Amen. Our scripture today, if you’ll turn with me in your Bibles, is Psalm 115. The psalmist writes, ‘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, and 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, and the righteous shall enter through it.
I thank you that you have answered me and 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 festival 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. And give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Lord, you have given us the psalms as an instruction manual, as a manual and guide for how to praise and how to pray to you. We ask that through the hearing of the psalms, our ears are opened, our minds expanded, and our hearts opened wide to receive you, to rest in your glory, and to respond in faithfulness and with praise to you.
And now, as always, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
O give thanks to the Lord for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. What does it mean to give thanks to the Lord, and really, why should we? What does ‘give thanks’ even mean? Miriam-Webster defines thanks as a good feeling that you have towards someone who has helped you, giving you something, etc. Or, secondly, a kindly or grateful thought, meaning gratitude.
But is that how we feel, or how we ought to feel towards God, towards Jesus? Yes? No? Kind of? So are we really just simply grateful, or is our response meant to be something more? The great and mighty works of the Lord should always move our hearts to both thanksgiving and praise, because they are intrinsically linked.
When we understand that all things—that everything comes from the Lord, originating with him, even if we might assist our receipt through our own work and efforts—then, by all accounts, we should and we must respond with thanksgiving. When we are truly thankful, we will offer heartfelt praise to the one to whom we are thankful, for praise is a means by which we express our gratitude.
And we all have so much to be grateful for, to be thankful for, and to praise God for. So much so that we do often forget or miss the importance of remembering to thank the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever.
Now this morning, I’m going to ask you to do something specific—something that may be helpful for you to do ordinarily, but which today I expressly ask you to do. Keep your Bibles open to the passage and follow along with me as we consider Psalm 115, verse by verse.
Thank you. Language, I’m still on the right-hand side here instead of the left-hand side; you’re not being used to where I belong.
Now please remember that, from a literary perspective, a psalm is three things all at once: it is prayer, it is song, and it is poetry. And so these three different aspects will affect how we understand the meaning of certain words and phrases. For within the psalms, there are examples of imagery, symbolism, metaphor, allegory, with some things being intended to be understood literally while others are understood more by their emotional impact.
Psalm 118 is the last of six consecutive psalms, which together are referred to as the Egyptian Hallel, and have been used throughout the devotional life of God’s people, being sung as psalms during the Passover services. The opening and concluding refrain of ‘O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever’ reminds us of David’s thanksgiving song sung when the ark was being brought up to Jerusalem, and was later again echoed when the temple was rebuilt in the days of Ezra.
The Exodus, the triumph of David with the establishment of Jerusalem as the throne of Israel, and the post-exile restoration of temple worship were specific events prompting the people to give thanks to the Lord in response to his great works of salvation and faithful provision for his people.
Psalm 118, as a whole, is an expression of thanksgiving to the Lord and is presented to us from the perspective of the king, or anointed of the Lord, with a call for the people to respond to God with thanksgiving and praise.
‘O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever.’ First, we are instructed in what we are to do and the reason for it—to praise God because he is good. But how do we know that God is good? His steadfast love, his loving-kindness, his covenant faithfulness, his compassion, mercy, and pity lasts forever, from beyond the beginning until beyond the end, and is communicated to us through his provision for all creation.
Steadfast love comes from the Hebrew word ‘hesed,’ which is an exceptionally difficult word to translate because it has a broad range of meanings and defies a single simple definition. When Scripture uses it for the Lord’s attitude towards mankind and creation, the word encapsulates all of God’s love, desire, and providence, but it is particularly intensified towards his chosen elect people, of whom he forgives their sins, their transgressing of his covenant, and most especially in the giving of Jesus Christ, God the Son, to be our Redeemer.
‘Let Israel say, ‘His steadfast love endures forever.” This is the right response of all God’s covenant people—Israel and the church—for the proclamation of God’s enduring and eternal love everywhere and to everyone. We proclaim thanksgiving for all that the Lord has done on behalf of his people in the past, and we petition him to remain true to his nature by continuing to express his providential love to us.
