God Will Sustain Us. Matthew 21:1-17; Psalm 118

What we see in chapter twenty-one is a basic structure orienting on the presentation of Jesus as the King of Israel to the population that is in Jerusalem. It is the beginning of the week of the Passover and because of that there are enormous crowds that are beginning to arrive in Jerusalem, for it is one of three feast days mandated by the Law for all Jewish males to come and be present at the temple in Jerusalem.

We see through vv. 1-17 the formal presentation of the King. We can break this down into some sub-sections. In vv. 1-7 we see how the Lord is preparing the circumstances for His presentation. He sends out the disciples to find the colt of the donkey and this is prepared for Him to ride into Jerusalem. In vv. 8-11 we see the description of His entry into Jerusalem. As He does so the crowds sing from Psalm 118:24-26, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD.” We need to understand why they are singing this.

In vv. 12-16 Jesus begins to demonstrate His messianic credentials by cleansing the temple and healing the blind and the lame. This sets off a negative reaction among the scribes and the chief priests. In vv. 17-22:46, the demonstration of His messianic credentials develops into a condemnation by Jesus of the religious leaders. They rejected Him as the Messiah and He, then, rejects the nation. This will culminate in a statement at the end of chapter twenty-three where He says that He will be leaving and will not return until people say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord”.

Psalm 118 is a crucial background for understanding this entire period from the entry into Jerusalem to the last night when He celebrates the Passover meal with His disciples.

Psalm 118:26 is quoted and sung by the crowds. They welcome Jesus in His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Then in Matthew 21:42 Jesus again quotes Psalm118 as he denounces the religious leaders: “The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief corner {stone.} This is the LORD’S doing; It is marvellous in our eyes.”

Then He again quotes from Psalm 118 in Matthew 23:39, and this is when He announces that He will not return until they say, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord”. That is probably on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The night before He goes to the cross when they celebrate the Passover meal and He re-institutes it as the Lord's Table, when they conclude the Lord's Table, they sing from Psalm 118:27, “Bind the festival sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar.” Then they walk out and go to Gethsemane where Jesus will be arrested, taken and tried, and become the Passover sacrifice for our sins.

We begin looking at this psalm with the call to praise in vv. 1-4.

Psalm 118:1 ^NASB “Give thanks to the LORD [Yahweh] ...” In Hebrew there are no vowels, all you have is a YHWH. The Y is often transliterate into English as J. The W is usually translated as a V. In fact, in Hebrew the W is often pronounced as a V—that's where you get the JHVH. And Jews do not read the name of God, so when they see the name of God they either says Hashem (the name) or, the vowel points that were put into the text later on are the vowels for the word ADONAI to remind them to read ADONAI rather than to say YAHWEH.

In the late middle ages a monk who was translating the text transliterated it wrongly as JEHOVAH, adding the vowels. So the vowels come from one word and the consonants come from another word. So JEHOVAH is not the name of God, not even a biblical word, it was something that was invented by mistake.

But the significance of this word is that it is always associated with God's covenant promises/obligations to Israel. So when we read this in the background there is always a focus on God's faithfulness to Israel. So the cal to worship here is to give thanks to the Lord.

There is a statement in the first stanza of each of these four verses, followed by the same line: “For His lovingkindness is everlasting.” The temple choir probably sang these verses antiphonally. One part would sing the first line and another part would sing the second part.

This psalm, as a declarative praise psalm, is a psalm that relates to giving thanks for God's deliverance in a specific historical, space-time situation. It is not for just any general act of God or generic deliverance but for something that happened specifically on behalf of the people. It is looking back to a specific incident, but that specific incident has certain aspects to it that are used in the New Testament because they are a picture or type of something that is going to happen in the future.

We see an example of this in Matthew chapter two where Hosea 11:1 is quoted: “When Israel {was} a youth I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son.” This is a verse that is referring to a historical event that occurred in 1446 BC when God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. He called them out as His firstborn son. Matthew quotes that as a type, a picture or foreshadowing of something that happened in the life of the Messiah. Hosea 11:1 isn't a prophecy but it is a picture of something that will happen in the future, and is applied to the life of Christ.

