The Chief Cornerstone, Matthew 21:1-10; Psalm 118:10-26
Each generation on its own has to decide if it is going to defend its freedom. In order for that to truly be effective we have to have to have a generation that is informed, educated, and understands that “terrible” word that is so misused today and distorted: history. History isn't what we want it to be; history is actually what happened. We have to study history. History tells us everything that has happened, and we can't talk about an y subject or think about any subject without thinking about history.
I was recently listening to somebody talk about church history. He made a statement that when you hear it you say, well that was just a blinding flash of the obvious. This was a statement of a professor at a seminary, and he said that the course that he taught on church history was the most important course in the entire curriculum in any seminary.
That is really true. Every time that you study anything, like the exegesis of a passage, you are going to read what so-and-so said about it, or somebody else said about it. If you don't know who those people are or what their context were, then you won't understand the significance of their statements. If you study Greek grammar you are going to study what other people have said about Greek grammar, and its history. The same thing for Hebrew grammar.
If you study anything about the Bible, sooner later somebody is going to talk about Augustine, Irenaeus, John Calvin, Luther, Wesley or Billy Graham, and if you don't understand who those people are you can't really grasp what is being said. Well you just take that and apply that to history as a whole. When you talk about freedom, liberty, government, politics, the Constitution, that is all embedded in history; the history of discussions on freedom and liberty, going back not just to 1776. Those men who came together to declare our independence from Britain knew exactly what they were doing, and they had a whole history behind them of understand what liberty was, understanding the roles and limitations of government, that came out of centuries of political thought and development, going back to at least the Magna Carta in the early 13th century. That provided them with a frame of reference for being able to discuss things and to argue their position.
When you get a generation that doesn't appreciate history they will destroy their future. A people who do not understand their past and how they got to where they are will have no future. That is one of the many things that is a tell when a culture is on the path to self-destruction.
What has happened over the last 150 years as a result of numerous philosophical changes and religious changes that have taken place, not only in this nation but also in western civilization, is that we have reached a point where we deny reality. We think that we can shift and reshape the past in order to substantiate the fantasies of political correctness and liberal utopianism.
When any individual lives in the realm of fantasy instead of the realm of reality he is on the path of self-destruction. And when they start making decisions based on fantasy instead of reality they will realize that self-destruction. When you expand that to a whole civilization and a whole culture, that is what happens.
We stand in this generation because there have been hundreds of thousands of citizens who have given their lives to defend the original intent of the Constitution, to defend liberty in this nation. And when we take positions and beliefs that contradict that which gave birth to our culture and the greatness of America then we are part of the problem and not part of the solution, and we dishonor their memories.
But the most important thing that we can do as Christians is just to know the Word of God and to apply the Word of God. That is important because as the psalmist writes Psalm 118 Israel has come out of a tremendous time of divine discipline. And the lesson he brings to bear is what he articulates in vv. 8 and 9: that it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence [take refuge] in man, and it is better to trust in the Lord than to take refuge in princes.
That is what the kingdom of Judah failed to do in the time before Nebuchadnezzar destroyed it in 596 BC. They were looking to Egypt, to human alliances and human viewpoint solutions in order to not be destroyed. But when God determined to bring judgment on that nation there was nothing they could do. In fact, God told them to surrender. Those who surrendered to the Babylonians would live, but they chose to disobey God and as a result hundreds of thousands were killed.
We have to understand the Word of God, and this is why in our study of Matthew we are going back to Psalm 118. There we find two verses that are quoted in this section in chapter 21, and this also forms a framework during the last day of Christ.
The focal point his morning is Psalm 118:22 NASB “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner {stone.}” This is a verse that is quoted many times in the New Testament.
When we look at Psalm 118 in relation to Matthew 21and the last week of Christ, Psalm 118:26 says, “Blessed in He who comes in the name of the Lord”. This is quoted and sung by the crowds. They welcome Jesus during His triumphal entry (Matthew 21:9).
The psalm is then quoted by Jesus as he denounces the religious leaders in Matthew 21:42. And remember, the Pharisees have memorized the entire Hebrew Scriptures. NASB “Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER {stone;} THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD, AND IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES’?”
He quotes Psalm 118:27 again in Matthew 23:39 NASB “For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!’”
