 1: Founders' Membership. The link is in the description or scan
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  Speaker 1: the barcode on your screen. Now, let us open Psalm 118.
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  Speaker 1: Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His
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  Speaker 1: love endures forever. Let Israel say, His love endures forever.
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  Speaker 1: Let the house of Aaron say, His love endures forever.
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  Speaker 1: Let those who fear the Lord say, His love endures forever.
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  Speaker 1: Four times, in four verses, the same phrase repeated four times,
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  Speaker 1: His love endures forever. And if you read that quickly,
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  Speaker 1: you might think, okay, repetition for emphasis, common poetic device,
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  Speaker 1: move on. But slow down, because what is happening here
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  Speaker 1: is not just poetry. It is a liturgy. It is
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  Speaker 1: a call and response that was performed by three specific
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  Speaker 1: groups of people in ancient Israel. And understanding who those
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  Speaker 1: three groups were changes everything about why they were all
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  Speaker 1: saying the same thing. The first group, Israel, the whole nation,
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  Speaker 1: the ordinary people, the farmers and shepherds and merchants and mothers,
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  Speaker 1: the ones who had been through the exile, the siege,
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  Speaker 1: the occupation, the ones who had watched their homes burn
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  Speaker 1: and their children carried away in chains. And the psalm
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  Speaker 1: opens by asking them to say, His love endures forever.
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  Speaker 1: Not His love endured before all of this happened. His
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  Speaker 1: love endures, present tense, ongoing, still active, right now, in
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  Speaker 1: the middle of the rubble. The second group, the house
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  Speaker 1: of Aaron, the priests, the religious leaders, the ones who
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  Speaker 1: had watched the temple, the very house of God, destroyed
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  Speaker 1: and desecrated by Babylonian soldiers, the ones whose entire life
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  Speaker 1: purpose was tied to a building that no longer existed.
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  Speaker 1: The psalm asks them specifically to say, His love endures forever.
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  Speaker 1: Because when the temple is gone, when the ritual is interrupted,
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  Speaker 1: when everything that structured your relationship with God has been
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  Speaker 1: stripped away, the love of God is still not gone.
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  Speaker 1: It endures, even without the building, even without the system,
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  Speaker 1: even without the ceremony, the third group, those who fear
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  Speaker 1: the Lord. This phrase in Hebrew, Yirei Adonai, referred to Gentiles, non-Jews,
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  Speaker 1: people who were not part of the covenant by birth,
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  Speaker 1: but who had come to worship the God of Israel.
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  Speaker 1: And the psalm includes them. It asks them to say
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  Speaker 1: it too, His love endures forever, which means from the
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  Speaker 1: very first verses of this psalm, God is already declaring
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  Speaker 1: that His enduring love is not limited to one ethnic
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  Speaker 1: group or one nation. It is for everyone who fears him,
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  Speaker 1: Jew and Gentile, insider and outsider, the people who grew
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  Speaker 1: up with this and the people who just arrived. And
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  Speaker 1: the Hebrew word translated love here is hesed. This word
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  Speaker 1: does not have a perfect English equivalent. It means loving kindness,
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  Speaker 1: but it also means covenant faithfulness. It means loyalty that
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  Speaker 1: does not leave. It means the kind of love that
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  Speaker 1: is not based on your performance, but on God's promise.
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  Speaker 1: a love that holds even when you have broken every
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  Speaker 1: condition that should have released God from holding it. That love,
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  Speaker 1: that specific unbreakable covenant love, endures forever. So the very
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  Speaker 1: first thing this psalm does before it tells you anything
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  Speaker 1: about what happened is make you say the most important
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  Speaker 1: truth first— Whatever comes next, whatever darkness, whatever battle, whatever
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  Speaker 1: impossible situation is about to be described, God's he said
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  Speaker 1: endures through all of it. You say it before you
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  Speaker 1: describe the problem, because that is how faith works. You
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  Speaker 1: anchor yourself in the character of God before you look
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  Speaker 1: at the size of the storm, when you have established
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  Speaker 1: that God's love endures forever. when you have said it
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  Speaker 1: four times, and let it settle into your bones, then
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  Speaker 1: and only then does the psalmist describe what he actually
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  Speaker 1: went through. And verse 5 is a single sentence that
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  Speaker 1: contains a lifetime of pain in seven words. When hard-pressed,
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  Speaker 1: I cried to the Lord, He brought me into a
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  Speaker 1: spacious place when hard-pressed. That phrase in Hebrew is minhametzar,
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  Speaker 1: and it comes from the word zar, which means narrow, tight, constricted, squeezed,
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  Speaker 1: like walls closing in from every side, like a corridor
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  Speaker 1: that keeps getting narrower with every step forward. No room
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  Speaker 1: to breathe, no room to maneuver, no room to escape.
