Psalm 116 | Rituals of Thanksgiving

Thanks to God for deliverance.

Psalm 116.

I love the Lord because he has heard my appeal for mercy, because he has turned his ear to me.

I will call out to him as long as I live.

The ropes of death were wrapped around me.

The torments of Sheol overcame me.

I encountered trouble and sorrow.

Then I called on the name of the Lord.

Lord, save me.

The Lord is gracious and righteous.

Our God is compassionate.

The Lord guards the inexperienced.

I was helpless and he saved me.

Return to your rest, my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.

For you, Lord, rescued me 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 said, I am severely oppressed.

In my alarm I said, Everyone is a liar.

How can I repay the Lord for all the good he has done for me?

I will take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.

I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.

The death of his faithful ones is valuable in the sight of the Lord.

Lord, I am indeed your servant.

I am your servant, the son of your female servant.

You have loosened my bonds.

I will offer you a thanksgiving sacrifice and call on the name of the Lord.

I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the Lord's house, within you, Jerusalem.

Hallelujah.

Psalm 73, which is a prayer about doubt.

146, a prayer about praise.

42 and 43, a prayer about lamenting or pain.

Psalm 1, a prayer about wisdom.

Psalm 104, a prayer about creation.

Now we're on Psalm 116, which is a prayer of thanksgiving.

Here's the question for today.

When God responds to our lamentations, what's our next prayer?

In other words, if God answers our cries for help and salvation, how do we continue to pray to God?

In Luke's account of Jesus' life and teaching, he tells a short story about Jesus' encounter with these ten men.

We know them as the ten lepers.

They're experiencing long-term bacteria infection, creates red lumps and lesions on your skin.

There's painful nerve damage on your appendages.

There's muscle weakness, problems with the upper respiratory system and eyes.

And in Jesus' day, there's no medical cure for this.

You were socially, spiritually, and physically marginalized.

You live outside of society.

Your life is painful and poor, and you're left to beg for food and funds just to stay alive.

So we we read the story about the ten lepers, and I think we picture kind of like the kids' storybook Bible version.

Like, no, this is like a really painful, horrible disease.

Um, if it was hell on earth.

And so if I was a leper, I would want to pray prayers of lament every day.

And Luke gives us a snapshot at Jesus' encounter with these guys.

We know the story.

They cry out, Master, have pity on us.

He says, Hey, go show yourselves to the priests.

They get up on their way, they're healed, and on the and then only one of them comes back.

It happens to be a Samaritan.

Jesus is on the border of Galilee and Samaria, so it is kind of a big kind of jab at the Galilee Samaritan beef that they have.

But beyond that, the kind of the big point of the story is that only one of these men with this just like hell on earth disease actually went back to thank Jesus.

Which is interesting.

He actually falls down on the ground.

He he like goes back, like he can finally walk, but then he goes back to not walking to thank Jesus, which I think is really cool.

Um, and as I was writing the sermon and thinking through Psalm 116, um I couldn't get out of my head that I often live as this leper, that I, when things aren't good, I cry out to God for deliverance.

He does show up, and then the moment things are okay again, I'm like off to the races, right?

Um and Winsley did a really good job of showing us the tension there as well.

So, what do we do?

How do we pray when God actually does show up and answer our prayers?

And the answer is a psalm of thanksgiving, which is the genre of these songs and what Psalm 116 is.

It's a prayer of gratitude for when God does relieve our suffering, when he does show up, when he does lift us out of the dark places or hopeless scenarios.

So let's just look at it.

Verses 1 and 2.

It begins with this kind of intent of affection and joy.

I love the Lord, for he heard my voice, he heard my cry for mercy, because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live.

This is a summary and a thesis statement.

In the Bible, if you if you talk about here and call, it's less auditory and more about a response.

So God heard me as in he did something, I will call on him as I will ask him for something.

The thesis is that God is reliable in the midst of crisis.

Um, I like dirt bikes, do you guys know that?

Okay.

I have a DRZ400, which is one they've made for 25 years, haven't changed it.

