The Last Song of Jesus

Could you turn with me, please, to Psalm 118.  Psalm 1-1-8.  As you do so, let me say two things by way of introduction.  The first is thank you.  You, as a church have been good, good friends to us over at Leeds in United Kingdom.  You’ve been generous with your prayers, generous with your giving, incredibly generous with your giving.  You’ve trained several of our young men far better than we could have done back home and so, we are very grateful.  I realize many of you will never set foot in Leeds, but you are blessing that city and your brothers and sisters over there. I thank you, and secondly, of course, an apology.  Brits have to apologize before we do anything.  Let me apologize in advance for my accent.  I will try my best.  I was in Taco Bell a couple of years ago in the states and I was confused about the different coins.  I didn’t understand what a dime was, and I chatted with a girl behind the counter, and we established that I’m from England and at the end of our conversation she leaned over and said, “Can I just say, honey, you speak really good English.” (laughter) I do speak good English.  I don’t speak good American, where I mispronounce things.  Let’s hear this wonderful Psalm, Psalm 118 and hear the words of our God.

“Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.  For his steadfast love endures forever.  Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”  Let the house of Aaron say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”  Let those who fear the Lord say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”  Out of my distress I called on the Lord.  The Lord answered me and set me free.  The Lord is on my side.  I will not fear.  What can man do to me?   The Lord is on my side, is my helper.  I shall look in triumph 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.  All nations surrounded me.  In the name of the Lord, I cut them off.  They surrounded me, surrounded me on every side.  In the name of the Lord, I cut them off.  They surrounded me like bees.  They went out like a fire among thorns.  In the name of the Lord, I cut them off.  I was pushed hard, so that I was falling, but the Lord helped me.  The Lord is my strength and my song.  He has become my salvation.  Glad songs of salvation are in the tents of the righteous.  The right hand of the Lord says valiantly, the right hand of the Lord exalts.  The right hand of the Lord does valiantly.  I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of the Lord.  The Lord has disciplined me severely, but He has not given me over to death.  Open to me the gates of righteousness that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.  This is the gate of the Lord.  The righteous shall enter through it.  I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.  The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.  This is the Lord’s doing.  It is marvelous in our eyes.  This is the day that the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.  Save us, we pray, oh, Lord.  Oh, Lord we pray, give us success.  Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.  We bless you from the house of the Lord.  The Lord is God and He has made His light to shine upon us.  Bind the festal sacrifice with cords up to the horns of the altar.  You are my God, and I will give thanks to you.  You are my God, I will extol you.  Oh, give thanks to the Lord for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever.”

Well, let’s pray.

Our Father in Heaven, as we gather this evening, we pray simply that the words of my mouth, the meditations of all our hearts, might be pleasing in your sight.  Strengthen us, we pray, our rock and our Redeemer, for we ask in Jesus’ name, Amen. 

Well, it’s a long Psalm and a Psalm with one or two cherry verses, well-known verses that perhaps jumped out to you as I read it.  Perhaps the most famous, “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and give thanks in it.”  A French Evangelical pastor once, a guy called Louie Rong, he took to the stage and he sang that verse to the watching crowds.  Well, that might not sound a particularly interesting anecdote, so let me put some flesh on the bones.  Louie had been arrested.  Louie was a Protestant, an Evangelical.  He’d been arrested by the Roman Catholic government.  The stage he took to was the stage of execution, the scaffold stood next to him.  The crowds had come not to hear him preach, but to see him die, and yet he could sing,
“This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice.” 

What kind of faith does it take?  How could a man walk to the scaffold and of all the verses in scripture, choose that one?  Wouldn’t you love to have that kind of faith?  That kind of confidence to be able to look the executioner in the eye and sing, but how can you?  You can’t.  You can’t.  One of the ways we know this psalm is meant for the lips, not just of Louie Rank and the Suffering Church, but everyday Christians like you and me, as the New Testament puts it on our lips.  We’ll see later, Hebrews 13 quotes part of Psalm 118, and does so, well, in order that you and I might confess its truth, sing its truths together. 

What I want us to see this evening, is the reason that Louie Rank can sing it, the reason you and I can sing it, whatever we’re facing, whatever distress we’re in, however rough and dark the day seems, the reason you and I can sing, “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice,” the reason is simple, it’s this.  Christ sang the psalm first.  Christ sang the psalm first.  You may have picked this up in your series, but Psalm 118 is the last of a series of psalms known as the Hallel Psalter.  They’re a mini collection within the wider book of the Book of Psalms.

