Bible Commentaries

A Cry of Faith and Joy

Psalm 118:17

We shall never, I suppose, know from whose lips and heart this cry of faith and joy first sprang. One thing is clear—there has been a great danger threatening the very life of a man or a nation. There has been more than danger—there has been the very presence of death; but the hour of suspense has now passed, and the man or the nation survives. Doubt has gone, certainty takes its place, and that certainty gives the thought of service, of newness of life, of joyful self-consecration. I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.

Let us, then, take these ancient words of our Psalmist, and see whether they may not lead us up to some holy mountain spot of which we may say with reverent truth, "It is good for us to be here". For observe there is not only past history which we can but faintly decipher, there is also present biography. The pulses of life are in them. You can almost hear the beating of their hearts. Again and again they rise up and give their message to men.

I. It is not men and women alone that are threatened with death. It is the same with causes, and books, and faiths, and churches. These, too, have their hours of seeming sickness and joyous revival. It is the better men and women in each generation who give the life-blood of their hearts to some great causes which are restored to mankind, freedom, or justice, or peace, or temperance, or purity, and for a time they seem to make way. They are almost more than conquerors; their zeal, their enthusiasm, perhaps their eloquence, win for a time. The reformers are not only reverenced but popular; all men go after them. And then comes the change. Applause is coldly silent; its place is taken first by apathy and then by abuse. How many of the choicest spirits of the past and present have known these times of decline and depression and almost seeming death! How many whose names are now household words for noble service to God and Psalm 118:17

This is a text which often meets us in German Reformation annals. It was one of Luther's favourite passages in the Psalm which he called "the beautiful Confitemini," and his own dear Psalm. It is also associated with Melanchthon's dangerous illness at Weimar in1540. Writing five years later to his friend Camerarius, Melanchthon said: "I should like you to sing that text: Non moriar sed vivam, et narrabo opera Domini. When I lay ill at Weimar, I saw that verse written on the wall, and rejoiced at the good omen." A biographer of Melanchthon has suggested that it was Luther who wrote the words on the wall, but in his last illness (April, 1560) Melanchthon recalled this experience and said that he had seen the words in a dream at Weimar.

Dr. Dale chose the text," I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord," as the text for his first sermon at Carr's Lane meeting, Birmingham, after his serious illness in1891. Writing to Mr. Richard Davies he said that text is "an exclamation which I suppose was originally intended as a cry from the heart of the Jewish nation when it had returned from exile and caught sight of its true vocation, but which... expressed very naturally the emotion with which a Christian minister returned to his work after an experience like mine".

Reference.—CXVIII:17.—J. M. Neale, Sermons on Passages of the Psalm 118:22

"The stone which the builders refused." But surely the builders could not be wrong? They were experts. We pay for an expert in our age; for we have high prices to pay for the most elaborate ignorance. They knew exactly what stone to choose and what stone not to choose, and they reported upon the case, and upon their report the stone was cast away with a spitting of contempt upon it. Does God delight to baffle the malevolent ingenuity of man? Has He some special pride in taking the experts by the feet and dipping them into the river as if He would drown them in the waters of contempt? It is an awful thing to be an expert when you do not know anything about the business in which you profess to be a proficient; your aggravation is sevenfold.

I. Many persons have undertaken to refuse the Bible stone. God has made it the head stone of the corner. Every day brings a new witness to the truth of the Bible, and even to the science of the Bible, and one day even Moses will have what is due to him in the way of tribute and gratitude and coronation. Moses has stood many a test; our hearts have ached for the grand old man as he had to die without treading the land that was fruitful with the harvest of a promise. Our grief was premature. Do not interfere with God's way. He knows it is better to die here than to die there; let Him fix the place, and dig the grave, and write the epitaph; and as for us, let us stand back; we are of yesterday and know nothing.

II. Refusals do not end in themselves. Do not suppose that the matter is of no consequence; that we can refuse, and nothing more will be heard of it. It is not so written in the Book. They refused to obey, and the consequence is that the Lord mocked them and shamed them. We have to face our refusals. We cannot throw our lives behind our backs, and say, Nothing more will be heard of this. Everything more will be heard of it; we shall give an account to God for every idle word we have spoken; we shall have to account for our decisions and elections and preferences.

III. There is a refusal which is right. Moses when he was come of age refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. The offer was made to him, he might have had the honour, he might have occupied an exalted position; he was learned in all the lore of the Egyptians, he had been proved to be a man of capacity, of great physical beauty and majesty, of great moral force and dignity; and when the offer was made to him that he might be the son of the king's daughter, he said, No. Then what will you choose? I choose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God. These are the refusals that mark critical points in human history. These, too, are the refusals which bring character to completeness and to crowning majesty. Resist, refuse the devil, and he will flee from you.

