Living and Dying as Servant and Saint

Grace Evangelical Free Church // Wyoming, MN

Psalm 116 I love the Lord, because he has heard
my voice and my pleas for mercy.
² Because he inclined his ear to me,
therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
³ The snares of death encompassed me;
the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me;
I suffered distress and anguish.
⁴ Then I called on the name of the Lord:
“O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!”
⁵ Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;
our God is merciful.
⁶ The Lord preserves the simple;
when I was brought low, he saved me.
⁷ Return, O my soul, to your rest;
for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
⁸ For you have delivered my soul from death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling;
⁹ I will walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.
¹⁰ I believed, even when I spoke:
“I am greatly afflicted”;
¹¹ I said in my alarm,
“All mankind are liars.”
¹² What shall I render to the Lord
for all his benefits to me?
¹³ I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the Lord,
¹⁴ I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people.
¹⁵ Precious in the sight of the Lord
is the death of his saints.
¹⁶ O Lord, I am your servant;
I am your servant, the son of your maidservant.
You have loosed my bonds.
¹⁷ I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving
and call on the name of the Lord.
¹⁸ I will pay my vows to the Lord
in the presence of all his people,
¹⁹ in the courts of the house of the Lord,
in your midst, O Jerusalem.
Praise the Lord!

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” You are going to die. You don’t know when. Will it be in the early morning or late at night? You don’t know how. Will it be peacefully in your sleep? Will it be at the end of a long and painful bout with cancer? At some point in time, that 15 ounce muscle that is steadily pumping life-giving blood throughout your body 100,000 times a day and 35 million times a year will beat one last time. Your skin will turn cold. Your body will become rigid. It will return to the dust from which it came.

How about your funeral? Have you considered what you would want that to look like? I think about it fairly often especially when we gather in this room on Sunday mornings to worship. The tongue that I sing with and the hands that lift up in praise to God will one day be in a casket in the front of this room. I have thought about what Scripture will be read and what songs will be sung. When Johanna and I were married, we sang In Christ Alone at our service. It seems fitting to have that sung at my funeral. No guilt in life, no fear in death/ This is the power of Christ in me/ From life’s first cry to final breath/ Jesus commands my destiny/ no power of hell, no scheme of man/ Can ever pluck me from His hand/ Till he returns or calls me home/ Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand. I picture Pastor Dave preaching, if he isn’t dead before me. I picture my two favorite chapters of the Bible being read; Romans 8 and Hebrews 11. And I picture the song Beautiful Eulogy being played as my casket is rolled out of the room. So this is my hope and my prayer/ The air that I’ll breathe in eternity with lungs that never fail me/ It if pleases my Lord, and only by your grace/ Use my life ’til its poured out for Your sake/ Until then I’ll remain where You have me/ With joy when I feel unhappy/ And a peace that surpasses all my understanding/ My life is in the hands of your love everlasting/ And when it is my time to go/ Go ahead and take me home/ I know I’ll be with you/ I know I’ll be with you

The reality of your death is not new information to you this morning. Although it may be uncomfortable or awkward information that you choose not to bring to the forefront of your thinking very often. Here in America, we live in a world where we have the luxury of not having to consider death very often. Modern medicine can be quick to heal things that would have killed us 150 years ago. We don’t have bombs raining down on us. How many actual dead bodies have you seen in your lifetime? We live in a relatively sanitized and sterile country compared to other countries or at other points of history. I had 3 days on the job as a brand new cop when I did CPR for the first time on a man. The heart attack had come upon him suddenly and unexpectedly, as he was in the bathroom, getting ready to start his day, just like any other day. I can remember his wife’s screams and tears. I can remember having death staring me down in a way I had never seen before. Just a few minutes ago this man was brushing his teeth and now his soul was in eternity.

Psalm 116 is here to help you face the reality of the deep sorrows in life and your imminent rendezvous with death. Psalm 116 is here to help remind God’s servants and saints that their sufferings are known to Him, and that their death is held as precious to Him. In times of distress and moments of death, God’s servants and saints cry out to him in prayer, find rest in his benefits, trust in his words, and praise him for his salvation. What depths of splendid glory and sweet comfort and practical help are waiting for your discovery in this psalm, if God will grant you eyes to see and ears to hear it.