I guess it’s something like turning to your Trinity hymnal and finding the Christmas Hymn section or the, the Easter songs.  It’s a mini collection within the wider book, and we know that one of the times these Psalms were song was at Passover.  The Jews each year would sing Psalms 113-118.  And therefore, therefore, it is most likely that this is the last song that Jesus sang before He went to his trial, to His execution.  Do you remember, the Gospels tell us that as the disciples gathered for the Last Supper, they sing hymns together.  And what were they singing?  It wasn’t Keith Getty, was it?  The Jews sang psalms.  It was Passover, so almost certainly, this is the last song that came from our Savior’s lips before He went to His execution.  He sang and then He went out, over the Kidron Brook, we read.  The Kidron Brook, little stream that ran out of Jerusalem, that at that time at Passover, ran red with the blood of the Passover lambs being sacrificed.  After He sang this psalm, He went to the garden and was betrayed, bound, lost His freedom, and was eventually sacrificed for us.  And yet, I guess, as you’ve seen the last few weeks, one of the striking things is that the courage with which Jesus went through all that final ordeal, before Pilate, before Caiaphas, before Annas, before Herod, arrested, whipped, scourged, mocked, scorned and, of course, crucified, and never once losing His courage.  And this psalm, this psalm on His lips.

Well, let’s dive in and look more carefully at the text itself.  It’s a psalm of thanksgiving.  “Oh, give thanks to the Lord for He is good.  His steadfast love endures forever,” and then over the first three or four verses, different sections of God’s people are called to respond.  “Let Israel, let God’s people say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”  Let the house of Aaron, the priestly tribe sing, let all those who fear the Lord,” perhaps the Gentiles as well, all of you sing and they sing the same line.  It’s a kind of liturgy.  Sometimes you get the impression in the, the modern church, at least back home, that unless something is spontaneous, made up on the spot, it’s not sincere, it’s not spiritual, but God’s people have always been trained to sing scripture back to Him. 

I was in a theater many years ago, before I had children.  I was asked to help on a school trip, and we went to see a show called the Gruffalo.  I don’t know if the Gruffalo is a children’s book that’s popular out of here, it is huge in the UK.  I’ve never heard of it and so I sat on this stage with perhaps 800 under 10s. No idea what I was about to see, and the character walked on stage, the first character, and said, “A mouse took a stroll in a deep, dark wood,” and 800 children in unison, chanted, “A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good.”  It was terrifying, (laughter) I’d never heard of this book and I thought it was some sort of cult or something, but those children had been catechized, they were doing liturgy.  They didn’t know it.    

The House of Israel had been called to sing, whatever the circumstances, whoever you are, sing.  His steadfast love endures forever.  Don’t sing it if you feel it, don’t sing it if you can see it, don’t sing it only if you can give a, a tangible example of that love that has arrived fresh from Heaven this morning.  Just sing it, train yourself to sing it.  The psalm begins and indeed, ends like that.  If you look at the last couple of verses, they’re the kind of book ends. 

Verse 28 and 29.  Again, it is thanksgiving.  “You are my God.  I will give thanks to you.” It’s a choice.  “You are my God, I will extol you.  Give thanks to the Lord, He is good.  His love endures forever.”

And the rest of the psalm, it’s, the commentators, those far cleverer than me certainly, they struggle to put a structure on it.  It’s quite long for a psalm, but the theme of thanksgiving runs through, so I want to look at two sections tonight.  The first is the anxiety, or rather the anguish, perhaps better.  The anguish of the king.  Verses 5-18, we meet a king in anguish.  The big picture is there in verse 5.  “Out of my distress, I called on the Lord.  The Lord answered me and set me free.  Out of my distress.  The word there is the word for narrow place.  He’s in a tight squeeze.  We speak like that, don’t we?  I’m in a bind.  I’m in a tough place.  I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place.  I can’t see a way out.  That is how the king feels here.  He is stuck and hemmed in on every side.  We don’t know the specific situation, but that’s good.  It means we don’t just associate with the psalm as when we’re in exactly in the same place, but, but whatever your distress, whatever narrow place, however you’re feeling squeezed tonight, this is a psalm for you. 

