Psalm 116 is a psalm whose themes are no doubt very familiar to us. That said, its themes are ones that we need to be reminded of continually because we often neglect, or even forget, the things that we take for granted.
Psalm 116 is a psalm about remembering. One of the central themes of Christianity is that we are to remember. We do not serve a God without a history, and it is that history that tells us about him and reminds us of what he has done for us and causes us to believe in him today.
The first two verses set the tone for us by laying out the themes that are going to be weaved together throughout the rest of our text. The psalmist begins by saying, “I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live” (v. 1-2). From the very beginning, we are introduced to the central ideas of this psalm. We see that the psalmist is declaring his faithful allegiance to the Lord (“I love the Lord…” / “I will call on him as long as I live”). The reason he is doing this is because – at some time in the past – he had cried out to the Lord for help and deliverance and the Lord heard him and delivered him. It is these three themes we will look at this morning: the psalmist’s past distress, the Lord’s faithful deliverance, and the psalmist’s grateful response.
The first thing we see the psalmist doing in Psalm 116 is remembering his past distress. The writer uses very strong language to describe this scenario. He first writes, “The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish” (v. 3). The psalmist goes on to say “…I spoke, ‘I am greatly afflicted’; I said in my alarm, ‘All mankind are liars’” (v. 10b-11). So while we do not know the exact situation in which the psalmist’s sufferings occurred, we know how that suffering made him feel. He feared even for his own life – the snares of death encompassed him. Sheol, as the psalmist uses it in verse 3, is the place of the dead – indicating again his fear that he would lose his very life. The psalmist, as we can see, was greatly distressed, surrounded by evil people (v. 10-11) and feared for his very life.
But we also see something else about the psalmist’s distress and suffering. The psalmist makes very clear that in the midst of his suffering, he cried out to the Lord and trusted that the Lord would deliver him. After declaring that death was taking hold of him, the psalmist says, “Then I called on the name of the Lord: ‘O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!’” (v. 4). So the psalmist makes clear that his fear of death drove him to call out to the Lord. But why would he be driven to do such a thing? He makes the reason clear in verse 10 when he writes, “I believed, even when I spoke, ‘I am greatly afflicted’; I said in my alarm, ‘All mankind are liars.’” The psalmist cried out to the Lord because he knew that the Lord – and the Lord alone – could deliver him.
So the first theme we see very clearly in the psalmist’s words is that he was suffering under some terrible affliction in which he even feared for his own life. And in the midst of that suffering, he cried out to the Lord to deliver him.
But what made the psalmist so confident that he could cry out to the Lord and be delivered? We have seen that the psalmist’s response was indeed to cry to the Lord, but why was that the case? Interestingly, the psalmist spends a good bit of time in this psalm making declarations about God. These declarations are not just mere words. Rather, they constitute the very reason why the psalmist himself cried out to the Lord.
The psalmist – after saying he cried out to the Lord – writes, “Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple…” (v. 5-6a). We can stop there for a moment and begin to see the psalmist’s reasoning for crying out to the Lord. The Lord of the psalmist is not some disengaged figure who created the world but now has nothing to do with it. The Lord of the psalmist is not some arbitrary God who does whatever amuses him at any given time. In short, the Lord of the psalmist is not like us! Rather, the psalmist knows that his Lord is gracious and merciful. That is, the Lord of the psalmist gives unmerited favor to unworthy people and withholds from those same unworthy people the horrible punishment that they deserve. And the psalmist also knows that his Lord is righteous, and that he will not allow evil to go unpunished.
But the psalmist goes on to say of the Lord, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant, the son of your maidservant” (v. 15-16a). Here we see another reason for the psalmist’s confidence in the Lord: he knows that the Lord cares for his people. He knows that the Lord cares for those who trust in him. It is a very serious matter for any saint of the Lord to die in the eyes of the Lord. We might wonder: “But saints die all the time, they are martyred all the time, does the Lord care about that?” The emphatic answer of the psalmist is that God most certainly cares and the death of his saints is a serious matter that the Lord only brings about when his purposes have been accomplished in the life of that saint. The Lord intimately cares about his people. And the psalmist could cry to the Lord confidently because he understood God’s intimate care for his people.
