Psalms Lesson 20

Psalm 116:5-19

Psalm 116 is a declarative praise psalm and this is the last one that we will have in this category. We outlined this Psalm under three headings, part 1 verses 1-2 that have to do with the psalmist announcing his response to God’s deliverance. Then the second section, verses 3-11, this psalmist recounts how Yahweh completely delivered him from the threats to his life by his enemies. That was the second section. Then the third section deals with verses 12-19, the psalmist vows to praise Yahweh in response for what He has done. Last week we got up to verses 3-4 which was the first part of this large second section. Now we are on the second section, we’ve had verses 3-4 which have to do with the psalmist recounting how he was near death and how he called upon Jehovah and the emphasis in these two verses was on death because of something that’s coming up later on in the Psalm.

Now verses 5 and 6 form another couplet where this is how Jehovah answered his prayer. This is part of the looking back as we explained when we developed the outline. And verse 5 and part of verse 6 gives you what kind of praise? What kind of praise is described here? Descriptive. Why is it descriptive? [someone says something] All right, he’s noticed in verse 5 and the first part of verse 6 these are general truths about God that the psalmist tells and as such, therefore, they are descriptive rather than declarative praise. And we want to study these because the end of verse 6 is a report of deliverance again. You see the end of verse 6 where it says “I was brought low and He helped me,” now when I go to explain verses 5-6 I am going to start with verse 6b, then I’m going to go back to 5 and 6a because on logical grounds it flows this way. In other words, what happened in 6b led to the conclusions of verses 5 and 6a. In other words, it was a historical experience of revelation and as a result of the psalmist’s experience he concluded verse 5 and 6a because he came to know God.

Now the last part of verse 6, “I was brought low, and He helped me.” Both are perfect tenses and both therefore express a point act or an experience. “I was brought low, and He helped me.” Except, here there’s a little fine point and the word “helped” is the word the word “deliver.” “He delivered me.” Now usually this verb carries a direct object. The direct object is the recipient of the action of the verb, so usually it would be “He delivered me” direct object, but here it’s not direct object; here of all things, it’s indirect object. “He delivered to me.”

Now, can anybody think how this shifts the force of this verse; when you have it in one way it’s direct object, and in another way its indirect object. What’s happening here? How does this statement, “He delivered to me,” differ, it’s obviously elliptical, by the way, from the statement “He delivered me.” Just a small point but just think about it for a moment. It’s thinking over points like this that make the text, the emphasis of the text come to you. [someone says something] All right, it would reflect God’s graciousness. The indirect object, the use of the indirect object in something like this emphasizes the recipients. You see the direct object is dropped. Literally what this is saying is “He delivered deliverance to me.” He gave deliverance to me, but to emphasize the recipient of the deliverance the thing is turned around, the direct object is dropped and the recipient is put in the indirect object, “He gave deliverance to me,” in other words, He gave deliverance not just to anybody, but He gave it to me. So you have this indirect object, then, and therefore this emphasizes something that is critical in this whole declarative praise Psalm. What did we say the theme of this declarative praise Psalm was? It’s really no different from any other declarative praise Psalm but why do you think this thing ties in? It’s not just an announcement, “He delivered me,” but “He gave deliverance to me.”

Why is it phrased this way in a declarative praise Psalm. [someone says something] Right, it’s showing the personal relationship he has with the Lord, emphasizing the fact that he is responding to what God has done. This “him” is a “him of personal response and we’re going to see how intense the personal response becomes as we get down to the end of the Psalm. All right, that’s the event: “I was brought low, and He helped me.”

Now out of this experience he concludes, verse 5 and 6a, he gives four words to describe God: “Gracious is the LORD; and righteous; yea, our God is merciful. [6] The LORD is the One who is preserving the simple.” That’s a good word for most believers, “the simple.” And this means naïve, this means people who are open-minded because they haven’t got anything in their minds. And so the simple refers to naïve, dumb sheep which is a picture of believers. So the Lord is in the preserving business. And this is one statement of His character.

However, in verse 5 there are three statements about the character of God. What attributes that we are used to speaking of would you tie into this thing. God is gracious, this emphasizes the attribute of love or His loving nature and grace means that love is shown forth to a creature who has rebelled. In other words, before the fall God could not show His love to the degree He can after the fall. After the fall God goes on loving creatures that have turned against Him and that shows greater love and we call that greater love by the term grace. So God is gracious, it emphasizes the attribute of His love.

