Psalm 118: This Day

The last of the Passover psalms may be the one that is most significant to me. I grew up in church, Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, even just around the house singing, “This is the Day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” It is a chorus that I have heard my entire life, I cannot begin to tell you how many church services I have attended that have begun with the words of that song, of this psalm. And yet, I did not grow up knowing the significance of those words, knowing which psalm they were found in, how they were used not only by the Jewish people through the ages, but probably by Jesus Himself on the night of His arrest. 

“This is the day that the LORD has made . . .” was always an acknowledgement that every day was a gift from God and had purpose established by God. No matter what that day would bring, the Lord made it and we were supposed to rejoice in it. What if that line from this song is not about any day or every day, what if it is about a particular, specific, day? What if it was written not to be applied to all our days, but to point us to a day that should stand above all the others? 

Psalm 118, the last psalm of the Hallel, the song that would have been sung to end the Passover celebration, is filled with Old Testament quotations. It has lines that we have read from David in earlier psalms, quotes Moses’ song in Exodus 15 at least twice, sounds like Jeremiah in verses 23 and 25, and even alludes to the blessing that Aaron was commanded to speak over Israel in verse 27. It is filled with Old Testament truth, but then it is also quoted in the New Testament 11 different times. Matthew, Mark, Luke John, Acts, Romans, II Corinthians, Hebrews and I Peter all directly use this psalm at some point in their texts. Showing us once again there is no divide between the Old and New Testaments, rather there is a convergence of the two, they meet at the Messiah. 

How beautiful, whether realized or not, that the Passover ended each year with a song about the Messiah? Psalm 118, more than anything else, is about Jesus. Read through it with me to see Him in it. After the opening antiphonal exclamations, different groups repeating the same truth, “his steadfast love (hesed) endures forever”, spoken four different times by at least three different groups, the psalmist prophetically speaks of, possibly for, the Messiah. “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.” 

The trouble gets described further: “They surrounded me” which is repeated three times, each time with the same outcome, “in the name of the LORD I cut them off.” “I was pushed hard, so that I was falling, but the LORD helped me.” Then comes the confidence, “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 (where Jesus sits) does valiantly, the right hand of the LORD exalts, the right hand of the LORD does valiantly!’” Then comes the promise that can only rightly be applied to the Messiah, “I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the LORD.” At the end of every Passover, the story of the Exodus of the past was joined by the promise of the Messiah to come, His suffering and His deliverance, His trials and His victories, even His death and His resurrection. 

This psalm is about Jesus, but it is also for Jesus. Matthew 26:30 and Mark 14:26 say that when Jesus and the apostles had finished eating the Passover meal in the upper room, that they sang a hymn before they departed to go to the Mount of Olives. On the night of Jesus’ arrest, the last song that he sang with his disciples was probably Psalm 118. Imagine Jesus, knowing that in just a few hours He would be arrested, falsely accused, beaten and killed, singing “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.” How kind is God, that He would have the Holy Spirit inspire someone to write these words about His Son, but also for His Son hundreds of years before they would be sung by His Son? How much assurance did these words give to Jesus? How much peace did they bring? How certain of His Father’s love was He when He sang about Himself just before He would give Himself over? 

Then there is the line that we started with, “This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” It is not just any day, and it does not need to be extended to every day, it was that day: the day of our redemption, the day of salvation, the day when Eve’s seed would crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15), the day when God would demonstrate His own love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ would die for us (Romans 5:8). Again, think of Jesus singing this song. John 13 told us that before Jesus sat down to eat the Passover with the apostles that Jesus “knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father”. He had spoken all along about His hour, His time and the Father’s will. This was the purpose for which He came, but that did not make the purpose easy or the burden light. Just as the Father had prepared Jesus to face the temptation of Satan by saying over Him at His baptism, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased”, He prepared Jesus for the cross by having the Scripture written for Him, “This is the LORD’s doing . . . This is the day the LORD has made . . .” 

And then Jesus would have sung verse 26, familiar words, words that had been sung to and about Him just a few days earlier, words that He had spoken over Jerusalem in some of His final public teaching, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!” Think with me over the things that this psalm spoke to Jesus as Jesus sang it on His way to His death: “I shall not die, but I shall live”; “This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it”; “The stone 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”; “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD”. Each of those were not just about Jesus, they were for Jesus, they were the Father protecting the Son, encouraging the Son, empowering the Son. They were not just prophecies from the Old Testament or revelation for the New Testament, they were intimate and personal words from God the Father to God the Son by God the Spirit. Psalm 118 is about Jesus, but even more, it was for Jesus. 

It then ended exactly as it had begun, “Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!” The very last words that Jesus probably sang with those He loved before He would become sin that we might become the righteousness of God (II Corinthians 5:21) was this truth about His Father. He sang it with them, in some way I am sure He sang it to them, but in that hour and on that day, I am sure He sang it to Himself. When His soul was in agony, He could still hear His own voice singing, “he is good . . . his steadfast love endures forever!” Often, I try to apply the psalms to us, to our lives, to what we can learn, pray, or go and do, today, I want to encourage us, this is not about us, it is about Jesus, and so, let us not make it about us, let us make it about Jesus. Go back and read Psalm 118 again, read it not just to see Jesus, but to hear Him singing it, to hear the Holy Spirit speaking it, to see the Father using His Word to protect and to strengthen His Son.