You just sang a psalm that I'm going to preach on tonight. I'm going to ask you to take your Bibles now and turn to Psalm 116. Psalm 116. I want to say a couple of things before We come to this particular psalm tonight and study it and look at it closely. There are some things that you often need to understand when you read the psalms that are in the Bible. Three different godly, conservative guys could come to the same psalm and preach it differently. that God may give some insights into some of the meanings or a thrust of the passage that a particular pastor wants to emphasize. So Psalm 16 is one that I could probably preach on for a very long time. It's a very lengthy Psalm. I'm gonna pick out some of the key highlights tonight and preach those to you as we work our way through this wonderful passage of scripture. Also, I want to say one other thing, just as a reminder to you. I know this is a very personal thing kind of for me, but if you look at like the first verse, I love the Lord, I want to remind you that all the words are in capital, capital L-O-R-D. When you read it with the capital L-O-R-D, that's God's personal name. The statement of God is a title, but this is very personal. This is the one who is I am that I am and who is a personal covenant God in dealing with his people. I don't get angry at people that don't do that. I don't get angry at people that say the word Jehovah instead of Yahweh, but I want to keep that before you as an emphasis because I think there's something intimate, very intimate. We know God is love, but there's something very infinite in the covenant God who chases his people. through difficult situations that they face in life. So let us look together at Psalm 116. Hear God's word. I love the Lord because he heard my voice and my pleads for mercy. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live. The snares of death encompassed me. The pains of Sheol laid hold on me. I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of Yahweh. Oh, Yahweh, I pray deliver my soul. Gracious is Yahweh and righteous. Our God is merciful. Yahweh preserves the simple. When I was brought low, he saved me. Return, O my soul, to your rest, for Yahweh has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believed even when I spoke, I'm greatly afflicted. I said in my alarm, all mankind are liars. What shall I render to the Lord for all of his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of Yahweh. I'll pay my vows to Yahweh in the presence of all his people, precious in the sight of Yahweh. is the death of his saints. Oh Yahweh, I am your servant. I am your servant, the son of your maidservant. You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call upon the name of the Lord. I'll pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people and the courts of the house of the Lord of Yahweh in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise Yahweh. This is the word of God. The grass withers, the flower fades away. The word of our God endures forever. Let us pray and ask God to help us understand this better. Our Father, we do pray often as a congregation that you would open up our eyes to behold wonderful things from your word as we come to this psalm that is so vast and says so many different things. Help us to grasp hold to the fact that your people are to be a thankful people. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. I once heard the story about a youth group who went out and sang Christmas hymns in July to people. Now there's nothing really wrong with that and it's sometimes perhaps good to know that the Christmas story is good all the year long. But I also know another group that went and sang Thanksgiving songs in November. Praise to our gracious God and thanksgiving to him for what he does. But really, if we're true believers, there's not just a particular day for Thanksgiving. Every day of your and my life should be a day of Thanksgiving. Now, I'm all for having Thanksgiving as a holiday, but I want to remind you tonight that God has called you in all circumstances of life to be a thankful individual and to bask in the fact that you have a God who's loved you so deeply. that he'll never let you go. He delivers his people all the time. He does it every day of our lives, every day. In our text, we hear David's testimony about Thanksgiving. And I want to encourage you to make parts of it your own, for you to offer daily. sacrifice of thanksgiving to God to manifest his goodness to you in ways, let me tell you, he's manifest his goodness to you in ways you don't know and you will one day know. So first of all let's just look at the psalmist expression of his love for Yahweh. That's the way it starts. Verse one, I love Yahweh. He heard my voice, my pleas for mercy. Therefore, I will continue to call upon him as long as I live. He does it all the time, he's saying. He heard my voice, he'll continue to call upon his name as long as I live. If you notice in verse 4, for example, he's saying, I pray, deliver my soul. Verse 13, look down there real quickly. What shall I render to him for all of his benefits? Verse 17 gives the answer, I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving. And so the psalmist is calling God's people and us as we read this psalm to be thankful people. And that's the first thing that I want you to grasp. I'm going to give a second point and then I'm going to start applying this to your life. Secondly, I want you to look at the psalmist experience of