Now I’m emphasizing this attribute business and going back to divine essence for a reason, because we get this thing four times; there’s four statements in this Psalm that have to do with divine essence and I want you to see first verse 5 clearly, so then when we see these other four statements you’ll catch on to what the Psalm is talking about. “Gracious is the LORD, and righteous.” When the Hebrew uses the word “righteous” referring obviously to God’s righteousness, he has more in mind the idea of God establishing righteousness. For example, the Jew would say, oh for the days when Messiah comes in His righteousness. Now they’re not anticipating and looking forward with glee to God’s judgment; what they’re looking forward to is the establishment of righteousness. And so the righteous character of God is emphasized mostly when God delivers and He delivers from evil, He destroys the evil and He upholds the One who is trusting in His promises. That vindicates God’s righteousness. “…God is merciful,” this is more emphasizing grace in the sense of tenderness.

Now three times in this Psalm we have a statement that is repeated and I might as well bring it up now, actually four verses. Look at verse 2, now look at verse 4, now look at verse 13 and verse 17. What is common to all four of those verses? It’s repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, almost like a slogan. What is common to verse 2, verse 4, verse 13 and verse 17? [someone says something] All right, but “the name of God,” notice “the name of God,” name, the noun “name” in the Hebrew always refers to the essence or something or the character of something, and it is obviously quite important to whoever wrote this Psalm as to what God’s nature is and His character. This is why verse 2, “Because He has inclined His ear unto me,” I’m going to call upon Him, and “call upon His nature as long as I live.” Notice also in verse 17, “I will offer to Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the LORD.” Now this calling on the name of the Lord began at a time in history.

Turn back to Genesis 4:26, “And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of the LORD.” In other words, it seems to indicate that they had to come a time, before which men did not call upon the name of the Lord, after which men did call upon the name of the Lord. The third generation of humanity was the generation in which, during which men began to call upon the name of the Lord. Why do you suppose it took three generations of men and three generations of history before men called upon the name of the Lord. Adam was regenerate, Eve was regenerate, Seth was regenerate. Why is it?

[someone says something] No, the third generation… okay, Enosh is the third generation; you’ve had Adam, you’ve had Seth, and you’ve had Enosh. It took two generations after the fall for men, apparently, to realize the nature of the fall and the nature of the jam that he was in. And to get a perspective on what had happened. Sure Adam and Eve lived through it, but the effects of the fall took time, historic time to dawn upon men’s minds. And it wasn’t until after they suddenly realized the nature of the awful state in which they were that they began to look towards God’s nature and to realize that everything depended upon His nature, nothing could depend upon them, everything depends on who and what God is; nothing depends on who and what man is, because man is so decrepit and degenerate as a result of the fall. So it took men time to do this, but once it started “men began to call upon the name of the Lord,” and I suspect that wrapped up in this idiom or this phrase is this thing that we discovered on Wednesday nights about prayer. And that is that over and over again in the Psalms you have this “Jew-ing” of God as we’ve called it. In other words, the idea of arguing with God, saying God if you don’t do this then your character is smeared by Satan. In other words, prevailing upon God.

So I think the term “they called upon the Lord,” means the fact that they literally hang their whole case on God’s character. And when they pray and when they worship, and everything else, the focus of it all is hanging on who and what God is. So that when Moses prays for forgiveness of the nation Israel, what does he do? He doesn’t go back to the Law, the Law has been broken. There’s only one basis on which Moses can claim that God would change His mind. He says God, You started a work here and if you don’t finish the work that you started it is a blot on Your name. So I believe that this phrase, “call on the name of the Lord” is very critical and I think this jells and puts into one phrase what we’ve been trying to say all along, this business of “Jew-ing” God, arguing with God, demanding that God answers a situation, they “call on the name of the Lord.” It also refutes the liberal contention, incidentally, that men didn’t know God’s character before Moses.

Now turn back to Psalm 116, verses 7-8 is the next couplet. “Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the LORD has dealt bountifully with thee. [8] For Thou hast delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.” See again he’s going back to the reported deliverance but now he’s saying something. Here in these two verses the psalmist enjoys his deliverance; this is the subjective enjoyment of the deliverance that God has given to him.

