Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 118:24
This [is] the day [which] the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
24. To Jehovah alone we owe this day of national rejoicing. Cp. Isa 25:9. “There was exceeding great gladness” is the description of the festival in Neh 8:17.
in it ] Or, in Him. Cp. Psa 32:11.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
This is the day which the Lord hath made – As if it were a new day, made for this very occasion; a day which the writer of the psalm did not expect to see, and which seemed therefore to have been created out of the ordinary course, and added to the other days. He was in danger of death; his days were likely to be cut off and ended, so that he should see no more. But God had spared him, and added this joyous day to his life; and it was meet that for this he should be praised. It was so full of joy, so unexpected, so bright, so cheerful, that it appeared to be a new day coming fresh from the hand of the Almighty, unlike the other days of the year. So the Sabbath – the day that commemorates the resurrection of the Redeemer – is Gods day. He claims it. He seems to have made it anew for man. Amidst the other days of the week – in a world where the ordinary days are filled up with so much of earth, so much toil, trouble, care, vexation, vanity, wickedness – it seems like one of the days that God made when he first made the world; before sin and sorrow entered; when all was calm, serene, happy. The Sabbath is so calm, so bright, so cheerful, so benign in its influence; it is so full of pleasant and holy associations and reminiscences, that it seems to be a day fresh from the hand of God, unlike the other days of the week, and made especially, as if by a new act of creation, for the good of mankind. So when a man is raised up from sickness – from the borders of the grave – it seems to be a new life given to him. Each day, week, month, year that he may live, is so much added to his life, as if it were created anew for this very purpose. He should, therefore, regard it not as his own, but as so much given to him by the special mercy and providence of God – as if added on to his life. Compare Isa 38:5.
We will rejoice and be glad in it – The psalmist, and all who united with him in his thanksgivings. So the Christian Sabbath. It is a day of joy – all joy, and no sorrow. It is a day to be happy in; a day of rest; a day, when the cares and toils of life are suspended; a day, when we are no longer harassed with those things which vex us in the worldliness of the week; a day, when we think of God, of redemption, of hope, of heaven. The Sabbath should be a day of joy, and not of gloom; it would be the happiest of all days to weary and jaded people everywhere, if they observed it aright. In a world of toil and sorrow, it is among the richest of Gods blessings to people; it strengthens, refreshes, and cheers the heart of burdened and sorrowful man here; it lifts the soul to joyous contemplation of that eternal Sabbath where wearisome toll and sorrow shall be no more.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 118:24
This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
The day of days
The day of days in the life of Christ was the day of His resurrection; and to the early Christians Easter Day was the queen of festivals. Easter should provoke a joy in Christian hearts, greater than any event in our private lives; greater than any in the worlds public history; greater than any other even in the life of our Lord Himself. This is the immemorial feeling and sense of Christendom; but why should it be so? why has Easter, why has the resurrection, this extraordinary claim on the buoyancy of the Christian heart?
I. The joy of a great reaction; a reaction from anxiety and sorrow. So it was at the time of Christs resurrection. The apostles had been crushed by the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ. When He was in His grave, all seemed over; and when He appeared, first to one, and then to another, on the day of His resurrection, they could not keep their feelings of welcome and delight,–traversed though these were by a sense of wondering awe,–within anything like bounds. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. And this joy of theirs is repeated every year in the greatest feast of the Christian Church. Those who have felt the sorrow feel the joy. Year by year we stand by, in spirit, while Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus lay Him in His grave; and the tension of sincere feeling, of sympathetic sorrow, of penitence and contrition which this implies, is followed by a corresponding reaction on Easter morning.
II. The joy of a great certainty. The resurrection of our Saviour is the fact which makes an intelligent Christian certain of the truth of his creed. And in this way it satisfies a real mental want, and it occasions keen enjoyment by giving this satisfaction. All else in our creed depends on the resurrection of Christ; and to-day when we remind ourselves of its historical certainty, which is scarcely less illustrated by the apparent contradictions than by the collective and direct force of the accounts which have come down to us, we experience a mental delight at the freshening touch of truth, and cry, This is the day which the Lord hath made: we will rejoice and be glad in it.
III. The joy of Easter is inspired by the hope which Easter warrants and quickens. Hope and Joy are twin sisters. Joy best enters the human soul when leaning on the arm of Hope. As the apostle says, We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. What is this hope which Easter most distinctly puts before us? and how does it spring from our Saviours resurrection? The great hope which Easter sets before us is the completeness of our life after death. The difficulty of believing in a future life is due, not to the reason, but to the imagination as controlled by the senses. Who of us has not made this discovery in some one of those dark hours, which sooner or later visit every human life? Who of us has not stood by the open coffin, and felt himself, or marked how others feel, the terrific empire of sense in the presence of death? At such a moment the most modest anticipations of reason are deemed an unsubstantial guess: the clear teaching of revelation a solemn fancy; the minds sceptre has passed to the imagination and the senses, and they decide that all ends with death, and that the grim secrets of the grave are the measure of mans impotent aspirations after a future existence. Now it was to deal with this specific difficulty that our Lord willed to die, and then, by a literal bodily resurrection, to rise from the grave. Truly we may exclaim with the apostle, that God hath begotten us again unto a lively hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and with the psalmist, that this is the day which the Lord hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Canon Liddon.)
