This is the Day which the Lord Hath Made

We have just passed through the holiday of Thanksgiving; the day set aside in our country for giving thanks to God for His providential care throughout the year. And this is a holiday that is becoming more and more lost in our modern world, partly because of the continued growth of the Christmas season and partly because we are no longer an agricultural nor a religious culture. However, for many people, there is a deeper and more fundamental reason why Thanksgiving is so irrelevant to them. Thanksgiving is a celebration of gratitude and life and is, therefore, incompatible with the general pessimism of our world. And this attitude is fatal, not simply to the holiday of Thanksgiving, but to the concept of thanksgiving in general. I am not, at present, especially concerned with preserving Thanksgiving, but it is vital that we preserve thanksgiving--and to understand why, we must address this fundemental issue of optimism and pessimism.

This article has something of an odd history. Last summer I wrote an article dealing with this issue and originally I started this article as a follow-up to that. But then the process of moving and other projects distracted me and it is only now that I am completing it, just in time for Thanksgiving. 

In my last article (Letter to a Dead Friend), I began attempting to describe the feeling of loss we have in death; that the death of someone we know is something concrete and almost tangible. And from that fact, I drew the following argument—if death is something definite, then life just be something definite; if death has meaning, then life must have meaning; if death is important, then life is important. I called the conclusion optimism, the belief that life is significant and important. 

And I still think that is good so far as it goes; I still think that it is a valid refutation of a quite real attitude that covers much of the modern world like a sort of mildew. Common sense is a proper refutation for common nonsense. But there are stains deeper than such casual pessimism and to cleanse them will require something more powerful than my previous arguments. And that brings us to our text: “This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24) This is a very familiar verse, all the more familiar for having been put to music and often being sung with a deeply spiritual ritual which involves standing up and sitting down rapidly. But there is more here than some catchy lines to open Children's Church. We can break the verse apart into separate pieces to understand more clearly what it says and how it relates to this article.

“This is the Day”

Previously, I described optimism as a sort of fixed and final loyalty to life comparable to the loyalty of a patriot to his country. That analogy comes from Chesterton but it comes along with a qualification. There does exist a false and dangerous kind of patriotism—what Chesterton calls jingoism and what we would probably call nationalism. The jingo or the nationalist is the man who allows his loyalty to his nation to blind him to reality—that makes him deny, ignore, cover-up, or justify the problems and sins of his nation. And, just so, there is a kind of optimism that is blind to reality—that leads men to deny, ignore, cover-up, or justify the problems of life. 

We will make no progress in political and civic philosophy unless we face squarely and honestly the issues and difficulties we face as a nation. And we will make no progress in general philosophy unless we face squarely and honestly the issues and difficulties of life. The optimism which sees the state of the realm or the state of reality as being nothing but roses and flowers is either deceived or it is deceptive (or both). 

Life is most certainly meaningful. But what that meaning is can still be debated. And given the heartache, the disappointments, the weariness, the complexities, the terror, and the torture that all face sometimes and some face most of the time—and given that all of this, sooner or later, terminates in death—well, life is a word that has meaning, but it easy to think it is a dirty word; life may be a demigod but you can certainly see the view of those who would blaspheme such a deity. Life transcends this world—but there are moments when it seems more likely to have come from Hell than from Heaven.

There is a lot of casual anti-patriotism in the world; a lot of people who criticize and complain about the nation. But there is also a deeper and more sincere anti-patriotism; a viewpoint that does quite seriously and sincerely believe that our nation (or any particular nation) is inherently corrupt and should not exist—whether or not this attitude ever goes to the final, logical step of revolution. And there is an attitude that goes beyond casual pessimism to the sincere and solid belief that life is itself bad—whether or not it ever goes to the final, logical conclusion of murder or suicide. And it is this attitude which should be called anti-life--it is the sincere blasphemy and treason against life. And we will never be able to refute it until we admit the very real evidence that stands in its favor.