There are a number of things to watch for in this thing. The first one is found in verse 7, “Return unto thy rest, O my soul.” And there is a note of encouragement to believers that although the believer is involved in a spiritual struggle that continues until the destruction of Satan, there are times of rest. This is claiming that if God rested on the seventh day from all His works that there remains for us a rest and that man was created to function in a rest situation; man was created not to have, so to speak, spiritual combat with Satan constantly. And “return to thy rest” means that because this psalmist has been delivered, momentarily he does have a vacation; momentarily he has a day off; momentarily in this life he can rest and he can relax, at least for the time being, because the spiritual struggle has declined in intensity. So verse 7 is his enjoyment of the deliverance.

Now there are two ways the soul can return to rest: one is obviously during the time, between the time you accept Christ until the time you die or phase 2, and the second is obviously for all eternity, which is phase three. And in the second case this is your final rest. The soul returns to its rest in that we have been totally and completely delivered, whereas here we have periods of rest and periods of struggle; periods of rest and periods of struggle; periods of rest and periods of struggle. And that’s the way the Christian life is; the Christian life is not uniform, it varies and this refers to one of those times when you can relax.

“Return to thy rest, O my soul; for the LORD has dealt completely,” the word “completely” is gamal, and it was used in different ways; it’s a variable verb used in many different contexts. Let me give you three ways this verb is used and I think from looking at these three ways you can get a feeling for what the verb means. One way it was used was to recompense justice, when somebody gave to somebody that which was his due, and the sentencing was finished and the punishment had been executed, then it was gamal, they have completely dealt with the situation. The second way gamal was used, it was for a mother who would wean her child and she’d take it through the period of nursing and then she’d wean it, and then when the child had been weaned, the mother had gamal-ed the child, she had finished this job. The third way which it was used, it was used of a tree or a farmer who was in charge of an orchard and when his harvest would become ripe, from the time that the harvest was seeded until it was ripened, that period was considered to be the work of the orchard keeper and he had gamal-ed, he had finished his job. So gamal takes the idea of completeness and God the Lord has completely dealt with you. In other words, there’s been a total deliverance.

Now verse 8, “For You have delivered my soul from death,” now notice the apposition, and here you get a feeling for the Hebrew sense of the word soul. The Hebrew use of the word soul, nephesh, is not what many of you have thought and identified the word “soul.” Some of you, because of your work in the classroom maybe, or some of you have read books on the soul, you think of the soul as something immaterial. Now in a sense that’s correct but the Hebrew word for the immaterial part is spirit. The Hebrew word for the body, for the material part, is “body,” and together they form the soul. So “soul” has two parts; it has the immaterial part and the material part. Now you look at what is used in this verse in apposition to soul; “You have delivered my soul from death,” and then what does it say, “my eyes … and my feet.” Now the eyes and the feet were part of his soul, and that’s the way he looked upon it. His life, the way the Jews used the word “soul,” it’s too bad the Bible even uses the word “soul” because it’s so colored by what’s happened. The best word is “life.” And so everywhere you see the word “soul” if you just think “life” you get a more accurate idea of what the word is. So it says, “For you have delivered my life from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.” So he takes two bodily organs and these bodily organs are picked… why do you suppose the eyes and the feet are picked? What’s common to both of those that might be used to epitomize life? [someone says something] Okay, in the New Testament what’s the word Paul uses all the time to describe the Christian life? Walk, walk by faith; to walk what do you have to use? Eyes and feet, right. All right, it’s that simple. This is the concept of the walk, the idea of the movement of the life in time, the eyes and the feet. And so what’s David… whoever wrote this Psalm, it may have been David for a reason which I’ll point out later but officially we can’t say because there’s no heading on the Psalm.

So he says, “You have delivered my life from death; my eyes and my feet,” so I can walk, I can walk through life now. Now obviously eyes and feet refer to the physical but in these Psalms always be sensitive to the spiritual analogues. The deliverance of the eyes and the feet would be equivalent to getting back in fellowship. If He delivers the eyes in a spiritual sense what has He done? He’s restored the divine viewpoint perspective in you, and if He’s delivered your feet He’s restored the ability to fulfill the Christian life. So the psalmist here has experienced deliverance.

