Miles de Libros Cristianos Gratis. Accede a nuestra Biblioteca Virtual

Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 116:12

Para un estudio avanzado de: “Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 116:12” utilice nuestra app.

What shall I render unto the LORD [for] all his benefits toward me?

12. ‘Quid retribuam Domino pro omnibus quae retribuit mihi?’ was the question which Richard of Bury, bishop of Durham 1334 1345, the most learned man of his country and age, asked himself repeatedly, and answered by making provision for a band of poor scholars to serve God and His Church. See Lightfoot’s Leaders of the Northern Church, p. 105.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? – All his recompences, – the same word which in Psa 116:7 is rendered hath dealt bountifully. The question here has reference to that. What return can be equal to his bounties; what will be a proper acknowledgment of them; with what can I repay him for them all? The question is a natural and a proper question. It is one which we naturally ask when we have received a favor from our fellowmortals; how much more proper is it in view of the favors which we receive from God – especially in view of the mercy of God in the gift of a Saviour; the love manifested in the redemption of the soul! What can be an adequate return for love like that – for mercies so great, so undeserved?

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Psa 116:12-14

What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?

Giving thanks by taking more

There is a wonderful ministry of contrast in this varied psalm. A diamond resting upon black plush or velvet shines with a more dazzling lustre. And so it is with the bright patches in this psalm, they are lifted into a still whiter radiance by their surroundings. Take this bit of black environment: The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow. And now take this gracious bit of light lying just upon the very fringe of the dark country: Gracious is the Lord and righteous; yea, our God is merciful! The Lord preserveth the simple. And here, again, is a similar contrast: I was greatly afflicted; I said in my haste, All men are liars. How sweet is the music that follows! What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me? My text is therefore born of the brighter season, when the storm is dying and rumbling away in the distance, and the sun is out again. We find him overwhelmed in the contemplation of Divine benefits. All His benefits toward me. He is amazed at the richness and the multitude of the favours which surround him. He is engirt by the vast crowd of Divine guests! Into whatever room of his house he enters, the guests are there. In highway and byway they throng his steps! Now, here is a very matured attainment of the spiritual man. To perceive and appreciate our benefits necessitates a very refined soul. That is so upon the merely human plane. There are some men who cannot appreciate kindness. They either never see them or they misconstrue them. They are the victims either of dulness or pride, and both these foul spirits make this kind of appreciation impossible. But this spiritual numbness is even more apparent in our relationship to the Divine. We receive multitudes of benefits, but we do not see the Divine mark upon their foreheads. We take them in, but they are not revealed to us as the Kings bounty. It is amazing how fine is the perception of other souls! They never open their eyes without seeing the presence of the hosts of God. The mountains are full of horses and chariots. Having nothing, they yet possess all things. Now, this is a fine perception which can be cultivated by continual exercise. We can have our senses exercised to discern. It is amazing how we can cultivate even a bodily perception. We can train it so as to discover even more minute distinctions. And it is the same with the senses by which we realize the presence of the Divine. But the exercise must be deliberate. We must set about in dead-set purpose to discern the mercies of the Lord. We must just be on the look-out for them as a botanist is on the look-out for wild flowers as he walks the country lanes. You must sit down to-night, for instance, and range over your life to-day, and seek out with eager eyes the mercies which have been about your path. Get hold of Frances Ridley Havergals Journal of Mercies, and she will help you in the cultivation of the finer sight. And then the happy issue is this, that what begins in deliberate exercise becomes an instinctive habit. Our souls can become habituated to the perception. Day after day your life would appear more and more filled with the bountiful guests of the Lord. What is the issue of such contemplation? The fountains of desire are unsealed. Love awakes, and yearns to make some return unto the Lord who has poured His benefits upon us. What shall I render unto the Lord? Have I ever used that word? If such phrase has never leapt to my lips it is because I have never gazed upon the mercies of the King. What return can I make? Now, mark this; the first answer which comes from a soul that has attained to fine spiritual perception is this–I will take the cup of salvation. How exceedingly strange it all is! He asks what he can render, and he answers that he will further take! And this is the very essence of true gratitude. The best return we can make for a gift of God is to take a higher gift. Have you thanked Him for your daily bread? Then the best return you can make is to take the bread of life. Have you thanked Him for your sleep? Then the best return you can make is to take His gift of rest and peace. Have you thanked Him for your health? Then the best return you can make is to seek His gift of holiness. I will take the cup of salvation. I will take the finest thing upon the Lords table! He has given me this gift, now I will take a bigger gift! But that is not the only return the psalmist makes. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now. When the cords of death compassed him he had made a strong and secret vow. He said to himself, If I get over this I will live a more pronounced life unto the Lord! If I get my strength back, I will use it for the King. If I get out of this darkness, I will take a lamp and light the feet of other men! And now he is better again, and he sets about to redeem his vow. The midnight vow was redeemed in the morning! As soon as he was out of the peril he remembered his covenant. Now! There must be no delay. In this sphere delays are attended with infinite peril. Aye, and he will surround the redemption of his vow with publicity. In the presence of all His people. He will do something publicly which will strongly proclaim him on Gods side, and tell to all men that he has given his devotion to Him. And that must be our way. The vow we made in secret must be performed openly. We must do something to indicate that we have passed through a great experience, and that we are remembering the benefits of the Lord. We can speak His name to another. We can write some gracious letter to a friend. We can attach ourselves publicly to the Masters Church. We can commit ourselves openly and outwardly as professed followers of the King. (J. H. Jowett, M.A.)