deliverance. Look with me at verse three. The snares of death encompassed me. The pangs of Sheol laid hold on me. I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called upon the name of the Lord, O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul." Now, it's very obvious that the psalmist was in some state of emergency. I can't tell you what it was, and he doesn't tell you exactly what it was. He says, the cords of death closed in on me, they encompassed me. It looked like a whole bunch of ropes were binding him up, perhaps to die. He mentions Sheol, which in the Old Testament is the realm of death and the grave. All we know is that his life was being threatened. His enemies perhaps were after him, and perhaps even maybe some of his friends were betraying him. We're not told. But the psalmist says he cried unto the Lord. Yahweh, I pray, deliver my life, some translations say, but it's deliver my soul. The psalmist is talking about God's deliverance. And as you look back on your life, I want you to ponder that for just a little bit tonight as we sit here in this congregation and as we celebrate Thanksgiving together this week and hopefully all the days of our life. I can remember a specific situation in which I personally feared death. Now this may sound very strange to you, but I'm going to tell you anyway. In 2013, Andrea and I went on a trip to Dallas and we were going to take our daughter Carrie to catch a plane to go to Cambodia where she was going to serve as a missionary for a few years helping out the church there. Before we left, I developed a kidney stone, a big one. And the doctor who diagnosed me put a stent in my private parts and said I could go to Dallas. But he said, I want to see you in seven days because we must crash that stone in your bladder. Well, we went to Dallas and I spent a week there dealing with pain and misery that I cannot explain to you. I mean, it was hard. I kept thinking the whole time about the what ifs. Now God was gracious to deliver me through the incident to bring us back home safely and to have a good procedure done and I haven't had one since and don't want to have one and don't want you to have one. Kidney stones are totally unfun. But what is true of us physically when there are times that God delivers us from certain situations? I know many of you probably can say that about yourself. We often speak of deliverance as being deliverance from the penalty of sin that comes to us with Jesus Christ and belief in him and the power of sin that we begin to deal with that in our life and experience that spiritually and we all know that in eternity we'll experience the total eradication of sin. We won't know it anymore. But sometimes the Bible does teach that were often delivered from physical effects of sin. We were not created to have heart attacks. That came after man fell into a state of sin and misery. The psalmist in our text was saved from a threatening death. That too is Yahweh's saving work according to this passage. As a Christian, you can say, God saved me from a car accident, or God saved me from a severe sickness, and many, many other things. But you do know this, that our God is a God who delivers His people. Now, that's His character. That's what He's like. He hears, and He will continue to hear you. Alexander McLaren, who was a Reformed Baptist pastor in Scotland in the last of last century into the beginning of the 19th century, wrote these words, and I think they're very worthy of pondering. He said, he delivers and he will deliver. This is possible because God is unchanging. Everything connected with mere human beings like you and me, we're constantly changing. But God is unchanging. And because He is, we can count on Him to do in the present and the future as He has in the past. Now, just making these general statements about the passage, I want to bring a couple of applications for your life. I know we also have a town meeting coming up in a few minutes, and I want to be specific and to the point. This psalm is a psalm that calls you to appreciate God's character like you never have before. In verse five it says, gracious is Yahweh and righteous and our God is merciful. And that word merciful means that he is full of compassion. He protects you from who knows what. He's compassionate in a thousand ways in your life. And when you begin to understand that, It'll bring a new perspective into your mind and heart to be a thankful person more and more every day for life, for food, for friends, for church, for fair and good health. It doesn't mean you're gonna have perfect health. It doesn't mean you're not gonna be sidetracked and have something happen to you and have both of your knees taken out and artificial ones put in like I've got in my knees. It doesn't mean that I'm not gonna have some pain It doesn't mean that I'm not going to be neglected, cast aside by some people. But the fact is that a steadfast love for you does not. It does not shift. It does not change like you change from day to day and year to year and month to month and for decade to decade. And so a true Christian must over and over again give thanksgiving to God for his constant deliverances in his or her life. My brothers and sister, be thankful people. I plead with you for greatness of the Lord and greatly to be praised. But secondly, Magnify him, but now, there's something here about understanding your own character. Look at verse six. The Lord preserves the simple. When I was brought low, he saved me. In this