Amen. I invite you to take your copy of scripture and turn to Psalm 118. Psalm 118. And we have been in a series in the Psalms for some time now. We actually started back in Psalm 107. for this current series that we've been in. And this morning we come to Psalm 118, which will conclude this current series, and then we're going to begin a series in the book of Acts, looking at Paul's third missionary journey. But this morning, we're going to be in Psalm 118. So if you'll turn there in your Bibles and you'll find our passage on page 511 and 512, and I'll read the psalm in its entirety and then we'll consider it together. This was actually Martin Luther, the Protestant reformer, this was his favorite psalm. So this is the psalm that we'll be looking at this morning. So Psalm 118. O 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 right hand of the Lord does valiantly. The right 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 for 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, and 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. Amen. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank you and praise you for this psalm and for the hope that it brings. And Lord, we pray that as we turn to your word now, that you would ground us and establish us in your steadfast love. And like the psalmist, we would give thanks and we would rejoice. And it's through Jesus Christ, our Lord, we pray. Amen. Psalm 118, you may have noticed, begins and ends with the same words. If you look there in verse 1, we read, Oh give thanks to the Lord for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever. And then if you go down to the end of the Psalm, verse 29, we read the same refrain, And so I've entitled our message this morning, Thank the Lord for His Steadfast Love. Thank the Lord for His Steadfast Love. Now that may seem pretty straightforward. We're to thank the Lord for His love. But I also want to direct your attention to verses 22 and 23, because I believe they are the key to us grasping a fuller, richer understanding of this psalm. This passage here, actually verse 22, is referred to At least six times in the New Testament. It's mentioned in Matthew chapter 21, Mark chapter 12, Luke chapter 20, Acts chapter 4, Ephesians chapter 2, and 1 Peter chapter 2. And you see it there in verse 22. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, verse 23, this is the Lord's doing, it is marvelous in our eyes. And so what we see from these verses is that Psalm 118 is not only celebrating the steadfast love of the Lord which endures forever, but Psalm 118 points us to the reality that the Lord's steadfast love for His people endures even when they are rejected. even when they are forsaken. And His steadfast love ultimately will exalt them and deliver them. Have you ever been rejected? We all have at one time or another. Maybe it's rejection from your parents. Or perhaps it's the abandonment of a spouse. Or maybe the betrayal of a best friend. Or perhaps the shunning of your peers. We learn in Psalm 118 that it's not that those whom the Lord loves are never rejected, but they are never forsaken. It's not that those whom love the Lord are never hurt or feel alone, but they are in God's mercy never abandoned. And why? Because as the psalmist declares over and over and over again in Psalm 118, the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever. When we feel rejected or hurt or alone, we can often despair and feel like there's something terribly wrong. And in one sense, there is something terribly wrong. We are experiencing the relational and emotional pain of living in a fallen world. But at the same time, that pain is an invitation. It is an invitation to a deeper, richer experience of the Lord's steadfast love. And that's the experience of the psalmist in Psalm 118, which is ultimately fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus, which we'll see this morning. And it is the experience that the psalmist is inviting us into. What if at the moment of our greatest hurt, of our deepest betrayal, of our most profound sorrow, of our darkest shame, at that very moment, God is inviting us into a more real and lasting experience of his steadfast love? I want us to look at this Psalm, Psalm 118, in three parts and we'll divide it up in this way. This will be our outline. First of all, we'll see in verses 1-4 a call to give thanks. Secondly, we'll see in verses 5-18 personal thanks. And then third and finally in verses 19-29 public thanks. So first of all, in verses 1 through 4, we see a call to give thanks. Now, as we read these first four verses, it's really impossible to miss the psalmist's use of repetition in these four verses. In just four verses, the psalmist refers to the Lord's steadfast love four times. Now, you might remember that the last psalm we looked at, Psalm 117, we spoke of God's steadfast love. We looked at that psalm a couple of weeks ago. And you might remember that I mentioned then that the word translated steadfast love is the word hesed in Hebrew. In English, it's spelled H-E-S-E-D, hesed. It is one of the most important words in the Old Testament Scriptures. In fact, it's used some 240 times in the Hebrew Bible. One author, Paul Miller, who wrote A Loving Life, he defines Chesed in this way, quote, Chesed is a one-way love, love without an exit strategy. When you love with Chesed love, you bind yourself to the object of your love, no matter what the response is. Chesed is stubborn