Then as the concluded the last supper on the night before He went to the cross the last thing they did was sing this psalm. They would sing Psalms 113-116 at the beginning of the meal and Psalm 118 at the end as part of the Hallel psalms that praised the Lord. Psalm 118 is the last of these Hallel psalms.
As we get to the heart of the passages that are quoted in Matthew 21 we have to remember what the original context was because that sets the framework for why these people are singing “Save now” (Hoshiana). The original context would have been sung by a procession of people being led by a political or religious leader up the temple mount.
Jesus is entering Jerusalem. It was not that large back then. He is going to be going up the temple mount and there is singing of this psalm. In its original context it was a communal thanksgiving psalm for a deliverance that God had given them over their enemies and had brought them back to the land. That is the core to be able to understand the significance of what is being said.
The heart of the praise is Psalm 118:6-9, which focuses on the Lord. The Lord is our only solution of hope, the only one who can deliver us. “The LORD is for me; I will not fear; What can man do to me? The LORD is for me among those who help me; Therefore I will look {with satisfaction} 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.”
These are great verses to memorize in a political year when you are just inundated with all of the political stories and all of the political decision. Ultimately all is in the Lord's hands and we need to trust Him.
If we as a culture, as a civilization, as a people, as a nation do not trust God our security is ephemeral, our future is in doubt. Our hope is the Lord. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't get involved politically; it doesn't mean that we don't need to vote; it doesn't mean that we become passive. But it does mean that we have to keep all of that civic responsibility, which we must be engaged in, in right perspective in relation to who is ultimately in control.
Every year we see this. We come to an election and hope the results will be one thing; they are not, and we are discouraged and depressed, which tells us (that's the clue) our hope was in something other than the Lord. The Lord is the only one who never changes and in whom we have our only hope.
Psalm 56:11 echoes
the same thought. NASB “In God I have put my trust, I shall
not be afraid. What can man do to me?” This is a theme that is a drum-beat
throughout the psalms—to trust in the Lord alone.
In Psalm 118 the author is speaking in the first person singular. For example, v.10, “All nations surrounded me; In the name of the LORD I will surely cut them off.” But nations do not surround an individual; they surround a nation. We learn from this that this person is a political or religious leader who is speaking for the nation, who is representing the nation. So what he is saying is related to a national crisis, not an individual crisis.
Four times he says that they are surrounded by these nations. Then three times he says that the solution is that in the name of the Lord, i.e. on the basis of God's character, who Yahweh is, the covenant God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, “I will destroy them”. This is really not an appropriate translation. The word that is translated “destroy” is translated “cut them off” in the NASB, which is much closer. It is a religious term, not a military term.
Deuteronomy 30:6 NASB “Moreover the LORD your God will circumcise your heart ...” Physical circumcision was really a ritual that was designed to depict a spiritual reality of something that transforms a person from the inside out. In its most basic sense this “circumcision of the heart” means a change of mind, a change of status. But it is applied in the New Testament in a different way.
What we see in the background of this is that the victory that came in the past related to Israel's victory over their divine judgment is a type of the individual's victory over sin and the sin nature in Christ. Christ the Messiah is the one who circumcises us spiritually at the moment of salvation.
Paul alludes to this in Romans 2:29 NASB “But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.” And in Colossians 2:13 NASB “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh ...” That is, when we were originally born and were spiritually dead we had a sin nature that controlled us, but when we are saved, one of the many things that happen is the cutting off of the power of the sin nature (Romans 6:1-6, the foundation for the spiritual life). We are identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection so that we are buried with Him and are raised again to new life where the sin nature is not the total authority over us that it was prior to our salvation.
Psalm 118 foreshadows this with is language related to the fact that the Lord gives victory through the spiritual circumcision of the enemy.
What happened historically is that the Babylonians were used by God to bring His discipline upon the kingdom of Judah. God had promised in Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 that if Israel violated the covenant with Him, was involved in idolatry and disobeyed the Law, He would discipline them. There would be different stages or cycles of discipline, the most extreme of which if they continued to be rebellious, would be their overrun by enemy forces and be removed from the land. They demonstrated that they weren't worthy to live in the land and so God would bring judgment upon them and take them out of the land.