It's like a tank, never breaks.

And it sat for a year in my garage, which is like horrible.

But, anyways, this spring I was like, I got I gotta get this thing running.

And it had been leaking oil, so I changed the oil, I added some coolant, I drained the bad gas out of the carburetor in the tank, put some fresh gas in.

And I'm like, I bet you this thing is gonna start up in like 10 seconds.

It's like five seconds later, this thing's running.

Sat like small gas engine sat for a year, fired right up.

And I was like, this thing is reliable, it's never let me down, I neglect it, and it just never stops running.

Really bad illustration for God.

But there is this thesis like I can call on this God and He will hear me, and He is reliable.

So this is the thesis statement of love.

Verse 3 and 4.

The cords of death entangled me.

Winslow did a great job talking about that.

The anguish of the grave came over me.

I was overcome by distress and sorrow.

Then I called on the name of the Lord, save me.

These are really intense words.

The death, the grave, distress, and sorrow.

This is like a rehash of the lament prayer that this author would have prayed, or that we pray.

It's kind of like whatever classic movie scene, I'm sure the RAS have one, of like the main character is about to be trapped, or it's quicksand, and like this is the last moment, and something or somehow they are saved and they get out of it.

And this is kind of like this picture.

There was it was the last straw, there's no hope.

The cords are around me, death is here, I'm overcome, there's no getting out.

And the last, my distress call is Lord save me.

Like I have I have no plan, I have no way, I have no way of knowing how I can get out of this.

Lord save me.

There's this kind of moment of like rock bottom desperation, and I don't know if it's good or bad, but we have a lot of places to turn to when we're in trouble.

We have doctors, friends, medical professionals, psychiatrists, chat GPT, donuts, binge watching Netflix.

I mean, there's a lot of ways, a lot of places we can go and we're in pain.

And this author reminds us that our hope is in the one who can rescue us.

And I think for a lot of us, maybe turning to God before or during all of these other ways is helpful.

So as we're praying in prayer of thanksgiving, we we declare our affection and then we name, we like name where we were.

So I trust in you.

Here's what it was like.

Here's what my situation was when I called out to you.

Then the then the author moves into this recognition of God's character.

Verse 5 and 6 The Lord is gracious and righteous.

Our God is full of compassion, the Lord protects the unwary or the foolish.

When I was brought low, he saved me.

And I think it's uh really cool to recognize God's character.

Before we start thinking about what God does, we remember who God is.

It sounds really similar to that kind of five-part mantra throughout the Old Testament about the character of God, that he's gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and kindness.

And I wonder if we really believe that God is like that.

Do we do we cry out to God thinking that he's merciful and kind, gracious and abounding in steadfast love?

I think often when I'm praying, I one of the things I've tried to do is pay attention to how I'm viewing God in whatever situation I'm in, whatever prayer I'm in.

God is oft, God often shows up in my projection as like the grumpy, distant boss that's just kind of annoyed with me and ready to hire me for something I did.

Like, there's probably a whole lot of personal story we could dive into to figure out why that is how I view God sometimes.

But if I'm crying out in distress, I'm like, well, he doesn't want to save me because I'm a fool, you know, or I don't deserve this, or like he's just mad at me.

And um, this psalmist is certain about the character of God, which is why they can cry out to God.

So if you find yourself with the cords of death entangled you, like how do you picture God?

He's gracious and compassionate and merciful.

He actually lifts up the lowly.

He's near the lost.

He makes the last first.

So if you find yourself last and lost, that's a good place to be.

And then verse 7, he starts to preach.

The psalmist preaches to himself.

That's one thing we've learned this summer is the psalmists preach to themselves a lot, right?

We're allowed to do that.

Verse 7, return to your rest, O my soul.

The Lord has been good to you.

For you, Lord, have delivered me from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living.

I trusted in the Lord when I said, I'm greatly afflicted, and my alarm, I said, Everyone is a liar.

What I think is interesting is there's this period of returning to rest and calibrating to this new reality.

