The Psalmist Expresses His Love the Lord

The first thing that the psalmist expresses is his love for the Lord and the wonderful reason why he loves God. “I love the LORD, because he hath heard, my voice and my supplications.” This love is a very personal, intimate love. It is not just the love of God from a member of the nation of Israel, but it is a love based upon what God has personally done for him.

He loves the Lord because He heard his cry in vs 1-4. This was a cry of desperation at a very bad time. He says, “3 The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow.” The word sorrows in Hebrew is literally the word cords or rope. David is saying he could feel death wrapped around him like being bound with.

One writer put it this way, “The pains of death surrounded me, And the pangs of Sheol laid hold of me; I found trouble and sorrow. - The New King James Version, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Ps 116:3.4

In such hopelessness despair he calls out to Jehovah for salvation, “Adonai, I beseech thee, deliver my soul!”

Vs. 5-7 And verse five tells us that Adonai, the Lord, answered that desperate cry. The Lord, “has delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.”

Now with that answered prayer and the life that the Lord saved, the Psalmist will “walk before the LORD in the land of the living. The idea here is that “he walks forth, in the presence of Jehovah with nothing to hinder his feet or limit his view. His Deliverer is always before his eyes. - Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 5:715.

Vs 10 and 11 are a testimony and a vow. This is what the psalmist has learned and will now do because his experience of despair and God’s deliverance. It is like saying, “I will keep on trusting even when I say, “I am utterly miserable,” even when, in my panic, I declare, “All men are liars.” - David H. Stern, Complete Jewish Bible: An English Version of the Tanakh (Old Testament) and B’rit Hadashah (New Testament), 1st ed., (Clarksville, MD: Jewish New Testament Publications, 1998), Ps 116:10–11.

Love Because The Lord Hears Us

In the midst of deep despair, terrible pain and intolerable conditions of life, we can cry out to God and we know that God will hear our cry. God promises that if we call, He will hear. In the midst of our troubles, in the depths of our sorrow God hears. Even when we call out to Him in the midst of our sinfulness, our rebellion and our doubt and our fears, still He will hear.

Psalms 18:3 I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.

Psalms 50:15 And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.

Psalms 55:16 As for me, I will call upon God; and the LORD shall save me.

And the most important cry we can utter, when we call out for the salvation of our souls, God has promised, He will save us.

Isaiah 55:6-7 Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

Roman 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

If we call out to God, we are promised redemption by the death of Jesus Christ, justification by His righteousness, eternal security by His power and eternal life by His resurrection.

Romans 5:1-2, 8-11 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. ….But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.

And along with the saving of your soul, Jesus also saves our life, giving it meaning and purpose and just wonderful joy. We are saved to live a life with purpose and power, with joy and grace.

John 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Nothing illustrates this better than the story of Matthew Henry when he was robbed.

When the famous commentator and preacher Matthew Henry, was robbed, later that day he wrote in his dairy, "Let me be thankful first, because I was never robbed before, second because although he took my purse, he did not take my life. Third because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed."

Only a person who has been delivered body and soul by the grace of God, could express such thankfulness. I really don’t want to find out firsthand, but I hope I could be as thankful after such an experience as was Matthew Henry.

After the Psalmist expresses his love for the Lord because God has delivered him, he then responds to that love with sacrifices for the Lord. Look at verse 12.