love. Chesed love is a determination to do someone good no matter what. To be faithful to a covenant regardless of its impact on you. It wills to love when every fiber in your body screams run, end of quote. In other words, chesed love is rooted in a promise, it's rooted in a covenant, it is covenantal love. And this is the steadfast love that the Lord has for us, His people. Here you see that the psalmist, as I mentioned before, repeats or makes reference to the Lord's steadfast love four times in just these four verses. And he does so not so much because we don't understand what's being said, but because it's so hard for us to believe and to trust. I mean, could it really last forever? Without intermission? Without a break? Without compromise? And the psalmist says to us, yes. His steadfast love endures forever. Forever. Forever. I really mean it. Forever. And notice who needs to say it. Notice who needs to hear it in the psalm. In verse 2, the psalmist says, Let Israel say, His steadfast love endures forever. In other words, the people of God need to say it. The people of God need to hear it. In verse 3, let the house of Aaron say, his steadfast love endures forever. Of course, the priest came from the line of Aaron, and so it is the spiritual leaders of the people of God who need to hear it, who need to say it. Let me just say, as one who's been called to serve as an elder and a leader amongst our other elders here at this church, Those who are in spiritual leadership need to say it. They need to hear it over and over again that the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever. Look at verse 4. Let those who fear the Lord say, His steadfast love endures forever. Now this could be another reference to the people of God as a whole, but it may be a reference to Gentile God-fearers. That is, those who were not Jews by birth, but had come to believe and trust in the God of the Bible. And they too need to hear it. They too need to say it. His steadfast love endures forever. You see, we might be tempted to think that this steadfast love was just for the psalmist, that it was back then in Bible times, but surely not now. Perhaps the love of God has faded. Perhaps it's grown faint or weak. Maybe it's run out, at least for me. And that's the reason why it's so important, and the psalmist models it here for us, for us to remember it, for us to recite it, for us to say it and repeat this truth again and again. Perhaps when we get up in the morning, when we first open our eyes, His steadfast love endures forever. Perhaps when we return to our desk after having gone to lunch at work, His steadfast love endures forever. Perhaps when we lay our heads down on our pillows at night before we go to sleep, his steadfast love endures forever. My friends, few things will prove more effective to sustain your faith and to give you strength for the day than to remind yourself that the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever and to give him thanks. Secondly, notice we see in the first four verses that there's a call to give thanks. But secondly, notice in verses 5 through 18 that there is personal thanks. So in these verses we see that the psalmist personally gives thanks to the Lord for his own experience of God's salvation. Now notice the psalmist begins by describing his own personal dilemma, the rejection that he himself experienced which almost resulted in death. Look there in verse 5, the psalmist declares, Now this word here, distress, seems to express the idea of being squeezed, of being cramped and pressed in on from every side. And this is further confirmed because if you look down further in the psalm, verses 10-12, we get this description. All the 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. Do you see it? He's pressed. He's surrounded. He's hemmed in from every side. And we learn here that the psalmist is likely a kingly figure. You see it there, he says, all the nations surrounded me. So this is likely either David writing or one of David's sons who served as a king in Israel. You see, that's not the common experience of your everyday average citizen. All the nations surrounded me. That's a predicament that a king would find himself in. His life threatened. His nation threatened. He's hemmed in. He's pressed on every side. And then he likens it to the experience of being chased by a bee. Have you ever been chased by a bee? What do we do when we're chased by a bee? We kind of act like a fool, right? We're swatting in the air. Falling all over ourselves, we turn from one direction to another. Why? Because every time you turn, it seems like the bee is coming at you from a different direction because it's swarming. Even worse than that is the idea of multiple bees swarming around you, or even a hive of bees swarming around you. And that's the experience that the psalmist describes here. He's being attacked from every side with no escape. Perhaps even more terrifying than being surrounded by bees is the prospect of being surrounded by fire. Back in January the fires out in California erupted and it was a terrifying thing. I remember watching online people taking videos inside of their homes and maybe you saw some of these videos where they were recording outside their window the fires that had encircled their homes and threatened their own lives and threatened their houses. And this is how the psalmist here describes his experience, his dilemma. He's pressed in on every side. He's hemmed in. It's