IV. We cannot depose those whom God has called in His electing love to this position or to that. We can say to Him, Lord, make me much, little, nothing, but let me know that it is Thy doing, and I shall be calm with Thine own peace; I shall not know the burning of jealousy and of envy; I will know that He who set the stars in their places has appointed my habitation. That is the spirit in which to accept the providence of life, and work out the destiny fixed by the love of God. Understand that we cannot all be at the head of the corner. Honour enough for us if we be in the God-built edifice, whether in the base, in the midst, or at the top.

—Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. II. p2.

The Blunder of the Builder

Psalm 118:22-23

Taking this incident as a parable of life, the blunder of the builders corrected by the providence of God, let us notice, in the first place, how often in our human experience this parable finds illustration, and then we shall be better able to appreciate its application to the history of our Lord and Saviour.

I. Interpreting our text in its purely human aspect, have we not here in this incident of the rejected stone a picture of misunderstood lives, a parable of unappreciated life? Lives misunderstood, love unappreciated, devotion neglected, the tender ministry of a woman's love cast aside—there is the hidden spring of much of life's silent tragedy.

II. Our text is also a picture of unappreciated truth. How often the truth which today lies at the foundation of life was in a previous age sneered at and condemned. The great builders of the temple of truth have frequently been forced to confess their blunder in casting aside some new idea quarried out of eternity, but whose significance they failed to understand.

III. The blunder of the builders reminds us of the compensations which God reserves for His servants who are misunderstood or unappreciated. Our text lifts for a moment the curtain that sways between time and eternity, long enough to see how lives that are stunted here break into the fullness of unshackled power yonder. But this reversal of the builder's blunder is not necessarily deferred to eternity. We witness the vindication of rejected truth on this earth.

IV. We turn to the last application of our text, as a prophecy fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It is the glory of our age that never was the place of Christ in human history so clearly recognized as now. All that is deepest and most sacred in life today, the noblest charities, the most enduring influences, the hopes of progress, no less than the achievements of the past, rest upon the great truths which became incarnate in His character and found expression in His life.

—D. S. Mackay, The Religion of the Threshold, p249.

Reference.—CXVIII:22-24.—H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No1696 , p607.

Difficulty of Realizing Sacred Privileges (Easter)

Psalm 118:24

This is Easter Day. Let us say this again and again to ourselves with fear and great joy. As children say to themselves, "This is the spring," or "This is the sea," trying to grasp the thought, and not let it go; as travellers in a foreign land say, "This is that great city," or "This is that famous building," knowing it has a long history through centuries, and vexed with themselves that they know so little about it; so let us say, This is the Day of Days, the Royal Day, the Lord's Day. This is the Day on which Christ arose from the dead; the Day which brought us salvation. It is a Day which has made us greater than we know. It is our Day of rest, the true Sabbath. Christ entered into His rest, and so do we. It brings us, in figure, through the grave and gate of death to our season of refreshment in Abraham's bosom. We have had enough of weariness, and dreariness and listlessness, and sorrow, and remorse. We have had enough of this troublesome world. We have had enough of its noise and din. Noise is its best music. But now there is stillness; and it is a stillness that speaks. We know how strange the feeling is of perfect silence after continued sound. Such is our blessedness now. Calm and serene days have begun; and Christ is heard in them, and His still small voice, because the world speaks not. Let us only put off the world, and we put on Christ. The receding from one is an approach to the other.

—J. H. Newman.

Easter Day Morning

Psalm 118:24

I. I would say to all who love the Lord Jesus Christ, to all who have mourned for their sins that brought Him to His death, that we have two reasons to rejoice to-day—that we rejoice both for His sake and for our own. We rejoice because He Whom we love, He Who loved us, and died for love of us, is not now dead, but alive for evermore. And again we rejoice because we are ourselves alive from the dead, able to live a holy life, a life in God's presence, like the life which He lives now. Yet these two reasons for joy are one, because the truth Psalm 118:24

I. It is clear why our Church selects the118th Psalm for Easter Day. It is full of the great tidings of a risen conquering Lord—a Psalm of rejoicing, and a giving of thanks to Almighty God.

II. If there comes one day above all others in the year on which it becomes a Christian to be in gladness, to put away his sorrow, to be lifted up in heart, it is Easter Day.

III. Jesus is shown to us, no longer in humiliation, a very scorn of men, no longer subject to insult, no longer enduring great suffering, but shown to us as a Mighty Conqueror.

IV. The joy that a Christian feels today, it is a widespread joy; it is not only that the Holy and Innocent Jesus has shown Himself the Conqueror, but it is because the benefit of His victory reaches far and wide—reaches to all the race which He came to save.

V. The resurrection of the dead is assured to us by what happened today; that is our blessed hope, which the Lord Jesus Christ, by bursting the bonds of death, has given us for an anchor of the soul, safe, sure, and steadfast.

—H. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons (3Series), p92.

References.—CXVIII:24.—Canon Beeching, The Grace of Episcopacy, p19. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p266. CXVIII.—International Critical Commentary, vol. ii. p402.