The point of this psalm, and the other 149 psalms in this book is to help you have proper, God-exalting feelings that have their roots in powerful, God-revealed truths, for walking in the path of God-glorifying obedience. Your feelings (emotions, affections) are powerful motivators to obey God, if they are grounded in the rock-solid foundation of God’s truth that we find in the Bible. Emotions and affections are scattered throughout the book of Psalms and this whole book is here to help you know what good emotions you should have and identify what wrong emotions you shouldn’t have…and what your response should be with those good or bad emotions.

Our disposition and bent at Grace Church is to be thinkers. We like to think. Our bent is towards thinking, reading and discussing. That is good and right, but it should not stop there. Our right thinking should be the stove top of which our emotions come to a boil. Right thinking ought to fuel right affections. “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you (Psalm 73:25).” “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).” In Psalm 116 we see the emotions of love and anguish, distress and praise, thanksgiving and desperation. God-exalting feelings have their roots in powerful, God-revealed truths. That’s our aim as God’s servants and saints. All the sermons preached here, all the books we read, every Berea; is meant to help you think rightly, feel deeply, and obey more consistently, until your last breath, for the glory of God.

Psalm 116 is a psalm of thanksgiving. The writer is not merely saying thank you to God as an act of words coming out his mouth, but is expressing a deep thankfulness from the heart that flows from grateful praise for what God has done. There are various categories of songs in the book of Psalms (songs of praise, royal songs about the king, communal complaint songs, individual complaint songs), but this is one of thanksgiving. This type of song can also be found also in Psalm 18, 30, 32, 34, 92, 118 and 138.

THE SITUATION OF GOD’S SERVANT (VERSES 1-4)

Verse 3 lays out the situation the writer of this psalm is in. “The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish.” We see two descriptions of the situation he is in. First, it is like a snare. He is caught in a near death experience like an animal caught in a trap that can’t escape. If you’ve ever seen some kind of animal caught in a trap, you know the frantic desperation they have. Death will close in on them if they do not escape, yet they don’t have the ability to escape. Secondly, the pain of Sheol has a tightening grip on him. Sheol is the poetic name for death. Depending on the context of the verse and chapter, it can either refer to eternal separation from the presence of God, or it can refer to experiencing death and going to the grave (which is the use of it in this verse). This is not a light trial he is going through. He is on the brink of death, the situation is consuming him completely, and it has a strangle hold on his soul, to the point that he is suffering great distress and anguish.

Having served as an elder in this church for a decade, I know from experience that usually at least one person or one family is in a situation like this. Sometimes many are in this kind of a situation. I have been in situations like this. A situation where the distress and anguish feel so heavy, that life is squeezed out of you and death feels like it is wrapping its cold grip tighter and tighter. On any given Sunday, as you stand here and sing, look around you and take that reality in. The life of the godly is not one of looking put together on a Sunday morning and having all your spiritual ducks in a row. If you are experiencing distress and anguish, know that many others in this church are as well. You are not alone. Your suffering may be unique or look different from others, yet the feelings of distress and anguish are still there.

That’s the situation, but how does this Psalm start? Look at verse 1. “I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy.” He starts with expressing his love for the Lord (the personal name for God almighty). This is the starting point. This is the home page, the orientation, the disposition of his heart. Love for his Lord. His affection, his desire is stirred up within him because he knows the Lord has heard his pleading for mercy.

This is the mark of a desperate man, caught in the trap of death, pleading with almighty God for mercy and deliverance. His love (an affection, a desire) for God is rooted in the truth that God hears him. Just as you enjoy the shade of a tree on a blistering hot, humid day; or embrace the soothing warmth of a crackling fire on a cold, winter night; or quench the thirst of your dry, sticky throat with ice cold water; so is this man desiring God through his prayers for deliverance.

What specifically is the root of his love for the Lord in the act of prayer? It is the fact that God really hears him. God listens to him. If you are in an emergency situation, and you need help, what good is the cell phone to call 911 if you don’t have any signal or have a dead battery? The dispatcher can’t hear your emergency. Help won’t be able to come. Take comfort in the reality that God hears your prayers! Right now you are one of nearly 8 billion people on this planet, and God can hear you. God who heard this man’s desperate prayer thousands of years ago in the middle east somewhere is the same God who hears our prayers this very morning in Minnesota. He hears his people’s cry for help. God’s servants have his ear. He always hears them. Whatever time in history they have been in and wherever in the world they were, God hears them.

So call on Him. Call on Him as long as there is breath in your lungs. Call on Him when times are good and when times are bad. Children just starting out in life- call on Him. Seniors who will be nearing death soon- call on Him. Call on Him as long as you live. Call on Him even as he takes the last breaths of air from your lungs. The storehouse of his graciousness and righteousness and mercy await for your cry.

