Salutation
... in the name of the Father, and
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen. Through the prayers of our
holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen. Glory
to You, our God, Glory to You.
O Heavenly King: Prayer to the Holy
Ghost
O
Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, You are everywhere and fill
all things, Treasury of blessings, and Giver of life: come and abide in us, and
cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One.
I love the Lord, because He
has heard my voice [and] my
supplications. Because He has inclined His
ear to me: therefore, I will call on [Him]
as long as I live.
The sorrows of death circled me. The pains of hell gripped me. I found trouble and sorrow. Then I called on the name of the Lord. “Lord, I beseech You, deliver my soul.”
Gracious [is] the Lord, and righteous. Yes, our God [is] merciful. The Lord preserves the simple. I was
brought low. He helped me.
Return to your rest, O my soul: for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you: for You have delivered my soul from
death, my eyes from tears, my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.
Division 16: Part 3
I believed, therefore I have spoken. I was greatly afflicted. I said in my haste, “All men [are] liars.”
What shall I render to the Lord [for] all His benefits to
me? I will take the cup of salvation,
and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of all His people.
Precious in the sight of the Lord [is] the death of His
saints.
Lord, truly I [am] Your
servant. I [am] Your servant, the son of Your handmaid. You have released my bonds. I will offer You the sacrifice of
thanksgiving, and will call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of all His people, in the courts of the Lord’s house, in the heart of you, O Jerusalem.
Praise the Lord.
________
If you have been
blessed or helped by any of these meditations in Psalms, please repost or share
all of them.
[1] The
Greek text of Psalms divides Psalm 116 into two parts between verses 9 and
10. We believe that this division is
correct, that this is really two Psalms: both anonymous and undated.
The psalmist begins with a proclamation of love for God. He is not claiming that if God doesn’t listen,
he refuses to love him: he only loves God because God did him a favor, some
sort of heavenly quid quo pro. What the
psalmist boldly announces is that without God’s condescension, he would not be
able to love God at all (1 John 4:10).
We would be remiss if we did not see Jesus in this. Jesus is the ultimate and final Word of condescension
from God. There will not be another such
Word. In Jesus resurrection from the
dead we are empowered to enter into prayer that never ends: it is “as long as I live” only because the risen Christ can never die.
The agonies of sin, the realities of
mortality, grip the psalmist. Again his
poetry, his hymnology is highly prophetic.
Jesus is the one who leads us through the valley of death (Psalm 23).
Out of our lowliness and brokenness in sin, He helps us, only
because He is gracious, righteous, and merciful. Simple and low are not compliments.
Thus only, we may enter into the eternal Sabbath rest of
God. This alone, is salvation. This exclusively, is the path of “the land of
the living.”
Verse ten may be separate from the previous nine, but it is
not unrelated. The condition of the
human race is in total wreckage. The
only reason it is not worse than this, is because God, in His rich mercy, has limited
the decline of our race.
The psalmist asks about the will of God for his life (John
6:28). The answer is that in Christ, God
has set a great feast table for the human race.
God excludes no one. People
exclude themselves. Free clothing,
wedding garments are provided, but people are thrown out of the feast for
refusing to wear these wonderful garments.
We must come to the feast table and eat and drink freely. What have we all vowed that we must pay? We have vowed to love the Law of God. We are incapable of obeying it. But in Christ we enter into His perfect
obedience: we share His life. What we
cannot do, He does within us. While we
fail miserably under the Law, in Jesus we build most magnificently upon the
Law. “God became man, so that man might
become God.”
The next verse seems horribly out of place until we consider that
the death of Christ on the cross, “tramples down death by death.” Through His death, “death has lost its sting,
the grave is swallowed up in victory, mortality is turned to life.” Death, which formerly indicated the great
poverty of man, is now made of great value, it is precious.
Now Jesus takes the bread and the cup. He is the Servant of God, par excellence. He is the Son of Mary, the handmaid of God,
the Virgin. He prepares the Feast Table
and eats and drinks from it. He breaks
the bonds of man. He is thankful to God,
and offers the High Priestly prayer for us all.
He is the lover of God’s Law.
These things He did in Jerusalem, on Zion, in the Temple Courts. Then He went out to die.
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