Simon Bowkett's Podcast

Psalm 116 - resilient faith in the resilient Lord

March 18, 2023 Simon Bowkett
Simon Bowkett's Podcast
Psalm 116 - resilient faith in the resilient Lord
Show Notes Transcript

Twenty-three minutes from https://twitter.com/WelshRev at https://www.facebook.com/TyrBugail for https://www.facebook.com/Grace.Wales.online , https://welshrev.blogspot.com/and https://yGRWP.com

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A video of this recording is available here:

https://youtu.be/gAZBuXgmf3A

DIY Sunday Service Kit

A DIY Sunday Service Kit around this sermon is available here:

https://welshrev.blogspot.com/2023/03/diy-sunday-service-kit-18032023-psalm.html


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Introduction

What makes for resilient followers of Jesus?

I reckon a decent memory, reasonable analysis … and a tendency towards belligerent praise.

Why do I say that?

Well, there’s an example for us here today in Psalm 116.

The psalmist is recapping on how God has reliably stepped in for him in horribly hard times in the past, he is drawing rational consequences from that for the present and he is expressing his resolution to give due praise to God.

Personally, I reckon a sense of humours all essential (but that may be cultural)

These other three elements come up time and again in God’s Word.

Faith rationally grows between the hammer of the memory of hard experience and the anvil of a determination to give God His due.

And the hammer and the anvil work concurrently.

Together.

At the same time.

As does the growth of faith … just like what you see when the metal is beaten between the hammer and the anvil.

And Jesus is singing about it all as they sing this Psalm together at the end of the Last Supper just before they head off to the Garden of Gethsemane … and we know what ‘goes down’ for Jesus over there.

Let’s concentrate first though on the content of this Psalm, which can help us with our personal morose Mondays, as well as our very own shadows of Good Friday.

1) Past experience, (a decent memory) vv. 1-4


A) The summary introduction, vv. 1-2

Vv. 1-2 “I love the Lord, for he heard my voice;

    he heard my cry for mercy.

2 Because he turned his ear to me,

    I will call on him as long as I live.”

The word for love here is a pretty general word and can be used for human love of all sorts as well as love for God.

But the Psalmist gives a reason for his love for God.

He says he loves the Lord because he has been HEARD by God.

That seems so important to so many folks in our online culture where so many are connected but don’t feel that they are heard.

We are bombarded with communication, but receiving attention in this situation is the big thing.

Many companies spend lashings of cash on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) because it is EASY to be posting content … sending words out there … and just beating the air with your vocal cords!

I prayed, says the Psalmist, not knowing if there was anyone listening,  but what happened next showed that  GOD certainly heard me …

Wow, fancy that!

It wasn’t just his words, but this word here means his ‘pleas’ for mercy.

And the Hebrew says what God did was ‘he turned His ear to me’.

You can picture that, can’t you?

Such a metaphor!

God looked up when He heard the faithful psalmist’s voice.

God Himself not only heard the noise of the psalmist’s cry for help in the general background noise, but as He heard the psalmist’s plea the Lord turned his head to get his ear aligned to pick up the sound all the better.

Personal attention is being paid.

We know well that Jesus … Who after singing this psalm was heading for Gethsemane … hung on the Cross crying out to His Father ‘My God, my God why HAVE you forsaken me?’

He was DESOLATE because God turned AWAY His ear, as sin … God-alienating sin … was laid on Him.

Laid on Him as He was paying for my sin, enabling the grace that enables you and me to be able to say: ‘I cried out to the Lord in MY trouble and the Lord turned His ear and paid attention to my prayer.’

It is an ASTONISHING thing that the Almighty God of Heaven

And out of that similar experience the psalmist resolves:

V. 2 “therefore I will call on him as long as I live.”

There’s the summary of the rest of what’s being said here in this psalm.

The psalmist cried out to God in His trouble.

The Lord didn’t just hear it but turned His head and listened closely to hear.

“therefore I will call on him as long as I live”

Faith make its life-long resolution to look for what it needs, to the Lord.

Sometimes He gives us the means to obtain what we need … prayerfully seek work, prayerfully seek a partner for life, prayerfully go out and make friends might be examples of that.

But then there are times when we’ve exhausted all legitimate means, and our human weakness becomes for us a pressing problem, and that seems to be the classroom where our psalmist has learned to lean on the Lord’s provision …

 


B) The background situation, vv. 3-4

vv. 3-4 “The cords of death entangled me,
    the anguish of the grave came over me;
    I was overcome by distress and sorrow.
4 Then I called on the name of the Lord:
    “Lord, save me!””

Human nature has such a deep-dyed desire for independence.

Although, maybe, it’s more a desire for self-gratification.

We want God to bail us out of our mess but leave us as we are.

What’s singular about the psalmist is that God’s grace CHANGES him.

But LOOK at the situation that’s taught him this lesson!