Easter Day
I. This is the day which the Lord hath made great, by giving the most glorious proof of His own greatness; by rising on it from the dead, by being born again of the womb of the earth, to prove Himself God, as His first birth had proved Him to be man.
II. This is the day which the Lord hath made glorious, by displaying the glory of His everlasting kingdom, by taking possession of eternal life in His own person, and thereby assuring the same precious blessing to them who by faith lay hold on His promises.
III. This is the day which the Lord hath made a day of triumph and rejoicing, by subduing all the most formidable enemies of human nature, robbing death of its sting, the grave of its victory, spoiling principalities and powers, triumphing over them, and making a show of them openly: by flinging open the gates of death and hell, proclaiming liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.
IV. This is the day which the Lord hath made wonderful, by turning dishonour into honour, by converting the ignominy of His death into the glory of a resurrection, the cross on which He suffered into the trophy of His victory, the crown of thorns into a ray of glory.
V. This is the day which the Lord hath made comfortable to all that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heartiness. (A. Grant, D.D.)
The memorial of Christs resurrection ought perpetually to be celebrated
I. The import of the words–This is the day, etc. The everlasting mercies of God which are celebrated in the four first verses by way of repetition; Christs being set in a large place (verse 5), which the prophet elsewhere explains by Gods delivering him (Psa 18:19); his exultation, because he shall see his desire upon them that hate him (verse 7); his declaring that it is better to trust in the Lord than to put any confidence in man (verse 8); the power given him to destroy all nations in the name of the Lord (verse 10). All these expressions, I say, import some effects of his royal dignity, more permanent and extensive, and more evident tokens of the Divine interposition, than can be attributed to the former event; though that was not ejected without the direction of a particular providence. But all these effects, as all other effects of Christs mediatorial Office, being fully accounted for from the truth of His resurrection, and such facts as were consequential to it; it is most reasonable to consider the text as respecting His resurrection.
II. Upon what reasons so eminent and peculiar a distinction of this day is made.
1. The resurrection of Christ did evidence the Divine authority of our Saviour, as it could not, upon the principles of the Jews themselves, have been ejected, but only by a Divine power.
2. But the proof, indeed of the Divine mission of Christ from His resurrection does not only affect the Jews, but all other persons indifferently; for granting a power to man of doing very strange and surprising things by means of the union of his soul and body, according to the laws of which they here act upon one another, or upon other bodies; yet, when this union is dissolved, when the soul is incapable of acting either upon its own former body, or any body whatever, how is it possible to conceive that it should be able to restore the bodily organs, which it before informed, either to their proper offices or order again? This can only be the act of God, who made us and fashioned us; by whom, as the psalmist celebrates His wisdom and power, we are so fearfully and wonderfully made; in whose hand is the soul of every living thing; of whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things.
III. What are those proper acts of joy and gladness wherewith it ought to be celebrated.
1. The first and highest expression of our joy on occasion of so extraordinary an act of the Divine power and goodness, ought to consist in those inward and spiritual sentiments which the soul of a good man naturally feels when he reflects on any special mercy of God, or any spiritual good which it is the means of conveying to him; especially in so ample a manner that it is fruitful and diffusive of many other spiritual goods. Such is the Divine mercy which we now commemorate; and therefore, if we commemorate it as we ought, we shall inwardly rejoice in the Lord, according to the joy in harvest, or as men rejoice when they divide the spoil on occasion of so great a flow of Divine blessings upon us all at once.
2. This internal joy ought also to be expressed by some outward and proper significations of it. Acts of religious praise and thanksgiving to God; and acts of innocent festivity in other external respects. (R. Fiddes.)