But the promise, the hope, is that God promised He would restore them and eventually they would repossess it forever and ever.
The Babylonians were used by God to take Israel out of the land. But then God brought judgment upon the Babylonians. They were defeated in 538 BC and the Persians came to power. God changed the heart of Cyrus and allows their restoration to the land, and he supports the reestablishment of the nation.
Psalm 118:13 NASB “You pushed me violently so that I was falling, But the LORD helped me”. The “you” here is singular in the original. This doesn't read smoothly in the original: “You pushed me violently that I might fall”. There are some who have tried to reinterpret the text and rewrite it, “I was pushed down,” but it makes it clear that the you here is talking to the nations collectively, that they were the ones who pushed Israel down, that tried to destroy Israel, and for a while it appeared that they had been successful. But he says, “The Lord helped me”.
The word for “help” is the verb atsar, which is related to the noun ezer, a word that is only used basically of God as a noun, and the wife—the wife is to be a helper to the man.
Psalm 118:14 NASB “The LORD is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation”. When we think of salvation we think of phase one justification. That is not what he is talking about here. The word for salvation is a word that often describes deliverance or rescue from a physical calamity. Sometimes it is applied to health and healing. In the Hebrew the word here is yeshua. That becomes the name of Jesus.
Looking at the imagery here we have the picture of a crushing defeat in v. 13, and this is so crushing that it threatens the very existence and future of the nation. When we think about it historically what we have seen in history is the Assyrian nation grow to a great power and expand throughout the Middle East, and as it has come down through the Levant it has completely destroyed and wiped out the northern kingdom of Israel. They came like a high tide up to the walls of Jerusalem and then God miraculously intervened. Over night the soldiers of the Assyrians were killed.
Then there were the Babylonians who have also grown to great strength and have destroyed the southern kingdom. As we read about this we see that Israel appears now to have been totally obliterated, like the other nations around them. They have all been taken over by these foreign powers, and like the Jews of the northern kingdom have been relocated to other parts of the empire. The only group that survives, the only people that are restored as a nation are the Jews.
That is not just an accident of history. This indicates that God is faithful to His covenant, faithful to His plan, and at the end of the seventy years that He had predicted to Jeremiah that would be the time of their captivity they were restored back to the land. It is as if the nation is reborn and God's plan has been renewed, and it indicates His faithfulness. So the emphasis here is on the fact that it is the Lord who does this. He is the strength of Israel. He is “my song”, and that is a figure of speech technically which means you talk about the effect, which is their singing, rejoicing and praise to God, and that is emphasized in place of the cause, which is God's deliverance. So the emphasis is on God as strength and song. This echoes other psalms:
Psalm 18:1, 2 NASB “I love You, O LORD, my strength.” The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”
This statement about the Lord being “my strength” is a reminder of God's deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt in the exodus event.
Exodus 15:2 NASB “The LORD is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; This is my God, and I will praise Him; My father’s God, and I will extol Him.”
Psalm 118 takes us back to these historical events, these things that have happened where God has delivered them in the past.
Psalm 118:15 NASB “The sound of joyful shouting and salvation is in the tents of the righteous ...” And then we have the first of three statements where he talks about the right hand of the Lord. When we read these phrases, the arm of the Lord, the finger of God the hand of God, these all are metaphors for the power of God. “... The right hand of the LORD does valiantly.” He is praising the power, the omnipotence of God.
“The sound of joyful shouting and salvation is in the tents of the righteous” is not to be taken as some sort of allusion to Tabernacles. The Feast of the Tabernacles takes place in the fall. It is the feast that foreshadows the coming of the King to establish His kingdom. But here, this is probably a reference to the fact that the people have come back from captivity and they are still in the process of rebuilding Jerusalem. They have probably just completed building the temple so it is probably just after 516 BC, and they are still living in tents, literally. This idea of them living in tents is also mentioned in the Minor Prophets after the exile, so we know that this was a characteristic of the period that the people lived in tents.
They are rejoicing. It helps us understand this historical context. He is praising the power of God. Psalm 118:16 NASB “The right hand of the LORD is exalted; The right hand of the LORD does valiantly.”