The cords of death don’t sound like a load of laughs, do they?

The ANGUISH of the grave is served plain and without gravy!

Overcome with distress and sorrow?

We don’t know what that’s about, but it seems to be accompanied (v. 11) by human infidelity strongly in the mix.

Well from that, we’re taught a lesson.

“Then I called on the Name of the Lord, ‘Lord, save me!’

Leslie Allen (who taught me Hebrew … quite a man) writes in his commentary on this psalm: “He has learned a lesson he commends to others, that Yahweh fulfils His obligations to those in covenant relationship and shows Himself true to His promises.”

And it is that practical real love from God that prompts the psalmist’s own love in v. 1 … as 1 John 4:19 puts it “We love because He first loved us.”

And this historical experience of the psalmist now leads to present-time consequences …

2) Present consequence vv. 5-11


A) What this says about God, vv. 5-6

vv. 5-6 “The Lord is gracious and righteous;
    our God is full of compassion.
6 The Lord protects the unwary;
    when I was brought low, he saved me.”

The psalmist draws doctrinal conclusions here about the character of the Lord based on this experience he’s had.

Now, it is no NEW idea that Israel’s God is gracious AND righteous … it’s just that people had lost their grip on the gracious bit as their internal Pharisee took over.

The psalmist’s experience of God led him back to the Biblical position in that … possibly as if it was a rather fresh discovery.

It was no new idea that Israel’s God was full of compassion … it’s just that there is something in uncorrected human nature that tends to see things as if what God delights in is the opposite: judgement and ‘justice’ and come-uppances.

The psalmist’s experience of God led him to realise that the attitudes that sell newspapers and fuel politics aren’t God’s delight.

And, of course as v. 6 points out, and it was knowledge the psalmist revised (rather than discovered) through his experience the Lord delights in lifting up and not down treading the down-trodden.

Again … that might be news in our current political and tabloid newspaper UK culture.

He PROTECTS the unwary, rather than penalising them.

When His people are brought low but turn to Him, He delights to save them.

Jesus KNEW that, in His sinless human nature.

But how starkly first Gethsemane and then after that Calvary must have seemed to contrast with that.

How down-treading that experience was … just as one example think of John 19:23  “When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. 

But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom, 24 so they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.”

 This was to fulfil the Scripture which says,

“They divided my garments among them,
    and for my clothing they cast lots.”

 

‘When I was brought low, He saved me’?

Well yes, because after the snares of death and the pangs of Sheol in v. 3, with all their accompanying anguish, came the deliverance from death and the walking in the land of the living of vv. 8 & 9 as the resurrection morning brought Christ’s victory over death and God raised His atoning son from His tomb in the rock.

It just didn’t really feel like He was going to at the time.

The nature of our God is the lesson to learn, and with that lesson – in His character – lies this consequence … this lesson for life

 


B) The lesson for me, v. 7

v. 7: “Return to your rest, my soul,
    for the Lord has been good to you.”

Anxiety must be cast to the wind.

Now, some of us are no strangers to anxiety.

Mortality creates awful uncertainty!

But the psalmist addresses himself in the genre of the most important sermon a soul will ever hear, the sermons we address to ourselves to bring our knowledge of God to bear upon our hearts.

Rest.

Return to the rest you have lost (he says), my soul.

Why’s that?

Because you know, you have experienced, God’s good to you.

You knew it in theory before.

Knowing it didn’t help when you didn’t FEEL this truth in your day of trouble.

I’m pretty sure that in His human nature, and in His abandonment by His Father on the Cross, the Lord didn’t FEEL that truth hanging there in His day of trouble … yet so unlike the thief hanging next to Him on the next cross, He didn’t curse God in the day of pain and anguish but persisted in sinlessness to save folks like you and me.

 


C) The roots of my assurance, vv. 8-11

vv. 8-11: “For you, Lord, have delivered me from death,
    my eyes from tears,
    my feet from stumbling,
9 that I may walk before the Lord
    in the land of the living.

10 I trusted in the Lord when I said,
    “I am greatly afflicted”;
11 in my alarm I said,
    “Everyone is a liar.”

Well, the third element in resilient faith here in this psalm seems to be gratitude that overflows into …

3) Belligerent praise vv. 12-19

 


A)  My duty in a patronage culture, v. 12

“What shall I return to the Lord
    for all his goodness to me?”

There’s the issue addressed in this section … God has been good and the heart that’s received grace longs to respond in kind.

Now, the New Covenant fact is that we cannot repay God anything like proportionately for His goodness towards us.

But it is equally true that it is nonetheless gratitude for His grace that motivates us to seek to walk in His ways, so Titus 2:11-14 puts it all together for us on this:

“For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope – the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.”

Then there are three Old Testament practices the psalmist says he will tackle to seek to return to the Lord for the Lord’s goodness to him in delivering him from the awful condition he was in.