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  Speaker 1: The psalmist is describing a moment when life had compressed
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  Speaker 1: around him so completely that there was no human way out.
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  Speaker 1: Can you picture it? Not abstractly, just actually picture it.
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  Speaker 1: You are a Jewish soldier in Jerusalem. The year is
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  Speaker 1: 701 B.C. Sennacherib's Assyrian army, the most feared military force
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  Speaker 1: the ancient world had ever seen, has surrounded the city.
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  Speaker 1: Two hundred thousand soldiers, battle-hardened, brutal. They had already destroyed
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  Speaker 1: forty-six other cities in Judah. Lachish had fallen. The secondary
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  Speaker 1: cities were gone. Jerusalem was all that was left. And
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  Speaker 1: the Assyrian commander stood outside the walls and shouted propaganda
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  Speaker 1: in Hebrew, in the people's own language, so everyone on
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  Speaker 1: the walls could hear he said your king is lying
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  Speaker 1: to you your God cannot save you surrender now and
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  Speaker 1: live fight and die that is narrow that is hard-pressed
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  Speaker 1: that is walls closing in with no visible exit or
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  Speaker 1: picture it in your own life because in Min HaMetzar
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  Speaker 1: is not just a military metaphor. It is the marriage
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  Speaker 1: that has reached the point where both people have stopped
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  Speaker 1: believing it can work. It is the medical diagnosis that
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  Speaker 1: left the room feeling smaller. It is the financial situation
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  Speaker 1: where the numbers simply do not add up no matter
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  Speaker 1: how many times you recalculate them. It is the grief
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  Speaker 1: that is so heavy some mornings it is genuinely difficult
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  Speaker 1: to get out of bed. That is the narrow place,
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  Speaker 1: and you know exactly what it feels like. And from
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  Speaker 1: that narrow place the psalmist cried to the Lord. The
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  Speaker 1: Hebrew word for cried here is karate, a shout, a
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  Speaker 1: cry from the gut, not a polished prayer with proper
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  Speaker 1: form and correct theological language. a raw, desperate, genuine cry
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  Speaker 1: from someone who has run out of every other option.
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  Speaker 1: And God answered. And where he brought the psalmist is
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  Speaker 1: the opposite of narrow. He brought him into a spacious place.
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  Speaker 1: The Hebrew is merchab, a broad, open space, a place
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  Speaker 1: of freedom and room to breathe, from claustrophobic to open,
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  Speaker 1: from trapped to free, not by the psalmist's own cleverness
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  Speaker 1: or strength, by God's response to a desperate cry. What
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  Speaker 1: narrow place are you in right now? What has been
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  Speaker 1: pressing in on you from every side? Verse 5 is
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  Speaker 1: telling you, cry from where you actually are, not from
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  Speaker 1: where you think you should be spiritually, from where you
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  Speaker 1: actually are. And God who answered from the narrow place
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  Speaker 1: then is the same God listening from whatever narrow place
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  Speaker 1: you are in today. Coming out of that cry from
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  Speaker 1: the narrow place, the psalmist does not immediately celebrate. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: he pauses and makes a declaration that is one of
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  Speaker 1: the most practically important statements in all of Scripture for
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  Speaker 1: anyone trying to navigate a crisis in the real world.
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  Speaker 1: The Lord is with me. I will not be afraid.
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  Speaker 1: What can mere mortals do to me? The Lord is
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  Speaker 1: with me. He is my helper. I look in triumph
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  Speaker 1: on my enemies. It is better to take refuge in
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  Speaker 1: the Lord than to trust in humans. It is better
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  Speaker 1: to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes. Humans, princes,
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  Speaker 1: two categories of people the ancient Israelites might have been
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  Speaker 1: tempted to trust in the middle of a military crisis.
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  Speaker 1: The ordinary people around them and the powerful leaders above them.