That before we start kind of walking off into our new life, there seems to be this window of pause between the cords of death and then the path of new life, where we can sit and thank God.

It's a period of pause before we quickly move on to the next thing.

Like the leper comes back and sits at Jesus' feet and thanks him.

And so we preach to ourselves, hey, this God has just delivered you.

Now you can return to your rest.

We can talk to ourselves and preach that to ourselves.

He talks about trusting in the in God in verse 10, and this is this idea of faith.

Um, I think sometimes we we think about faith kind of as this like cognitive um ascent to some information.

Like, do you do you have faith in Jesus?

Well, yeah, I understand these correct things about him doctrinally.

But faith is like trust.

It's proven in how we live and who we call out to.

So this person trusts in God.

Then we get to this next part of the psalm, which I'm calling Rituals of Thanksgiving, which I think is going to be the title.

We'll see how I feel tonight when we're uploading it.

Um, Rituals of Thanksgiving.

This is kind of where I want to preach.

What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me?

I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.

I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of his people.

Verse 14, right there, I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, is actually repeated twice in this prayer.

It's repeated later on.

And so he he goes on and kind of explains what this ritual of thanksgiving looks like.

Um, first, he kind of declares this self-worth.

When you first read this psalm, it's like precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful servants, and you think, that sounds weird.

Um, and the emphasis is on the person, that this person's life is valuable and precious, not that God thinks someone dying is precious.

Okay.

That's cost costly in the sight of the Lord is the death of his servants, and I am your servant, so I have value.

And I think sometimes we, when we're in this period of lowliness, we can move into like self-deprecating and like, woe is me, I'm so low.

Like, humility is kind of this self-deprecating talk and posture, but clearly the psalmist has still has a high self-worth.

That I'm I am the I am God's servant.

My death would have been costly to him, and so he saved me, he freed me from my chains.

This is where it gets fun.

I will sacrifice a thank offering to you and call on the name of the Lord.

I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, Jerusalem, praise the Lord.

So this Psalm of Thanksgiving isn't just like a journal entry that's like, dear God, thank you for my house and my clean clothes and my dog and like my school and my car that didn't break down, whatever.

It's my it's way more deeper and public and ritualistic than that.

It culminates in a thank offering, which I'll read here shortly.

It's a it's a song for the community, it's a visible public ritual, it's an embodied and tangible act to express a truth or memory with sights and sounds and smells and tastes.

Because we are not just our brains on sticks, our kind of and so here's here's kind of like where I want to conclude with this and go.

Here's the first point with this psalm.

Is that I think that we need personal rituals of thanksgiving.

You and I, like each of us individually, we need personal rituals of thanksgiving.

So um this description, it's pretty short, but of a thanksgiving offering.

It's in Leviticus 7, 12 to 15.

You don't have to look it up, I'll read it to you.

So, this is what this author in verse 17, when they say, I will offer a thank offering to you, I'll call upon the name of the Lord.

This is what they're doing.

Um, talking about this fellowship sacrifice, if he presents it for thanksgiving, in addition to the thanksgiving sacrifice, he is to present unleavened cakes mixed with olive oil.

Sounds tasty.

Um, unleavened wafers coated with oil, and well-needed cakes of fine flour mixed with oil.

So kind of like a little bakery platter.

He is to present as his offering cakes of unleavened bread with his thanksgiving sacrifice of fellowship.

From the cakes, he is to present one portion of each offering as a contribution to the Lord, it will belong to the priest.

It is his.

The meat of this thanksgiving offering, uh sacrifice of fellowship must be eaten on the day he offers it.

He may not leave any of it until morning.

So if God saves you from something and you want to make this offering, you need to go into your kitchen, whatever, first century kitchen, or actually earlier than that, and you get your flour and get your oil and make three different types of like flour cakes.

And one of them is well needed.

So you got to be out there like needing this.

This whole time, like you're smelling something, you're feeling something, you're um touching things, you've also sacrificed this animal that has meat that you eat.

