Only One

This is the day which the LORD has made;  let us rejoice and be glad in it.  Psalm 118:24

Day – Have you ever heard this expression applied to the current day?  Maybe you grew up like I did where your mother used this verse as a kind of reminder to not grumble.  Maybe you have used it yourself to provide encouragement or affirmation.  Guess what?  That is not how David uses this verse.  In fact, there is only one day when this verse actually applies to the present, and that day happened 2000 years ago.

Like most pithy Bible verses, we often ignore the context.  In order to understand why David proclaimed this one day, we must read the preceding verses.  David is talking about “the stone which the builders rejected.”  The day David has in mind is the day of vindication when this rejected stone becomes the fundamental building block of God’s grace.  That is the day which the Lord has made.  It is all God’s doing.

Tonight you will celebrate the final stages of that day.  In spite of the fact that this particular night is unlikely to have been the real night of Jesus’ birth, it is nevertheless the adopted day when God revealed the last steps leading to the day of vindication.  It is a night of remembrance.  It is a night that David longed to experience, when angels announced startling news.  We are privileged to know when that day of rejoicing occurred, centuries ago.

Of course, the Hebrew word is yom.  It certainly means “day,” but it is a word that has a wider umbrella than 24 hours.  In fact, yom is used for a day, a year, a life span and some unspecified period of time (so, don’t get too worked up over its use in Genesis 1).  It can point to the future as well as the past.  In all its flexibility, it is the fundamental concept of time in the Old Testament. 

David looks ahead to the time of the Messiah, the day when God will vindicate His anointed one.  David sees, prophetically, that part of the role of the coming King will be rejection and suffering.  That comes before victory.  When we celebrate Christmas as the birth of the Savior, we must never forget that the wise men brought embalming substances!  They knew a deeper truth.  This one was born to die.

In rabbinic fashion, we must turn our attention from what lies before our eyes to see what lies in the mind of God.  Yes, there is a baby in a manger.  Yes, there are shepherds and angels.  But what is also here is the God of weakness.  The way of God is not shock and awe.  He leaves those pointless exercises to men.  God’s way is humility, ignominy and death.  God’s way is humanly inconceivable.  We would never have thought of this.  We look for the spectacular, the overpowering and the glorifying.  God uses another way.  This we much remember, on the night of celebration.  The pathway of God leads not to enviable status but to crushing service.  If you’re going to follow the Son, you must first become a helpless infant.  In that day, you too can rejoice.