And almost the whole story of the psalm is in verse 5.  “Out of my distress,” my narrow place, “I called to the Lord.  The Lord answered and set me free.”  The setting free phrase is about, again, the common days tell us, being brought to a wide place, an expansive place, from being enchained, closed in.  He’s now free and in green pastures.  He’s come out into the fresh air, out of the darkness, breathing again.  “The Lord has rescued me.”  Who is he?  Well, in one sense, we don’t know.  We don’t have a little superscription.  Remember the little lettering above the psalms often gives us a clue, a Psalm of David, or a Psalm of the Son of Korah, but it’s very likely that this is the Psalm of David.  It’s certainly meant to be a kingly psalm.  If we were to pick through really slowly this evening, we’d be able to play a kind of mix and match, spot the repeated phrase, or we’d see that many of the phrases in the psalm are actually copied word from word, from earlier in the Psalter, earlier Psalms, and they’re always Davidic psalms.  So, Psalm 5 itself, “Out of my distress I call on the Lord,” all kind of key verse.  That is Psalm 18, verse 19, which is a Psalm of David.  Well, the next verse, verse 6, “The Lord is on my side.  I will not fear.  What can man do to me?”  That’s word for word, Psalm 56, verse 11, also a Psalm of David. 

And that’s why I say this first half of the psalm is about the anguish of the king, in particular.  It is a kingly psalm.  And that gets all the more clear as we, we see just what this distress looked like for Him.  Look at the squeeze in verse 10.  “All nations surrounded me.  In the name of the Lord, I cut them off.  They surrounded me.”  Surrounded me on very side.”  Verse 12, “They surrounded me like bees, every side the enemy is there.”  He’s getting covered in the bees, a swarm of bees that are around Him, the fire, everything, His world is closing in on Him.  And it’s the nations, all the nations surround me.  That is kind of kingly language.  I’m fighting against everybody.  It’s like one of those, I’m not sure they make them anymore, do they, but these classic kind of martial arts movies, Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, one man in the middle, and just a hundred bad buys around him, and he’s fighting them all off and the odds rule against him.  He’s abandoned, alone and surrounded.   

What a fitting psalm for Christ to sing before He is arrested.  He was alone, abandoned, abandoned by the disciples, abandoned by His closest friends, betrayed by Judas, abandoned by His people, abandoned ultimately even by Heaven itself, as He prays in the garden, “Father take this cup from me.”  And Heaven is silent.  He will stand alone, against, well, against all our enemies.  Abandoned and yet surrounded too.  The number of enemies who, who crowd around Christ in the last hours of His life, just seems to multiply and multiply.  Arrested by the, the troops, brought before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council, taken on to Annas, the high priest, to Pilate, to Herod, back again to Pilate.  Surrounded and mocked by Roman soldiers, dressing Him up as a fake king, scourging Him, whipping Him, crowning Him with thorns, bowing before Him, and behind that no doubt, as He heads into the darkness, the horror of Calvary.  Surrounded, not just by the, the dogs of mankind, but by the filthy dogs of the unseen realm.  This is Satan’s hour we’re told, the hour of darkness, as the devil holds all that he and his minions can, against the Son of God, surrounded on every side.

And yet, He conquers.  He conquers.  Christ conquers, doesn’t He?  He does not go down.  Alone, abandoned, surrounded, but not defeated.  How?  You say, well that’s easy, He’s the Son of God, that’s how He does it.  Divine power.  That was not what our psalm tells us.  And indeed, importantly, I think it’s not what the New Testament tells us.  Jesus does not conquer His enemies like superman.  Jesus does not even, if I can put this carefully, Jesus does not even conquer His enemies, just by His divine power.  Of course, He could have clicked His fingers and everybody evaporates.  He is God.  But He’s there to represent us, and therefore, at every stage, He is truly a man, just a man, if I can use that phrase.  Never ceasing to be fully God, one person, but genuinely one person in two natures now, fully divine still, everything He was in Heaven in eternity past, He remains, but He became in the incarnation at Bethlehem, what He was not, and He has to be truly a man as He goes to the cross. 