And that is how we come back to our text. Taken out of context, whenever verse is repeated or sung, the implication is that “this is the day” refers to the particular day on which it is being repeated or sung; that every day is “the day.” And there is a certain sense in which that is true. But in the context of the Psalm, it is clear that the psalmist is speaking of a specific day, a specific event or occasion. And while this occasion is certainly pictured as a time of celebration, it is also clear that it comes after and out of a time of great trouble and suffering.

The writer describes himself as being surrounded by enemies as if the entire world had risen up in arms against him. They swarmed around him like bees anxious to inflict a sting. They had attacked him and struck at him, trying to bring him down. Verse 17 begins “I shall not die”; implying that, in the moment, death had been a real possibility from which he had just escaped.  

And if, as I believe, this Psalm is the words of David upon his coronation, then you recognize that David had gone through some very dark and terrible situations, bringing him to that day. He had been cast out and had been forced to be an outlaw, living on the run for years; he had gone through numerous near brushes with death; he had very recently experienced extreme danger to his own family and the treason of his followers; he had recently experienced the death of his best friend, of one of his cousins, and of the king who, though his enemy, he seems to have regarded with legitimate admiration and affection. 

This is a day of joy, but it is joy in the context of sorrow and suffering. And that is the point we always have to keep very clear in our mind. The Bible is not written from some kind of idealistic standpoint that ignores the troubles and sorrows and problems of life. Leonard Cohen probably thought he was being very clever in using Biblical language to preach a doctrine of pessimism, but in fact, David knew very well the sound of “a cold and broken Hallelujah” and not merely in the time of his sin.  The Psalms, especially, are filled with a quite frank and honest and sometimes annoyingly accurate depiction of suffering and sorrow and the pain and loss we experience in life. 

The verse just a few before this one speaks of the stone which the builders rejected. This reminds us that this day, while a day of rejoicing, is not a day of conventional rejoicing. It is day on which many peoples expectations were overturned; what many people wanted or expected did not happen. The thing that did happen was good, but it was not the normal or expected thing. There was a bittersweet or at least surprising, perhaps even unsettling nature, to the good of this day. 

And in the New Testament, Christ uses these words to describe Himself as the stone which the builders rejected—and that rejection led to His death on the cross. And that is what we must remember: that “this is the day” can have reference to somebody dying in agony because of the false accusations of others. “This is the day” can be seen as referring to the darkest day in Earth's history. 

There is a certain spectrum of modern Christianity that focuses merely on rejoicing and happiness and there is a certain reason to this, and we might all be better if we erred more often on the side of joy. But we have to be sure that we never forget the context—the context of our experience and the context of this verse: the day in which we live, as humans, is a dark one. This is not the whole of the picture, but we have to keep that part of the picture in mind if we are to understand anything else.

“Which the Lord”

The word “Lord” has a somewhat interesting history. It means someone in authority. There was a day when certain human authorities were referred to as Lord. In some countries, that title is still used, at least nominally. The Greek word for Lord, kurios, like the English, has this idea of one in authority or is even sometimes used merely as a term of respect. But in both Greek and in English, the word is also used as a religious term, as a term for God. (This is not specifically a Christian usage; other religions also refer to their deities as 'Lord.')

This somewhat dual meaning in the word “Lord” has been the source of some controversy. In Romans 10:9, Paul says that the condition of salvation is an acknowledgment  of “the Lord Jesus.” And the controversy centers on what it means to acknowledge Jesus as Lord. One understanding is that we must recognize and submit to the authority of Christ in order to be saved. Paul Enns in The Moody Handbook of Theology states the contrary view, the view of modern evangelicalism: “Confession of Christ as Lord identifies Christ as deity; the issue is not concerning His lordship.... Lordship is based on application of the knowledge of Scripture, and the knowledge of Scripture comes with spiritual maturity, which in turn follows salvation. Lordship is important, but it cannot be a condition of for salvation...” (p. 343) The idea is usually expressed by saying that at salvation we take Christ as our Savior and then at some subsequent point we take him as our Lord.