We have the same kind of thing here. Psalm 118 is talking about a historical circumstance but there are things about that that are then taken as a picture of something that will happen in terms of a future deliverance provided by the Messiah. This is a psalm that is a messianic psalm and has much significance to the life of the Messiah.

Some key things that we need to understand in this psalm as we go through it is that vv. 11-13 helps with a historical understanding that is a time of discipline and existential crisis in the life of Israel. Then when we get down to v. 22, which is quoted numerous times in the New Testament and is a reference ultimately to the Lord Jesus Christ. Then in v. 24 which, sadly, is taken out of context and abused a lot and used in a contemporary chorus to refer to any day that is a nice bright sunny day. It has absolutely nothing to do with that. It refers in context to a historical event and is a type of the future return of Christ to establish His kingdom. Then when they call upon the Lord to save, v. 25, “O LORD, do save, we beseech You; O LORD, we beseech You, do send prosperity!”, the Hebrew word there is hoshianu. It is an imperative of request. It comes over into the Greek as HOSANNA. It is a cry for God to save and deliver the people. This is why it gets sung when Jesus is entering into Jerusalem.

Psalm 118:1 introduces the call to worship: “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; For His lovingkindness is everlasting.” This introduces the important idea that God is good. He is intrinsically good. This is related to His righteousness. And because God is the creator God set over against all in creation He is good in a way that nothing else is good. He is absolute righteousness, and therefore all that He does is righteous, even when He disciplines us individually. Even when He disciplined Israel and had the nation destroyed by the armies of the Babylonians and had the temple destroyed, all of that was the result of His justice and His righteousness.

He is a good God and is faithful to His covenant. In Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 God spelled out the fact that if Israel rejected Him and went into idolatry and disobedience He would take them through various stages or cycles of judgment and discipline, the harshest of which was the fifth cycle, which would mean that God would remove the people from the land. Because of their irresponsibility, because of their disobedience, they would no longer have the right to the land and God would bring them out of the nation and take them through a time of horrific chastening.

This occurred when Nebuchadnezzar invaded Israel twice before, in 605 and 597, and then the third time in 586 he destroyed the temple and hundreds of thousands of Jews were slaughtered and children who survived were taken off to Babylon. But after God brought them back they recognized His faithfulness—His mercy. Mercy means His faithful covenant, His faithful love for His people. We see this echoed in other psalms.

Psalm 106:1 ^NASB “Praise the LORD! Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; For His lovingkindness is everlasting.” Why do we give thanks to God? Because He is good intrinsically.

Psalm 136:1 ^NASB “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, For His lovingkindness is everlasting.” The title changes in v. 2 ^NASB “Give thanks to the God of gods, For His lovingkindness is everlasting.” Again, in v. 3, “Give thanks to the Lord of lords, For His lovingkindness is everlasting.” In v. 36, “Give thanks to the God of heaven, For His lovingkindness is everlasting.” The focus in all of these is to give us a full view of the identity of the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Why? Because His mercy, His chesed – often translated lovingkindness, sometimes mercy—emphasizes His loyal love. He is loyal to His covenant with Israel and He is going to fulfil that which he has promised: to bless them when they are obedient and to bring judgment on them when they are disobedient.

Sometimes when you reduce or explain love in terms of faithfulness to a covenant people think that is not really loving, you're just being faithful to a contract. When you get married you stand before a pastor or a judge, or perhaps someone else who is authorized to conduct a marriage service. What happens? You pledge to one another that you are going to fulfil the obligations of the covenant that you are entering into in terms of your love for one another and in terms of your marriage. That is the foundation of your relationship from that point on. You have entered into a contract with your spouse and have pledged that on the basis of that contract you are going to love one another and be true to one another for the remainder of your lives.

That doesn't sound very romantic, does it? But that is the essence of a successful marriage—being faithful to that contract to love one another, in sickness, in health, in good times, bad times, prosperity, adversity, or whatever the situation may be because the love is not based on something that is ephemeral, something that changes, it is based on something that is grounded in the eternal character of God, i.e. a covenant.

