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His steadfast love endures forever!

His steadfast love endures forever! (Psalm 118.1-20 https://www.biblegateway.com NRSVA)
Then as now, Israel often found herself up against it, encircled by enemies. At these difficult times in the life of the nation, when people were anxious and distressed, this psalm was a source of comfort. 
It seems likely that the worshippers processed into the temple led by the priests and perhaps also the king. The priests would chant some of the lines, and the worshippers would echo them back, asserting their faith in God's power to help them.
The message is clear. It’s foolish to try to build alliances with other princes or for the nation to put its trust in politicians to come up with clever solutions to its predicament when the people can take refuge in the Lord, knowing that he is on their side. Even when they’re pushed hard, so that they’re falling, the Lord will help them. He’s their true strength and has become their salvation. 
The Lord may have punished the nation severely, but he’s not given it over to death. At the gates of the temple the worshippers cry out to be allowed in, and God lets the righteous enter.
Jeremiah knew this psalm. At the beginning of the nation’s long exile he alludes, in the passage that we explored yesterday, to going up to the house of the Lord again to celebrate God's everlasting love. He believed that sentiments like those expressed in Psalm 118 had given the nation false confidence that it was somehow impregnable to disaster. But it wasn’t. In the end Israel was given over to exile and death after all, despite all the anxious petitions for God's help. 
Does that mean the people's faith in God had been misplaced? Like the psalmist, Jeremiah thinks not. If the nation can become truly righteous, instead of taking God’s help for granted, it shall not die, but shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord.
For Christians, righteousness comes ‘through Christ alone’, and his death is the guarantee that even if we’re given over to death we shall live again to recount the Lord’s saving power.

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