The Lords day
I. This day is distinguished by His triumphs–let us hail Him Conqueror.
II. This day He claims as an offering–let us present it with joyful obedience.
III. On this day He advances with peculiar privileges–let us get forth to meet Him with all the ardour of hope.
IV. On this day we discern our interest in the triumph of the Redeemer. (J. Hughes.)
The blessings of a day
A day, what is it? A space of light between two mountain-walls of darkness; a time of redemption from the kingdom of Chaos and Old Night; the half or the two-thirds of life really given us to live; the season of consciousness, duty, trial; the end and aim for which sleep is given, and the veil of temporary oblivion and rest spread over our faculties so many hours. Wonderful and rich, far beyond the line of our usual appreciation, is the gift of a day. It stands like a monument between the eternity of the past and the eternity of the future. One day! It is little; a fugitive twenty-four hours, a hurried routine, a mill-horse round of cares and toils, a succession of meals,–breakfast, dinner, supper,–a miniature life, rounded with a sleep, a daybreak of childhood, a morning of youth and hope, a noonday of manhood and activity, a twilight of age and pensiveness, a night of death. How quickly it is here, how soon it is gone! But in this very shortness of a day we discern a benevolent intention. Constituted as we are, we could not bear the burden of a double day. Literally, our strength is according to our day, and our day according to our strength. They have been weighed and balanced by a sure Hand, one to the other. The mechanical arrangements by which the day is made, the position of the earth and the sun and their respective revolutions, and those of the other planetary and celestial bodies, the nature of the influence exerted on us by the sun through light, heat, and electricity and other elements, too subtle and delicate for our coarse senses to take cognizance of them, all are indications of the Fatherly care over us, and fitted to assure us that this is the day which the Lord hath made, and to inspire us to rejoice and be glad in it We discern a most beneficent intention in the separation and subdivision of our life into daily fragments. Each night is a gentle semi-oblivion, that our past lives may not tyrannize over us, that the door of progress may still be kept open, that we may have in some sense a new and untrammelled being every day. Every night is a faint death, every morning a fresh birth. The blessing of the day depends in no slight degree on the manner in which we begin it, on the key-note of the morning hour. It is well begun by the Almighty Disposer. He gives us a new world, bathed in dew, blushing with the dawn, vocal with the song of birds, while clouds of vapour and smoke rise like columns of incense from hill and vale and human homes to heaven. Fair and gracious world of ours, we feel like saying, how sad and strange it is that we should ever forget that this is a Divine handiwork, or that we should ever abuse such royal gifts by our ingratitude and disobedience! Devotion is the spontaneous service of the morning. To invoke the guardian care of Heaven, and to bless its new mercies, is but a fitting counterpart to all the other beauty, and solemnity, and hope, and renewed life of the world. Shall the birds arise and sing at the gate of heaven, and man feel no uplifting sentiment at the birth of a new day? Man, says the psalmist, goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening. That work and labour, the heat and burden of the day, called, in the external and figurative language of the elementary dispensation, a curse, have proved on long trial, and in the wide experience of a world, to be some of the best blessings of the day. Who has the pleasant, consciousness of being useful? The worker. Who stores up the rich memories of many things done? The worker. Who sleeps sweetly? The worker. Who relishes his food more than the epicure? The hard worker. Who enjoys leisure? He who has used his time so industriously that he has earned a right to be idle. Who can understand the full measure of blessing in a day, bug he who has so earnestly pursued its opportunities that its minutes are to him as gems, and its hours as diamonds? There is great work yet to be done on this planet,–continents to be reclaimed, oceans to be navigated, wild elements to be yoked to the car of human progress, acres of brains to be tilled, Augean stables of moral filth to be purified, swarming multitudes of souls to be touched to finer spiritual issues, vast social Saharas to be clothed with verdure, new and grander organizations in Church and State, and family, and art, and labour, and literature, to be formed, that shall make our modern homes, and sanctuaries and schools, galleries and Crystal Palaces, seem to be but the bungling work of apprentices compared with the productions of the perfect Master-workman. The past history of our race has its representative in the night,–dreamy, sleepy, irresponsible, fearful, often riotous, artificially lighted, addicted to passion, meteor-led night. The ages have been dark ages, and history has been profane, and the earth has not been holy land. But the dayspring from on high hath visited us, and the future is to be a day of action, usefulness, progress, as the past has been a night of preparation, dreams, and darkness. (A. A. Livermore.)
Evangelical gladness
First, it brings with it a spiritual delight. Secondly, an external gladness which opens itself in signs and tokens. The spiritual delight which we treasure up within the soul looking steadfastly upon Jesus that died for our sins, and rose again for our justification, is heavenly and unutterable, it is a superlative joy that cries down all other petty delights. The external utterances of a pious joy are these–
1. Days of rest from bodily labour; for the meaner labour must give way when a better and a worthier is to be undertaken. And while the mind hath just occasion to make its abode in the house of gladness, the weed of ordinary toil and travel doth not become us; therefore it is fit that ordinary labour should sometimes surrender itself up to the service of God.
2. To laud the name of the Lord, and to give thanks unto Him are the only language of our thankfulness (Psa 42:5).
3. God doth not deny it, but he that offereth Him praise doth honour Him; but will you know how that honour is best exalted? Make a cheerful noise to the God of Jacob, singing and making melody to the Lord with psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs. If the Jews might justly say, how can we sing the Lords song, while we are in a strange land, while we are in captivity? then we must acknowledge, on the contrary, how can we choose but sing the Lords song, being delivered out of captivity? Singing of psalms is a most proper exercise of our reasonable service.
4. Another effect of Christian joy is to give, because it abounds. A joy that will not distribute to the needy is a shrunken withered joy, nay, a joy that will carry the curse of God with it, because it wants fruits; and a joy that will carry the curse of the poor with it, because they are suffered to pine and languish in our public gladness.