Awake, sweet gratitude

I. A very suitable inquiry. It contains–

1. A remembrance of all His benefits.

2. A recognition of the Lords consequent claim.

3. A desire appropriately to acknowledge these benefits.

4. An overwhelming sense of inability to acknowledge Gods mercy.

II. A truly remarkable reply.

1. Thank God for the cup of communion, and the cup of consolation. The best way to praise Him for mercies past is to accept mercies present, and to anticipate the mercies that are still in store.

2. True prayer is worship, homage. As a sickly flower pent within the cottage window turns itself towards the sun, and by drinking in its beams worships it, so you who have nothing to give to the collection, so you who have no talents for Sunday school teaching, so you whose lives seem to be one dull round, one common task, do worship God in most spiritual fashion by just breathing His air, imbibing His beams, meditating on His mercy, and asking still for more.

3. Praise and prayer are acceptable to God, and better sacrifices could hardly be, but with praising and praying the psalmist links paying. Do not divorce one from the other. Do not rob God. Have you never read of one who, being brought to the place of martyrdom, kneeled down in the mire at Smithfield, and, lifting up his eyes to heaven, said, I will pay my vows now in the midst of thee, O Smithfield? The place was red with the blood of saints, and brown with the burning of fires! Ah me! the lines are fallen to us in pleasant places; we have a goodly heritage. Will you pay your vows unto the Lord in the basement of the tabernacle? Smithfields fires are out, thank God. It should be easier for us to be consecrated, and devoted, and whole-hearted here and now. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Harvest Thanksgiving

The importance of gratitude in the heart of man cannot be over-estimated. This is true, even viewing it as an item in the economy of human things. But the sin and the shame of not possessing it are surely greatest when men are found unthankful to their God. What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits? It is a practical question, for God does not expect any reward from us which we cannot give.

1. And, first, might we not have a full appreciation of Gods goodness? This would please Him. There are times certainly when we should practise abstinence, but to say this is very far from teaching that it is sinful to appreciate and use to the full the means of sustenance and enjoyment which God has given. A full appreciation of the beauty of the world in which we live,–of the warmth of its sunshine and the fragrance of its flowers, of the strength and healing in its kindly fruits,–is one of the least rewards God merits and expects. A lack of due appreciation is one of the seeds of ingratitude.