like being surrounded by swarming bees in a ring of fire. He goes on to say in verse 13, I was pushed hard so that I was falling. We know that sometimes out of animosity or resentment, someone might give us a proverbial push from behind when we're not looking. Other times it seems like life itself gives us a shove and leaves us falling, leaves us tumbling and we don't know when we'll stop or when we hit bottom what condition we'll find ourselves in. And what do we need when we feel hemmed in, when we feel pressed from every side? When we often need to know that someone is there with us by our side. That we're not out there swatting at the bees alone, fighting the fire by ourselves. What do we need when we feel like we're free-falling and there's no end in sight? We need to know that someone will come and help us. That they'll intervene, that they'll break the fall to make sure we're safe. And notice what the psalmist says in verses 9, or I'm sorry, verses 5 through 9. 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. In other words, when stinging bees surrounded me, when a circle of fire hemmed me in, when I felt myself falling but I couldn't stop and I couldn't brace myself for impact, the Lord was at my side. And the Lord helped me. My friends, when we find ourselves in troubling and difficult times, it is always good to have a faithful and loyal friend. And God is surely a faithful and loyal friend, but also what we recognize from our text is that God has resources. He's not only faithful and loyal, but He can do something about our situation. God can make things happen. It's like Paul says in Romans chapter 8 verse 31, if God is for us, who can be against us? And this is the question that the psalmist asks here, right? What can man do to me if the Lord is at my side? Now, if you think about that for a moment and you reflect upon it, you might recognize, well, in one sense, man can do a lot to me, right? Man can surround me like swarming bees. Man can attack me and encroach upon me like a circle of fire. But here's the point. If God is on my side, ultimately, man cannot successfully be against me so as to cancel or abolish God's purpose and plan for my life. God will ultimately rule and reign over these circumstances for my good and for His glory. And that's why the psalmist says in verses 8 and 9, it's better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It's better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes. But notice that the psalmist's knowledge of God's steadfast love then results in bold and confident action. We read these verses earlier. Look there in verses 10 through 13. All the nations surrounded me in the name of the Lord. Here it is. 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. You know, when we feel attacked, when we feel rejected, when we feel surrounded and hemmed in, one temptation is to get stuck, to be incapacitated. We don't want to get out of bed in the morning. We don't want to move. And sometimes it's good to rest, right? We need rest. Our bodies need rest. But at the same time, we need to continue to move forward in faith, doing what God has called us to do, trusting in the steadfast love of the Lord. And that's what we see the psalmist doing here. He's taking action boldly, confidently, stepping out as he trusts in the steadfast love of the Lord. Martin Luther, I told you earlier, this was his favorite psalm. At one point he writes, quote, you must learn to call and not sit there by thyself and lie on thy bench and hang and shake your head and bite and devour yourself with your thoughts. But come on, you indolent knave. Down upon your knees. Up with your hands and eyes to heaven. Take a psalm and a prayer and set forth your distress with tears before God. In other words, take action, right? Cry out to the Lord. And after you cry out to the Lord, step forward in faith, doing what He has called you to do, trusting in His steadfast love. Reminds me of the words of Elizabeth Elliot that I heard so many years ago when she said, just do the next thing. When you're overwhelmed, when you feel surrounded, where you feel hemmed in, cry out to the Lord. And then just do the next thing and trust in his steadfast love. The psalmist goes on to say that those who call out to the Lord and trust in His steadfast love will find Him to be their salvation and their strength and their song. Look there in verses 14 to 17. 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 right hand of the Lord does valiantly. The right 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. Now these verses are actually the psalmist rifting on the song of Moses from Exodus chapter 15. When Moses and the people of God are delivered by God from Egyptian bondage and slavery at the Red Sea. And Moses and the people sing this song, it's known as the Song of Moses. And essentially what the psalmist is doing here in these verses, he's just rifting on that song. So many of the themes in the Song of Moses are found here in these verses. The Lord is my strength. The Lord is my song. The Lord is my salvation. And then notice the psalmist's final evaluation of his own personal experience of the Lord's salvation. Look there in verse 18. The Lord has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death. Now that verse right there may be surprising. It's not, given what we've just read, It's not what maybe we would anticipate the psalmist saying next. But what we see here in this verse is that those