All right, now verses 9-11, this is what threw some of you when we were on the form analysis. Remember we had trouble last week with verses 9-11 because some of you looked there and you said that must be part of the looking back, and yet it looks like the looking back would be in verse 3-4. Verses 3-4 describes the looking back on the situation. Well then why is it that in verses 9-11 we seem to have another looking back? Now I told you, every time you see an anomaly when we try to impose this form on the Psalms and we can’t get something, it’s like putting something in a garbage can and you put the lid down and it’s still sticking out. When that happens and you start working with the Psalms, always kind of make a little note and say I’ve got to explain that; that’s something that when I interpret this Psalm finally I’ve got to come to some explanation of why this thing is sticking out here when it’s not supposed to stick out.

The explanation is found in the context of verses 9-11. Verse 9 does not begin by looking back; verse 9 begins by looking ahead, “I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living.” Now that is the verb to resolve and “walk” the verb walk is in what we call the hithpael stem in the Hebrew which means walk about, he’s walking about, the word for life, you see, by the way, it’s connected with the eyes and the feet. “I will walk about” how, “before the LORD,” this is the concept of service. The Psalmist has been delivered and universally the result of deliverance for a believer is always to turn that deliverance and freedom around and use it for the Lord’s service. So, “I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living.” This means that he a chance, another lease on life, that he was rescued from death.

Now verse 10 is the hardest verse we have encountered, probably in any of the Psalms to date. It’s a very difficult verse to interpret because of the verb tenses. The verb tenses are exactly backwards. And people down through the centuries have tried to rewrite the text, the Septuagint for example, has corrections in it, which obviously the Septuagint translators are trying to rework verse 10 so it makes some sort of sense, but here’s the problem: “I have believed” past tense, “because I will speak,” now what kind of sense does that make? That’s the problem, that’s literally what the Hebrew is saying. “I have believed because I will speak.” You can see we’ve got a tense problem here. “I have believed” is past but the reason for the past action is the future, and how are we going to get this one. Well, the best way of resolving this particular problem is that “I have believed” is past tense which fits with the next verb, notice the next verb, let’s forget the problem of tenses for a moment and keep on going, verse 10, “I have believed because I will speak,” the King James translation is just an attempt to get around this tense situation, “I have believed … I was greatly afflicted … I said.” All three verbs are past, all three verbs to together, all three verbs describe something that went on in the past. He’s recounting something. Now how would you tie verse 10 with “I have believed, I was greatly afflicted, and I said that all men are liars.” That’s all looking back to the past. Now how would try to explain the future, “because I will speak?” Can you think how this might be hooked together to get some sort of order out of chaos here, and this is a very difficult problem.

[someone asks something] It’s a causal, because. It’s key, and this can be referred to “that,” it’s like ’oti in the Greek, by the way, it can be that, “I have believed that I will speak,” and this doesn’t seem to fit too well, and it can also be like ’oti the Greek, it can be causal. [someone says something] Those are all past also, just like believe, just perfect. “Believe” is perfect, “afflicted” is perfect, “said” is perfect, they’re all together, they’re all wrapped up in the same bundle. [someone asks something] Well, the perfect tense can be sometimes translated pluperfect. [someone asks something about he’s speaking of his verification of his having been…] Aha, okay, instead of running to work with the… a lot of people try to adjust the translation; believe me, when you work with something like this God had a purpose in writing it that way so don’t try to ram into the text and try to say well, we’ve got a corrupt text here. We’ve got a problem and we might as well face it and see if we can come to an answer on it. “I have believed because I will speak,” this phrase, “because I will speak,” is talking about something he’s going to do, isn’t it. “I will speak” is like the verb in verse 9, “I will walk about.” Now what do you suppose he’s going to speak about? It’s going to be praise, isn’t it.

All right, “I have believed,” and why have I believed? What is the evidence that I have believed? The evidence that I have believed is that now I am going to praise God. Now this is a very hard thing to get this causal thing into in your mind, but if you think about it for a minute, this phrase is the evidence of his having believed. Out of this, by struggling with this thing, sure it takes time, now it looks very easy up here but believe me, I spent about three hours figuring out the tenses…

[tape turns] …to ram your way through it and cram it into something, just sit there until you think you’ve solved the thing, so it fits and you don’t have to adjust the text. Second lesson, that applies to the Christian life in this; this gives us a parameter on how big our faith is. You see? There are various parameters or measures or evidences that you can used to find out how well you’re believing in your Christian life, how consistently you are believing. One of the evidences that marks you and tells both you and others how consistent your faith is, is your attitude in praising God. How do you do it? Praising God would include evangelism, personal evangelism; praising God in the sense of what He has done for you at the cross. Anytime you share the gospel with somebody else you’re praising God, and there are a number of ways of praising God, but one of the tests is how much praising of God do you do? And that is a measure of how much believing you have done. See how this connects in the Psalm, the outward praise flowing out of the primary act of faith.