5. All sorts of mirth and innocent recreation, wherein our substance is not exhausted, nor our time trifled away, are agreeable to our Christian conversation. At our times of respite from sacred offices, to delight our sullen nature with harmless pleasures, it rubs off the rust of melancholy, and puts alacrity in us to rejoice always in the Lord. (Bp. Hacket.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 24. This is the day which the Lord hath made] As the Lord hath called me to triumph, this is the day which he hath appointed for that purpose. This is a gracious opportunity; I will improve it to his glory.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Made; either created, or exalted and glorified, as this word is used, 1Sa 12:6, or sanctified by his glorious presence and work, and by his appointment, as a time or season never to be forgotten, but to be observed with great thankfulness and rejoicing, as it follows.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
24. This is the dayor perioddistinguished by God’s favor of all others.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
This [is] the day [which] the Lord hath made,…. Famous and remarkable for the above events. Meaning either the day of Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem, in order to be delivered up to the Jews, and suffer and die in the place of his people; to which the following words agree: or the day of his resurrection g from the dead; when God gave him glory, and was matter of joy to those for whose justification he rose; or the Lord’s day, kept in commemoration of it: or rather the whole Gospel dispensation, made a bright day by the sun of righteousness; and which is the now present day of salvation;
we will rejoice and be glad in it; because of the blessings of grace, peace, pardon, righteousness, and salvation, which came through the humiliation and exaltation of Christ, and are published in the everlasting Gospel. The Targum is,
“this day the Lord hath made, said the builders; let us rejoice and be glad in it, said the sons of Jesse.”
g So Suidas in voce ; which he observes fell on March 25.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
24. This is the day which Jehovah made He now speaks of that as a happy and pleasant day, on which he was at last established king over Israel, and the anointing of him by Samuel ratified by this event. Doubtless, all days were created alike by God, nevertheless David, by way of eminence, calls that the day of God which, after a long period of darkness, had dawned for the weal of the Church, because it was signalized by a notable event, deserving of being remembered by succeeding generations; and because the Church had thus emerged from a state of deep obscurity, he exhorts the faithful to mirth and joy, and that, too, by reason of the ignorance which many still displayed of the grace of God, or of their treating it with contempt, and of others being so lettered by their perverse attachment to Saul, that they could scarcely be brought to yield allegiance to David.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(24) This is the day.Either the festival for which the psalm was composed (Feast of Tabernacles?) or more generally the day of triumph won by Jehovah, as in preceding verse.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
The day here spoken of, it should seem, is the glorious day of the gospel; to which the eyes of the patriarchs and prophets were unweariedly looking, called in scripture, The day of the Messiah, The day of the Lord’s coming. Reader! if the very prospect of that day filled the souls of the faithful, before Christ came, with such joy, with what rapture ought you and I to welcome and celebrate it, in ordinances, in sabbaths, and in every means of grace, which Jesus hath brought in with this day of his coming.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 118:24 This [is] the day [which] the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
Ver. 24. This is the day which the Lord hath made ] The queen of days, as the Jews call the sabbath. Arnobius interpreteth this text of the Christian sabbath; others, of the day of salvation by Christ exalted to be the head cornerstone; in opposition to that dismal day of man’s fall.
We will rejoice
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Day which the Lord made
This is the day which the Lord hath made;
We will rejoice and be glad in it.Psa 118:24.
This is unmistakably a psalm for use in the Temple worship, and was probably meant to be sung antiphonally, on some day of national rejoicing indicated in the text. A general concurrence of opinion points to the period of the restoration from Babylon as its date, but different events connected with that restoration have been selected. The psalm implies the completion of the Temple, and therefore shuts out any point prior to that. Delitzsch fixes on the dedication of the Temple as the occasion; but the view is still more probable which supposes that it was sung on the great celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, recorded in Neh 8:14-18. In later times Psa 118:25 was the festal cry raised while the altar of burnt-offering was solemnly compassed, once on each of the first six days of the Feast of Tabernacles, and seven times on the seventh.
1. Apparently the psalm falls into two halves, of which the former half (Psa 118:1-16) seems to have, been sung as a processional hymn while approaching the sanctuary, and the latter (Psa 118:17-29), partly at the Temple gates, partly by a chorus of priests within, and partly by the procession when it had entered. Psa 118:22-24 probably belong to the priestly chorus. They set forth the great truth made manifest by restored Israels presence in the rebuilt Temple. The metaphor is suggested by the incidents connected with the rebuilding. The stone is obviously Israel, weak, contemptible, but now once more laid as the very foundation stone of Gods house in the world. The broad truth taught by its history is that God lays as the basis of His building, i.e., uses for the execution of His purposes, that which the wisdom of man despises and tosses aside.
2. The general truth contained here is that of St. Pauls great saying, God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that are strong. It is a law which finds its highest exemplification in the foundation for Gods true temple, other than which can no man lay. Israel is not only a figure of Christ; there is an organic unity between Him and them. Whatever, therefore, is true of Israel in a lower sense is true in its highest sense of Christ. If Israel is the rejected stone made the head of the corner, this is far truer of Him who was indeed rejected of men, but chosen of God and precious, the corner stone of the one great living temple of the redeemed.
The text is best regarded as the continuation of the choral praise in Psa 118:22-23. The day is that of the festival now in progress, the joyful culmination of Gods manifold deliverances. It is a day in which joy is duty, and no heart has a right to be too heavy to leap for gladness. Private sorrows enough many of the jubilant worshippers no doubt had, but the sight of the Stone laid as the head of the corner should bring joy even to such. If sadness was ingratitude and almost treason then, what sorrow should now be so dense that it cannot be pierced by the Light which lighteth every man?