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  Speaker 1: And the psalmist is making a distinction that was not
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  Speaker 1: merely philosophical. It was geopolitical, because when Sennacherib's army surrounded Jerusalem,
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  Speaker 1: the natural human response was to look for allies. Egypt
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  Speaker 1: had a powerful army. Other regional kings had troops. The
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  Speaker 1: temptation was overwhelming to send messengers, to forge alliances, to
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  Speaker 1: negotiate with human power in order to survive a human threat.
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  Speaker 1: And the prophet Isaiah was furious about exactly this tendency.
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  Speaker 1: Isaiah said, 31.1. Woe to those who go down to
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  Speaker 1: Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in
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  Speaker 1: the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength
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  Speaker 1: of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy
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  Speaker 1: One of Israel or seek help from the Lord. Isaiah
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  Speaker 1: was not saying military strategy is sinful. He was saying
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  Speaker 1: when you trust the strategy more than the God behind
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  Speaker 1: the strategy, when the plan becomes your hope instead of
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  Speaker 1: the God who ordains outcomes. you have replaced your refuge.
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  Speaker 1: And the word refuge here is the same word used
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  Speaker 1: throughout the Psalms, chassa, to flee to for shelter, to
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  Speaker 1: hide in, to press yourself against for protection. It is
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  Speaker 1: the image of a small animal running from a predator
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  Speaker 1: and pressing itself into a cleft in the rock, completely
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  Speaker 1: dependent on the rock for survival. The Lord is that rock.
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  Speaker 1: Not a human ally, not a powerful political figure, not
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  Speaker 1: the most impressive earthly option available, the Lord. Now bring
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  Speaker 1: this into your actual life in 2025. The princes have
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  Speaker 1: changed their titles but not their nature. They are the
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  Speaker 1: job that feels like your only source of security, the
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  Speaker 1: relationship you are holding on to because you cannot imagine
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  Speaker 1: surviving without it. the doctor's opinion that has become more
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  Speaker 1: authoritative in your heart than God's word, the financial plan
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  Speaker 1: that has become your real trust, the human connection you
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  Speaker 1: are depending on to hold your life together. None of
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  Speaker 1: those things are bad. Jobs and relationships and doctors and
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  Speaker 1: plans are gifts. But when they become your refuge, when
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  Speaker 1: they are what you are actually trusting instead of the
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  Speaker 1: God who governs all of them, You have swapped the
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  Speaker 1: rock for the thing leaning against it. It is better
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  Speaker 1: to take refuge in the Lord, not because humans and
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  Speaker 1: resources and princes are useless, but because only one refuge
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  Speaker 1: does not shake when the pressure comes. Only one refuge
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  Speaker 1: is still standing when everything else has been moved. And
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  Speaker 1: verse 6 names the freedom that comes from knowing that.
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  Speaker 1: The Lord is with me. I will not be afraid.
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  Speaker 1: What can mere mortals do to me? That is not arrogance.
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  Speaker 1: That is a person who has correctly identified where their
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  Speaker 1: security actually lives. Having declared that his trust is in
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  Speaker 1: the Lord and not in human alliances, the psalmist now
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  Speaker 1: takes us into the actual battle. And what he describes
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  Speaker 1: is not a theoretical enemy. It is a surrounding, a
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  Speaker 1: complete 360-degree encirclement by hostile forces. And this is where
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  Speaker 1: Psalm 118 becomes one of the most viscerally honest battle
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  Speaker 1: narratives in all of Scripture. All the nations surrounded me,
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  Speaker 1: but in the name of the Lord I cut them off.
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  Speaker 1: They swarmed around me like bees. but they were consumed
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  Speaker 1: as quickly as burning thorns. In the name of the
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  Speaker 1: Lord I cut them off. I was pushed back and
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  Speaker 1: about to fall, but the Lord helped me. Three times
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  Speaker 1: in three verses, in the name of the Lord I
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  Speaker 1: cut them off. This is not accidental repetition. This is
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  Speaker 1: liturgical emphasis. This is a man who wants you to
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  Speaker 1: understand that the cutting off did not happen because of
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  Speaker 1: his military skill or his tactical brilliance or the size
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  Speaker 1: of his army. Three times he makes the source of
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  Speaker 1: the victory unmistakable. In the name of the Lord. In
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  Speaker 1: the name of the Lord. In the name of the Lord.
