How Can I Repay the Lord?

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August 2, 2014

Psalm 116

“How Can I Repay the Lord?” How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me? What can I do to make up for what God has done in my life? This is the question the psalmist is asking himself as he thinks about God’s mercy in his life. In the summer of 1983 I went on a beach trip with my youth group to Manteo NC. I was 14 years old and a brand new Christian. One day when we were on the beach I got in water over my head and I felt myself being pulled out by the undertow. I couldn’t swim back in and I was next to the youth director’s wife and in my panic I almost pulled her down with me. I began to scream for help. I thought I was going to drown. I remember going under water and praying for God to save me. It was one of the most helpless moments in my life. There was nothing I could do. Thankfully and bravely, my youth director was a strong swimmer and he rushed in the water and pulled me out. I thought of this story in my life this week because this particular psalm contains one of the most vivid descriptions of being saved from the jaws of death in all the Bible. In fact, “the cords of death” phrase contains images of drowning in it. In Psalm 18:4 it says “the cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.” A torrent is a flood of water. In the book of Jonah the prophet describes his experience of being thrown overboard and then being swallowed up by the great fish just before he drowned like this: “The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me. Seaweed wrapped around my head and to the roots of the mountains I sank.” (Jonah 2:5) The seaweed would be akin to the “cords of death.” To tap into this drowning imagery even more Psalm 116 also reminds us of the experience of Peter who got out of the boat when he saw Jesus walking on the water. At first Peter did fine but then he took his eyes off the Savior and began to sink. As he was drowning he cried out the very same thing the Psalmist cried out in Psam116, “Lord save me!” (Matt. 14:30) The point in all this is not to say that the psalmist was literally drowning but rather that whatever situation or circumstance he was facing in life it was one of total helplessness and hopelessness apart from a direct, miraculous, and saving intervention by God. The picture we have in the psalm today is not one of God “helping someone who helps himself,” which is really a half-truth, if not an outright lie, but rather it is a picture of God saving someone who was totally helpless and powerless to save himself. The psalmist was in over his head and he was going to die unless God intervened in his life. Have you ever been in that kind of situation? Where you thought you were going to die? Either literally or figuratively? I imagine if you have been around long enough then your answer is likely yes. In fact, I don’t think you have to live very long in order to find yourself in such a situation. Danger and death are all around us and most folks have had an experience or two where were it not for the saving and merciful hand of God in their lives they would not be here today.

So the first truth we can learn from this text is a simple one. “The Lord saves.” Let me repeat that, “The Lord saves.” God hears our cries for salvation and he answers them in the affirmative. The text tells us that “The Lord is gracious… and our God is full of compassion. He protects the simple-hearted and when we are in great need and call out to him he saves us.” (v.6) The greatest truths in God’s Holy Word are not always the ones that are the most earth shattering, but rather they are the ones that are most simple and easy to understand. The Lord saves so cry out to Him for salvation and he will save you! Of course this warrants further explanation because we know that there have been many people who have cried out to God in the midst of drowning and they did not make it. God does not always deliver us of our physical infirmities. The world we live in is fallen and one day, no matter how many times God may have spared our lives in the past, our lives will not be spared and we will die. Nor is there a guarantee that we will be alleviated of all difficult circumstances or sins in our lives in this life on earth. Sometimes God in his sovereign grace chooses not to remove certain “thorns” from our lives so that we might learn to trust and rely upon Him as we fight against them, so that Christ’s strength will be made perfect in our lives in the midst of our weakness. This is what the apostle Paul said in his second letter to the Corinthians when he talked about praying to God three times for his “thorn in the flesh” (a problem in his life) to be removed but God said no so that Paul would learn to trust Jesus in the midst of his weakness and struggle. Sometimes God saves us by leaving the thorns in place because they draw us and keeps us closer to Him, as painful as it may be. But when it comes to salvation in our life with God the thorn of sin that separates us from God is always removed when we cry out for the Lord Jesus Christ to save us. Jesus Christ is our great High Priest (as we learned last week) and when he died on the cross for the sins of the world curtain of the temple that separated the people from God’s holy dwelling place was torn in two. After his death there was no more barrier and no more separation between a holy God and a sinful humanity. Jesus by his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead saved us by destroying that barrier and when we cry out him to save us God will save us, always. The Bible says “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (Jn. 3:16) It also says “If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” and that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Rom. 10:9,13) This you can bank on if you do not have a relationship with the Living God this morning. If you will ask the Lord Jesus Christ to save you and reconcile you back unto God he will do it. He saved