We respond with praise because God’s hesed is eternal, and because we hope to continue enjoying his hesed.
‘Let the house of Aaron say, ‘His steadfast love endures forever.” The house of Aaron refers to the particular priesthood of Israel, whom God had declared to be a perpetual priesthood and was provided to serve Israel before the Lord and to represent the Lord before Israel. Although the Aaronic priesthood has since failed both in character and in recorded natural descent, we now have that better, that great high priest in Jesus, whom we now serve with—as a holy nation and a royal priesthood before the entire world.
‘Let those who fear the Lord say, ‘His steadfast love endures forever.” Those who fear the Lord include all of those who honor and revere the God of Jacob, respecting him and giving him his due, as well as those who fear him in the sense of being afraid of, or terrified of, our immortal dread of his justice and wrath.
So this expression reasonably covers all people in all times, because they will, upon the day of resurrection, find themselves in the presence of Christ, bowing the knee, honoring him either in awe or in terror, in love and devotion, or trembling with despair and horror.
As all the people receive the benefits of God’s continuing provision in this life, no one may deny him, and therefore everyone must proclaim that his steadfast love endures forever. All creation, by and for its continued existence through providence and divine fiat, must exclaim the eternal love of God.
This reminds me of the song, ‘All God’s critters got a place in the choir: some sing low, some sing higher, some sing out loud on the telephone wire, but some just clap their hands or paws or anything they got.’ All creation praises God.
‘Out of my distress, I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me free.’ The Lord is our only hope and help. Christ alone is the only one who can and does save us. When we finally recognize our fallen condition, once we know the state of our human misery and despair of life apart from Jesus, the Holy Spirit leads us to call upon Christ alone by faith and assures us that we have been forgiven and set free from our sin so that we may be justified before the Lord.
‘The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?’ The Apostle Paul understood this attitude very well, writing, ‘If God is for us, then who can be against us?’ Nothing in this life, nothing in this world, can ever harm us except by the express allowance of God.
But even the harm we suffer is relative. The evil intent and evil will of men cannot harm us or our eternal security because even the terrible things we suffer—the troubles and trials we experience because of our enemies, and even disease or illness—are always turned to good in Christ.
‘The Lord is on my side as my helper; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.’ By the sovereign will of God, we are conquerors in Christ. We share in his triumph. Jesus is the good shepherd, and his victory feast is set in the presence of our enemies.
‘It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.’ Who can we really depend on? Whom can we really trust? Our families? Surely! Our friends? Usually! But always remember that these kinds of positive relationships are reflections of Christ’s relationship with his people.
This world is fallen and corrupted while our Christian hope and confidence is in the world that is to come. Nothing good in all creation was originally sourced in people. Everything good comes from God. While we cannot help but disappoint one another, it is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.
Princes here, or rulers and other authorities, is not really the most complete expression to help us understand this. The Greek used was quantitatively descriptive of a ruler or authority, but the original Hebrew is more qualitatively suggesting the character of a leader who is noble and generous. Thus, this may be better understood as: it is better to trust God than to trust benevolent rulers or the benevolence of those in authority.
The hearts of men are corrupted by the sinful nature, and our best intentions become spoiled by our pride, self-righteousness, and our own selfishness. The axiom is true, especially of all mere human rulers and all people, that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. No human government can save us. No human government is perfect.
While some forms are better than others, the worst ones are those that offer the people what they think they want instead of giving them what they need—those who do not govern for the benefit of the governed, but instead govern for the benefit of the governors and at the expense of and by the exploitation of those whom they govern.
Only the authority of Christ and his kingdom is worthy of our absolute trust and dependence. Human government and other secular authorities serve at the pleasure of the Lord God, from whom their authority comes. They are purposed to exact justice, to guide, to guard, and to direct humanity and God’s people according to the divine moral law written on our hearts.
