2024 Week 43

Hello, Springers!

How can I ever repay you?

We probably all have experienced unexpected generosity by someone or some organization and had this thought. The writer of Psalm 116 had this thought about God and expressed it this way:

What shall I render to the LORD
for all his benefits to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the LORD,
I will pay my vows to the LORD
in the presence of all his people.

How can I give back to the Lord something for all his benefits to me? The psalmist gives an interesting answer. He says he will lift up the cup of salvation. He will call on the name of the Lord.

The psalmist doesn’t tell us whether this cup of salvation is empty or full. If it’s full, then he is talking about a cup of salvation that he is about to drink and be revived. Or it could be that since God has saved him he raises a cup in honor of God for the salvation he has received from him.

If the cup is empty, then the psalmist is calling God to fill the cup. The writer is raising the cup to heaven and asking God to fill it yet again – another benefit of God’s grace.

Either way, whether empty or full, the psalmist is not really giving something back to the Lord. He is receiving something again from the Lord, a benefit.

What shall I give to the Lord? I shall give him my need once again that he may be the one who fulfills it. I shall give him my trust because I know that God alone can help me. God alone can save me.

When God fills this cup, the final thing the psalmist says is that he will pay his vows to God before the people of God. From the fullness he has received, he will pay out.

The order to these verses is important. Sometimes I describe this order by saying, “The indicatives empower the imperatives.” Or another way to express it is to say that what is true compels what we do.

What is true for the psalm writer is that God alone saves him. God alone fills his cup. When his cup is full, then and only then can he give proper honor to the Lord and fulfill his vows.

If we reverse the order, we will die of thirst. Thirsting for salvation but trying to earn it ourselves or merit it for ourselves will never work.

We have to see the benefit of who God is, a God gracious and compassionate. Then we must call on him to save us in Christ. Then we can live lives that honor him.

The psalmist indicates what is true. God freely gives us his benefits in Christ. The salvation that we call on God to receive empowers the things we must do – honor God with our whole lives.

in Christ,

Pastor Tag