3. In our Lords time the whole of this psalm was applied to the Messiah by the Jewish interpreters. Christ was the Stone, refused by the builders of Israel, but afterwards made the Head of the corner. His was the welcome, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; to Him was addressed the prayer, Hosanna, save, I pray, as on Palm Sunday, by the Jewish multitude. Thus it was very natural for the Christian Church to find in the words, This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it, an application to our Lord Jesus Christ. What was the day in Christs life which He made His own, beyond all others? Not His birthday; for that meant His entrance on a life of sorrows. Not His ascension day; for that was the closing scene of a triumph already achieved. Not His transfiguration day; it was a momentary flash of glory in a career of pain. Not the day of His crucifixion; it was a great day for a ruined world, but for Him it marked the lowest stage of humiliation and of woe. The day of days in the life of Christ was the day of His resurrection. It reflected a new glory on the day of His birth. It witnessed a triumph of which the ascension was but a completion. It was to the transfiguration what the sunrise is to the earliest dawn. It poured a flood of light and meaning on Calvary itself; and showed that what took place there was not simply the death-scene of an innocent Sufferer, but a sacrifice which would have power with God to the end of time.
Something of this kind is what was felt by the early Christians about Easter Day; and as it was the greatest day in the life of Jesus Christ, so for them it was the greatest day in the whole year. It was the day of days; it was the Lords Own Day. Every Lords Day in the year was a weekly feast of Christs rising from the dead; on Easter Day, the force and meaning of all these Lords Days were gathered into one consummate expression of joy and praise. This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
The song of the angels, the voice at the baptism, the agony in the garden, the sublime anguish of Calvary, would have been inexplicable without the light which was reflected back upon them by the angels at the open tomb on the morning of the resurrection. Such a nature and such a life were not formed and fashioned within the narrow limits of time and space; they brought infinity and immortality within the confines of the world. Alone among men, Christ has visibly put on immortality; but that sublime truth does not rest on the resurrection; it rests on the very structure of mans nature and life. Neither is comprehensible without it; neither is ever complete in itself; both affirm its reality and predict its fuller disclosure. The risen Christ does not stand solitary in a vast circle of unopened graves; He is the visible witness to the sublime truth that the grave has no victory and death no sting; for life and immortality are one and the same.1 [Note: H. W. Mabie, The Life of the Spirit, 360.]
Oh, had I lived in that great day,
How had its glory new
Filld earth and heaven, and caught away
My ravishd spirit too!
No thoughts that to the world belong
Had stood against the wave
Of love which set so deep and strong
From Christs then open grave.
No cloister-floor of humid stone
Had been too cold for me;
For me no Eastern desert lone
Had been too far to flee.1 [Note: Matthew Arnold, Elegiac Poems.]
I
A Day of Victory
The joy of Easter is inspired by the hope which the day of our Lords resurrection warrants and quickens. What is this hope, and how does it spring from our Saviours rising again from the dead? The great hope which the resurrection sets before us is the completeness of our life after death.
1. The difficulty of believing in a future life is due, not to the reason, but to the imagination as controlled by the senses. Who of us has not made this discovery, in some one of those dark hours which sooner or later visit every human life? Who of us has not stood by the open coffin, and felt himself, or marked how others feel, the terrific empire of sense in the presence of death? The form which was once full of life, quivering with expressiveness, with thought, with feeling, now lies before us cold and motionless, like a plaster cast of its former self. Perhaps the traces of what must follow are already discernible; and forthwith the imagination surrenders itself, Like a docile pupil, to the guidance of the senses, and ends by proclaiming the victory of death; a victory too clear, too complete, too unquestionable, to allow reason or revelation to raise their voices in favour of any sort of life that can possibly survive it.
2. Now it was to deal with this specific difficulty that our Lord willed to die, and then, by a literal bodily resurrection, to rise from the grave. He would grapple with the imperious urgency of the senses and the imagination on their own ground. He would beat down by an act, palpable to the senses, and attested by evidence which should warrant its reality for all time, the tyrant power which sought to shut out from man the hope of an immortal life. When the disciples saw that the Risen Being before them was their Lord; when they noted His pierced hands, His feet, His side; when they conversed with Him, ate with Him, listened to Him, followed Him much as of old; then they knew that the Master who had been killed upon the cross by a protracted agony, and committed to the grave as a bleeding and mangled corpse, had really risen from death, and had opened a new era of hope for the human race. And for us, in a distant age, this fact that Christ rose from death is not less full of precious hope and joy than for our first forefathers in the faith. For the early Christians the resurrection was practically Christianity, nay, the whole of Christianity, in so far as Christianity as a whole rested on it as the proof-fact of its having come from heaven. This is what the first Christians felt: of the truth of their faith God had given an assurance unto all men, in that he had raised Jesus from the dead. Therefore did the resurrection inspire them with such fervent joy.
