Psalm 116:1-2 & 12-19
How Can I Repay the Lord For All His Goodness to Me?
March 24, 2005
Maundy Thursday Service
Associate Pastor Doug Forsberg
Tonight’s service of worship is different than Sunday morning services at the church. We are hushed and stilled tonight as we focus on Jesus’ final hours and on the supper he shared with his disciples. It is good to take this time to look inside of our own lives and to follow Jesus on the road to the cross. Psalm 116 is a special psalm, for Jesus and his disciples would have sung this song after the Lord’s Supper and before going on to the Mount of Olives. The one who wrote Psalm 116 almost lost his life, but the Lord saved him. This led the Psalmist to ask a question each one of us might ask in the coming days, “How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me?”
Jesus also knew about losing life didn’t he? To accomplish the work his Father had given him, he knew he must lose his life, for there was no other way to bring those he loved into right relationship with the Father but to have his pure, righteous blood cover their sin-stained lives. On this night, we remember the Last Supper and see within the sacrament a visual reminder of Christ’s suffering on our behalf. As we wonder how we should respond as faithful disciples let us find our answers in Psalm 116.
Let us begin by focusing on God’s mercy, for we cannot be thankful if we don’t understand the nature of the gift we’ve been given. Like Jesus, the person who wrote Psalm 116 knew something about the threat of death and the value of life. As we read this Psalm, it is clear that the psalmist found himself in a tight spot fearing for his very life. He called out to the Lord, and listen to this: the Lord turned his ear to the psalmist and heard his cry for mercy. Friends, if you are ever tempted to think that the Lord is far off, remember this word, for the Lord turns his ear to those who cry out for mercy.
How do we know that our God turns his ear toward those who cry out for mercy? We need only look at two moments in history to see that our God is merciful, for in these two moments we find God working out the salvation of his people.
In chapter 12 of Exodus, we read of the Passover. God had heard the cry of his people, and through the leadership of Moses and plagues upon the Egyptians, God Almighty brought his people out of bondage and into freedom. One final plague was needed to accomplish the salvation of Israel: the destruction of every firstborn in Egypt. The Israelites were told to slaughter a lamb and put its blood on their doorframes so that the Lord would pass over their homes and sons.
Can we imagine the horror throughout Egypt as God struck down all of the firstborn? God’s wrath is indeed dreadful, and without the covenant relationship sealed by blood of the lamb, the Israelites would have suffered the death of their firstborn too. They were literally covered by the blood of a lamb, and they needed to be covered, for although they were God’s people, they were not without fault, and they could not present themselves before the Lord as a pure and holy people. God, in covenant love, saved the Israelites from both bondage in Egypt and his wrath and in so doing we see his mercy in the gift of the Passover lamb.
God’s mercy is also found in a concrete historical event that took place about 2000 years ago. Thanks be to God that the Passover is but a foretaste of God’s great mercy found in Jesus Christ! When John the Baptist first saw Jesus he said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). As Luke records Jesus’ journey to the cross, he writes the following concerning the day of the Last Supper: “Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed” (Luke 22:7).
Friends, Jesus is the Passover Lamb, and one writer has noted that Jesus reshaped the Passover in the following way, “Just as each Israelite family had been sealed in a covenant relationship by the blood . . . on the night of judgement, now Jesus bound his disciples to himself in [a] covenant meal before he went to the cross and passed from death to life.”[1] So it is that we testify that, through the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, life has come to all those who would take hold of it. Have you taken hold of this truth?
Friends, in Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, the Lord has delivered us from certain death and offered us life eternal. If we can turn and see the dreadfulness of God’s wrath and our inability to cover ourselves, then we can also see God’s great mercy in the gift of the Lamb whose blood covers our sin. As those who have been turned, we will respond to God’s mercy with thanksgiving just as Psalm 116 invites us to do.
In Psalm 116:17, we find that one of the Psalmist’s responses to God’s mercy is to sacrifice a thank offering to the Lord. Within the context of Hebrew worship, a thank offering was a gift one made to the Lord in response to some good thing that had happened in a person’s life. Such an offering was not prescribed. One was not forced to make a thank offering. It was made freely as an expression of thanksgiving. The only requirement was that this offering be made in an acceptable manner (Lev 22:29).