And so if you're going to sacrifice this personal sacrifice to God, it includes all this ritual.

And what that ritual does is it slows you down and it gives you these meaningful experiences through which to thank God.

And I'm not sure.

I I don't think this is like I couldn't find a parking spot and God gave it to me, or like the Amazon thing went on sale, but I found it on sale at this other website, couldn't find it on Amazon, whatever.

It's like big, like a few things a year or a few things a decade.

Like, what are those deep pillar moments where God has delivered you?

Do you have some type of embodied ritual where you can thank God and then repeat that ritual as a way of thanking him?

I thought about art.

Maybe you could paint or draw something and hang it on the wall.

I think people get tattoos about that stuff nowadays.

Maybe there's a particular meal.

This is me brainstorming.

Maybe you plant a tree.

Like that tree is the tree of when God delivered me from this, and every day you see it, you know.

Uh, maybe you make some type of gratitude journal where you reread it somehow.

But I as God delivers you from things, I think this psalm is inviting us to have some type of like ritual or tangible expression of that gratitude that reminds us that God saved us, because otherwise we're just off to the races with the other nine lepers.

We need kind of structure to bring us back to the place of Thanksgiving.

But not only personal rituals of Thanksgiving, I think we need corporate rituals of Thanksgiving, like as a church community.

Um Winslow, you stole my thunder.

These are part of the Hallel Psalms, so they're sung every year as during the whole Passover celebration, they're tied to the deliverance of Egypt from slavery.

That um the the Exodus is the key, the fundamental identity of Israel for God's as part of God's people.

And every year they remember that God brought them out of Egypt with days of ritual and prayers and feasts.

And these psalms would have been part of part of that.

And so these psalms are meant to shape us, that every single year you would remember, we all would remember that God brought us out of Egypt.

And I wonder, just as a community of friends or as a as a church, what are our corporate rituals of thanksgiving?

Um, we talk about we have prayers of the people where we give our petitions to God, but I wonder, is there a space for prayers of thanksgiving where we give our thanks to God or a particular yearly event we could do?

Um, God's people would do these things called Ebenezer towers.

You you know, you sing the song here, I raise my Ebenezer.

Like you don't know, I don't know what an Ebenezer is as you sing that as a little kid.

As you get older, you're like, oh, it's like a pile of rocks that God did something really cool.

And so maybe I don't know.

That maybe sounds weird.

We can make a pile of rocks for citizens somewhere out there in the campus playground.

Um, that this is not an individual faith that as our community is delivered by God, we actually participate in one another's Thanksgiving.

Um I have more thoughts, but I'm just gonna close with that.

Um this is a song about God's character.

It's about thanksgiving and remembering to um not skip the step of thanking God for his deliverance.

And so I'll just close um with Walter Brugemann's kind of paradigm of the Psalms uh that when things are okay, we can pray psalms of praise.

When things are not okay, we can pray psalms of lament.

And when things are okay again, we can pray psalms of thanksgiving.

So let's be people who are marked with uh rituals of thanksgiving and um willing to be vulnerable and share share that with the community because um even if you're in if you're in the cords of death, you can look to the stories of other people and say God brought them out, He will bring me out as well.

Um Let me pray.

And then uh Keris or I think Keris, you're up.

No, Winslow's up.

Oh we we might need to audible, I don't know.

Do you guys have time?

What are we doing?

It's five.

Alright.

How about how about um Winslow I'll no, you you're good.

You did a lot, man.

I'll just I'll read the psalm again as like a reflection activity.

Um and then invite to the table and we'll do some songs.

Okay, let me pray.

Oh god, we're so grateful for this night and this community, and um honestly that we can even be in this building found away and technology and um we we're doing the church things, but we want to be the church that you would have for us to be in this place and season and time.

Thank you for these people that have uh given up so much to help birth a new church community.

Uh may we continue to get to know each other and share our stories, be willing to be vulnerable vulnerable about when we faced death and celebratory about when you brought us out.

Help us to find rituals of thanksgiving for ourselves and as a community.

In your name.

Amen.