If it belong to man to rejoice when some great General has fought his countrys enemies, and beaten them and led their chiefs captives; if on such occasions our bells ring, and our cities are decked with garlands, and flags wave, and there are feastings and banquetings,
And the tumult of their acclaim is rolled
Through the open gates of the city afar,
To the shepherd who watcheth the evening star,
if a nation joys in the return of the triumphant General, and hearts are warmed all through the length and breadth of the land at the news, as by electric sympathy, and all agree to make holiday, because now the yoke of the invader has been broken, and they feel themselves freeand hearth, and home, and wife, and child, and all that they hold dear is rescued out of peril, and the possession secured to themhow much more surely ought the Christian to be glad and rejoice on each recurrence of Easter? For it is the anniversary of the Lords Victory. He comes to us as the Captain of our Salvation, comes amongst us fresh from combat, with dyed garments from Bozrah, treading in the greatness of his strength; He comes, leading the Invader a prisoner, leading captivity captive.1 [Note: R. D. B. Rawnsley.]
II
A Day of Rejoicing
1. The joy of Easter is the joy of a great certainty. The resurrection of our Saviour is the fact which makes an intelligent Christian certain of the truth of his creed. The Apostles entered on their work with one conviction, prominent beyond all others. It was that the truth of Christianity, and its claim upon the minds and hearts of men, depended mainly upon the fact of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Within a few weeks of the occurrence, and amidst a population passionately interested in denying the truth of what they said, they took every opportunity of virtually saying, Christianity is true; it is true because Christ has risen from death. They could not have ventured to do this unless they had been sure of the fact upon which they were so ready to risk everything, even life itself; sure, with that sort of certainty which comes from actual experience.
To my mind, the spiritual miracle of the Crucifixion was an infinitely greater miracle than the physical miracle of the Resurrectiona much more impressive evidence of the actual mingling of the Divine with the human. It is strange that a world which can accept heartily the one should find it so difficult, and in some cases so impossible, to accept the other. This implies, I think, that what it does accept it accepts without any true insight into the wonder and majesty of the personal manifestation the reality of which it professes to recognize. Certainly ours is a superstitious age, though superstitious rather in the excess of its respect for the physical energies of the universe, than in the excess of its respect for the spiritual.1 [Note: R. H. Hutton, Aspects of Religious and Scientific Thought, 163.]
2. It is always very difficult to realize any great joy or great sorrow. We cannot realize it by wishing to do so. What brings joys and sorrows of this world home to us is their circumstances and accompaniments. When a friend dies, we cannot at first believe him taken from us; we cannot believe ourselves to be in any new place when we are just come to it. When we are told a thing, we assent to it, we do not doubt it, but we do not feel it to be true, we do not understand it as a fact which must take up a position or station in our thoughts, and must be acted from and acted towards, must be dealt with as existing: that is, we do not realize it. It cannot be denied that we have much to do, very much, before we rise to the understanding of our new nature and its privileges, and learn to rejoice and be glad in the day which the Lord hath made; the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.
Unbelief once wrote at the entrance of a cemetery the word Fuerunt, They have been. Faith always writes over the gate of a churchyard, I am the Resurrection and the Life. To unbelief the dead are but memories; memories of beings who have ceased to be. To faith the dead are living, working, praying friends, whom nothing but the dulness of sense hides from sight.1 [Note: H. P. Liddon, Easter in St. Pauls, 178.]
3. The joy of Easter is the joy of a great reaction: a reaction from anxiety and sorrow. So it was at the time of Christs resurrection. The Apostles had been crushed by the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ. They had trusted that it was he which should have redeemed Israel. Their disappointment, their despondency, their anguish were exactly proportioned to their earlier hopes. When He was in His grave, all seemed over; and when He appeared, first to one, and then to another, on the day of His resurrection, they could not keep their feelings of welcome and delighttraversed though these were by a sense of wondering awewithin anything like bounds. It was a change from darkness to light, from fear to hope, from death to endless life, for the world at large. Those who first felt it, and rejoiced, are long since gathered to their rest; but others came after them, to whom it was just as really a cause of joy as to the women who were early at the tomb; and to us at this present time, separated by nineteen hundred years from the Apostles and followers of the risen Son of God, His rising again is quite as much a matter to encourage us to triumphant faith, to comfort us in trouble and in death, as it was to them.
Finding that one of his children had been greatly shocked and overcome by the first sight of death, he tenderly endeavoured to remove the feeling which had been awakened, and opening a Bible, pointed to the words, Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Nothing, he said, to his mind, afforded us such comfort when shrinking from the outward accompaniments of death,the grave, the grave-clothes, the loneliness,as the thought that all these had been around our Lord Himself, round Him who died, and is now alive for evermore.1 [Note: A. P. Stanley, Life of Thomas Arnold, D.D., i. 219.]
4. The joy of Easter is the holy joy of quiet triumph, of hymns of victory and exulting faith. The Lord is risen! What more can the glad Church of the redeemed say? She can only repeat it again and again with multiplied Alleluias. Words seem out of place, for the joy of the Church is too deep to express itself in the ordinary language of the worldand yet it is to the world that she brings the glad tidings of the victory of her Lord. No wonder then that the earth is glad and beautiful in this foregleam of the coming day, when He shall fulfil His promise, Behold, I make all things new. Even in the order of nature there is nothing but joy and the coming of new life in the spring-time of the world. The very air is full of the songs of the birds, and fragrant with the first fresh scents of the forests and meadows, as they clothe themselves again with foliage and verdure after the long days of wintry gloom, decay and death.
See the worlds beauty budding forth anew,
Shows with the Lord His gifts returning too!