And then he describes, [11] I said in my haste, All men are liars.” He’s just looking back momentarily now. “I will walk before” is a resolve, “I have believed and therefore I am going to speak,” it shouldn’t be really “therefore,” see “therefore” ruins the whole context, it should be “I have believed because right now I’m going to speak about it.”

Now verse 12 and following, as most of you found last week is all praise. This is the vowing of the praising. So from verses 12 through the end of the Psalm we’ll have almost solid line of praise. Now out of this we have a very wonderful thing. Beginning in verse 12, “What shall I render unto the LORD for all His benefits toward me?” I’m sure many of you have asked this and if you haven’t you should. What do you give God back, He did a lot for you, what are you doing for Him. Now this is not going to be a sermon on tithing so you can relax; and it’s not going to be a sermon on pledging or anything else, or dedicating your life, whatever that means, as we trot down the aisle. Now all of that is a cheap substitute for the kind of reaction that we should be having as believers, and here he begins to spell out, in a way that I have never seen in any of the other Psalms that we’ve studied closely, the believer’s personal response to God’s love.

And so naturally he says what can I give God back for the benefits that He has made for me, [“What shall I render unto the LORD for all His benefits toward me?”] and the word “benefits” is a word that comes from gamal again, that Hebrew verb which meant to complete; well, if you want to put it in noun form it means “for His completions toward me,” “for His completions,” the things that He has finished, the total provisions that He has made for me. The emphasis is on the TOTAL provisions, the complete provisions. This is the Romans 8:28, this is the 1 Cor. 10:13, that no testing is ever going to take any of you for which God has not made gamal, complete provision ahead of time and this is what he means by benefits.

Now verse 13 is an answer to his rhetorical question. I might add at this point, verses 12-14 go together. Verse 12, 13 and 14 sort of fit together as a vow of praise. Verse 12 is the rhetorical question, what am I going to do, God blessed me so, what am I going to do back? Here’s what I’m going to do, he answers in verses 13-14. “I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the LORD. [14] I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all His people.” This is what the Psalmist does because of what God has done. Now first let’s look at the word “cup,” the “cup of salvation.” “Cup” is one of those words in Scripture that has a picture to it and I’m going to take you on a series of references to “cup.” There’s six; when you study your Bibles you would go to a concordance, Young’s Concordance or Strong’s Concordance are the two best ones going, they’re complete concordances. Now if you see the word “cup” and you’re puzzled by it, don’t just look at verse 13 and say well, that’s a sweet thing, I’m going to go around and share the cup of salvation. Well you want to know what you’re sharing first.

So let’s look up and see cup; and by the way, in your Bible study when you do this, the rule for looking up words is don’t just look randomly, look up words first by the same book; in other words, find where that noun, verb, adjective is used in the same book to get the immediate context. Next, look how that word is used by that same author in other books and then finally in the rest of the Bible, but start with how that word is used. So I’m going to give you four references from the Psalms, then we’re going to take two about the life of Christ to show you how Christ Himself used this concept of the cup.

Turn to Psalm 11:6 first, be thinking as I show you these four references, how you would fill in the picture behind the noun “cup.” Psalm 11:6, “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest; this shall be the portion of their cup.” Now turn to Psalm 16:5, “The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup.” Psalm 23:5, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.” And finally Psalm 75:8, “For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is fully mixed, and He pours out of the same; but the dregs thereof all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.”

Now finally two references in the New Testament as to how Christ uses the word cup; Matthew 20:22, this is when John and James’ mother came to strike up a deal with Christ for her sons. And in verse 22 “But Jesus answered and said, “You know not what you ask? Are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of? And to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto Him, We are able.” And finally turn to Matthew 26:39, this is in the Garden of Gethsemane, “And He [Jesus] went a little further, and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”

Now come back to Psalm 116 where the “cup” is used, “I will take the cup of salvation,” what does the “cup of salvation” mean? What is the picture behind the word “cup,” obviously it’s a cup but I mean what does it do? [someone says something] Okay, a portion or an allotment. [someone else] A feeling of predestination. [someone else] Okay, think of communion, here’s the easiest way to tie it together. To tie this together think of the communion cup. What do we do in the communion service, what do I always say when we come to the cup, when I explain basically what communion is about, what do I usually say about the function of the elements? [someone says something] That you’re always eating it and drinking it which is a symbol of faith; you’re taking, you’re receiving aren’t you.