Then he states a conclusion again. Psalm 118:17 NASB “I will not die, but live, And tell of the works of the LORD.” I am not going to die. The nation is not going to be destroyed; the nation is not going out of existence. God has a plan for us and a future and a hope for Israel. That is the realization here, that God has brought the nation back from the brink of death and is re-establishing it. Nothing like this has been seen before in history.
When we talk about praising God we so often just are superficial in our Christian culture. We think praising God means just praising God, or Hallelujah. But when we look at a psalm like this, which is a Hallel psalm, we see that it is not just saying praise God, it is describing what God has done and how God has delivered us from, and delivered the nation in this situation in a historical disaster, and it is explaining what the lessons are that we learn in that particular disaster. So the psalmist says he is going to tell/declare the works of the Lord.
Psalm 118:18 NASB “The LORD has disciplined me severely, But He has not given me over to death”. That tells us again what the historical circumstances were: that the nation has gone through severe judgment or discipline.
This ends the description of the praise and the cause for the praise in the psalm. Starting in verse 19 the leader then begins to declare his praise to God. There is a shift in what is taking place and this last part is more of a liturgical worship where the community is described as they come together to rejoice and praise God for His deliverance.
As we read this we must think about this in terms of historical context. So much as has happened in interpreting Scripture where people read it and they read into the text without understanding this context. For example, as we begin the next section the psalmist says, Psalm 118:19 NASB “Open to me the gates of righteousness ...” There are many who read that and think this is heaven. “... I shall enter through them, I shall give thanks to the LORD.” No, this is a historical context where people have been called to praise God as they go to the temple. It was to be sung in a procession as they were going up to the temple. So what are the gates? The gates were entering into the temple where they would come together as a nation to worship God and and to praise Him for his deliverance.
It is very likely that this psalm was written at the time of the dedication of Zerubbabel's temple.
These are not lost people who want to be saved, these are people who are believers who are expressing their praise to God for what he has already done and accomplished for them. He has delivered them from all the nations and has allowed them to live and to be restored to the land.
Psalm 118:20 NASB “This is the gate of the LORD; The righteous will enter through it”. It doesn't flow with verse 19 and verse 21. So the question: Who is speaking in verse 20?
Verse 19 is the leader of the group who is taking them to the gates. Verse 20 appears to be the response of the Levites who are holding the gates, reminding those who want to enter the temple that they have to be ritually prepared. They have to be cleansed and be prepared to worship God. Not just anyone can worship: “The righteous will enter through it”. This is not those who are positionally righteous but those who have cleansed themselves through the appropriate sacrifices before they come to worship. This is the same kind of thing that we do at the beginning of every Bible class as a reminder that those who want to enter into worship of God and study His Word need to be cleansed of sin.
So we see a pattern here in the Old Testament, that if you were coming into the temple the worshippers were reminded that only those who have been ritually prepared through cleansing could come and worship the Lord.
Psalm 118:21 is their response. NASB “I shall give thanks to You, for You have answered me, And You have become my salvation.”
Then we come to the core of the quotes that we find in a passage in Matthew and many passages in the New Testament that quote from Psalm 118:22 NASB “The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief corner {stone.}”
When you hear that, if you have any knowledge of the New Testament, immediately you think that this is talking about the Messiah. But one of the things that I have been laboring to teach you the last three Sundays is that this is talking about a historical situation. This is not directly prophetic. This is talking about something that happened historically, something which had happened already at the time that this was sung; probably around 516 BC. And he says, [23] “This is the LORD’S doing; It is marvelous in our eyes.” He is praising God for something He has already done, and then says, [24] “This is the day which the LORD has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it”.
When the psalmist writes this he is not just talking about a beautiful day—no clouds, sunshine, low humidity. That is such a superficial application. This is talking about a specific historical deliverance of God that occurred when God restored the nation in 538 BC. He is talking about how this has been brought to a conclusion with the temple being completed and they are now able to worship God in the temple as they did before.
What is the stone? When we read that he had become the chief corner stone, what is that alluding to? In terms of the historical event the stone is Judah who has been rejected by the nations. Since man's fall there has been the development in history broadly of two kingdoms: the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God. Not the kingdom in the sense of the millennial kingdom, but man is seeking to assert his own right to rule himself over against God and so the nations are seeking to build their kingdom. They started at the tower of Babel as Nimrod sought to establish himself and to establish a worship that was apart from God. The nations are the builders who seek to establish their dominion and their kingdom over the earth.