The earth with flowers is deckd, the sky serene;
The heavenly portals glow with brighter sheen.
The greenwood-leaves, the flowering meadows tell
Of Christ, triumphant over gloomy hell.
Hail! Festal Day! for evermore adord,
Wherein God conquerd hell, and upward soard.
Be sure there is a unity of Law in the universe, and if in that which we call the natural world there is one consistent thought producing one consistent fact, the same thought holds good in the world of Man; and the life which we possess when we diethe life which is in thought, feeling, will, and the restwill frame for itself, as quickly, as individually, as eagerly, a new form as the seed in spring has done when we see its twofold arrow cleave the ground. This will be the resurrection, and of the great law of which this is the outcome, the result of which we see in Nature, in all thingsthe result of which we do not see in Manfor its result in us is wrought after deaththe resurrection of Christ is the only known result in humanity. The life in Christ took new form when His earthly body died, and the fact that it had done so was revealed to His disciples. They knew He was alive again, and had a new and living formthat on the death of His mortal body, an immortal form became His own. He was not unclothed, but clothed upon. Properly speaking, that is no miracle, if miracle be defined as the violation or transcending of law. It is, in my mind, that which always takes place in the other world when we die; shown to us in this world for once, that we might know it. It is not a reversion, it is a revelation, of law; it is not apart from our knowledge, it is the declarations that the same idea that rules the growth of life in the world of Nature rules its growth in the world of Man. The resurrection of the body is the renewing of form.1 [Note: Stopford A. Brooke.]
The yearly miracle of spring,
Of budding tree and blooming flower,
Which Natures feathered laureates sing
In my cold ear from hour to hour,
Spreads all its wonders round my feet;
And every wakeful sense is fed
On thoughts that oer and oer repeat,
The Resurrection of the Dead!
If these half vital things have force
To break the spell which winter weaves,
To wake, and clothe the wrinkled corse
In the full life of shining leaves;
Shall I sit down in vague despair,
And marvel if the nobler soul
We laid in earth shall ever dare
To wake to life, and backward roll
The sealing stone, and striding out,
Claim its eternity, and head
Creation once again, and shout,
The Resurrection of the Dead?1 [Note: George Henry Boker, The Book of the Dead, 147.]
III
A Day of Remembrance
1. Christs resurrection has not become less important by the passage of years; its virtue is not diminished, its grace and power are not worn out. If Christ had indeed risen this very morning, His resurrection would not be in reality of more concern to us than it is now. Christ is risenrisen never to die again, to be for ever that which He was the first moment when He conquered death. He is there above, the Saviour who could not be kept in captivity by the grave; the very same who spoke to Mary Magdalene, and reproved the doubting Thomas, and talked on the way to Emmaus, and broke bread on the sea-shore. And what was true of Him then is true now; what could be said of Him then can be said now; what He did then for those who loved Him and believed Him, He can do now; what they felt towards Himthe rejoicing and the glorying trust, and the conquering comfort and strengthit is ours to choose whether we shall not feel it too. The Light which broke on men on that third day, shines as brightly on all believing hearts now as it did on St. Peter and St. John, not a mere remembrance of past glory and gladness, but an unfailing and uninterrupted spring of present hope and strength. And it will shine long after we are gone, to cheer the hearts and raise the joy of our children, and of all the unborn generations to the end of the world.
It is the one inspiring element of Christianity that it throws us in boundless hope upon the future, and forbids us to dwell in the poisonous shadows of the past. A new and better growth is before us, a fresher, a diviner, a more enthusiastic life awaits us. We are to wake up satisfied in the likeness of Christ, the ever young Humanity. Therefore, forgetting those things which are behind, let us press forward to the mark of the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus.2 [Note: Stopford A. Brooke.]
The women sought the tomb at dawn of day,
And as they went they wept and made their moan:
His sepulchre is guarded by a stone,
And who for us shall roll the stone away?
But lo!an Angel, robed in white array,
Had rent the rock and sat thereon alone.
Fear not, said he; the Lord hath overthrown
The power of Death: I show you where He lay.
We echo oftentimes that cry of old:
Huge stumbling-blocks confront us whilst we wait
And wonder, weeping, who will help afford:
But as we question sorrowing, behold!
The stone is rolled away, though it is great,
And on it sits the Angel of the Lord.1 [Note: Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, Verses, Wise or Otherwise, 197.]
2. The resurrection of Christ was to His early followers a call, a call louder than that of the trumpet on Mount Sinai, to newness of life and newness of hope. It called men of old when it was first preached; it calls men still, now that its remembrance never ceases among us. It calls aloud to newness of life, it calls on the sinner and the careless to arise from the death of sin to the life of righteousness; it cries aloud, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light, We know how it made St. Paul cry out, If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. In that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. These were the feelings, these were the thoughts, which came into the minds of the first believers in Christ. They felt how much they had to do with the resurrection. It had weaned them from sin; it strengthened them, day by day, in all holiness and love. The resurrection had changed everything to them, and they lived as men to whom this world had become nothing except a place to live in holily, where they might love and serve their brethren, and wait patiently Gods will, till their call came to that world and home which was to be for ever. Christs resurrection calls us also not only to begin a new life, but to go on with it, with renewed zeal and carefulness, if by His grace we have begun it. It reminds us once more how mighty to save, how unwearied to uphold and help, is He whom we have for our Leader and Guide through life. He, if we are trusting Him, is One who has broken the bands of death, who is in truth the Watcher of our way, and the Director of our steps; He is One who has endured and conqueredendured all and conquered allto lend us of His strength, to feed our faintness with His renewed life, to show us of that truth and light which He has won for men. We have only to go to Him for it. We have only to go straight forward in the way of obedience and holiness, and we need not fear that we shall fail.