To put it in the language of this psalm, “Jesus conquers by faith.”  Jesus in His human mind, His human soul, His human heart, Jesus the man, trusts the Lord to rescue Him.  He exercises faith.  It’s there in verse 6-9, “The Lord is on my side.  I will not fear.  What can man do to me?”  Verse 6 and 7 speak of the question, “What harm can come to me?  If the Lord is on my side, I will look in triumph on those who hate me.  Nothing can harm me,” nothing can harm us if the Lord,” that special name, that coveted name for God, if Yahweh is on our side, and in versus 8 and 9, the question is, what help would other saviors be?  Not what harm will come, but what help could come?  Verse 8, “It’s better to take refuge in the Lord than trust in man, better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.”  Jesus conquers His enemies by faith.  Where you and I would have fallen and stumbled, doubted and distrusted, despaired, feared, tried to save ourself through just any means possible from the grim fate that faced Him, Jesus lived by faith.  He trusted the goodness of God.  He had that fundamental conviction, “The Lord is on my side and there is no other Savior.  The Lord will rescue me from these enemies.” 

That’s why in verses 14-16, He sings the psalm that is the Exodus Psalm, “The Lord is my strength and my song,” It’s the song the people sang back in the days of the Exodus.  Jesus conquers His enemies by faith, or to put it another way around, it is Yahweh, it is God who rescues Jesus from His anguish.  Not Jesus who rescues Himself.  The psalm is not about the king on His own, separate from Yahweh as it were, manning up and defeating all who stood against Him.  It is a king trusting Yahweh and praising Yahweh for rescuing Him.  That’s why it’s a song of thanks.  It’s not a psalm of boasting.  I conquered.  It was all against me, I was the last man up to the plate, and I smacked it out of the park.  It’s my best attempt at an American sports illustration. Hope it was close. 

No, it’s not a psalm of triumph, but a psalm of thanksgiving, and Jesus, who incredibly became man, sings it too.  The psalm is all about Yahweh.  I tried to bring it out in the reading.  Yahweh’s name, the little, little capital letters, the Lord.  28 times in this psalm, more than any other psalm, even the next psalm, Psalm 119, the longest psalm in the Bible, doesn’t have the Lord’s name as often, just 24 times in Psalm 119, 28 in this one.  It is a psalm about Yahweh’s activity, rescuing the king, and that brings it closer to us, doesn’t it?  I said Hebrews 13 puts the psalm on the lips of Christians. 

Of those two dangers of the king in anguish, “what harm could come to me,” and “what help could other saviors be?”  Hebrews 13.  Let me read from verse 4. 

“Let marriage be held in honor among all and let the marriage bed be undefiled, that God would judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.  Keep your life free from love of money and be content with what you have, for He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” so we could confidently say the Lord is my helper, I will not fear.  What can man do to me?” Psalm 118.  It’s strange logic.  Keep yourself sexually pure, keep the marriage bed pure.  Keep yourself from the love of money, why?  Well, here it isn’t, because those things needed judgment, or they dishonor the Lord.  They destroy your community, all true.  But here, whoever wrote Hebrews, turns to Psalm 118 and says, “It’s because confidently we can say, “The Lord is my helper, I shall not fear.”

What’s he thinking?  I think he’s thinking this, just like the psalmist, just like that king of old, and of course, just like Christ, we can say, “I don’t need to turn to sex and money, other Gods, other things to protect me from harm or to help me when I’m in distress.” That is why we turn to those things, isn’t it? “I’ll only be safe if the bank account is full.  We’ve had a rough day, your colleagues are letting you down, the kids are arguing, your friends have not replied to the text, and the temptation to find comfort, pleasure, salvation in sexual morality is there.  Satan just whispering in our ears, “You deserve it.  The Lord is not enough.  The Lord won’t rescue you from this little distress, this squeeze, this narrow place.  What will really bring blessing is indulging in, or what will really bring you safety is cutting back on the tithe this week,” or Satan tells you, “There’s great harm in trusting Yahweh and there’s no help in trusting Yahweh, to turn to any other Gods.” The classic ones are sex and money.  The psalmist says, “What can they do?”  The Lord is on your side.  So, the anguish of the king. 

But then in verse 19, the psalm turns, as psalms so often do, and we turn from the anguish of the king to the acceptance of the king.   This is verse 19-24.  Verses 19-24. 