The stone, Judah, has been seen as something worthless and something for the nations to just roll over and destroy. So this is the nation that has been viewed by the Gentiles as being useless and worthless. And what significance has it? It is the stone the builders rejected. It is not pertinent, significant or relative to the building of the kingdom of man.
The builders historically were the nations: the Assyrians, the Babylonians and the Persians, who sought to rule and dominate Israel. The stone that is rejected is Israel, but in restoration Israel has become the foundation of God's kingdom program.
God has restored the nation. He is going to fulfil His covenant with Israel, He is going to build the nation, and from this inauspicious beginning He will eventually establish the kingdom. Through the reestablishment of Israel this will eventually lead to the coming of the Messiah. The Messiah eventually will be crucified, there will be the lull of the church age, the parenthesis, and then when the Lord comes He will establish His kingdom. That is the typological application.
The stone therefore is Israel, but Israel is typological fulfilled in all of its intent and purposes in the Messiah. The builders in terms of the application we see in Jesus' time were the religious leaders of Israel who were still trying to establish the kingdom of man through their human viewpoint religion. They reject the Messiah as not being relevant, significant or valuable. And yet, after the resurrection He is the one who will eventually come to establish His kingdom.
This imagery of the stone is found in numerous Old Testament passages, which would have been known by the writer of this psalm. For example, Isaiah 28:16 NASB “Therefore thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, A costly cornerstone {for} the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes {in it} will not be disturbed.” This is a messianic prophecy.
Zechariah 3:9 NASB “‘For behold, the stone that I have set before Joshua; on one stone are seven eyes. Behold, I will engrave an inscription on it,’ declares the LORD of hosts, ‘and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day”. It has that prophetic significance. That stone is the stone that destroys and removes iniquity and brings in the kingdom.
It is related to the stone that is cut without hands in Nebuchadnezzar's dream that represents the coming of the messianic kingdom.
Jesus quotes this in Matthew 21:42 as he is arguing with the Pharisees. Paul uses it in Ephesians 2:20 NASB “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner {stone,} (for the church)” . Peter applies it also in 1 Peter 2:6, 7.
So the response of the people in Psalm 118:29 NASB “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; For His lovingkindness is everlasting.” They are moving beyond the deliverance that has already occurred and calling for Him to work out the ultimate deliverance. And what they are saying is, Hoshiana. It means to save or deliver now. The root of hoshiana is the verb yasha, which means to save. It is where we get the name Jesus/yeshua.
So in Matthew chapter 21 as these followers and believers in Jesus are laying down the palm branches and welcoming Him into Jerusalem quote this psalm, they know exactly what they are doing. This is the King who has offered the kingdom and they are welcoming the King and the kingdom that has been promised. They understand that He is the coming one, the one who will establish the kingdom, and they are welcoming Him. To understand that is to understand this context from Psalm 118.
In John 11:27 Jesus was talking to Martha. NASB “She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, {even} He who comes into the world.” This goes back to this quotation in Psalm 118. Psalm 118:26 NASB “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD ...” The one who comes in the name of the Lord is understood as the Messiah, the one who establishes the kingdom, and in the thinking between 516 BC and the coming of Christ the Messiah is this coming one. Martha uses it that way in v. 27.
Points of comparison:
In Psalm 118 the nation is partially restored from divine discipline.
In Matthew 21 the nation is on the edge of another great divine discipline, which will come in AD 70.
The solution in Psalm 118 is the restoration of the temple and the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
The solution in Matthew 21 is to welcome the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
In Psalm 118 God alone delivered the nation from the plans of the nations/Gentiles.
When the coming one comes He will deliver the nation. He will destroy the plots of the kings (Psalm 2; Revelation 19), and He will then establish His kingdom.
In Matthew 22 that solution is rejected by the religious leaders, but Matthew 23:39 indicates that there will be a future recovery and restoration of the nation.
The final application is that the solution for every believer is to trust in God rather than in government, rather than in politics, rather than in human methods or in human works. The only government that will provide perfection is the government of a perfect King, who is the Messiah. That won't happen until Jesus returns.