Psalms 118:24

Psalms 118:24

This Psalm has been applied by our Church to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It is looked upon as a triumphant hymn. All throughout are notes of thanksgiving; and all throughout are allusions to Christ, and to His victory, and the defeat of His enemies. It is full of the great tidings of a risen, conquering Lord; and these tidings are beyond all others of importance to man, the greatest, the gladdest, charged with most stupendous consequences.

I. If it belong to man to rejoice when some great captain has fought his country's enemies, and beaten them, and led their chiefs captives, how much more surely ought the Christian to be glad and rejoice on each recurrence of Easter. For it is the anniversary of the Lord's victory. He comes, leading the invader a prisoner, leading captivity captive. He comes to proclaim the victory.

II. The joy that a Christian feels today is a widespread joy; it is not only that the holy and innocent Jesus has shown Himself the Conqueror, but it is because the benefit of His victory reaches far and wide reaches to all the race which He came to save. The enemy which Christ subdued is our enemy. The crown which He has won, the crown of life, is a crown that we too may hope to wear.

III. The resurrection of the dead is assured to us by what happened today. Sad and incessant are the inroads of Death, mighty in power, still a great severer of dear ties, a separator of chief friends; but his power is broken. Jesus has gone before us through the grave and gate of death; He speaks to us today from the other side of the flood: "I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of hell and of death."

R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons,3rd series, p. 92.

What are the joys of Easter? Why on this day above all days should we rejoice and be glad?

I. Our first and highest joy today is undoubtedly that Jesus is happy happy that His work is done; happy that His people's work is done in His.

II. The next joy is that those whom we have loved, and lost, and laid in their quiet graves will rise where He has risen. For as His grave hath opened, so hath theirs.

III. This is an Easter joy: your salvation is sure. Jesus and His atoning death have been accepted. "He is raised for your justification."

IV. If you are really a member in the mystical body of Christ, you were there when Christ rose; it is a risen life you are leading. You may look upon old things as a risen man may look upon his graveclothes. You are free free from bondage; free to walk; free to run; free to soar in your holy liberty.

V. No one will pass his Easter rightly who does not get up in heart and life a little higher than he was before. The characteristic feature of the season is rising. There is no joy on earth like a life going up, ascending in the Christian scale. Consecrate this Easter by some one distinct upward step, some rise in the being of your immortality.

J. Vaughan, Sermons,11th series, p. 173.

We Christians, though born in our very infancy into the kingdom of God and chosen above all other men to be heirs of heaven and witnesses to the world, and though knowing and believing this truth entirely, yet have very great difficulty, and pass many years, in learning our privilege. This insensibility or want of apprehension rises in great measure from our exceeding frailness and sinfulness. Yet besides this, there are certainly other reasons too which make it difficult for us to apprehend our state and cause us to do so but gradually, and which are not our fault, but which arise out of our position and circumstances.

I. We are born into the fulness of Christian blessings long before we have reason. As, then, we acquire reason itself but gradually, so we acquire the knowledge of what we are but gradually also. We are like people waking from sleep, who cannot collect their thoughts at once or understand where they are. By little and little the truth breaks upon us. Such are we in the present world, sons of light, gradually waking to a knowledge of themselves.

II. Our duties to God and man are not only duties done to them, but they are means of enlightening our eyes and making our faith apprehensive. Every act of obedience has a tendency to strengthen our convictions about heaven.

III. While we feel keenly, as we ought, that we do not honour this blessed day with that lively and earnest joy which is its due, yet let us not be discouraged, let us not despond, at this. We dofeel joy; we feel more joy than we know we do. We see more of the next world than we know we see. 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 Lord's Day. This is the day on which Christ arose from the dead, the day which brought us salvation." It brings us in figure through the grave and gate of death to our season of refreshment in Abraham's bosom.

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. vi., p. 94.

References: Psalms 118:24. J. Sherman, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. v., p. 26; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 255; A. Rees, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 328; Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. iii., p. 275; R. W. Evans, Parochial Sermons,vol. iii., p. 123; H. P. Liddon, Easter Sermons,vol. i., p. 226, and Old Testament Outlines,p. 145.Psalms 118:27. Expositor,3rd series, vol. iv., p. 86.