All right the cup, you can see very clearly from some of the Psalms it was a portion of something, and the idea is when you serve at a table, they used to have this big vat or large pot of wine and they’d dip the cup in there, and by the way, it was not Kool-aid and grape juice; they would dip the cup into this pot and they’d serve it to the people sitting at the table. So the cup contained something out of the big pot that was the person’s own portion, which that person would then receive. So the cup holds what the person receives. So when Christ said “Father, let this cup be taken from Me,” what He was saying was Father, I would hope that I would not have to receive this event that’s coming in My life, this destiny that is ahead of Me, I pray that it might not, that I might not have to drink of this cup. This is why He said to the mother of John and James, do you really think so much of your sons that your sons can drink of the same cup that I’m going to drink of, thinking of the experience of the cross. Will they be able to receive that which is My portion and which has been served up to Me. And in the rest of these things you can see how God does this.

So in verse 13, the “cup of salvation,” again, this is one of those small points but it’s one that I tried to show you back in verse 6 when I brought out that little point about the direct object and the indirect object and we concluded back there what? What was our conclusion of why salvation was given to him and not He saved him; because it emphasized the personal relationship of God to the psalmist. The “cup of salvation” therefore, is not some general salvation, but it’s as though God has come before you with a cup, and He’s placed the cup in your place, at your point on the table. So the cup of salvation means the salvation that I have received. And so this whole phrase, then, means personal salvation, My personal salvation! And it is that personal salvation that he takes, and the word nasa means to lift up, actually it’s a picture of a toast, some of you believers wouldn’t know what a toast is, I know. But it’s a picture of taking the cup and holding it up in a toast. I will take the cup of salvation and I will hold it up, so now do you see how that has to do with praise. He’s saying look at my salvation, I hold it up for you all to see; this is my salvation. And it’s a graphic picture of the believer giving praise to God for what God has done, using an analogy that is foreign to some Christian circles.

Verse 14, “I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all His people.” Again the translation has one of these hidden things in it; and this is the idea, there’s a little particle in here, naa, and this is a particle of urgency or hope, and literally what he is saying here is this: “I will pay my vows unto the LORD,” not “now,” now is just the King James translation of naa, but “OH that it might be in the presence of all His people,” there’s an exclamation to this thing, he says I’m going to “pay my vows unto the LORD, and oh may it be in the presence of all His people.” In other words, there’s a sincere desire to share this. This is the excitement of praising God for something He has done. If you are really excited, as I said earlier when we started this Psalm series, reading from C. S. Lewis, what did Lewis say, one of the illustrations of praise that C. S. Lewis had in his book, and that is, he said when I write a book or I read a book, you know how it is, you read a book, you’re excited about it, what do you want to do? You want to share it with somebody, tell somebody about it. That’s the same urgency here. “I will pay vows unto the LORD and oh, may it be in the presence of all His people,” with other believers.

Now verse 15 and 16 is another word pair and here we have a fantastic truth about death. “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints. [16] O LORD, truly I am Thy servant; I am Thy servant, and the son of Thine handmaid; Thou hast loosed my bonds.” Verse 15 and 16 all say the same thing, but verse 15 in particular, “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints,” what has been the problem of the psalmist up to here? He was near death. What is this saying? It is saying that death, which every Christian is going to face, you might as well think about death and whether you’re prepared to face death and look at this thing. Ultimately at that moment of your life, when you finally check out, that ultimate point in your life is precious in God’s sight. And the truth, the experiential truth of the Psalmist that he is trying to communicate to us through the Psalm is, he says I’ve been there, he says I’ve been almost to the point where I died, and I can come back from that near death and tell you something, that God cares for us and will not let death come as an accident. There are no such things as accidental deaths; God is very concerned with you and how you die, and He has it planed and He has grace provided for you to handle that situation. So this verse is a very powerful verse if you have followed the argument up to it. “Precious,” why is it precious? God cares very much.

