First Baptist Church
FBCC 2025-04-12

      • 1 Peter 1:3GS-NETBIBLE

  • Waiting Here for You
  • Blessed Assurance
  • Psalm 118:19–24 ESV
    19 Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord. 20 This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it. 21 I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation. 22 The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. 23 This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. 24 This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
    BIG IDEA: When God reverses rejection, He lays the foundation for our greatest joy.

    Have you ever been passed over?

    Have you ever been passed over? Maybe you were overlooked for a promotion you deserved. Maybe you were left off an invitation list, or chosen last when sides were picked. The sting of rejection has a way of defining us, following us into rooms where we thought we were safe.

    The way we see ourselves and the way we approach God

    It settles in and whispers a verdict. You are not good enough. You do not belong. The experts have spoken, and you did not make the cut. We carry that verdict far longer than we should, and it shapes the way we see ourselves and the way we approach God.

    An Ancient Song

    But the ancient song we call Psalm 118 has a different story to tell. It begins at a gate and ends at a celebration, and at the center of it is the most surprising reversal in all of human history. The very thing that was thrown away turns out to be the thing everything else depends on.
    The gate we long for,
    The stone that defines everything,
    The day that calls for celebration.
    We are going to walk through these six verses in three movements. We will look at the gate we long for, the stone that defines everything, and the day that calls for celebration. Each movement builds toward the same conclusion: God’s ways seem like reversals, and His reversals are worth celebrating.

    The Gate We Long For

    (v. 19-21)
    The psalmist stands at a gate and makes a bold demand. “Open to me the gates of righteousness; I will enter through them and give thanks to the LORD.” This is not a timid whisper at a locked door. This is confident, expectant knocking from someone who believes the door will open.
    The gate has a name: “the gate of the LORD.” It is not a bureaucratic checkpoint for the impressive. This is the threshold between wandering and belonging, between the ordinary and the holy. The psalmist is not asking to attend a ceremony. He is asking to come home.
    “The threshold between wandering and belonging”
    We all know what it feels like to stand at a gate we cannot open. The gate of acceptance. The gate of belonging. The gate of being truly known without being turned away. We pace in front of it. We examine the lock. We wonder if we have what it takes to qualify.
    Psalm 118:21 ESV
    I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.
    But notice what gives this psalmist his confidence. It is not his own track record. It is not impressive credentials or a clean moral history. Verse 21 tells us exactly why he can knock with such boldness: “I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.”
    Psalm 118:21 ESV
    I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.
    He approaches this gate as someone who has a history with God. He has been in desperate places before. He has called out and been heard. He has been in danger and been rescued. God did not abandon him then, and he trusts he will not be kept outside now.
    Here is the pastoral word this text offers us. Many people approach God as though the gate is permanently locked against them. They assume their failures, their doubts, their track record has disqualified them from entering. But access to God is not earned by our righteousness. It is opened by His salvation.

    The Stone That Defines Everything

    (v. 22)
    Verse 22 shifts the scene from a gate to a construction site. “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” This single verse is one of the most quoted Old Testament lines in the entire New Testament, and for good reason.

    The Cornerstone

    In ancient building, the cornerstone was the most critical piece of the whole structure. It was set first, and everything else was aligned to it. Every wall, every angle, every dimension was measured against that one stone. Get the cornerstone wrong, and the entire building is compromised.

    A Professional Verdict

    When builders examined a stone and rejected it, that was a professional verdict. These were the experts. They knew weight and density, surface texture, and structural grain. If they passed on a stone, that settled the matter. Nobody appealed the decision. The rejected stone went to the discard pile.

    God’s Assessment

    Except God does not share their assessment. He takes the stone the experts threw away and makes it the cornerstone of the whole structure. The most important element turns out to be the very one the professionals dismissed. The reversal is so complete it borders on absurd.
    Matthew 21:42 NET
    Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?
    Jesus quoted this verse in Matthew 21:42, standing in the temple courts, speaking directly to the chief priests and Pharisees. These were the religious experts of His day. They had examined His credentials and found Him wanting. They had decided He did not meet the requirements for the role He was claiming.