As he calls upon the nation to give thanks to the Lord, the psalmist then breaks this down to three different groups within Israel. First of all he talks about the whole nation: “Let Israel say, 'His mercy endures forever'.” Then he narrows it to the priesthood: “Let the house of Aaron now say, 'His mercy endures forever'.” He narrows it even more to those who fear the Lord: “Oh let those who fear the LORD say, 'His lovingkindness is everlasting'.” Those who fear the Lord are those who are focused on living the life that honors and glorifies God.

So this is the introduction, the call to each one, every one in the nation and each subset, to call upon the Lord because His lovingkindness is everlasting.

The cause for the phrase begins to be described in verse 5 where he says, “I called upon the LORD [Jah]”. Jah, the shortened form of God because the text didn't use the full form, it uses simply the shortened form. What is interesting is the way that this is stated in the Hebrew to show the emphasis. It doesn't say, “I called upon the Lord is distress,” it says, “In distress I called upon the Lord”. The emphasis is on the circumstances, the distress. The idea of distress is from the Hebrew verb which means to bind, to be narrow, to be in distress. Literally it means, “I am in a narrow place, a tight place”. Everything seems to be closing in around me is the idea here metaphorically.

And then he says, “The LORD answered me {and} {set me} in a large [wide open] place.” In other words, He removed all of the adversity, or He lightened the load so that I no longer had the load. The circumstances may not have changed but it changed in terms of my response to that adversity because God was taking care of me.

The idea is that we get in a position of pressure through external adversity and when we respond through fear and anxiety and worry we convert our own internal sin into stress in the soul. We are in distress and we are no longer characterizing the Christian life. We are no longer relaxed; we are not trusting God; we are not experiencing the joy that God has for us. There is no stability, no happiness, because we have converted the external pressure of adversity into or the internal pressure of adversity into stress in our soul.

This is what he is talking about. He called on the name of the Lord. That is the proper response whenever we face external or internal adversity. The solution is that the Lord answers us, and only God can set us in a broad place. The circumstances may not change but we are able to respond to the circumstances with peace.

This is seen in the Lord Jesus Christ. The night before He went to the cross, when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane, He was under incredible pressure—not externally, but because He knew what was going to happen in the next 24 hours. He knew that what He would face in terms of the physical torment and torture, and that beyond that He would face incredible pain as the sin of humanity touch and impacted judicially the perfect Lamb of God, the one who was without sin. The Scripture says that He faced great sorrow and emotional distress. That is not because at that point He has yielded to the pressure but the way He responds is to take it to the Lord in prayer and to trust in Him. And so the Lord Jesus Christ never lost His peace, His happiness; He was perfectly happy, perfectly at peace, even though He was facing incredible internal distress.

We see this illustrated in the Old Testament. Genesis 32:7 ^NASB “Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed ...” Remember, Jacob had cheated his brother out of his inheritance. Esau threatened to take his life. Jacob went and worked for his Laban for at least 14 years. Now he is returning to the land and is fearful because he has just learned from his advanced scouts that Esau is coming to meet him. He thinks that Esau is going to kill him and he is scared to death.

This kind of pressure on our soul can come from our sin nature when we respond in fear. There is the external source; there is also an internal source of this kind of adversity.

We also see this in the book of Judges to describe the situation in Israel as external enemies threaten them. Judges 2:15 ^NASB “Wherever they went, the hand of the LORD was against them for evil, as the LORD had spoken and as the LORD had sworn to them, so that they were severely distressed.” The external circumstances were putting pressure on their souls, they are not responding in trust to God, and internally they are falling apart.

Judges 10:9 talks about the same kind of situation. ^NASB “The sons of Ammon crossed the Jordan to fight also against Judah, Benjamin, and the house of Ephraim, so that Israel was greatly distressed.” God's discipline on the nation is talked about as this great distress. That is important because what that helps us to understand is the backdrop to understanding and interpreting Psalm 118 correctly. It is a time of severe divine discipline on the nation.

We see in this that adversity is the outside pressure of negative circumstances, or the internal pressure of sinful thoughts and emotions on the soul. Think of a stress test. To evaluate something you put external pressure on it and if there is a weakness internally then the more pressure that is applied will reveal it. So the outside pressure of external circumstances or the inside pressure of sinful thoughts and emotions can expose those faults and cracks within our soul as we are relying on self or circumstances rather than God.

