I invite you to imagine this scene. Jesus and his disciples are standing atop the Mount of Olives. Spread out before them, on the other side of the Kidron Valley, is the Temple and the city of Jerusalem beyond. As Jesus, riding on a donkey, along with his disciples walking beside him, begin to descend the Mount of Olives, various pilgrims who have gathered for Passover, greet him by spreading their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. This is how the crowds greeted another conquering hero less than two-hundred-years before Jesus. Next, the crowd begins to recite the words of Psalm 118 (which we read this morning) just as they always do, while flowing in pilgrimage up to the Temple to celebrate Passover.
I want you to keep that picture in your mind as we consider what this psalm that was chanted on that first Palm Sunday has to teach us today.
I believe this psalm teaches us at least three things. First, it teaches us that God’s love is an active love.
The Hebrew word for love that is used in this Psalm is hesed. It refers to a slight bowing of the head, a slight stooping. What does a parent or a grandparent do when their little child or grandchild falls down and is crying? A loving parent or grandparent will stoop down, scoop up that child in his or her arms, kiss them, and comfort them until they stop crying. That is hesed, and hesed is an active love.
God loves us with hesed. When we fall down in life, God stoops down to scoop us up and comfort us and strengthen us until he can set us back down on our own two feet. The psalmist describes just such a love…
Out of my distress I called on the Lord;
The Lord answered me and set me in a broad place.
With the Lord on my side I do not fear.
What can mortals do to me?
The original author of parts of this psalm may have been King Hezekiah of Judah. He lived in the 8thcentury BC, around the time that the King of Assyria conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and deported many of the Israelites to foreign lands.
Hezekiah was just 25 years old when he began to reign over the southern kingdom of Judah. He reigned for 29 years and we read that he did what was right in the sight of the Lord.
In Hezekiah’s day, some of the Jewish people had started to worship a bronze sculpture of a serpent that Moses had made in the desert. Hezekiah decided enough was enough and so he broke the bronze serpent in pieces. Furthermore, he removed all the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the sacred poles where the Jewish people worshiped various false gods. 2 Kings 18:5 says that Hezekiah “trusted in the Lord the God of Israel; so that there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah after him, or among those who were before him.”
However, as we all know, sometimes bad things happen to good people. Such was the case for Hezekiah. The King of Assyria, not being content with capturing the kingdom of Israel, came after Judah next. Hezekiah tried to appease Sennacherib with tribute, but Sennacherib was not satisfied with that; he wanted to possess Judah. Each time that Hezekiah was afraid of what Sennacherib might do, he took the matter before the Lord in prayer. Furthermore, the Lord answered Hezekiah through the prophet Isaiah and told him not to be afraid. The Lord promised Hezekiah that Sennacherib would not attack or be able to take Jerusalem. That night, the enemy was defeated; the next day Sennacherib left and went home to Nineveh where he died. It is in this context that the middle of Psalm 118 makes sense:
The Lord is on my side to help me;
I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.
It is better to take refuge in the Lord
Than to put confidence in mortals.
It is better to take refuge in the Lord
Than to put confidence 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 blazed like a fire of 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 might;
He has become my salvation.
There are glad songs of victory in the tents of the righteous:
“The right hand of the Lord does valiantly;
The right hand of the Lord is exalted;
The right hand of the Lord does valiantly.”
However, that is not all there is to the story of Hezekiah. In the second half of his reign, Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. Isaiah approached him and told him to set his affairs in order because he was going to die. However, once again Hezekiah prayed to the Lord and the Lord answered, adding fifteen years to his life. That is probably why the next part of the psalm says:
I shall not die, but I shall live,
And recount the deeds of the Lord.
The Lord has punished me severely,
But he did not give me over to death.
Of course, when we read these words today, we see their application to Jesus. But their original application was to Hezekiah. He was a person who knew that God’s love for him was an active love.
Do we know the active love of God?
A second thing we can learn from this psalm is that God’s love never ends.
Hezekiah was not the only one to whom this psalm had special meaning. When the Jews returned to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon a couple hundred years after Hezekiah, they took up this psalm as one of their songs of praise.
Jack Hayford explains it this way:
Some who were children when they were taken captive are returning with others in their later years. They return to the rubble of the broken walls, to the charred stone. Soot is everywhere. Weeds have grown up. Lizards bask in the midday sun on those stones. They decide to start rebuilding the temple. And as they begin to lay the foundations, hosts of people begin to praise the Lord.
But there are other people, the Bible says, that weep, because they have seen the earlier temple in all its splendor—the temple of Solomon. And having seen that temple, they feel this is a pathetic attempt at making a replica of what was. Stones are taken from the rubble, a residue of what was before. It is so far removed from the splendor of what had been, many would not even support the building project. Builders say, “We don’t want to work with this kind of stuff. We want something that has more glory than this.”