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  Speaker 1: And the image of swarming bees is extraordinary, because bees
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  Speaker 1: in the ancient Near East were not a minor irritant.
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  Speaker 1: They were a genuine danger, particularly the Anatolian honeybee, known
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  Speaker 1: for aggressive swarming behavior. A swarm of ancient bees could
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  Speaker 1: kill a person. and the nations are described as swarming,
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  Speaker 1: not one at a time, not in an orderly military
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  Speaker 1: column that you can strategize against, but coming from everywhere, relentlessly, chaotically, overwhelmingly,
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  Speaker 1: and yet they were consumed as quickly as burning thorns.
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  Speaker 1: Ancient thorn fires were famous for burning intensely and dying
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  Speaker 1: out almost immediately. The threat looked enormous and terrifying, and
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  Speaker 1: it ended as suddenly as it began. because God. And
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  Speaker 1: then verse 13, I was pushed back and about to fall.
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  Speaker 1: This is the admission that cuts through all the triumph.
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  Speaker 1: Even the person singing this victory song, even the one
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  Speaker 1: who watched God move in extraordinary ways, there was a moment,
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  Speaker 1: a specific moment, when they were about to fall, when
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  Speaker 1: the outcome was genuinely uncertain, when pushed back means the
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  Speaker 1: enemy had the upper hand long enough that falling was
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  Speaker 1: a real possibility, not just a theoretical one. But the
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  Speaker 1: Lord helped me four words, the simplest possible sentence— after
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  Speaker 1: all the swirling chaos of swarming enemies and surrounding nations
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  Speaker 1: and being pushed to the edge of falling, four words,
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  Speaker 1: the Lord help me, not a complicated theology, not a
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  Speaker 1: detailed explanation of the mechanism, just the raw testimony of
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  Speaker 1: someone who was about to go under and did not,
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  Speaker 1: because God reached in. What is surrounding you right now?
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  Speaker 1: What is coming at you from every direction? What has
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  Speaker 1: been pushing you back until falling and feels genuinely possible.
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  Speaker 1: Verses 10 through 13 are not asking you to pretend
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  Speaker 1: the surrounding is not real. They are asking you to
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  Speaker 1: say the four words that change the outcome. The Lord
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  Speaker 1: helped me. Say it as a declaration over what is coming,
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  Speaker 1: and say it as a testimony over what you have
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  Speaker 1: already survived. We are only halfway through Psalm 118, and already,
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  Speaker 1: The depth of what God has placed in this single
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  Speaker 1: chapter is extraordinary. If you want to go through every
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  Speaker 1: chapter of the Bible with this kind of depth, historically,
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  Speaker 1: verse by verse, in a way that connects to your
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  Speaker 1: real life, our Founders membership gives you full access to
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  Speaker 1: the complete experience. After the chaos of surrounding nations and
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  Speaker 1: swarming enemies and the admission of almost falling, verse 14
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  Speaker 1: arrives like a breath. like the moment after the storm,
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  Speaker 1: when the air is completely still, and the sky is clearing,
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  Speaker 1: and you are standing there, realizing you are still standing.
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  Speaker 1: The Lord is my strength and my defense. He has
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  Speaker 1: become my salvation. This verse is not original to Psalm 118,
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  Speaker 1: and the fact that it is not original is one
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  Speaker 1: of the most important things about it. This is a
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  Speaker 1: direct quotation from Exodus 15.2. the song of Moses. After
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  Speaker 1: the Red Sea parted, after Pharaoh's entire army drowned in
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  Speaker 1: the returning waters, after two million former slaves stood on
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  Speaker 1: the other shore and looked back at the sea and
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  Speaker 1: realized that the most powerful military force in the known
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  Speaker 1: world was gone, Moses sang this, The Lord is my
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  Speaker 1: strength and my song. He has become my salvation. The
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  Speaker 1: psalmist is deliberately invoking that memory. He is connecting his
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  Speaker 1: own survival, whatever siege, whatever exile, whatever impossible situation produced
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  Speaker 1: this psalm, to the greatest rescue story in Israel's entire history.
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  Speaker 1: He is saying, what God did at the Red Sea
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  Speaker 1: is what God just did for me. The same power,
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  Speaker 1: the same faithfulness, the same impossible odds, ending the same way.