verse, God's people are called simple. Now, I know the book of Proverbs tells us that we need to pursue wisdom. And that's correct. But most of us here are pretty simple in a lot of ways. The Psalmist says, I was a simple man. I got into a mess. It brought me to a low point. And the reason that I was delivered was not because I was sharp and wise as Solomon. But the reason that I was delivered is because the Lord was kind to me. He was kind to me, a simple person. I was not smart. I was walking in confusion. I got into a mess. It's me. But you were kind to me in ways I didn't know. I remember the song that says this, it's about my own life. You're prone to wonder and walk away from the God you love, but he to save you from your danger interposed his precious love. He cared for you. He took care of you. Thirdly, on a more positive note, this is a call to enjoy God's generosity to you. That's what it is. He says in verse 7, return, O my soul, to your rest, for Yahweh the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. The Psalmist just keeps on reminding you and me this evening that God has been so good to us. Look at verses 8 and 9. For you've delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. Actually, you know what that's saying? He's saying the Psalmist's got more than he asked for. Much more than he even asked for. God gave him. Isn't that so much like our God? My brothers and sisters, we ask him to give us our daily bread and he gives us more than we can eat. We're all going to get fat on Thursday. He gives us relief from our sorrows and stability in our confusion. He even gives us many, many things we don't even ask for over and over and over again. Psalmist wants to create in you and me that attitude toward Yahweh our God. Just one final application. Look at verse 15. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." I've been thinking through this all week long, sometimes trying to just find ways to express it to where you can grasp it. But what it's telling you is that Yahweh draws particularly near to his people when they stand at death's door. even in people that may be out of it, that are just laying there, still alive. He's doing good for them in ways that you and I cannot conceive. He's taking those that we love deeply, and to us it looks like, what a mess. But they're precious saints and he makes his presence known to them in ways that some of you will someday know. Precious in the sight of Yahweh is the death of his people. Paul spoke similarly. with an encouraging word to all of us here. I know death is never a pleasant thing to stand up and talk about, but I think we need to hear it sometimes, especially when there's gonna be such good things for us beyond it, to where it needs not be our biggest fear. But the Apostle Paul spoke of death as a blessing. Listen to his language. If I am to go on living in this body, this will mean fruitful labor for me, what shall I choose? I do not know. I'm torn between the two. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better, but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body." So Paul understands his situation. One thing is certain about Paul's words, the people of God are immortal. until their work on earth is done. How do you reply to his goodness? He doesn't need our money. Yes, we should give for his work. We can't give him anything. For from him and through him and to him are all things." We can't repay God. What he wants us to do is just respond to him and tell of his mercy to other people. Tell other people what he's like, how good he is, how much he loves his people, how great is the person and work of Jesus Christ. We tell of his mercy, but we also thank God by calling upon him in the presence of all of his people when we gather to render to him thanksgiving for how great and wonderful he is. We should lift up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of Yahweh. I close with these words. I've heard it and I haven't been able to put it together in my mind yet. Maybe Jim could teach it to me tomorrow and help me work through it. I'm pretty convinced, if I'm correct and have read it right, that during the Passover season, this is one of the Psalms that was sung by Jesus and his apostles when they were in the upper room. I'm trying to build up, but I will take up the cup of salvation. You know, he drank it for us. He drank the wrath of God. He bore it. And he says, I'll lift up the cup of salvation, give thanks. There's a connection. I can't get it. Maybe somebody can help me. But I think that makes sense. The only way we repay God from whom everything comes is by taking even more from him because he loves us to do it. That's his character. May God help us to appreciate his character tonight. And in this Thanksgiving season of this week, be thankful. But remember, every day, every single day, God delivers you from you don't know all that he delivers you from. Would you pray with me? Our Father in heaven, we stand in awe of your deep love. I mean, I cannot conceive of the times that you protected me from things that were so dangerous. You put thoughts in my mind to do something that was wicked, wrong, and you intervened and stopped me from doing it. There are times when I was heading in directions that were stupid and you changed the course quickly. Just everyday things that happen to us make us a thankful people. For you're great and greatly to be praised in the congregation of your people. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.