Notice in verse 4 that he asks the Lord to deliver his soul. “O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!” In your suffering and anguish, there is more going on than just physical pain. You are more than merely a physical body. You have something eternal and immaterial. He wants his soul to be delivered. He recognizes that there is more going on in his situation than just physical suffering or mental suffering. He knows that his soul may be tempted to find rest in something other than God because of his suffering. He may be tempted to forget God.

God may choose to deliver you from your trials in this life or he may choose to deliver you from the trial in your death. We can see in Hebrews 11 that some saints in Scripture were delivered from the sword and some were delivered into eternity by the sword. God may choose to heal you from the cancer in this life or he may choose to heal you by taking your life through the cancer. Go to God in your trials with desperate, dependent prayer that cries out, “I love you Lord, because you hear me!” The greatest need for your soul is not to be delivered from your trial but to have your soul desperately dependent on Him and trusting in him no matter what happens to you.

THE BOUNTY OF GOD’S DEALINGS (5-9)

Look at verse 7. “Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.” A couple of weeks ago Johanna and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary by going to Duluth and staying at the same bed and breakfast we had stayed at on our honeymoon. This old, beautiful house was built in 1903, and has a large banister staircase that stares right at you as you enter the front door. We recreated a picture of us sitting on that banister, exactly like the one we took back in 2006. I looked at these two pictures side-by-side. In the one picture, there were two, 24 year-olds that had just said their wedding vows, happy to start a new life together. In the other picture, there are now two, 42 year-olds, with some new wrinkles showing on their faces, having lived through the joys and sorrows of life together. I saw these two pictures as book ends to 18 years of life lived. I wondered what I would say to that 24 year-old Kyle, if I could somehow go back in time. What wisdom would I share about how to walk along the path when the snares of death and pangs of Sheol try to wrap their cords around him? I would say verses 5 through 9 to the 24 year-old Kyle Puelston.

First, notice carefully two things that are happening in verse 7. The psalmist is reminding himself (his soul) of what is true. He has climbed up into the pulpit of his own soul and is preaching to himself. He is telling his soul to find rest in God. This was just revolutionary to me when I understood it for the first time years ago. Do not passively listen to your brain telling you that life is too hard, or that God doesn’t care about you and what is happening to you, or that your life is unfair. Don’t do that. Instead talk to yourself like the psalmists do! Say, “Soul! Yes, life is hard. Yes, I feel like my trials have me on the brink of death. But God is holding out rest for my soul. He has dealt bountifully with me even as I am suffering here.” Take the sermons you hear preached here on Sunday mornings and preach them again to your souls on Monday night or Thursday afternoon or Saturday night. Memorize a chapter of the Bible that you can anchor your soul too. I have preached Hebrews 11 and Romans 8 to my soul thousands of times. Take the lyrics of the songs we sing, put them on a playlist and let them preach to your soul. Songs like Christ our Glory can ring the bell of truth in your soul when the pain of Sheol takes hold. Our rest is in heaven, our rest is not here/ Then why should we tremble when trials draw near?/ Be still and remember the worst that can come/ But shortens our journey and hastens us home.

What we learn from verse 7 is that we can find rest for our soul in the bounty of how God has dealt with us in distress and in moments of death. The next question is, how has God done this? Please, tell me specifically song writer, how does God give rest to the soul and bountifully deal with his servants and saints when they are going through Sheol. The psalmist doesn’t leave this answer vague. He gets specific. I hope what is about to be unpacked quickly here in verses 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10 washes over you with profound thankfulness and praise to God. I hope it stirs surging love in you, towards God for who he is for his people.

First, look at verse 5. He says that God is three things. “Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful.” He is gracious, He is righteous and He is merciful. God’s graciousness is the kindness of his stooping down from heaven and showing favor to His inferior people. Righteousness is the right conduct and character which God has and shows in dispensing justice. He is reliably faithful. Mercy is the display of his tender affection. When the psalmist calls on the name of God in prayer, this is a description of what God will be for Him. Who God is and what he does is all that we need in life and in death. His grace and righteousness and mercy are there for His people to meditate on, to pray for, and to delight in.