Verse 22 says, “The stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing, and it’s marvelous in our sight.” It is a miracle and a marvel in their eyes, and they are praising the Lord for mercy that had sustained them through the exile, mercy that had brought them back, mercy that enabled there to be something built of their own hands that was a praise to God.
Then Hayford makes this application…
Loved ones, many of you wonder if anything can come out of the rubble of your past. The Lord is able to bring marvels of life out of death, and victory out of what has been brokenness and defeat. That’s what this whole situation had to do with. And in the facts that activated the people’s thanksgiving on this occasion, there is the picture over and over of things they faced and how God had brought them through…
There are people in this room today that face situations, and they think nothing could be deader than that hope. Nothing could be deader than that dream. Nothing could be more withered than what it is that seeks to crawl into your present circumstance. And the Lord’s mercies endure right into the middle of your circumstance. And by reason of thechesed, the kindness of God, his arm is reaching your way. He’s stooping in mercy your way, and there’s reason to say: “This situation shall not die; it shall live, and I will behold the work of God, Hallelujah!”
God’s love is active. God’s love is never-ending.
What is our response to that kind of love?
We see here the response of the psalmist:
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
His steadfast love endures forever!
Then, in verses 19 through 21 we read:
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.
That is the best way to respond to the amazing grace of God—with thanksgiving. We praise God as we move into the future because God has proven himself so faithful in the past.
Verse 21 echoes verse 14, “The Lord is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.” Verse 14 is a sort of song within a song. Hezekiah knew the song within his song. The Jews who returned from exile knew this song within the song.
Hundreds of years before, the Israelites stood on the shore of the Red Sea where the waters had just flooded over their oppressors. They had been delivered from slavery and death through the blood of the Passover lamb. Now they had been delivered through the Red Sea from their slave-masters who were chasing after them. It was on the shores of the Red Sea that Miriam, the sister of Moses, composed the words of this song within the song: “The Lord is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.”
Miriam and the women of Israel danced as they sang this song of victory. The song was taken up throughout the history of Israel. Hezekiah includes it in his psalm of praise. The returning exiles take up Hezekiah’s psalm and add to it. They sing this psalm as the second temple is being dedicated.
However, the naysayers are also present. They are the ones who say, “There is no real glory in it; that thing you call a temple is just a collection of burnt stones.”
The prophet Haggai’s response to this was to say, “The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former…” (Haggai 2:9)
Some of the people standing there when the foundation of the second temple was laid must have wondered, “How will this be?” After all, the first temple was, when translated into today’s currency, a multi-billion-dollar structure, encrusted with the gold and jewels representing Solomon’s great wealth and his father David’s provision. That first temple should have counted as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
However, what those people standing there when the foundation of the second temple was laid did not know was that a few hundred years later, on what we know as Palm Sunday, Jesus, the Son of God himself, would walk into that temple. The glory of God was destined to enter that temple, and thus make its glory greater than any temple before or since.
Again, Jack Hayford writes:
The glorious beauty of God says: Watch what I can do in the future.
Listen. Jesus is set on coming into your house in ways you can’t imagine. Praise is the key to welcoming it…
The Bible says the way you possess God’s purpose in the future is through praise.
The meaning of the Hebrew word for giving thanks and praise indicates a raising of the hands in praise to God. It is a physical expression. The word is used in a few places in Scripture to indicate something being thrown. Thus, we are invited to hurl our praises toward heaven in response to God’s active love that never ends.
I realize that sometimes it is hard to give thanks to God. However, if Jesus, knowing the cross that was before him, could join in this psalm of thanksgiving on that first Palm Sunday two thousand years ago, then why can’t we praise God?
I remember a time some 25 years ago. Some good friends of our family lost their 17-year-old son in an automobile accident. I went to the memorial service. Amazingly, there was an open casket. It was hard to look into that casket and see the body of this young man who was loved by so many, not only his family. Hundreds of people must have filed into the church that day and looked into that casket.
And then when the memorial service began, they did an even more amazing thing. They closed that casket and began to sing:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
His mercies never come to an end
They are new every morning
New every morning
Great is thy faithfulness O Lord
Great is thy faithfulness.
And the family of that 17-year-old boy stood there singing that song and weeping while they were singing. And they made it through that horrible time. And they continued to walk with the Lord as a family. They did not lose faith in God. They experienced the truth of Psalm 126 that says:
Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.
The Jesus who entered Jerusalem triumphant on Palm Sunday, the Jesus who went to the cross on Good Friday, the Jesus who rose from the dead three days later, is the same Jesus who can give us the power to praise God for his active, never-ending love, even in the worst of times.
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