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  Speaker 1: The Lord showed up. And the word translated strength here
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  Speaker 1: is Oz. not just physical power but a fortified quality,
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  Speaker 1: something that cannot be easily shaken or broken. And the
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  Speaker 1: word translated defense, in some translations it is song, is zimrat,
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  Speaker 1: a word that can mean both strength and song simultaneously,
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  Speaker 1: which means this verse is saying, the Lord is not
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: just the source of my power, He is what I
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: sing about, He is the content of my worship, My
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: strength and my song are the same thing. They are
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: both hymn. Think about what that means for your life.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: What is your song right now? What do you find
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: yourself returning to when you need courage? What narrative are
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: you rehearsing when the pressure builds? Because the psalmist is
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: telling us that the healthiest spiritual posture is one where
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the source of your strength and the content of your
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: worship are identical. You do not sing about how great
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: you handled the crisis. You do not sing about how
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: resilient you turned out to be. You sing about Him.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: The Lord is my strength and my song. He has
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: become my salvation. That shift from singing about circumstances to
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: singing about God is one of the most powerful transitions
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: a human being can make in the middle of a trial.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: It is not denial. It is reorientation. The storm is
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: still there, but the song has changed. and the song
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: you sing changes what you see. The song that began
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: in verse 14 now breaks into something that sounds like
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: it is coming from outside the walls, like the news
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: has arrived and the celebration has begun before the battle
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: is technically over, because the outcome is now certain even
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: if the dust has not yet settled. Shouts of joy
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: and victory resound in the tents of the righteous, The
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Lord's right hand has done mighty things. The Lord's right
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: hand is lifted high. The Lord's right hand has done
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: mighty things. Tents of the righteous. In the ancient Israelite context,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: tents referred to the dwelling places of the soldiers, the
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: military encampment of God's people. These are not the shouts
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: of people who have been safe behind walls watching from
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: a distance. These are the shouts of people who were
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: in the fight, who were surrounded, who almost fell, and
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: who are now standing in the very camp where the
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: fear was, shouting. The right hand of the Lord appears
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: three times in two verses, and the right hand in
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: ancient near-eastern culture was not simply a physical description. The
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: right hand was the hand of power, authority, and covenant action.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: When a king stretched out his right hand, it was
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: an act of sovereign authority. When a person swore an oath,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: they raised their right hand. When a military commander signaled attack,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: it was with the right hand. So when the psalm says,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the Lord's right hand has done mighty things, it is
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: not describing an arm. It is describing the active, intentional,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: authoritative intervention of God in human history, not a passive allowance.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: not a standing back while things unfold, active intervention. The
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: right hand is lifted high, meaning visible, undeniable, unmistakable. Nobody
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: looking at what happened can attribute this to coincidence. And
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: the Hebrew word for mighty things here is chayil, valor, might, strength,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: the same word used to describe mighty warriors in battle.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: The psalmist is saying the Lord fought with the valor
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: of a warrior. He did not observe from a distance.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: He entered the battle. He fought. He won. And now
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: the tents are full of shouting. When was the last
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: time you shouted about what God did? Not a polite acknowledgement,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: not a grateful note in a journal, a shout, the
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: kind that comes from someone who was surrounded and almost
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: fell and watched God's right hand move in a way
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: that left no room for any other explanation. the tents
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: of the righteous, should be full of that sound. Because
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: every believer who has been through anything has a testimony
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: that deserves a shout, not whispered, proclaimed, shouts of joy
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: and victory. The Lord's right hand has done mighty things.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Right in the middle of the celebration, right in the
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: middle of the shouts and the right hand of the
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Lord and the victory declarations, the psalmist stops and says
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: something so raw and so personal. that it feels like
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: the mask comes off entirely for just a moment. I
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: will not die but live, and will proclaim what the
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Lord has done. The Lord has chastened me severely, but
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: he has not given me over to death. I will
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: not die but live. That sentence contains the specific, named
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: fear of someone who genuinely believed they were going to
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: die and did not. This is not a metaphorical statement
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: about spiritual deadness. This is a human being who looked
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: death in the face, the Assyrian army outside the gates,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: the Babylonian chains, the exile, the illness, whatever the specific
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: context was, and survived. And the survival was not expected.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: It was miraculous enough to require a declaration, I will