Next, look at verse 6. “The Lord preserves the simple.” This word means naive and untrained. That is what I think of when I look at 24 year-old Kyle Puelston sitting on that staircase in 2006. Very naive. Very untrained. Needing to learn to discern wisdom from foolishness. God does not look to preserve those who have a certain amount of intellect. Kids, you do not need to have straight A’s on your report card for God to hear your prayers. In your foolishness and at the lowest and hardest times in your life, when you are completely undone, God will still keep you if you belong to Him. The whole Bible is filled with stories of men and women like this. As Hebrews 11 says, time would fail us to hear all the stories of Noah and Abraham and Sarah and Moses and Gideon and Barak and Sampson and Jepthah and the list could go on. A list of simple and low people that God dealt bountifully with.

Next, look at verse 8. “For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.” While God can and does deliver from death, this verse doesn’t necessarily mean deliverance from physical death. We will see in verse 15 that death is on the table as an option, and we know that we will all die. The death in this verse could also be the death of dreams and plans you had for your life. When I sat on those steps for that picture in 2006, there were ideas and goals I had for how I wanted the path of my life to go. Since that time, tears have accumulated and my feet have stumbled on unexpected circumstances. I have seen dreams die and plans fail. I am sure that many of you could say the same thing. Yet God delivers. He brings us through these deaths with his grace and mercy, working righteousness on our behalf.

Finally, because of God’s bountiful dealing with the psalmist, look at his resolve in verse 9. “I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.” What is this land of the living? It is the arena of life. It is the life you are living and the lives we are living together. He is saying, “As long as I have breath, I’m walking with God.” There is no alternative route. There is nowhere else I’m walking to. Death and Sheol seek to wrap their icy grip around his soul. He stumbles and cries. Yet…yet the eyes of his soul are fixed on God’s graciousness, mercy and righteousness.

He could give in to simplistic, foolish thinking at this point. Life is too hard. Death and Sheol have too tight a grip on me. I’m done with trying to walk with God. This is too much. This is too painful. Instead, he is preaching to himself with resolve saying that as long as he has breath, he will walk in the grace and mercy and righteousness of God. He is choosing the opposite of death. He is choosing life in the midst of deathly circumstances. Like a mountain climber who has his eyes set on summiting a mountain. Maybe the climber took the wrong route up and now the climb is harder than he expected. Maybe his backpack strap broke and now he’s feeling extra weight tug at his shoulders. Maybe biting, bitter wind has kicked up and is stinging his face. Yet, his eyes are fixed on that summit, where he can see brilliant gleams of light reflecting off the snow-capped peak. He continues to take the next step, drawing strength and vigor and action from the glory of what his eyes are fixed on and where he wants to eventually be.

THE RESPONSE OF GOD’S SAINTS (VERSES 12-19)

We will come back and end at verses 10 and 11. For now, skip to verse 12 and see what the writer asks in light of what he has said. “What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?” What do we do in response to all that God has done for us? How should we think about paying back God for all his grace, mercy and righteousness that he’s bountifully poured out on us? Can we even pay him back for hearing our cry for help?

In verses 14 and 18 he says that he will pay his vows to the Lord, and in verse 17 he says he will offer to God the sacrifice of thanksgiving. As Christians today, in our church gatherings under the new covenant brought in through Jesus, we practice singing, prayer, preaching, communion and baptism as expressions of obedience and worship to God. In the Old Testament, God’s people would have understood this psalm under the system of offering animals upon the altar in the temple. When verse 17 refers to the sacrifice of thanksgiving, this could be a reference to Leviticus 7:11-12. That passage explains how the peace offering was to be performed. The peace offering would be offered as an expression of thanksgiving to God, after the completion of a vow made to God, or out freewill. It was a voluntary sacrifice. This was the only sacrifice where the Israelite making the offering could directly participate in the offering, and the only one in which they would eat some of the animal offered to God. This offering was an expression of thanksgiving to God for all his benefits shown to his people.

However, in the Hebrew language, the word thanksgiving does not exist. While we think of thanksgiving as a way to express gratitude, the word has a deeper meaning as it is used in verse 17. It is used to express gratitude, but it goes deeper than that. It also means to confess or declare or to proclaim. It isn’t just expressing gratitude. It is declaring praise and worship to God. You can’t repay God for all his benefits. He’s not like a mortgage payment where you slowly pay him back. When the psalmist says that he’s paying his vows to the Lord and offering a sacrifice of thanksgiving, these are expressions of love and praise and worship for God. This is the overflow of a heart satisfied in the grace and mercy and righteousness of God.

What shall we render to the Lord for all his benefits? We lift up the cup of our salvation, calling on Him, (verse 13) asking God to fill it with more of his bounty. More of his grace and mercy and righteousness.