Rulers remain valid and justifiable, deserving of honor, respect, and obedience, so long as they rule in accord with the law of God. But when their power corrupts them and they no longer rule justly, or they demand obedience to things or manners contrary to the expressed will of God as written and taught by the word of Scripture, then they must be disobeyed and ignored—even if or when their demands seem to be good and beneficent to people.
For, as the apostles said, we must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29). And like that declaration of the apostles before the Jewish priests, the original Hebrew here is more simple than the relative scale suggested by our interpretive English translation of ‘better than being;’ it is good to find refuge in the Lord instead of trusting in benevolent rulers.
The psalmist does not suggest a comparison of better or worse, with worse still potentially being acceptable; instead, that plainly, it is good to take refuge in God while trust in princes is contrasted as being not good.
‘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 king, the anointed of the Lord, the mediator and representative of God’s people exclaims how the entire world is against him and God’s covenant people. Enemies surround them; their enemies are everywhere, obnoxious and intolerable.
Enemies swarmed them, stinging them like bees, overwhelmingly, seemingly undefeated, for where one combatant falls, another appears in its place. Their enemies have trapped them like a fire burning in a hedge of thorns. In ancient Israel, planted fields would be surrounded by living fences, consisting of thorn bushes, to separate distinct farmlands and to also protect crops from wandering animals.
While this was very effective, there was still some added risk, because these thorny hedges were also very dry. If a fire was kindled, then it would quickly engulf the entire fence and trap anyone caught in the field, encircled by sharp thorns.
By flaming sharp thorns, choking smoke and this blazing inferno, ordinarily the expression of cutting off is used in Scripture to refer to removing somebody from the covenant community, with the Hebrew ‘karate’ (to cut) being used to denote the punishment for covenant violation.
But the verb used here is ‘mul,’ the same verb used for circumcision. Circumcision was the sign of the old covenant, the physical sign showing the distinct separation of the Hebrew people from the other nations.
‘Cut them off,’ in this sense, is less about justice and more about preserving and strengthening the distinction of God’s elect against the encroachment of sin and the enemies of God.
‘In the name of the Lord, I cut them off’ describes a clear division between God’s people and the world, between the church and the synagogue of Satan. The king, God’s anointed, has rescued his covenant people not through his own strength and power, but with the help of the Lord.
God and king have together separated and preserved the elect. Jesus said, ‘While I was with them, I kept them in your name which you have given me; I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.’
For Christ has cut off the world from the elect, calling his chosen out of the world and given us a new distinct nature. Without the help of Christ, there can be no victory. Only in Christ, possessing the new nature as new creations, we are a new race of humanity, different from the old sons of Adam.
As we cut off and are separated from the enemy, apart from Christ, we are consumed by the flames. Without him, we are overwhelmed and destroyed. Victory only comes by help from God.
This soul-sufficient and efficacious work of the Lord is affirmed in our next stanza: ‘The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.’ Here, the psalmist directly quotes Exodus 15—the song of the sea, celebrating the safe passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea and the concluding destruction of the Egyptian army, calling to mind two miraculous events that are only attributable to the Lord’s power and love for his people, and not the power of men.
Thus we may join with Jonah as he cried from within the deep, ‘Salvation belongs to the Lord.’
‘Glad songs of salvation are in the tents of the righteous.’ Shouts of joy, praise, and thanksgiving to the Lord is our proper response to the great salvation of God. Justified by faith in Christ, we are declared righteous by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. We are being sanctified; we are becoming, slowly becoming, but still becoming righteous as we have already been judged.
So let us all praise the Lord. Thank you, Jesus!
‘The right hand of the Lord does valiantly; the right hand of the Lord exalts; the right hand of the Lord does valiantly.’ Our physical strength is often found in our right hand, as the vast majority of humanity seems to have been right-handed since antiquity.