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: not die, but live. And then, and this is the
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: part that transforms survival into purpose and will proclaim what
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: the Lord has done. The psalmist is saying, God did
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: not spare my life so I could keep it to myself.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: God did not pull me back from the edge of
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: death so I could live quietly and keep my head down.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: He spared me so I could talk, so I could
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: tell people, so the story of what he did becomes
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: available to anyone who needs it. and then the hardest
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: verse in the whole psalm, The Lord has chastened me severely, severely,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: not gently, not with a light corrective nudge, severely. The
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Hebrew word used here is yassar, discipline, correction, instruction through difficulty,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: the same word used in Proverbs for the discipline a
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: father applies to a child he loves. And the psalmist
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: is acknowledging something that most people in the middle of
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: their crisis cannot say, that the suffering was not only
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: an attack, some of it was God's hand of correction,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: some of it was discipline designed to produce something in
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: him that comfort could not have produced. But he has
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: not given me over to death, the discipline was real,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: the severity was real, and it had a limit. God
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: set a boundary on how far it went, he chastened,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: but he did not destroy, he corrected, but he did
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: not abandon, he allowed the pressure, but he kept the
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: hand on the door, making sure it did not go
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: past the point of purpose. Have you been in a
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: season where you felt the chastening, where the difficulty was
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: real enough and long enough that it felt severe? Verse
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: 18 is telling you there is a hand on the door.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: The one who allowed the pressure is also the one
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: who is governing how far it goes, and the purpose
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: of it is not destruction, it is proclamation. so that
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: when you come through, and you will come through, you
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: have something to say. Having survived the surrounding, having declared
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: that he will not die but live, having acknowledged the
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: severity of the discipline and the mercy that held the door,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: the psalmist now moves. He is no longer standing outside
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: looking at the threat. He is approaching a gate. and
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: what he says at this gate is one of the
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: most liturgically significant moments in the entire psalm. Open for
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: me the gates of righteousness. I will enter and give
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: through which the righteous may enter. I will give thanks
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: to you, for you answered me. You have become my salvation.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Gates in the ancient world were not merely architectural features.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: They were the center of civic and religious life. In
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: an ancient Israelite city, the gate was where justice was administered,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: where elders sat to make decisions, where contracts were witnessed.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: where the most important conversations happened. The gate was authority.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: The gate was community. The gate was the threshold between
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the outside world and the protected interior. The gates of righteousness,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Shaarei Tzedek, were specifically the gates of the temple complex
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: in Jerusalem. The temple mount had multiple gates, and the righteous,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: those who had been purified and prepared, entered through specific
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: gates to come into the presence of God. The psalmist
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: is not just describing a physical journey across a threshold.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: He is describing the movement from the battlefield to the sanctuary,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: from the place of survival to the place of worship,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: from the outside where the enemies surrounded him to the
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: inside where God is enthroned. And notice what he plans
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: to do when he gets through the gate. Not rest,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: not recuperate, not take stock of what the battle cost him,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: Give thanks. Immediately. The transition from survival to worship is
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: instantaneous in this psalm. There is no cooling-off period. No,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: we will deal with the gratitude later once things settle.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: The gate opens, and the first thing through it is thanksgiving.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: This is the gate of the Lord. Only the righteous enter.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: And the word righteous here, tzaddikim, does not mean morally perfect.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: It means those who are in right relationship with God.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: those who have been declared righteous through the covenant, which
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: in the New Testament context means everyone who is in Christ.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: You are among the righteous. The gate is open for you,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: not because of what you have done, but because of
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: what he has done. And the right response to walking
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: through that gate is exactly what the psalmist models here.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Open your mouth. Say it out loud. You answered me.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: You have become my salvation. I am through the gate,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: and I am giving thanks. We have arrived at the
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: verse that Jesus quoted about himself, the verse that Peter
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: quoted in front of the Sanhedrin, the verse that Paul
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: referenced in his letters, the verse that appears in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, Romans, Ephesians,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: and 1 Peter. No single verse of Psalm 118 gets
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: more New Testament attention than this one. and in its
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: original context in the psalm, it is deceptively simple. The
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Lord
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: In its original context, before we get to Jesus, this
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: verse is likely describing Israel itself, the nation that was