And in one sense, Enns is probably right. In the New Testament, the word Lord when applied to Jesus does probably refer to His deity; the statement that Jesus is Lord probably does mean Jesus is God. Because while Lord is a general religious term, it has a more specific history in Judaism. The Jews would not pronounce the sacred name of God (the name translated into English as Jehovah) and so always would always substitute the Hebrew word for Lord when reading aloud. This was carried through into the New Testament which uses kurios in place of Jehovah when quoting from the Old Testament, and this is also carried through into the King James which tends to translate Jehovah with LORD (as in the case of our text). So Enns is quite right to say that the statement Jesus is Lord is a statement of divinity. The problem is that it never seems to have occurred to Enns (or the rest of modern evangelicalism) to wonder why in Greek, Hebrew, or English the word Lord would be used as another name for God.

The very word itself suggests an answer, but the answer is stronger if we look at the name Jehovah. Jehovah means the one who is, the I Am That I Am; the self-existent one. God is the one whose existence is primary and all other things depend on Him. Paul says in Colossians that by Him all things consist. God is the ground of all reality. If you picture this world as something like a computer program, God is the programmer, who makes the code that brings everything into existence and allows it to function. But the point I want to make is that because God is the self-existent Creator of all things and the one by whom all things consist, therefore He is the one in authority by definition. The lordship of Christ is not solely a result of the atonement and certainly, it is not simply an emotional response on the part of the Christian. It is a primary fact that is inherent in the very nature of the universe. Because this world is contingent upon the existence of God--and because God is the I Am--it is, therefore, intrinsic that God would be the one in control, that God would be the one who would give orders and it would be incumbent upon us to obey. This is simply the structure of reality.

So it is not a question of whether we take Christ as Lord at salvation or at some later point because Christ is Lord even if we are sinners. We may not admit the fact, we may not realize it—but it is intrinsic to the universe and that is why there is coming a day when every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord because His Lordship is not contingent upon our response or our feelings. And so, while there may be a psychological process of coming to understand and recognize His Lordship, that Lordship is a primary fact.

And why that matters is this. When dealing with facing the difficulties of life and how we respond, we have to remember that we are not the center of the universe. We are not the final reference. We cannot make the final determination about life, about the value of life, about how we should live in life—because we are not the final point; we are not Lord. I had an argument with someone recently regarding the value of life. Their case was that all life is worthless because when someone dies, the world still goes on. There are several logical fallacies in the argument, but in the end, it entirely misses the point, because we do not determine the value of life. The fact that someone else dies but we keep on living (or even that we all die and the world goes on) does not determine whether life does or does not have value--because we are not Lord; this Earth is not Lord. Jesus is Lord—and He is the one who determines the value and meaning of life. 

“Hath Made”

In its immediate context, the meaning is that this day of victory, of establishment, of joy out of sorrow, of triumph out of battle is something that was accomplished or brought about by God. And, again, if this is referring specifically to David and his ascension to the throne and more symbolically to the death and resurrection of Christ and the opening of the New Testament dispensation, then we see in both cases that it was the work of God, bringing about something that never would have happened on its own.

But the broader truth is that this world itself is something that the Lord has made. This verse could have been read with equal propriety on that first week when God rested from his work of Creation. 

Now, this world as it presently exists is not the world that God made. If this were still that first week of creation, the Psalm would have begun with this verse—there would be no need for the lengthy prologue about sorrow and danger. There would be no need to defeat pessimism in a world without sorrow. But even though that is true, it does not change the point which is that this world is a creation of God.