But we also see something else in these verses in which the psalmist is exalting his Deliverer. We not only see the reasons that drove the psalmist to put his hope and his faith in the Lord for deliverance, but we also see that the hope and faith of the psalmist was not disappointed. After making clear that God is gracious and righteous and merciful, the psalmist declares, “…when I was brought low, he saved me. Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling” (v. 6b-8). The psalmist makes clear that he does not know the grace and mercy of the Lord in theory only. Rather, he has seen the Lord’s deliverance, and he knows the mercy and grace of God because he has experienced it. Even after declaring the Lord’s faithful care for his saints and the Lord’s concern over the death of his saints, the psalmist reiterates, “You have loosed my bonds” (v. 16b). The psalmist does not just want his readers to know abstract truths about the Lord, he wants them to know that he has seen these abstract attributes of the Lord on display in his own deliverance.
Having remembered the distress he experienced and having reminded himself of the glorious deliverance of the Lord, the psalmist makes clear his earnest desire to live a particular way in light of the suffering he has experienced and in light of the deliverance he has seen from that suffering. After recounting the Lord’s faithfulness to him, he declares, “I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living” (v. 9). This is a brief declaration that demonstrates an essential reality of life: the Lord’s deliverance is meant to elicit faith and obedience in us. And any response that demonstrates a lack of faith or a lack of obedience is a slap in the face to the one who has delivered us. Noticeably absent from the psalmist’s declaration in verse 9 is any assumption that the Lord owed him deliverance or grace or mercy. Rather, the psalmist understands the incredible love that he has been shown through the Lord’s deliverance, and – as a result – he declares that he will faithfully obey the one who has been rescued. Because the Lord has saved his life, the psalmist makes clear that he will devote that life to the Lord.
The psalmist goes on to make this point even stronger as he writes, “What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord, I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people” (v. 12-14). These verses say essentially the same thing as verse 9. When the psalmist says he will “lift up the cup of salvation,” he is simply saying that he will remember the salvation he has experienced and, as a result, he will “pay [his] vows to the Lord.” That is, he will obey the Lord’s commands – submitting to the Lord who has granted him salvation.
One final piece of the psalmist’s response to the Lord’s salvation comes in verses 17-19 as he writes, “I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord!” Here we see, once again, the psalmist’s declaration that he will respond to the Lord’s mercy and grace with obedience and thankfulness. But we also see something else: the psalmist is calling the rest of God’s people to do the same thing. Suddenly, the psalmist’s personal experience is taking on new dimensions. He is not only telling this story to himself but to the rest of God’s people as well. He wants to declare to all of God’s people that he was in dire straits and the Lord delivered them. He wants to declare this to them because he wants them to praise and obey and thank the Lord with him. The Lord has delivered him in an incredible way and so his thankfulness and obedience will be done in a very public way. The psalmist is not merely giving his readers an example; he is actively encouraging them to respond to the Lord with obedience and faithfulness and praise alongside him.
Particularly in light of the last point that the psalmist makes in which he calls his readers to praise the Lord with him, we must think through the way in which this psalm applies to us as its readers thousands of years later.
Remember what you have been delivered from!
As we looked at the psalmist’s description of his situation of despair, it could be easy for us just to assume that his situation has no connection to ours. Such an assumption is absolutely wrong and will cause us to miss the entire point of the psalm. First of all, on a purely physical level, some of you in this room know the feeling of being on the verge of death. You know what it feels like to have the snares of death encompass you in a physical sense. You know what it is to cry out to the Lord in the midst of that suffering and anguish and distress. Part of your task as a Christian is to never forget that feeling. Though you may hate even the though of it now, you should not forget the utter helplessness you felt when your fate was entirely out of your hands. Remember the time when you cried out to the Lord because you felt that the end of your life was near.
That said, most of us in this room have never experienced such a scenario. Most of us have never feared for our lives in a tangible way. We have never been in a situation where our physical lives were in danger of ending. How do we connect with David’s situation if we do not even feel we understand the feeling of Sheol laying hold on us? To answer this question, we have to remind ourselves that the spiritual, unseen realm is just as real as the things that we can see. As we understand that reality, we understand that every single individual on earth has – at one time or another – lived in the very reality that the psalmist describes. As human beings, we are sinful people, and that sin merits the just wrath of God. As human beings, apart from Jesus Christ, we live as objects of God’s wrath. In the truest sense of the word, as an object of wrath, we can say that the snares of death encompass us and the pangs of Sheol lay hold on us. Indeed, the apostle Paul will be so bold as to say to his readers, “…you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…” (Eph. 2:1-2a). Though you may not even realize it, the distressed and anguished position of the psalmist in relation to death is a demonstration of the state of every human being who has ever lived.
