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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadSpurgeon Verse Expositions - Psalms 116:1 - 116:11
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
It begins well.
Psa_116:1. I love the Lord,
Can you say that? “Yea, Lord, thou knowest all things. Thou knowest that I love thee.” “I love the Lord.” Love is said to be blind, but not love to God. Love to God can see, and it can give a reason for its own existence, and a good substantial reason too. “I love the Lord.”
Psa_116:1. Because he hath heard my voice and my supplications. A good reason for love will be found in the closet where prayer is answered. If you have ever been in trouble, and that Divine friend has listened to your feeble cries, you do love him, and you cannot help loving.
You wonder why others do not love him too.
Psa_116:2. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.
“Because.” He harps on that string. It is so sweet a note that he touches it again: “Because he hath inclined his ear unto me”: stooped out of heaven. He has laid his ear down to my lips. He has caught my wandering utterances. He hath inclined his ear. My sin had pushed his ear away, but he has brought his head back again, and inclined his ear unto me. “Therefore.” You see this was given as a reason, but the Psalmist is so full that what was a reason for love now becomes a reason for something else. The flowers in the garden of believers bloom double. Here is a second flower on this stalk. I love him because he hath inclined his ear unto me.
“Therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.” I speed so well in prayer that I will keep on in that blessed business. God heard me once. He shall hear me again.
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For only while we pray we live.”
Psa_116:3. The sorrows of death compassed me,
They were all round me. They made a circle. I could not find a break. They compassed me. Sorrows, deadly sorrows, the very sorrows of death.
Psa_116:3. And the pains of hell gat hold upon me:
They came inside the circle and they gripped me. I was like one that did lie under the lion. He seemed to bite and tear me. “The pains of hell gat hold upon me.” Did you ever know that? I did. Oh! I can never forget, for the scars are in my mind to this day when the pains of hell gat hold upon me. They say that there is no hell. He will never say that who has ever felt the pains of a guilty conscience — the pangs of unforgiven sin to a soul that is made alive by the Spirit of God. “The pains of hell gat hold upon me.”
Psa_116:3. I found trouble and sorrow.
An unexpected find. They were hidden away — these double enemies — hidden away beneath my pleasures, beneath my sins, beneath my self-righteousness. “I found trouble and sorrow.”
Psa_116:4. Then called I upon the name of the LORD;
The most canonical hour for prayer is the time of our greatest distress. When you can do nothing else but pray, then is the very best time to pray. When you seem shut up to prayer, what a blessed shutting up it is! “Then called I upon the name of the Lord.” And what was his prayer? Very short: very full: a sort of soldier’s prayer.
Psa_116:4. O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.
There, dear hearer, if you want to begin to pray to God, there is a good beginning for you. “Oh! Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.”
Psa_116:5. Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;
A curious mixture. You will never understand it until you stand at the foot of the cross.
Psa_116:5. Yea, our God is merciful.
That is the practical outcome of the holy conjunction of grace and righteousness in the atoning sacrifice of Christ. “Our God is merciful.” Sometimes when people cannot read well, they spell the words, and one, I remember, spelt God in this way — “Yea, our God is merciful.” That will do — full of mercy — merciful.
Psa_116:6. The LORD preserveth the simple:
You clever men take heed of this. “The Lord preserveth the simple” — the plain, hearty, honest, sincere, sometimes ridiculed for their want of cunning. God takes care of them.
Psa_116:6. I was brought low, and he helped me.
What a sweet thing it is when you have studied a general doctrine to be able to give yourself as a particular instance of it. “The Lord preserveth the simple.” That is a grand truth. “But I was brought low, and he helped me.” That is an emphatic proof. That is the enjoyable illustration of the grand truth. Can you say that, dear friends? Can you put that in your diary? “I was brought low, and he helped me.”
Psa_116:7. Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the LORD hath dealt bountifully with thee.
Come back. He is a good God. Why wander? Return unto thy first husband, for it was better with thee than now. He has been bountiful. My soul lives on his bounty again.
Psa_116:8. For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.
As I read these words, they seem as if they were written for me. Do they seem, dear hearer, as if they were written for you? Have you undergone this trinity of salvation — your soul from death, your eyes from tears, your feet from falling? If so, then make this resolve tonight.
Psa_116:9. I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living.
That is to say, as he has dealt so well with me, I will always deal well with him. I will not care to look to men — to their hope, to their help, to their judgment, to their censure, but I will set the Lord always before me. He shall be everything to me. Beloved, it is one of the best days work a man ever does, when he turns clean away from everything but God. Oh! when you have given up all reliance upon the creature, and throw yourself upon the bare arm of the Creator, now you have got at it, man; now you have come to real life. All the rest is mere play-acting, but this is reality, for God alone is, And all else is but a dream.
Psa_116:10-11. I believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afflicted: I said in my haste, All men are liars.
And uncommonly near the truth he came, even though he was in a hurry in saying it, for if you trust in any men, they must be liars to you. They will fail you either from want of faithfulness, or else from want of power. There are pinches where the kindest hand cannot succor. There are times of sorrow when she who is the partner of your bosom cannot find you alleviation. Then you will have to come to God, and God alone, and you will never find him fail you. The brooks of the earth are dry in summer, and frozen in winter. All my fresh springs are in thee, my God, and there neither frost nor drought can come. Happy man who has got right away from everything to his God.