The only way to avoid converting external adversity into stress in the soul is by using the ten spiritual skills. The first thing we have to do is confess sin. We have to walk by the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:16). We have to trust in God. We have to be oriented to God's grace—He supplies everything we need in Christ Jesus. We have to be oriented to what the Word of God says; it describes how we are to face and handle difficult circumstances. Then as we grow and mature we develop a personal sense of our eternal destiny. We live in light of who we will be in eternity and let that impact how we think and respond today. We develop a personal love for God and an impersonal love for mankind. By impersonal love what is meant is not that this is some kind of machine type of love but that we don't have to have a personal relationship with a person to demonstrate the love of God for them. This is the kind of love we have towards people we don't know. Then occupation with Christ: we focus on who Jesus Christ is, and He is the author and finisher of our faith (Heb. 12:2). Then ⁺H, the personal happiness that Christ has given us.

This is what the backdrop is, and divine judgment on a nation is certainly a source of external adversity. And if you haven't recognized it yet we have been going through divine judgment in this country since about five or ten years after WW2. It is not going to come because of failures today, what we are experiencing in terms of many of the failures today is divine judgment.

Read Romans 1 & 2. Homosexuality and lesbianism are divine judgments; they are not the cause of divine judgment. We are seriously under divine discipline and instead of letting that destroy our walk with the Lord, your peace, your happiness and stability, then we need to learn to relax and trust in the Lord and let these things go by, because they are just circumstances. For us as believers circumstances are not our source of stability or happiness or joy.

We see the incorrect response to divine discipline and the distress that God brings into our lives through judgment in king Ahaz. 2 Chronicles 28:22 ^NASB “Now in the time of his distress [divine discipline on the nation] this same King Ahaz became yet more unfaithful to the LORD.” Sometimes divine discipline causes some people to become more stubborn in their disobedience and things get worse.

The correct response is illustrated in David. 1 Samuel 30:6 ^NASB “Moreover David was greatly distressed because the people spoke of stoning him, for all the people were embittered, each one because of his sons and his daughters. But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.” That is the source. When we are faced with external adversity we strengthen ourselves with the Lord our God.

Another response is in the life of Manasseh. He had a forty-year reign and was one of the most evil kings in the southern kingdom. But God brought judgment and discipline into his life and he turned back to the Lord toward the end of his life. 2 Chronicles 33:12 ^NASB “When he was in distress, he entreated the LORD his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers.”

This word for distress is often used for the divine discipline that God would bring upon Israel, especially the fifth cycle of discipline that came to them in 586 BC. It is described this way in four verses in Deuteronomy 28.

Deuteronomy 28:52-55 ^NASB “It shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout your land, and it shall besiege you in all your towns throughout your land which the LORD your God has given you. Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you. The man who is refined and very delicate among you shall be hostile toward his brother and toward the wife he cherishes and toward the rest of his children who remain, so that he will not give {even} one of them any of the flesh of his children which he will eat, since he has nothing {else} left, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you in all your towns.” This is what they went through.

Jeremiah 10:18 ^NASB “For thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I am slinging out the inhabitants of the land At this time, And will cause them distress, That they may be found'.” The point being made is that this word for distress is a word indicating divine judgment.

All of this is to show that the context to the praise (Ps. 118) is a time of incredible distress in the nation, a time of existential crisis. It is not about an individual because we see in vv. 10-12, “All nations surrounded me; In the name of the LORD I will surely cut them off. They surrounded me, yes, they surrounded me; In the name of the LORD I will surely cut them off. They surrounded me like bees; They were extinguished as a fire of thorns; In the name of the LORD I will surely cut them off.” We don't have a group of nations surrounding and attacking an individual. The psalmist is representing the nation as a whole and there is only one time when the nation Israel is surrounded by these nations and is destroyed, and that is in 586 BC as they go under divine discipline and judgment.

What we can understand by way of application is that when we feel surrounded by adversity the only thing that will give us sustenance and deliver us is when we turn to the Lord.