It seems that the warrior has triumphed, he’s through the battle.  He’s fought off the bees, he’s fought off the burning fires that surrounded him, and so verse 19, “He comes to the gates.  He’s home.  Open to me the gates of righteous that I may enter in.”  He’s banging on the city gates, and saying, “Let me in,” except this gate is not just the gate of his own castle or hall, verse 20, this is the gate of the Lord.  This is God’s house, and the king is saying, “Open it up that I might come in.  The righteous alone shall come in,” but here is a righteous king.  It’s like Psalm 15 or 24, “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord, who may dwell in your house, who may abide on your holy hill.”  That great question, who could really ascend and come through the gates of Heaven, ultimately?  The righteous one can and does.  He has conquered the enemies and now receives the welcome of Heaven as He ascends the hill into God’s presence. 

But then the picture changes, perhaps somewhat surprisingly. Wonder if you noticed in verse 22, again a verse quoted many times in the New Testament, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.  This is the Lord’s doing.  It is marvelous in our eyes.”  The psalmist changes the view from the warrior returning and banging the gates to the crowds cheering as he walks through and says, “There’s a stone that has been thrown outside,” that the builders picked it up and threw it away, and yet the Lord has taken that stone and built around it a whole new temple.

When I was an assistant pastor, I worked in a small town in Derbyshire, a small village really, called Duffield.  This morning we heard, I think in our opening illustration, about various battles the British lost against the Americans.  I get to reminded we don’t call it the war of independence, we call it the rebellion, but I’ll leave that with you. One of the things Brits had to accept is that you now frankly are better at everything than us.  You’ve more money, you’ve got a better army, you run the world, and we don’t.  One thing we have left, our stuff is old, (laughter) our stuff is old.  Someone was telling me earlier this week, I was down in Jackson.

I’m from a really historic church, it’s over 120 years old, and I was able just to smugly look at him and, well that’s sweet.  My first church, 14^th century.  It’s all we’ve left (laughter).  That church, if you ever visit, beautiful little church.  There’s a river running through a valley in Derbyshire which is a beautiful county.  You’ve seen Pride and Prejudice, it’s where, you know, the church where that is set, that church, if you look on the inside of it, there are some strange stones, lion’s carved on them and that they’re all a bit out of place and the reason for that is this, that when they built they church hundreds of years ago, there’d been a castle on the hill nearby, that had been sacked and destroyed and they’d just thrown the rubble down the hill, and so when they came to build the church, rather than quarry more stone, they picked up the rejected stones and built Sir Norman’s Duffield.  Well, that’s kind of the idea here.  The rejected stone has become the cornerstone, the keystone, the central plank as it were, in the Lord’s new building.  And, of course, you don’t need me to tell you that Jesus applies this verse to Himself in the New Testament.  Jesus is the cornerstone.  He was rejected by the builders, the chief priests, but Pilate joining in too, the Sanhedrin, the leaders of Israel.  The leaders of God’s people, took Him and tried to throw Him out.  They cast Him away from His house, the temple.  They cast Him away from His city, Jerusalem, drove Him outside the gates to execute Him on a hill outside, above the rubbish dump.  They tried to drive Him outside the world itself, Jew and Gentile, killing Him, driving Him from life. 

It is true that the Romans destroyed the temple in 70 AD but in many ways as the Romans took hammer and nail to Jesus on the cross, that is what they were doing, destroying the true temple of God, trying to drive Him from them, rejecting Him.  But as we celebrated last week, and again this morning, God took that rejected Messiah, that rejected king and from Him built the true temple, the temple that is the temple of the Holy Spirit.  The temple we meet in now, not in terms of this beautiful building, but in terms of the people in it, and that’s why verse 23, verse 24, the psalms can sing, “Rejoice, this is the Lord’s doing.  This is the day the Lord has made.”  I mean, one says every day He has made, of course, but that great day of resurrection, the day of triumph, where the rejected Christ cast out by man, but picked up by God and made the foundation of the whole new world, that day of resurrection, let’s rejoice in it, because all the enemies are defeated.  God rescued the king and now welcomes Him home and builds the new kingdom around Him, the new temple around Him.  The king is rejected by the world, but welcomed by God.  That’s why it’s such a great call to worship on the Lord’s day, the day that celebrates the resurrection.  This is the day the Lord made, let’s rejoice.