who trust in the steadfast love of the Lord, they find the Lord to be their strength, their song, their salvation. They find that it is the Lord who delivers them from their trials and difficulties, and the psalmist has given testimony to all of that. But here we see in verse 18 that they will also find that from the very beginning, providentially, mysteriously, God is the one who designed their trials and their difficulties. At the bottom of it all, there we find God. And He designed our trials and He designed our difficulties not to destroy us, but to do us good. The Lord has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death. You see, we might think at this point in the psalm, I've read the psalm up to this point, I understand what's happening here. It's the nations who surrounded him, right? It's the nations who swarmed around him like bees. It's the nations who surrounded him like a ring of fire. It's the nations who pushed him and intended for him to die. Isn't that true? And the answer is yes, of course, it was the nations. And at the same time, not one nation acted outside of God's divine purpose and plan. And what they meant for evil, God meant for good. To teach and to train, to humble and to sanctify the psalmist and to bring him into a deeper experience of God's steadfast love. Charles Spurgeon says it this way, quote, the attacks of the enemy are chastisements from the hand of God. The devil tormented Job for his own purposes, but in reality the sorrow of the patriarch were chastisements from the Lord. The Lord frequently appears to save his heaviest blows for his best beloved ones. If any one affliction be more painful than another, it falls to the lot of those whom he most distinguishes in his service. The gardener prunes his best roses with most care. Chastisement is sent to keep successful saints humble. to make them tender towards others, and to enable them to bear the high honors which their heavenly Father puts upon them. Their pains are for their instruction, not their destruction." Some of you may be experiencing in some ways the discipline of the Lord now. Discipline is not always for sin. Sometimes it is. It's discipline of correction. Sometimes it's discipline of training and instruction. But either way, you can know if you are in Christ that the discipline you are experiencing comes to you ultimately through the loving, providential hand of your father. Who intends to do you good. And so the psalmist here in this opening section, in this section where he gives personal thanks, he gives thanks to the Lord for his steadfast love. He gives thanks to the Lord for being by his side when he was surrounded by enemies. He gives thanks to the Lord for being his helper in his time of greatest need. He gives thanks to the Lord for being his strength and his salvation and his song. And he gives thanks to the Lord for providentially watching over and protecting his life and orchestrating every evil for his good. Now this leads us to our third and final point, public thanks. So we saw in verses 1-4 a call to give thanks. Then we saw in this large section here, verses 5-18, personal thanks. And then finally in verses 19-29 we see public thanks. Now at this point in the psalm we need to use our imaginations a little bit to understand how Psalm 118 works. We don't know exactly the original context in which Psalm 118 was penned. However, it does seem that at this point in the psalm we have multiple voices that are contributing to the psalm. So I want you to imagine something, imagine a scene where you have the king of Israel, he's been victorious in battle, and he is returning to the holy city of Jerusalem, the capital city of Jerusalem. And the city has heard the news of his great victory. And so the city has gathered together, the people of the city have gathered together into the streets, and they've gathered together in the temple, and they are awaiting the return of their victorious king. And what the psalmist is recording here is the interaction that will take place between the returning victorious king and the people that await him who are eager to celebrate his victory. And so it seems that these verses, verses 19 to 29, break down into three parts where you have this interaction between the king and his people. And so in verses 19 to 21, we see that the king speaks. And then in verses 22 to 27, the people respond. And then in verses 28 to 29, the king speaks again. Notice the king speaks in verses 19-21. Now, one of the reasons we know or we believe that the king is speaking here is because he speaks in the first person singular voice. You'll see it as we read it here. We get the pronouns I and me. This is the king, this is the one who wrote the psalmist, he's speaking. He says in verse 19, 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. And so here's the king, the psalmist, he's entering in, he's victorious, he's been delivered by the Lord, and he says, open the gates, the gates of righteousness, which could refer to the gates of Jerusalem, or the gates of the temple, or perhaps both. And then notice the people respond in verses 22 to 27. Now, the reason why we believe it's the people speaking now is because the pronouns change, right? Instead of speaking in the first person singular voice, we get the first person plural voice, so we get we and us and our. And so we read there in verses 22 to 27. 