3. There may still be for each of us many anxieties, many sorrows, many bitter disappointments and griefs in life; for God does not promise tranquillity, but quite the opposite. Yet in spite of all this there will be joy in God, and peace, and rest, through the abiding union with Him who is our peace. As we conquer sin we grow in likeness to Jesus Christ; and as we become like Him we share, through an ever-growing closeness of union, the joy, the peace, and the brightness of the resurrection life. I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. As children say to themselves, This is the spring, or This is the sea, trying to grasp the thought and not let it go; as travellers in a foreign land say, This is that great city, or This is that famous building, knowing it has a long history through centuries, and vexed with themselves that they know so little about it; so let us say, This is the Day of Days, the Royal Day, the Lords Day. This is the day on which Christ rose from the dead; the day which brought us salvation. It is a day which has made us greater than we know. It is our Day of Rest, the true Sabbath. We have had enough of weariness, and dreariness, and listlessness, and sorrow, and remorse. We have had enough of this troublesome world. We have had enough of its noise and din. Noise is its best music. But now there is a stillness that speaks. We know how strange the feeling is of perfect silence after continued sound. Such is our blessedness now. Calm and serene days have begun; and Christ is heard in them, and His still small voice, because the world speaks not. Let us only put off the world, and we put on Christ. The receding from one is an approach to the other. May we grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, season after season, year after year, till He takes to Himself, first one, then another, in the order He thinks fit, to be separated from each other for a little while, to be united together for ever, in the Kingdom of His Father and our Father, His God and our God.
When one says, Lord, I believe, in Jesus sense, he means that he trustsa very different thing. Jesus physical Resurrection, in the same way, is a question that can be decided only by evidence, and is within the province of reason. His spiritual Resurrection is a drama of the soul, and a matter of faith. When I declare my belief that on the third day Jesus rose, I am really yielding to evidence. When I am crucified with Christ, buried with Christ, and rise to newness of life in Christ, I am believing after the very sense of Jesus.1 [Note: John Watson, The Mind of the Master.]
Literature
Beveridge (W.), Theological Works, iii. 418.
Blackley (T.), Practical Sermons, i. 82.
Church (R. W.), Village Sermons, ii. 142.
Cottam (S. E.), New Sermons for a New Century, 117.
Frank (M.), Sermons, ii. 112.
Fuller (M.), The Lords Day, 109.
Hall (R.), Works, v. 380.
Hutton (R. E.), The Crown of Christ, ii. 7.
Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., v. 1.
Liddon (H. P.), Easter in St. Pauls, 169.
Maclaren (A.), The Book of Psalms (Expositors Bible), iii. 232.
Mills (B. R. V.), The Marks of the Church, 224.
Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, vi. 94.
Simcox (W. H.), The Cessation of Prophecy, 310.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxiv. (1878), No. 1420.
Strong (A. H.), Miscellanies, ii. 19.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xi. (1875), No. 948.
Wilkinson (J. B.), Mission Sermons, i. 176.
Christian World Pulpit, xi. 314 (R. Glover); xxxv. 276 (Canon Rowsell).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
the day: Zec 3:9, Mat 28:1-8, Joh 20:19, Joh 20:20, Act 20:7, Rev 1:10
we will: Psa 84:10, 1Ki 8:66, 2Ch 20:26-28, Neh 8:10, Isa 58:13
Reciprocal: Mat 21:9 – Hosanna Joh 20:28 – My Lord
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 118:24-25. This is the day which the Lord hath made Or, sanctified, as a season never to be forgotten. Of the day on which Christ arose from the dead, it may, with more propriety than of any other day, be affirmed, this is the day which Jehovah hath made. Then it was that the rejected stone became the head of the corner. A morning then dawned, which is to be followed by no evening; a brighter sun arose upon the world, which is to set no more; a day began which will never end; and night and darkness departed to return not again. Easter-day is, in a peculiar manner, consecrated to him who, by his resurrection, triumphed over death and hell. On that day, through faith, we triumph with him, we rejoice and are glad in his salvation. Horne. Save now, I beseech thee Or, we beseech thee; for the clause may be rendered either way: and these may be either considered as the words of David, or, as some rather think, those of the Levites, or porters, to whom he spake, Psa 118:19; or of the people, using these joyful acclamations or prayers to God, for the preservation of their king and kingdom. This also is interpreted of, and was applied to, Christ, even by the Jews themselves, Mar 11:9; Joh 12:13.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
118:24 This [is] the {l} day [which] the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
(l) In which God has shown chiefly his mercy, by appointing me king and delivering his Church.