And at this point, it seems the psalm ought to be done, and yet it takes a strange turn.  The focus, if you’re a kind of literary scholar, it’s difficult to pull apart and I can’t do it.  But in verses 25-27, it tells of the story of God’s salvation.  There’s one last twist and turn.  You’d think that, that it ought to end.  Let’s rejoice and be glad, hallelujah, but the call goes out again, “Save us, we pray, Oh, Lord.”  Save us we pray is that word Hosannah.  It’s what the crowds cried as Jesus came into Jerusalem, Palm Sunday, “Save us, we pray, Hosannah.  Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.  We bless you from the house of the Lord.” 

The crowds wanted the rescue and in Jesus’ day they perhaps knew it hadn’t fully arrived, but I wonder if, how few realized what it would take for verse 27 to come true.  “The Lord is God.  He’s made His light to shine upon us.”  What would make the light of God shine upon a people who tried to cast His Son out of the world?  What would it make to make the God of Heavan shine His face upon you? 

Second half of verse 27, “Bind the festal sacrifice with cords up to the horns of the altar.”  Isn’t that amazing?  Some of the last words that Jesus sang, “Bind the sacrifice.”  Jesus sang those words, went out, prayed and then was arrested and we are told, bound.  Did they realize what they were doing?  I doubt it.  Did they realize they were binding the last Passover sacrifice, the last Passover lamb?  Did they realize they were preparing the sacrifice that all their other sacrifices had pointed to?  Did they realize they were about to make the cross the true altar of Heaven and earth?  Did Caiaphas and Annas realize they were making the final Passover sacrifice?  Did they realize that in handing Christ over to Pilate, they were grasping his hand and clasping it around the knife, in other that both Jew and Gentile together would make the final sacrifice?  Did they realize that that sacrifice, therefore, would be for the whole world, not just Jew, but Gentile too?  Did they realize that in order for God’s light to shine upon us, enough to be able to sing, “Give thanks to the Lord, his love endures forever,” the light would have to be taken from Christ.  He would have to be squeezed into the darkest, narrowest place in distress any man has ever been, be taken to the depths of horror and terror, that thank God you and I will never know because He has known them for us. 

Did they realize every gift would be removed from Christ, even the shining face of God upon Him?  Did they realize that through that, Christ would stay firm, stay trusting when He could see no earthly sign of God’s favor, enemies all around, Heaven cut off in darkness, no sense of His Father’s love, although, of course, His Father continued to love Him, but no sense, no felt sense of God’s love.  When everything’s said, you are surrounded, abandoned and all is lost, He stay faithful.  He lived out the faith of Psalm 118, and from that narrow place of distress, cramped to the cross, wrapped in the shrouds of death, buried in a tomb, He kept trusting Yahweh, His God, and therefore, three days later He burst out, was raised out by God the Father, and lifted up to the place, the broad place, the green pastures, in order that forever more He might dwell, perhaps now, perhaps now you are enemies on all sides.  Perhaps they buzz around you like bees, enemies of sin, the world, Satan suffering distress, you could see no way out.  The psalm says, “Sing, give thanks to the Lord for He is good.  His love endures forever.” 

You might not see it, but you can hear it from Calvary.  He will not abandon you, and because He has rescued Christ, therefore He will rescue you, because His Son was willing to go into the darkest of distress, crushed in on every side.  You will never be brought that low.  Oh, there will be distress in your life, very likely.  It’ll come to all of us.  The Christian life is not one of joy and candy, but the enemies will not conquer you.  They will not, they cannot, because Christ has conquered them in His death, and His resurrection.  As He did for Christ, so He will do for you.  It is unlikely you’ll ever take to a stage, crowds watching and a hangman’s noose in the background.  Pray, God, no, but you will face suffering, you will face distress.  Brothers and sisters, this psalm can be yours, whatever you feel or whatever you see, give thanks to the Lord, His love is good.  He has rescued Christ.  Brothers and sisters, one day He will rescue you.  Let’s pray.

Our Father in heaven, we believe, but help us overcome our unbelief.  We confess we are quick to doubt, quick to tremble.  We see the bees and the fire, the swarms of enemies and in our weakness, we tremble and fall, and so we praise you.  We’re not saved by our strength, but by yours.  We thank you and praise you, that Christ has gone into a darkness we will never see, in order that He might deliver us into a kingdom of light we cannot imagine.  Pour your Spirit on us and strengthen us in faith, we pray for His name’s sake.  Amen.