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. And so this is the people speaking now, right? We, us, and they're responding to the victorious king who has returned to the city. And notice they declare in verse 22, the stone that the builders rejected. I said before, this is a key verse to understanding this psalm. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. Now the stone here that they are referring to may refer to the king, the victorious king who's coming back. Or the nation of Israel as a whole, right? Or both, which I think is probably most likely because the nation experiences victory through their king. And this is a theme actually, this idea that the rejected stone has now become the chosen cornerstone through whom God will do his work and build his kingdom. This theme is found all throughout the Old Testament. This idea that God is predisposed to those who are forsaken and rejected and despised. Think about it. Joseph's brothers rejected him. They threw him in a well. They left him to die. But God raised him up and made him second in command over all of Egypt. Or think about Moses. Initially, the Hebrew slaves rejected Moses. In fact, Moses came to the conclusion that he would have to leave his people and flee Egypt. But God brought Moses back and used Moses to deliver his people from slavery. Or think about David. David's father, Jesse, he overlooked David. He never considered that David could be a king. He always assumed that David was too young, too inexperienced. And then as David became a young man, King Saul, he chased David out of the palace, out of the kingdom, across the wilderness in order to kill him. And yet, God chose David, who was rejected, to be the one, his sons to be the line through whom the Messiah would come and deliver the world. This theme we see repeated over and over and over again in the Old Testament and it finds its ultimate fulfillment and expression in the humiliation and the exaltation of the Lord Jesus. In fact, in Matthew chapter 21, prior to Jesus going to the cross, Jesus tells a parable. He tells a parable of the tenants. And you've probably heard this story before. He tells the story of a man who owned a vineyard. And he leased it out to some tenants. And when it came time for him to collect his share of the fruit that was produced by the vineyard, he sent some of his servants to receive that share of the fruit. But the tenants, instead of giving back the share that rightly should go to the master, they took the servants, the servants of the master, the owner of the vineyard, and they beat them, and they stoned them, and they killed them. And this happened repeatedly. So that the owner of the vineyard sent servant after servant, and yet they rejected them all, and they killed them, and they stoned them. And then the master of the vineyard, the owner of the vineyard decided, well of course, if they've rejected my servants, surely they will respect my son. Surely they will fear him. And he sent his son. But then Jesus, reveals in the parable that even the son they captured and killed and threw outside the vineyard. Of course, the Lord Jesus, as he tells this parable. It's prophesying his own coming death and crucifixion, where he will die on the cross for the sins of his people. And then he concludes the parable with these words. Jesus said to them, have you never read in the scriptures that the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone? This was the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. You see, Jesus is revealing himself in that moment to be the stone. The stone that was rejected, yet the Lord chose to be the cornerstone upon which He would build His kingdom. The people go on to declare in Psalm 118 verse 24, this is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. Now, what day are they referring to? It was the day of God's vindication of His chosen servant. So in the immediate context, it would be the day in which they gather in the city to receive the victorious King and to celebrate His victory. And for the Lord Jesus, this is the day of His resurrection. The day that Jesus was vindicated and declared victorious over His enemies by His resurrection from the dead. We could say it this way. It is Sunday. It is Resurrection Day. It is the day that the Lord raised His Son from the dead, vindicating His righteousness. Vindicating that He is truly the Son of God. And this is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. It is the day that the Lord has made and we will rejoice and be glad in it. This is why we gather on Sundays. To celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and His vindication. People go on to declare, look there in verse 25. 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 our God and he has made his light to shine upon us. Bind the festal sacrifice with cords up to the horns of the altar. Now, again, this is the people. These people are still responding to the king, right? The victorious king who is coming into the city. And although they have already experienced the Lord's salvation, we see here that they continue to call out to the Lord for salvation. Because we never live beyond our need for God's salvation. They pray, save us, O Lord. And actually, those words, save us, those words are actually the word hosanna. And on Palm Sunday, you may be familiar with this account, when the Lord Jesus rode on a colt into the city of Jerusalem, this was just a week before He was to be crucified, we read in the Scriptures that the people and the children gathered together and they