For those who are Christians, that means we must rightly understand the depths from which we have been redeemed. We must not assume, due to the intense language of the psalmist, that we know nothing of his situation. If you have lived under the wrath of God – whether you knew it or not – you have been in such a position. And even if you did not realize it at the time, it will benefit you in life today to realize it now and think about the horrible state you were in when the Lord rescued you.
For those who are not Christians, you need to understand the horrible reality of your present situation apart from Jesus Christ. The fact that you do not feel the same distress as the psalmist is itself an effect of sin. You are deceiving yourself, and if you continue, you will deceive yourself all the way to hell. Your sin is real. The wrath of God is real. But Jesus Christ is real as well. The deliverance that comes through him is real as well. If you turn from your sins and submit to him as Lord, you will be saved. And your redemption will be as real as the redemption of which the psalmist speaks.
Remember your glorious Deliverer!
Just as it does in the psalm itself, this reality flows very naturally from the point we just saw. The psalmist was more than ready to exalt his Lord because he understood that it must have been a great Lord who delivered him from such great distress. In the same way, once we properly understand the terrible sin of every human being by nature, we will begin to understand just how glorious is the Lord who delivers human beings from that sin. The brightness of a light, in a very real sense, is determined by the darkness in which it shines. For those of us who have been redeemed, the darkness of our sin is greater than we will ever know. But if we can even begin to understand its depths, we will begin to understand the glory of our Lord all the better.
As you think on this psalm, let it move you to think much on the Lord. The focus of the attention in Psalm 116 is the Lord because it is the Lord that has delivered the psalmist and that same Lord is the object of the psalmist’s praise and obedience and faith. In the same way, remember your past – but not as an end in itself. Remember your past to the extent that it causes you to praise your Lord for his immeasurable mercy and grace. Remember that it is not because of your worthiness that the Lord delivered you but because of his character as a merciful and gracious and righteous God. Your deliverance was not ultimately for you but for God. Use it rightly.
For those who are not believers, I want you to understand the nature of the Lord. It is true that the Lord is holy and just and that he will not allow sin to go unpunished. The world’s image of a grandfatherly God who just overlooks sin (or does not care about it at all) is not the true picture of God. He will judge sin, and He will judge sinners. He is righteous. You also need to know that He is gracious and merciful. He will never reject anyone who comes to him with a sincere heart. Perhaps you read this psalm and just assume that though the Lord delivered the psalmist, he will not deliver you. Such an idea is dishonoring to God. Jesus himself has said that he will never cast out the one that comes to him (John 6:37). If you say that you will not come because he will not accept you, you are calling him a liar and it dishonors him. God himself has said that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Rom. 10:9). If you say that you will not come because he will not accept you, you are calling him a liar and it dishonors him. God is a just God who will punish sin. So turn from your sins and follow Jesus Christ because God is a merciful God who forgives repentant sinners.
Walk in faithful obedience because you have been delivered!
Just as the psalmist understood that his deliverance by the Lord left him no choice but to follow that Lord wholeheartedly, we must realize the same thing. Just like the psalmist, we must realize that we are not owed anything by God. Our deliverance and our redemption is not something that God owed us. Rather, it was a sheer act of grace and mercy, and the proper response to a gift is gratitude. And the proper response to a gift of infinite value is infinite gratitude and praise and service. We are serving the Lord who has redeemed us and not as a way of paying off some debt. We serve a good and gracious Lord and so we serve him gladly. To those who are saints, I would urge you to serve the Lord with gladness. Like the psalmist, walk faithfully before the Lord. Like the psalmist, call upon the Lord and thank him. Sing his praises with your life, and exhort those around you to do the same. You have been redeemed for the purpose of glorifying God, so get to it! On the other side of the coin, we must understand just how dishonoring it is to God for us to refuse to thank him and obey him and praise him after he has delivered us. It is like spitting in his face. Such an attitude evidences a heart that does not understand the horrible nature of the things from which it was delivered and a heart that does not understand the incredible love of the Lord that drove him to deliver us. Indeed, such an ungrateful attitude could evidence a heart that has not really been delivered but is instead deceiving itself. Let us examine our hearts and our lives to ensure that we are indeed responding rightly to the grace that we have received.
As we come to the table, we are doing the very thing that I spoke of at the beginning: we are remembering. We are remembering the horrible people that we were apart from Christ – enemies of God who were objects of his wrath. And we are remembering that God delivered us from that bondage to sin and death – he has set us free and made us alive. We are remembering the glorious Deliverer who has set us free. And as we remember, we are declaring our allegiance to that Deliverer by obeying him and thanking him and praising him – with this one act and with our entire lives. Amen.