The Jewish people used to sing this psalm after their Passover meal. Picture Jesus, at the passover meal with his disciples, on the verge of his crucifixion, singing Psalm 116. He had just held up the cup of wine, telling them that this is the blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. He was about to be the sacrifice for the eternal deliverance of his people over death, sin and hell. The Israelites could partake in the sacrifice of thanksgiving by eating a part of the animal, as way to thank and praise God for all his benefits, and this was a pointer to the greater sacrifice that was to be made by Jesus. Today, we drink the cup at communion as an expression of thanks and praise to Jesus for pouring out his blood for us. What shall we render to the Lord for all his benefits? We lift up the cup of our salvation purchased through Jesus Christ who poured out his blood for us. His death is our life.

This is the type of life set before us in Psalm 116. This song writer calls himself a servant of God in verse 16 and a saint of God in verse 15. That is how he views himself and sees his life. A servant (obedient to the master) and saint (faithful to the master). The life of the servant and saint that pours his life out in love and praise to God, and cries out in prayer to God, and takes joy in the grace and mercy and righteousness of God; that life, and that death, is what is precious to God. God finds value in that life and prizes that type of life. The trials may kill you. You may never find complete relief from the sorrow of this life, yet God has provided something better for you. That which is better is the reward of him saying that your life is of value to Him, and he is not wasting one second of it.

There is one final thing I want you to see in this section. Verses 18 and 19 show that your life and death as servant and saint is not to be done in isolation. This is a community project and not lone ranger Christianity. This type of life is done in the presence of all his people and in the courts of the house of the Lord. That is why Sunday morning worship and midweek Discipleship Groups should not be optional for you as people of Grace Church! We draw strength from one another and share in one another’s suffering and rejoicing and learn from one another as we grow in our love for God.

THE FAITH IN GOD’S WORDS (VERSES 10-11)

Now, let’s return to verses 10 and 11 and end here. “I believed, even when I spoke: ‘I am greatly afflicted’; I said in my alarm, ‘All mankind are liars.’” The psalmist is saying here, “God, I’m really in a bad spot in my life right now. I’m struggling to believe that you are good and that you are doing something good right now. Yet, I will believe. Where else can I go? Nothing mankind can promise me will ever be able to fully satisfy. It is all a lie. Only you hold the truth, and I will hold on to you in faith.”

Paul quotes Psalm 116:10 in 2 Corinthians 4:13. “Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, ‘I believed, and so I spoke,’ we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God.”

Christians are people who believe what has been written in this book. Faith is the way in which we hold on to the truths of Psalm 116 and 2 Corinthians 4. The heart that trusts in this book is the heart that says, even though I am afflicted, I’m not crushed. Even though I am perplexed at what God is doing, I will not be driven to despair. Even if I am persecuted, I know I am not forsaken. Even if am struck down, I am not destroyed. Why? Because Jesus bought me through his sacrificial death. The cup of his blood was poured out at the cross, so the cup of my salvation can be lifted up in love and worship. Oh, I hope that shoots through your soul with utter amazement and joy and worship to Jesus Christ. I hope that helps you sing your guts out in a few moments when we sing again.

Christians are people that do not have to lose heart. This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. Each day that our bodies are wasting away from the decay of living in a sin-stained, sin-soaked world, our souls are being renewed day by day. The best is yet to come.

Unbeliever, my question to you is, would have you this Jesus who was poured out for your sake? Would you have this Jesus who offered himself freely and completely at the cross, so that you could be totally and thoroughly his. Would you have this Jesus who offers you a way for your sin and rebellion against a holy, righteous God to be forgiven. Receive him as your Savior. Repent. Trust. Plead with him to give you the gift of faith in Him. Believe in Him.

We all are going to die should Christ not return first. Your heart will pump one last time. Your lungs will fill with air one last time. The hope for the life of the woman and the man, whose faith is in Jesus, who love and worship God, who live and die as servants and saints; the guaranteed hope that you have is that because Jesus rose from the dead, you too will be raised from the dead. And you will be brought into the presence of Jesus forever in the new heavens and the new earth. Tears will be wiped away. All the plans that you had for your life which have fallen into pieces, will be restored to you in ways you can’t even begin to imagine now. And together, people from every tribe, tongue and nation will join in worship together at the marriage supper of the Lamb. We will eat. We will drink. We will sing. We will be filled with perfect joy, basking in the glory of God which will take an eternity for us to fully grasp.

I love the Lord, because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. Praise the Lord!