declared these words from Psalm 118. Hosanna! Save us, Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And we can imagine that those people who gathered and those children who gathered, that they did not understand everything that was taking place. They surely could not have foreseen everything that would occur in the days ahead. But they understood enough to know that Psalm 118 was a messianic psalm. that Psalm 118 was speaking of one ultimately who would come and deliver God's people. And they saw in Jesus a prophet, just like they had seen repeated over and over again in the Old Testament, they saw in Jesus a prophet of God who was rejected by the leaders of Israel, but was obviously honored and esteemed by the Lord. And they related Psalm 118 to the Lord Jesus. This is the stone like Joseph, like Moses, like David. This is the stone that the builders, the leaders of Israel have rejected. He will be the cornerstone. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna, save us, Son of David. And then we get a final word from the king. So we've got the king coming in, he speaks, the people respond, and then a final word from the king in verses 28 to 29. We know now that it's the king, the psalmist who's speaking, because the pronouns change back to the first person singular voice, I and my. You are my God and 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. I want you to remember that Psalms 113 to 118 are the Egyptian Hillel Psalms, and we've talked about this a number of times over the last several weeks. The Egyptian Hillel Psalms were songs that the Israelites sang during particular festivals and feasts and specifically during the Passover feast when they celebrated God's deliverance of his people from Egyptian bondage and slavery. And we know that just prior to Jesus being crucified he celebrated the Passover feast with his disciples. And these psalms, these hymns, would have been sung during that time. And with this being the last of the Egyptian Hillel Psalms, it is likely that this was the last psalm that Jesus and his disciples would have sung before they parted from eating the feast. And as they were eating the feast, It was during that time that Judas left them to betray Jesus. And just a few hours later, Jesus was arrested and then crucified. Now with that in mind, I want you to consider Jesus singing this psalm with his disciples On the night that Judas betrayed him and on the night before he was crucified. The Lord Jesus saying, verses six through nine, 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 and 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. The Lord Jesus would have sung verse 17, I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of the Lord, expressing his own faith. That God would raise him from the dead. The Lord Jesus would have recounted and sung verses 22 and 23, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. And so my friends, how is it that Jesus, how did Jesus make it when his enemies surrounded him? When his own people rejected him. When even his closest friends would forsake him. This is how he did it. He was singing Psalm 118. He was recounting it in his mind. He was reminding himself of the steadfast love of the Lord and of the promises of God. The author of Hebrews says it this way in Hebrews chapter 12, for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross. And we see the hope of this psalm in the Lord Jesus as he was betrayed and as he approached the cross. And Jesus's last days and Jesus's last hours, yes, his grief was real, but so was his hope and his faith in the steadfast love of the Lord. And how will we make it? How will we be found faithful when we are rejected, disappointed, in danger, even facing death? The same way. with realistic honesty about the challenges and the hurts that we face, and with joyful hope and confidence in the steadfast love of the Lord that endures forever. As we conclude the sermon this morning, I want us to do something a little different. I want us to heed the instructions of the psalmist. to declare our trust in the steadfast love of the Lord. I believe that the rhythms and the practices that are revealed to us in Scripture, like we see here in Psalm 118, really do possess a power, a means for us experiencing the healing presence of the Lord. So what I'll do is I'm going to read for us the prompts that the psalmist gives in verses 2 through 4. Let Israel say. Let the house of Aaron say. Let those who fear the Lord say. And then I want you to respond all of us together out loud. His steadfast love endures forever. Some of you may want to say it loud. Shout it. That's okay. Some of you may want to whisper it. That's also OK. But we all need to say it. And if you don't feel like you need to say it, say it for the person who's to the left of you or the right of you. Because I can guarantee you there are people here this morning in this room who need to hear it. Say it for them. Let's practice one time, OK? Let's say it together. His steadfast love endures forever. Let's say it again. 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. Amen. Let's pray. Oh God on this truth we bank our lives and our eternal hope. that your steadfast love endures forever. And we thank you that you have loved us completely and you will love us eternally through your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and was raised from the dead so that we might experience your love. And it's in his name we pray, amen.