Those seated at the right hand of the sovereign acted with all their same power and authority, serving as their regent or other decision-making representative—hence our continued contemporary uses of ‘right-hand man.’ The psalmist here continues the allusions to the Exodus and the song of the sea, where the right hand of the Lord shattered the enemy and caused the earth to swallow them up by his hand.
God’s people are planted on the mountain in the sanctuary, which he has established. Throughout the book of Psalms, the psalmist repeatedly refers to the honor and power of the right hand of the Lord, the position which Jesus claimed for himself standing before the Sanhedrin—and which both Peter and the author of Hebrews ascribe to Christ.
Jesus is powerful in his heavenly exaltation, and he exerts his power to exalt his church through our union with him as the bride of Christ.
‘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. The Lord our God is the God of the living. As he has raised Christ from the dead, so too he will raise us to eternal life with him, bringing us into his eternal kingdom, and so we shall surely worship and glorify him forever and ever. Amen.
This stanza also brings to our minds the death and resurrection of Christ as the suffering servant. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Jesus suffered the divine discipline due us, even unto death, yet he lives again, and still he reigns. Jesus is our gate of righteousness, through whose blood we enter the kingdom and may praise the Lord for his goodness to us.
‘I thank you that 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.
Jesus Christ, our Savior, is our only source of salvation, and he generously gives it to us by sovereign grace. He is the keystone and object of our faith; he is the cornerstone of the foundation for new life in him. Jesus quoted this psalm in the Synoptic Gospels in relation to himself as the Messiah, and it was repeated again by Peter, reaffirming our confidence that salvation is in Christ alone, according to the Scripture alone.
Salvation is the Lord’s doing alone, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore, we must respond by glorifying him alone.
‘This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.’ Every day is a gift, a blessing from God, for which we must be thankful and praise him. Our lives are a blessing; even our trials and diverse challenges are still blessings. Everything we have or experience should inspire us to thank God and rejoice in all the blessings he gives to us.
‘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.
When Jesus entered Jerusalem before the Passover, riding on a donkey colt, he was greeted by jubilant crowds crying out, ‘Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!’
God’s people rejoiced that day; they were glad, believing that Messiah had come, that Jesus was the salvation of Israel, greeting him in the manner prescribed for the Lord’s anointed king and right hand. As they blessed and praised Jesus in the streets, as they blessed and praised him in the temple, so we continue to bless him, to praise him, to exalt in Christ’s salvation whenever we gather together as the church for corporate worship and by our individually living for his glory.
‘The Lord is God, and he has made his light to shine upon us. Bind the festival 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. O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever.’
This psalm now closes as it began—with who the Lord is, what he has done, and how we ought to respond. The Lord alone is God; he has created everything and providentially blessed us so very much—in the light and in the dark, in the sunshine and the rain, when we are hot or when we are cold, in our plenty and in our poverty.
All these things demonstrate his love for creation, and especially his chosen people. Therefore, it is good and right that we respond to him with praise and thanksgiving, for we have so much to be grateful for. God is good all the time.
He loves us so much that even after we fell into corruption and could not help ourselves, he gave us his Son, Jesus Christ, to save us from our sin. Jesus lived perfectly for us; Jesus died suffering the penalty due us on the cross; and Jesus rose from the dead, giving us hope that we too will be raised like him.
So are you thankful? If you understand and believe how great this salvation we have is, then I know you are. If not, then I invite you to accept all that Christ has offered and given to you. Respond to the Holy Spirit’s call upon your heart. Call upon Jesus in faith; from out of your distress, he will answer, and he will surely set you free.
Place your trust in him. Let him be your refuge and safe space, instead of trusting in yourself, instead of trusting in the things of this world, instead of trusting the powers and authorities of this world for your salvation.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and see for yourself how marvelous the stone rejected by the world truly is—the rock and foundation upon which our faith and our hope is built.
For this is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. And so, let us all give thanks to the Lord for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever. Amen.