    The Resurrection Is God’s Answer

    Three days after His crucifixion, God gave His answer. The resurrection is God’s declaration that the experts had it exactly backward. The one they rejected, tried, condemned, and buried became the cornerstone of a new creation, the foundation of a kingdom that will not end.
    Acts 4:11 NET
    This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, that has become the cornerstone.
    Peter quotes this psalm in Acts 4:11 while standing trial before the very leaders who rejected Jesus. He says: “This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.” He is not apologizing. He is announcing. The reversal is complete and permanent.

    How God Works

    What this should do for us is reorder our assumptions about how God works. The most important things in God’s economy do not always look impressive to those who consider themselves qualified to judge. God’s work has a persistent habit of coming through the things the world passes over.

    The Day That Calls for Celebration

    (vv. 23–24)
    Now the psalmist steps back and stands in pure wonder. “This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.” He does not say this was inevitable. He does not say, “We saw it coming.” He stands before what God has done and reaches for the only explanation: the LORD did this.

    This Is the LORD’s Doing

    Think about the resurrection in exactly those terms.
    The disciples did not engineer it.
    The early church did not orchestrate it.
    The enemies of Jesus certainly did not anticipate it.
    There is only one explanation that accounts for an empty tomb, for a community that exploded out of Jerusalem, for two thousand years of the gospel spreading to every corner of the earth. This is the LORD’s doing.
    Psalm 118:24 ESV
    This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
    And then comes verse 24, perhaps the most quoted verse in all of Psalms: “This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” We put it on coffee mugs and greeting cards. We recite it on Monday mornings when motivation is low.

    One Specific Day

    But in context, this is not a general affirmation of daily gratitude. It is not a reminder to appreciate sunny weather or good coffee. This is a declaration about a specific day, the day when God took the rejected stone and set it as the cornerstone. The day when the gate swung open. The day when death did not hold.
    Psalm 118:22 ESV
    The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
    The command to rejoice in verse 24 is grounded in the reversal announced in verse 22. We rejoice not because life feels pleasant today. We rejoice because God has done something permanent. The cornerstone has been set. It is not moving. That is the foundation under our feet, regardless of what the morning brings.
    Psalm 118:22 ESV
    The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
    That kind of joy does not depend on circumstances. It is not vulnerable to the morning news, or to what your doctor said last week, or to whether the year is going the way you planned. It rests on something that happened outside a tomb on a Sunday morning, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

    God Is Still Working

    Let me be direct about what this text is asking of each of us, because a sermon's job is to connect the ancient word to the present moment.
    Some of you are standing outside a gate you assume is locked against you. You have tallied up your failures and concluded that God would not welcome you inside. But the psalmist did not earn his welcome. He received it. The gate of the LORD is opened by grace, not by achievement. Knock.

    The rejected stone was not wasted.

    Some of you are in a season that feels exactly like rejection. A door closed. A relationship ended. A dream was passed over by the people who seemed qualified to judge. And it is genuinely hard to see how God is at work in any of that. But the rejected stone was not wasted. God was doing something the builders could not see, and He is not finished with what He started in your life.
    Some of you simply need to rejoice today, not because everything is resolved, not because the hard things have disappeared, but because the LORD has made a day. That day is the day the cornerstone was set. It is the day the gate was thrown open. It is the day that cannot be undone.
    The LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
    The gate is open. The cornerstone is set. The LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. So let us enter the gate, trust the cornerstone, and rejoice in this day that the LORD has made.

      • Psalm 118:19–24ESV

      • Psalm 118:21GS-NETBIBLE

      • Psalm 118:21GS-NETBIBLE

      • Matthew 21:42ESV

      • Acts 4:11GS-NETBIBLE

      • Psalm 118:24GS-NETBIBLE

      • Psalm 118:22GS-NETBIBLE

      • Psalm 118:22GS-NETBIBLE

First Baptist Church
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410-575-3760
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