And this is why that matters. The debate between optimism and pessimism will always be a deadlock because there is both good and evil in this world and the deciding point is one of attitude. Choosing to focus on the positives or the negatives is a choice of the will and so no amount of argument or debate will ever settle the point. Optimists can never truly prove optimism and pessimists can never truly prove pessimism—except to their fellow optimists and pessimists—because there is no new data to uncover and no new facts to present. The good and evil of the world are present for anyone to see. (There may be some cases where someone has an unusually bad experience with life and then later comes to experience the fact that there is good in the world, or vice versa, but these cases are the minority.) 

But the Christian view of life is not based on observations of life. Rather, it is based on the creation or origin of life. If you really want to know what a machine is, what is made to do, then you have to ask the inventor. If you really want to know what life is, what it is supposed to be, what its purpose is, then you have to ask the Creator, the one who made it. That is where Christianity differs from both pagan optimism and pessimism. Because we are not forming our view of life or the value of life based on this world; we are forming our view based on the Lord and on the Creator. That is why we can hold on with loyalty to life even when things in life are bad, because we know a reality about life which goes down deeper than the superficial moment-by-moment characteristics.

Suppose you were two men from a few centuries ago were brought forward in time and confronted by a car. They could examine the car from every angle and make observations about it. One might note the shine of the paint and beauty of the shape; the other might point out the cracks and chips and deterioration of rust. But they would be in no position to actual judge the real value of the car so long as they were ignorant of what a car was and what it was supposed to do. Their observations might be true; they might be incidentally important—but they would not touch on the heart of the matter without understanding the design or purpose of the car. Optimism and pessimism are both based on the “what” in the world. The Christian attitude is founded on the “why” in the world, and the only way to answer the why is by knowing the “Who.” 

“We Will Rejoice and Be Glad In It”

And this is the important thing to remember. This psalm talks of troubles and problems, but it is not a psalm of mourning. This psalm gives us some ideas to think and ponder on, but it is not a psalm of philosophy. At its heart, this is a psalm of praise and thanksgiving. It begins with a call to thanksgiving and then, over and over throughout it, the Psalmist makes statements regarding his intention to praise and call upon the Lord. 

Throughout this article, I have been contrasting the Christian attitude with more casual optimism. And now we are in a position to name that attitude: it is called thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is not merely enjoying and finding the good in life, though it does that; thanksgiving is recognizing the source of that goodness. It is knowing that the Lord, the source and meaning of all things, has sovereignly orchestrated the good in the world; it is knowing that the satisfaction and joy we find in life has been “Granted in what He ordaineth.” 

We will rejoice and be glad in it is not a statement of general cheerfulness; it is a conscious and deliberate choice. It may be an easy and natural choice when we see what God has done, but it is still a choice. That is where we come back to my original statement that optimism is something more like loyalty than a mere feeling or attitude—it is a choice to be loyal and faithful to the side of joy. But in Christian optimism, that choice is not merely an arbitrary act of the will—it is based on the nature of reality itself. And that is why Christians can rejoice and be glad while simultaneously admitting the deep evil and sorrow in the world because we know that good is something deeper and more fundamental than all the corruption that attacks it. Thanksgiving is not a passing pleasantry, still less a naïve ignorance—it is our pledge of allegiance to the original goodness of the world.

But it is even more than this. We rejoice and are glad, not merely on general principle, but because of the day which the Lord has made, this day which came out of the darkness and sorrow of the world. Because that is the final point—it is not merely that we serve the good Lord who made the original good world. We serve the Lord who is making something good out of the terrible tragedy of this present world. God once, long ago, made a beautiful world, but God is still, amid the smoky, acrid furnace of evil, making all things beautiful in his time. It is precisely here, in our cruel, heartless, selfish reality that God is making His day; it is precisely where sin did most abound that grace is much more abounding. 

There is much evil in the world, whether old or new, big or small. Some people complain about it; some people ignore it; some people accept it, and some use it for their own purposes. But there is a rumbling in the corridors of the universe and an army is marching to fight for a better world. And their battle cry is: “This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”