Psalms 118:22-24

Psalms 118:22

I. There can be no doubt that it is our Lord Jesus Christ whom David here designates as "the stone which the builders refused." And when it has been ascertained that it is Christ whom David describes by the figure of a stone, there can be little debate that His resurrection placed Him at the head of the corner, for He rose from the dead as a Conqueror, though He went down to the grave like one vanquished by enemies; and henceforward there shall be "committed unto Him all power both in heaven and in earth."

II. The feelings of the psalmist were those of amazement and delight. (1) Never ought the resurrection of the Redeemer to appear to us other than a fact as amazing as it is consolatory, for there is a respect in which the resurrection of Christ differs immeasurably from every other recorded case of the quickening of the dead. Others were raised by Christ, or by men acting in the name and with the authority of Christ; but Christ raised Himself. The stone, rejected as it had been, and thrown by the builders into the pit, stirred of itself in its gloomy receptacle, instinct miraculously with life, forced back whatever opposed its return, and sprang to its due place in the temple of God. Verily we must exclaim, with the psalmist, "This is the Lord's doing." (2) But amazement or admiration is not the only feeling which the fact before us should excite. "This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." (a) There was no day before; it was not day to an apostate and darkened creation till the Sun of righteousness rose on it in His strength; and His rising was virtually the rising from the dead. We, then, who can rejoice, because there has arisen a Mediator between us and God, must therefore rejoice in the exaltation of the rejected stone. It was in the rising to the head of the corner that this stone swept down the obstacles to the forgiveness of man, and opened to him the pathway to heaven and immortality. (b) The resurrection of our own bodies is intimately connected with the resurrection of Christ, connected as an effect with a cause, for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. The resurrection of the body is a cause for joy.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1696.

Reference: Psalms 118:22. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiv., No. 1420.