And by the way, a footnote on verse 15, in 1 Thess. 4:15 the Christians who are have died are said to be put asleep, it’s an aorist tense, and it’s most interesting why an aorist passive tense is used here, passive voice. Why the passive voice? Do you know what that’s saying? That famous one often read at funerals, “I show you a mystery brethren,” I show you that we will not go before those who are asleep, and “asleep” means those who have been put to sleep. Now you stop and think of a violent death, say a soldier out on the battlefield, a mortar shell comes in and his body is just vaporized, you can’t even find a piece of it left. Do you know what God’s Word says about that? That violent death, he has been put to sleep, there’s a gentleness about that word and that again shows that the shepherd of His sheep puts the sheep to sleep but He does it because that moment of his death is very precious.

Okay, “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints.” And then he says, verse 16, he’s amazed, verse 16 is just amazement, Lord, look what I am in Your sight, “O LORD, truly I am Thy servant; I am the son of Thine handmaid; Thou hast loosed my bonds.” Now the “son of Thine handmaid” is a tip off that this Psalm was probably written by David because Psalm 86:16 has the same phrase and David is the one that does it. This also is a tribute to an unknown woman. The “handmaid” is David’s mother, and here we get a hint as to what made David a great man. Saul, very rarely, if ever, I don’t know of one text, there may be one but I haven’t come across it yet, where Saul mentions his mother; he never mentions his mother. It’s his father, Saul, the son of Tish, but David is the one who says yes, I am the son of Jesse, but I’m also the son of Your handmaid. So it appears, then, that his mother was a deeply spiritual woman and she communicated to David many of the spiritual insights that later made that man great. And that should be a source of encouragement to you women. Those of you who are mothers, just think what David’s mother did. Her name isn’t even recorded in God’s Word; history doesn’t even know her name but she’s a woman that had the most fantastic son that probably ever lived; David’s mother was the spiritual giant, whether she was more spiritual than Jesse or not we don’t know, but she evidently was a great influence in David’s life because he also refers to his mother as, “Lord, I am the son of Your handmaid.” That by the way, is the ultimate praise that a son can give his mother, “I am the son of Your handmaid,” which means his mother was a servant of the Lord.

Verse 17 through the end, this is a renewed vow to praise, “I will offer Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the LORD.” Verse 18 is just a repeat of verse 14 if you notice, “I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all His people.” And “In the presence of all His people,” and the word “now,” you see the King James translators have done the same thing with naa, translating it “now.” “I will pay my vows, oh may be it the presence of all His people, [19] In the courts of the LORD’s house, in the midst of Thee, O Jerusalem. Praise ye the LORD.”

Now verse 19 has to be read in half; literally what he is saying is “May I do the praising in the courts of the Lord’s house;” and then it should be a semicolon, and then a break, and then it should say, “in the midst of thee, O Jerusalem. Praise ye the LORD.” Now this means temple worship.

To conclude and tie this declarative praise to the Christian, there are three temples spoken of in the New Testament. In each of these temples the kind of praise that is given in Psalm 116 should be done. The first temple is 1 Cor. 6:20, it is the temple which is our body. And as we, in this life, exist in our body, we are to use our body to praise. The temple was the place of praise. This would refer primarily to private praise that you do in prayer, with your mind. This is personal praise; that’s the first kind of temple. [What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom ye have of God, and ye are not your own? [20] For ye are bought with a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” ]

The second kind of temple is 1 Cor. 3:16, the local church. That’s the second area of praise, where God’s salvation should be spoken of, should be rejoiced in and should be shared. That’s why the Wednesday night thing is actually the focal thing in worship service we have, simply because those of you who are in the prayer part, that’s what we’re doing, we’re sharing the up-to-date petitions and praises and so on. [1 Cor. 3:16, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? [17] If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple are ye.”

And then the third temple mentioned in the New Testament is Ephesians 2:21 and that’s the whole body of Christ. And their the praise is done from one generation to the next; it’s a historically continuing praise; the praise is preserved in writings like Augustine’s works; the praise is preserved in the commentaries of the church fathers, so that second and third and fourth and fifth generations of believers can share that praise. [“In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord.”]

Okay, this is the last Psalm in the declarative praise category. If you would like to work on Psalm 138; I’d like you to break it down, conduct a form criticism of it, find out where the parts are, put together a rough outline, and thirdly, see if you can come up with some application of the truths of that Psalm in the Christian life. Next week we’ll start a new category of Psalms, the Psalms of descriptive praise.

[someone asks a question] The Holy Spirit knowing women exercise the degree of wisdom had he put her name in they would all have wanted it in. I don’t know, I didn’t write the Bible, I’m just telling you what it says.