The first of those is …


B)   Lifting the cup of salvation 

יְשׁוּעָה (ye.shu.ah) 'salvation' 

1)     salvation, deliverance
1a) welfare, prosperity
1b) deliverance
1c) salvation (by God)
1d) victory

 I searched the NIV online for times when this phrase was used elsewhere, and this was the only place I could find it!

The commentaries suggest it was some sort of pouring out of a drink offering … a freewill offering for the experience he had known of salvation.

The translators of the New English Translation account for their translation of this verse like this … they say:

Heb “a cup of deliverance I will lift up.” 

“Perhaps this alludes to a drink offering the psalmist will present as he thanks the Lord for his deliverance.”

Now, there are Biblical references to the cup of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty which must be drunk to the dregs … but that’s clearly different!

This is an act of gratitude and worship for God’s redemption.

The third act of gratitude, which again is public and temple-based, is the fulfilling of vows.


C)   Fulfilling vows

The practice of making vows or solemn promises to God deliberately and freely to perform some good work was ancient among the Israelites. 

Usually a vow consisted in a promise to offer a sacrifice, if God would give some assistance in a difficulty; hence, the Hebrew word neder means both vow and votive offering. 

No directive in the Mosaic Law obliged man to make vows or votive offerings; but it specified where they were to be carried out (Dt 12.5–6), and it regulated and stressed their fulfillment (Dt 23.22–24), since there was an evident tendency among the Israelites to promise frequently but lightly (Dt 22.21–23; Nm 30.2–16; Na 2.1; Eccl 5.1–6; Sir 18.22–23). 

Every Israelite could consecrate himself in a particular manner to God by vow for a limited period or for life. 

Such persons were called Nazirites. 

They bound themselves to abstain from all products of grapes, from contact with a corpse, and from cutting or shaving their hair (Numbers 6:1–8).

In the New Testament although He spoke in repudiation of the abuses connected with certain vows, such as the corban vow (Mk 7.9–13), never denounced them as such.

And of course,  Paul shaved his head at Cenchrae in fulfilment of his Nazirite vow (Acts 18.18), and on his last journey to Jerusalem he took a temporary Nazirite vow (Acts 21.22–26) … but from there on this with a load of other Jewish responses to show devotion to the Lord faded away.

They hadn’t been commanded in Scripture but the excesses of the practice seem to have been controlled by Scripture.

The point is that the psalmist HAD made certain undertakings to the Lord … perhaps when he was praying anxiously about His situation, perhaps just in general life … but his point is that having been delivered and God having been faithful to His commitments to the psalmist, he was determined now that as the recipient of God goodness he would keep his promises to God.

And concluding the psalmist the author writes out for us what he suggests these acts of devotion born of gratitude for God’s salvation all go to prove


D)  Service … just like Mama used to make

It’s probably worth noticing for a moment on Mothers’ Day the content of v. 16 and thinking it through.

v. 16 “O Lord, I am your servant;
    I am your servant, the son of your maidservant.”

Listen to David who appears here to speak.

He was a great servant of God, though a weakly human one, in his own day …

We know the identity of his father.

David’s father we read is Scripture was a man called Jesse.

We simply don’t know the name of His mother … but when David speaks of parental spiritual influence, it is his mother who he credits for that.

And it’s His mother that Jesus cares for and provides for from the Cross.

Appreciation of the goodness of God, His grace personally received, flows out in service from the heart it has landed in.

 

Conclusion

Now look, Jesus sang about all of this in the Upper Room.

He sang the assurance the psalmist had learned in his own experience of his personal encounter with the entangling cords of death.

But Jesus walked to Calvary on His own.

He sang the deliverance of the faithful by their God.

But His Father forsook Him - for the first-time - as He hung there.

Oh yes, He lifted the cup of salvation at Gethsemane, and drank the cup of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty in our place … drank it down to the dregs as He hung on Golgotha’s ghastly hill.

And He fulfilled all His commitments to the Father, as He poured out His life to death as the world looked on.

But unlike the psalmist it wasn’t an experience that led the Saviour to assurance of deliverance … it was an experience of desolation with potential for despair, tried and tested just as we are (even in death) but proved Himself through it all to be without sin.

And He went there for love of sinners all the same.

Which gives the author of Hebrews the opportunity to exhort us, in those times when the going’s hard and the road seems lonely:

Hebrews 12:1-2 “let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

Can I suggest that if you have a quiet hour to yourself this Sunday afternoon … or whenever it may be … that you pick up and read Psalm 116 quietly for yourself.

And can I suggest that as you do so you look out for things you read there that chime with or clang against the experience of the Lord out on Calvary’s hill … away from the Temple where the activities the psalmist described of himself were all to take place.

And appreciate afresh what it cost the Lord to be your Saviour, as He died between heaven and earth to bring both together, with the words of Psalm 116 still ringing in His ears.

And as we do so may we learn to love the Saviour more.