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: despised by the surrounding empires. the small, constantly besieged, repeatedly
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: exiled people that the great powers of the ancient world
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: treated as a footnote. Assyria did not take Israel seriously
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: as a rival. Babylon considered them a minor regional nuisance.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Egypt used them as a buffer state. Nobody built their
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: major alliances or military strategies around Israel. They were the
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: stone the builders pushed to the side, the rejected peace.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: the one that did not fit the grand architectural plans
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: of the great empires. And yet, the God of Israel,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: the God of this rejected people, outlasted every empire that
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: discarded them. Assyria is gone. Babylon is gone. Egypt as
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: a world power is gone. The Roman Empire that crucified
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: their Messiah is gone. And the Jewish people are still here.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: The rejected stone is the cornerstone. The one the builders
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: pushed aside became the load-bearing piece that everything else depends on.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: And then Jesus enters, Matthew 21.42. He is in the temple.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: He has just told the parable of the tenants, the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: story of a landowner whose servants are beaten and killed
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: and whose son is finally murdered by the tenants who
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: want the vineyard for themselves. And the religious leaders are listening,
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: and they know he is talking about them. and he
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: looks at them and says, have you never read in
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the scriptures, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: our eyes? Jesus is applying this psalm to himself. He
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: is the rejected stone. He is the one the builders,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the religious leaders, the political authorities, the entire human establishment
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: will push aside and discard. He does not fit their
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: plans for what a Messiah should be. He comes on
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: a donkey instead of a war horse. He eats with
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: sinners instead of establishing a royal court. He washes feet
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: instead of demanding service. Every expectation they had for the
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: cornerstone of God's kingdom, he refuses to meet. And they
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: reject him. They push him aside. They crucify him. And
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: three days later, The rejected stone becomes the resurrection cornerstone.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: The peace they discarded becomes the foundation that the entire
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: new creation is built on. The Lord has done this.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Not human planning, not strategic positioning, not political maneuvering. The
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: Lord has done this. And it is marvelous in our eyes.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Is there something in your life that has been rejected
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: by people, by circumstances, by your own assessment of its value,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: that God is building something on? Sometimes the most important
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: thing in your life is the thing that got pushed
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: to the side. This is the verse that gets printed
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: on coffee mugs. This is the verse that gets cross-stitched
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: on decorative pillows. This is the verse that gets quoted
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: on Sunday mornings when the worship leader wants the congregation
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: to feel cheerful. and there is nothing wrong with any
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: of that, but the original meaning of this verse is
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: so much more powerful and so much more specific than
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: a general encouragement to have a positive attitude. This is
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: be glad in it. The word day in Hebrew, yom,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: can refer to a specific day, a particular day, not
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: every day in general, but this day, the day the
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: psalm has been building toward. And what day is that?
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Look at the context. The psalmist has just described the
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: rejected stone becoming the cornerstone. He has described the gates
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: of righteousness opening. He has described coming through impossible surrounding
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: and near death and severe chastening and emerging into the
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: sanctuary of God. And then he says, this is the
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: day the Lord has made. This is not a general
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: statement about gratitude for waking up. This is a proclamation
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: about a specific, appointed, miraculous day of divine rescue. The
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Lord made this day. He constructed it. He prepared it.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: He designed the moment of deliverance in advance. The rescue
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: was not improvised. The survival was not accidental. The cornerstone
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: moment was not a happy coincidence. God made this day.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: He prepared it before the surrounding nations surrounded. He prepared
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: it before the walls closed in. He prepared it before
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: the exile, the siege, the impossibility. And now that the
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: day has arrived, we rejoice and are glad in it.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: And in the early Christian community, this verse became specifically
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: associated with Easter Sunday, with resurrection morning, with the most specific,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: most appointed, most divinely constructed day in all of human history.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: the day God raised Jesus from the dead, the day
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: the rejected stone became the cornerstone in the most literal
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: and cosmic sense possible. That was the day the Lord made.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: The disciples who ran to the empty tomb were living
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: inside this verse. This is the day, the one he made,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: the one he prepared before the foundation of the world.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: We will rejoice and be glad in it. So when
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: you say this verse tomorrow morning, and I hope you will,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: do not say it as a general positive affirmation. Say
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: it with the full weight of what it means. God
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: made today. He designed the specific circumstances of your today
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: before you opened your eyes this morning. He did not