“In the name of the LORD I will surely cut them off”. Name isn't just saying the name of the Lord as some magical incantation. What he is referring to is the character of the Lord. The name of something in the Scripture relates to its attributes, its character. It is in the person of the Lord “that I will cut them off [destroy them]”.

Notice that there are three times where it says that He will destroy them: verses 10, 11 and 12.

This is interesting. We know from the Old Testament that Israel had quite a background of military conquests as well as defeats. Any people who are involved in a lot of military activity have a great vocabulary for military conquest and military defeat, military tactics and military strategy. The word that we have here that are translated destroy in these verses is not a military word. The word translated “I will cut them off” [NASB] is closer to an accurate translation but it is not a military term. In fact the term that is used here means to circumcise. So what it says is: “All nations surrounded me but I will circumcise them”.

There were a couple of situations in Israel's history where there was a mass circumcision. It occurred in Shechem with a couple of Jacob's sons, Levi and Simeon. Another time was when Samson went out and circumcised a bunch of Philistines. David did that, too, but it wasn't really a way of achieving military victory. So we have to understand what he means here.

They are surrounded by this adversity but the way that God delivers them is through circumcision. How is that accomplished? Deuteronomy 30:6 shows that circumcision was not only used to describe physical circumcision, it was also used to describe spiritual circumcision.

Deuteronomy 30:6 ^NASB “Moreover the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.” It is a spiritual circumcision, and the idiom refers to bringing about a change of mind, a change of thinking. This is exactly what happened historically. When Israel was taken out into captivity it was through the Babylonians. When the Persians defeated the Babylonians, the Persians had a change of mind. Through Cyrus they decided to not only restore peoples to their various historic homelands but when Cyrus gave his decree for the Jews to return to their land he not only paid for them to go home, he paid for the rebuilding of the temple and gave them money for the building of the city. So this is the idea of a change of mind.

What the writer is saying here is that God not only restored them to the land but that He would provide everything that they would need in order to go back.

What we find in the verses in between, verses 6-9, is the focal point. Ps 118:6, The LORD is for me; I will not fear; What can man do to me? Ps 118:7, The LORD is for me …” In the Hebrew it is, “The LORD for me”, and it means, “The Lord is mine, the Lord is on my side”. “... among those who help me; Therefore I will look {with satisfaction} on those who hate me.” God is going to provide justice, no matter what happens.

The Lord is called here the ezer, the helper. In Genesis chapter two God said: “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a helper for him”. Feminism says that demeans women; it makes them second class citizens; it reduces them by reducing them role of an assistant and a helper for the husband. The only problem with that is that aside from the wife the only other individual in the Bible described as an ezer is God. So if the woman is demeaned by being called an ezer, God would be demeaned by being called an ezer.

But again and again and again in the Scripture God is the Helper. He is the one who fights for us and strengthens us, and He is the one who helps us. That doesn't demean women by calling them a helper or an assistant, it elevates them to an exceptional, specific and important role that should not ever be demeaned or ridiculed by placing them on the level of some sort of slave. This isn't a word for a slave; this is a word for a special divinely appointed assistant.

In vv. 8, 9 we have the resolution. Psalm 118:8 ^NASB “It is better to take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in man. [9] It is better to take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in princes.”

Too often today in this political environment people are disappointed because they think that the solution is in a political party or individual. But Scripture says that we never put our trust in man. The only hope is in God. The word that is translated trust is the word that means to seek protection, to seek refuge. It is better to find our refuge and security in the Lord than to put confidence in any prince, person or political party.

This is echoed in Psalm 56:11 ^NASB “In God I have put my trust, I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me?”

This is the lesson that is learned from the exile. Israel cannot put their trust in idols, in mean, in princes; they will always fail. The lesson is, the only hope in times of difficulty and distress is to trust in the Lord. And the confidence that comes out of this psalm is that our only hope is in the Lord. He is the one who will sustain us, no matter what happens. Because the psalmist that writes this was born in captivity, born in Babylon. The circumstances of their defeat, their captivity, of losing everything, were not changed by God. What he learned was that even in the midst of the horrors of divine judgment—and things might get much worse in this country—no matter how bad it might get, God is going to sustain us. God is going to provide for us and take care of us.

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