Psalms 116

Psalms 116:1

Psalm 116: I Love the Lord!The joy and gladness of the first Easter morning are singing throughout the Psalm. The garden tomb is empty. Christ has been raised from the dead by the glory of His Father. And now He bursts forth in a song of thanksgiving to God for answered prayer in connection with His Resurrection. 116:1-4 Notice how He begins: “I love the LORD.” Only four monosyllables, yet the purest worship. To timid souls who mistakenly think that God can only be approached in grandiose language, it should be a tremendous encouragement to know that the simplest statement of love for the Lord is genuine worship. But we need not stop there. Like the Savior, we can go on to recite the great things that God has done for us. This too is worship. The Lord Jesus overflowed with ceaseless thanks because His Father had heard His anguished supplications from Gethsemane and Golgotha. When death was tightening its ropes around Him, and the pangs of physical dissolution were laying hold of Him, when He was enduring agony beyond description, then He called to the LORD to deliver Him. And the Lord did. He did not save Him from dying, but He did save Him out of death. 116:5, 6 A third element of worship is found in telling out the excellencies of the Lord. The risen Christ here lists some of the virtues of God which were displayed in His Resurrection. God is gracious, that is, kind and good. God is righteous; all He does is just and fair. God is merciful; He is of great compassion. The LORD preserves the simple, which in the case of the Lord Jesus on the cross meant that He preserved the sincere, the guileless or the helpless. God saves His people when they are in danger. 116:7 Finally God deals bountifully with those who trust in HimHe is not miserly in His benefits. And so the Lord Jesus says, “Return to your rest, O my soul.” His agitation, His anguish, His agony are over. God has heard Him and delivered Him. Now He enters into well-earned rest. 116:8-11 Our Lord next returns to a review of what His Father had done for Him. We learn from this that we need not fear to repeat ourselves in worship. God never tires to hear His children’s praise. And the subject is worthy of endless repetition. Christ’s heart was full of gratitude to the Father for His threefold deliverance: His soul was delivered from death; His eyes were delivered from tears; and His feet were delivered from falling or defeat. Now He walked before the LORD in the land of the livinga Victor over sin, death, the grave, and Sheol. The continuity of thought in verses 10, 11 is admittedly difficult. Perhaps the TEV catches the general meaning: I kept on believing, even when I said, “I am completely crushed,” even when I was afraid and said, “No one can be trusted.” His faith did not falter, even in the moment of His deepest agony, or when men proved how untrustworthy they were. What He said was not born out of distrust but out of deep conviction. 116:12, 13 And then there is a final element of worship, as expressed by the question, “What shall I render to the LORD for all His benefits toward me?” In our case, there can be no thought of repaying Him; any repayment we might make would be an insult to His grace. But there is an inborn desire to respond to His grace in some appropriate way. That way is to take up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the LORD. To lift up the cup of salvation means to express thanksgiving to the Lord for saving us. Calling upon the name of the LORD means to make a special act of devotion in recognition of the greatness of His salvation. 116:14 The risen Savior was determined to pay His vows to the LORD . . . in the presence of all His people. These were vows of praise, worship and thanksgiving which He made before and during His passion. He now fulfills those vows. 116:15 Once again the flow of thought seems suddenly interrupted by the Lord’s observation, “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints.” Even if we have difficulty fitting it into the context, we can still enjoy it as an isolated text. It is true of all saintstheir death is precious to our God because it means they are with Him in glory. But it was never more true than in the case of the Lord Jesus. His death was precious to His Father because it provided a righteous basis upon which He could justify ungodly sinners. 116:16, 17 In verse 16, Jesus, the Risen One, is still “the Servant of Jehovah.” It is as if He is saying, “I love my master . . . I will not go out free” (Exo_21:5). And so He indentures Himself as a servant forever. As the Son of God’s maidservant, He vows to serve God just as His mother Mary did, because Jehovah has loosed His bonds. 116:18, 19 Again He vows to offer to the Father the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and . . . call upon the name of the LORD. In the congregation of God’s people, assembled at the temple in Jerusalem, the Lord Jesus will yet pay His vows as He leads them in a resounding chorus of praise to the LORD. This will take place when He returns to earth, the Great Immanuel, to take the scepter of the universe in His nail-scarred hand.