the dying thief on the cross and he saved the apostle Paul, a murderous persecutor of the church so why can’t he save you? Why won’t he save you? There is no sin or problem in your life that Jesus can’t forgive or won’t forgive if you will but give your life to him today. Christ did not die for some sins but all sins, except for one. The only sin he will not forgive is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. What is that? Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is denying the Spirit’s witness in your life that Jesus Christ is Lord. The role of the Holy Spirit is to point and lead us to the truth of Jesus Christ in our lives and when we blaspheme him, when we say to the Spirit thanks but no thanks, I do not need a Savior, then we die in our sin. That is the one sin Jesus will not forgive; the sin of throwing the gospel back in his face and saying I do not need you. I do not need your life, I do not need your death and I do not need your resurrection. I do not want you in my life and I do not want to have a relationship with you. I can save myself thank you very much, if there is even such a thing as needing to be saved! But all other sins Jesus can forgive. This is what makes the gospel so radical and seem so backward (even offensive) to the world. It means that a “good person” who lived a morally exemplary life in the eyes of the world can die in his sin and not be in God’s eternal Kingdom because in his self-righteousness he rejected the Savior while at the same time a person like Ted Bundy, a serial killer and rapist can be in God’s Kingdom if he truly confesses his sins and truly gives his heart to Christ, and truly seeks to live a life of repentance and service unto the Lord. Do you remember what the Westminster Confession of faith teaches concerning sin? It says that there is no sin so small that it does not deserve the condemnation and judgment of God, nor is there any sin so great that it cannot be forgiven by God if one will but trust in Christ. What the confession of faith teaches is Biblical and true. So long as you are not a blasphemer there is hope for you, if you will but ask Jesus to save you and make you right with the Father. And if you’re a blasphemer then the only hope you have is to cease your blaspheming and accept Christ for who he is. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the one sin that must be stopped before one’s conversion to Christ because it is the one sin in the world that prevents a person from coming to the Lord 100% of the time. In short, an alcoholic doesn’t have to put the bottle down before he comes to Jesus, though the Lord is going to want to deal with that, but you do have to stop your blaspheming because it is your blaspheming that is keeping you from asking the Lord Jesus Christ to save you. The way this sermon has unfolded was a little different than what I had in mind at the outset. I entitled the message “How can I repay the Lord?” based off v. 13 of the text which says, “How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me?” Some translations say “What shall I return to the Lord?” or “What can I render unto the Lord?” They are all basically asking the same question. What am I supposed to do for God in response to God’s salvation in my life? That was

what I was originally going to focus on but instead I ended up unpacking the salvation teaching in the text. But if you will permit me a moment to answer what I originally set out to do. What are we supposed to do? How can I repay God for all his goodness to me? In one sense you can’t. His goodness to you is far greater than anything you could ever give in return to him but you can lift up the cup of salvation and seek to fulfill your vows to the Lord. You do this not because you think it will save you but rather because of gratitude in your heart for his mercy and grace in your life. The Lord Jesus Christ saves you so that you can worship him (that is lifting up the cup of salvation) and so that you will grow in holiness unto the Lord (that is fulfilling your vows, learning to walk in obedience to him as a changed and changing new creation in Christ). The table is set before us all today. Here we have the gospel made visible and tangible before our very eyes. The cup of salvation that was shed for sins and the bread of life that was broken for our salvation is before us. This is a table for sinners and all sinners who trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins are welcome. You do not have to perfect to come to this table but you have to be willing to walk in repentance and do your best to keep your vows unto the Lord. Sure, you have failed and so have I but our merciful God stills call us to repent and keep our vows out of gratitude for his gift of Jesus. If you’re willing to do that then the invitation stands to take the bread and wine and “lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.” In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.