Today, God does not desire his people to sacrifice animals. Instead, the letter to the Hebrews teaches us how to make such a sacrifice now: “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise-- the fruit of lips that confess his name” (Hebrews 13:15). When you and I sing songs of thanksgiving, when we speak with thankfulness to others concerning what the Lord has done in our lives, we are sacrificing a thank offering, and this is a faithful response to God’s mercy.
In verses 14 and 18 we find a second response to God’s mercy as the Psalmist promises to fulfill his vows to the Lord in the presence of all the people. We aren’t told what the Psalmist’s vows were, but I imagine they were something along the lines of “Lord, if only you would spare me, I promise to do the following things for you.” In view of the Lord’s mercy, the Psalmist acts on the promises he made so that no one will miss the fact that the Lord saved the Psalmist and that the Psalmist serves the Lord.
When Christians make a profession of faith, they proclaim Christ as Lord and promise to serve him. We promise to die to ourselves and serve the one who died for us. I wonder how well we are fulfilling our vow to the Lord? When I wonder this I don’t want any of us to think that there is some grand checklist in the sky that we have to keep marking off. Instead, I’m wondering if there are places in your heart, places in my heart where we seek to establish our own rule and fight off the rule of Christ? He calls us to die and find our lives in him. Jesus himself said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” (Luke 9:23-25). As we seek to respond to God’s mercy, let us fulfill our vows.
A third response to God’s mercy is found in verses 13 and 17 as the Psalmist calls on the name of the Lord. The way we speak a person’s name tells us so much about how we feel about that person. I was recently in a store, and I saw a woman who was having a rough day. Things just weren’t going her way. Finally, she exclaimed our Lord’s name in a way that made me cringe. Her proclamation of Jesus’ name was out of touch with who Jesus is. Jesus is our Lord and brother. He’s the one who is crazy about us, claiming us just as we are and offering new life to those who will follow. To say Jesus’ name in a profane way is to reject the very kindness he offers to us.
As we respond to God’s mercy, we should proclaim Jesus’ name in a way that invites others into citizenship in the Kingdom of God. We say Jesus’ name in a manner that calls all people to make peace with God and so enter into the celebration of the people of God. Jesus says, “People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29). The table set before us is a foretaste of that feast as we come together and partake of the bread and the cup. As we express our thankfulness to God for his mercy, let us call on the name of the Lord.
The Psalmist’s final response to God’s mercy is to lift up the cup of salvation. When the Psalmist lifted up the cup of salvation, he didn’t know of the Lord’s Supper. Yet, he understood something of God’s ways as he sought to express his thankfulness by seeking more of God, seeking salvation that comes from Almighty God alone.
Some of you know that during the course of the Passover meal Jews pray over four different cups of wine. The third cup is the cup of blessing and it is over this cup that Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper. In so doing, Jesus gave new meaning to this sacramental meal. When we lift up the cup of Christ, we express our thanks to God for his mercy, for in taking the cup we are asking to be filled with Christ and brought in to his presence.
Our union with Christ is strengthened by this meal before us and together we are encouraged to bear witness to our Lord in a fallen world. One commentator notes that, “All who take these common elements into their bodies are inviting Christ to be formed in them and to touch every cell of their lives as this bread and wine will go to every cell of their bodies.”[2] Sisters and brothers, as our union with Christ is strengthened, we find continued assurance that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). So it is that we lift up the cup of salvation in thanksgiving for God’s mercy.
Those of us who call Christ, Lord, know of his great mercy, and in thanksgiving we must respond to his mercy. We do this as those who seek to lose our lives and in so doing find life as the people of God.
May it be Lord; may it be.
[1] Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship that is Reformed According to Scripture, Eds. John H. Leith and John W. Kuykendall, Guides to the Reformed Tradition, Atlanta: John Know Press 1984, 108.
[2] Howard W. Roberts in Worship: The Global Hallelujah!, Ed. Barbara Colborn, Orlando: Wycliffe Bible Translators, 2000, 58.