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: improvise it. He did not react to it. He made it,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: and in it, even the hard parts of it, even
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: the parts that feel like surrounding enemies and narrow places,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: He is working toward a cornerstone moment that he has
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: already prepared. This is the day the Lord has made,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: and that changes everything about how you meet it. We
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: have arrived at the verse that the crowd shouted on
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Palm Sunday, the verse that rang through the streets of
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Jerusalem as Jesus rode in on a donkey and the
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: people spread their cloaks on the road and waved palm
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: branches and shouted with everything they had. And if you
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: have heard this verse in that context, If Palm Sunday
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: is the only place you have encountered it, you have
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: been missing the full earthquake. of what it means. Blessed
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: From the house of the Lord we bless you. In
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: its original psalm context, this verse was the blessing spoken
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: by the priests to the pilgrims arriving at the temple
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: for the great feasts. Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, Three times a year,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Jewish men were required to go up to Jerusalem and
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: present themselves at the temple. And as the pilgrims came
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: through the gates of the temple mount, through the very
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: gates of righteousness described earlier in this psalm, the priests
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: would call out from the temple precincts, Blessed is he
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: who comes in the name of the Lord. From the
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: house of the Lord we bless you. It was a
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: liturgical welcome, a declaration that these pilgrims coming to worship
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: were blessed by God as they entered his presence, and
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: then on Palm Sunday the crowd took this exact liturgical
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: formula and applied it to Jesus as he entered Jerusalem.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: They were doing something extraordinary. They were greeting Jesus the
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: way the priests greeted temple pilgrims, except they were doing
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: it in the streets to a man on a donkey
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: with the entire city watching. They were declaring him to
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: be the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: not just a pilgrim, the one, the Messiah, the one
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Psalm 118 had been pointing toward all along. And Jesus
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: did not correct them. He did not say, I please
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: you are being inappropriate. This language is too strong. He
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: let them say it because it was true. He was
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: the one, the rejected stone, the cornerstone, the one who
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: would not die but live, the one who came through
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: the narrow place and proclaimed what the Lord had done.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: the one whose day the Lord had made, and now
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: he was riding into Jerusalem, into the city that would
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: kill him and could not stop him, and the crowd
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: was singing the last psalm of the Hallel, the psalm
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: that Jesus would sing again that very night at the
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: Last Supper, the last song before the cross. Blessed is
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: he who comes in the name of the Lord. Two
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: thousand years later, that blessing is still the most important
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: thing that has ever been said. because the one who
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: came in the name of the Lord went to the
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: cross and rose from the dead, and the psalm that
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: was sung before both events is now yours, every narrow
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: place it describes, every surrounding enemy, every almost fall and
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: every rescue, every gate of righteousness and every rejected stone.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Every day the Lord made, it is all yours, because
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the one who came in the name of the Lord
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: made it available to everyone who believes. Let us pray together. Father,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: thank you for Psalm 118. Thank you that it was
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: not written from a comfortable place, but from the edge
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: of everything falling apart. Thank you that the same people
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: who almost fell are the ones who shouted. Thank you
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: that the rejected stone became the cornerstone. Thank you that
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: you made this specific day before we ever opened our
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: eyes this morning. And thank you that the last song
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Jesus sang before the cross was a song about your hesed,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: your loving kindness, enduring forever. Let that be true for
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: the person hearing this right now, in whatever narrow place
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: they are in. in whatever surrounding they are facing, in
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  Speaker 1: whatever almost fall they are in the middle of. His
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  Speaker 1: love endures forever, and He has not given them over
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  Speaker 1: to death. In Jesus' name. Amen. You just walked through
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  Speaker 1: one of the most extraordinary Psalms in all of Scripture,
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  Speaker 1: verse by verse, in full historical depth, with everything it
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  Speaker 1: meant then and everything it means now. But Psalm 118
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  Speaker 1: is one chapter of 150 in the book of Psalms alone.
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  Speaker 1: and Psalms is one book of 66. If you want
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  Speaker 1: this kind of depth for every chapter of every book,
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  Speaker 1: our Founders' membership gives you full access to the complete
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  Speaker 1: Explained series, every book, every chapter, in full, as you
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  Speaker 1: have never seen it. Join the Founders who are going
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  Speaker 1: deeper into God's Word than most people will ever go.
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  Speaker 1: The link is in the description or scan the barcode
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  Speaker 1: on your screen. This is Deep Bible Stories, where the
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  Speaker 1: Word speaks deeper. Stay rooted. Stay blessed.