2. And then, too, let us be patient in all the circumstances of our life. This also will please God. There may be some who are in want. What shall we say to such as these? Shall we be content to tell them of a better land? Let us tell them of that country, and lead them thither, but let us also tell them to be patient here. Tell them that Jesus, who laid their burden upon them, will help them to bear its weight. Sweet are the uses of adversity if it leads us to trust more in Him. I once heard of a man who was rich, and happy in his wealth. Suddenly a reverse in fortune came, and he lost all. Yet, even in misfortune, he was still happy. On being asked the reason why he was happy in all circumstances of life, he answered, When I was rich, I saw God in all things. Now that I am poor, I have all things in God. Brethren, in your patience possess ye your souls.

3. And God expects us to be kind. That will surely please Him, for He has said, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me. The very existence of the poor (and we have them with us always) is an opportunity for good works. May all of us in time learn the luxury of doing good. We have kept the grandest lesson of harvest till the last.

4. It leads our thoughts on from carnal food to Jesus, who is the Bread of Life. As food is necessary for the sustenance of the body, so is Jesus necessary for the life of the soul. Therefore, like David, let us take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord. (F. St. John Corbett.)

How may each Christian best glorify God?

I. The benefits which we Have received from God. The catalogue is endless. It stretches into eternity. Converting mercy–pardoning mercy–renewing mercy–justifying mercy–restoring mercy–supporting mercy;–where shall I close the enumeration?

II. The return of gratitude and love which God requires at your hand.

1. There are methods of glorifying God common to every Christian. Every Christian must dedicate his body to God as His temple. Surrender to Him the key of every apartment. Lay open to Him every chamber of your heart. Let your spirit bow before Him as He enters in, and hail Him Lord of all that it contains.

2. By employing your talents in His service. If you are the property of God, then all the powers of the mind, as well as the members of the body, are individually his right. (T. Raffles, D. D.)

What shall I give to Him?

I. The desire that prompts the question.

1. It seems to be a law of nature that some return should be made for benefits received.

2. Gratitude can only be shown by making some return.

3. Thanksgiving is the peculiar privilege of the saint.

4. How may we know when we are truly thankful?

(1) When we are quick to see and slow to forget our mercies.

(2) When our heart is in our praises.

(3) When there is an absence of all thought of human merit.

II. Some thoughts suggested by the question.

1. The possessions of God.

2. Our own poverty.

III. The only answer that can be given. The hearts gratitude is all the saint can give in return for mercies that are fresh with every hour, and as numerous as the seconds in the day. Do not niggardly withhold the only thing you can render. Praise Him, it costs nothing, it is all that you can do, and it is just what He is willing to accept. Not to do so is disloyalty to heavens throne. But if thanksgiving be good, remember thanksliving is better, therefore let thy whole life join in the harmony. (A. G. Brown.)

What will you do

The text is the language of a man who sees religion in its true light.

I. The benefits received.

1. The benefit of answered prayer. The ancient Romans had many gods, some of which they regarded as their especial deities; but they were so much afraid of some other nation stealing or enticing their gods away that they never mentioned their names; and in one instance the marble image of a god was actually chained in the temple, to prevent his leaving them or being spirited away to some other place. Being fickle themselves, they believed their gods were also fickle. The blessedness of true religion, based upon Divine revelation, is that is clearly shows that our God will never leave us. He has promised, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. God careth for us because He is our Creator and our Redeemer. He is a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God.

2. The Lord had redeemed his soul from death. Then, because He has redeemed your soul from death on the cross, what will you render unto the Lord? Will you not take the cup of salvation? Will you not be the Lords servant and pay your vows in the presence of His people?

II. The return made for these benefits. I will take the cup of salvation. Jesus spoke of His body as bread and of His blood as wine; and when He told His disciples that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood, it is evident He meant that we must get our spiritual nourishment from believing in the truth and love of His Gospel, and our strength from practising that truth and love in our lives. It is considered doubly treacherous to injure or betray a man of whose bread and wine you have partaken. The Arabs say that if you eat bread with them or taste their salt, they can never injure you; everlastingly they are your friends. Now, when you take the cup at what is called the Lords Supper, it means, likewise, that you publicly testify that you are a friend of Jesus who died for you; and when you eat the bread, you mean that you earnestly desire to receive the truth, which the bread represents. Partaking of this cup also means that we trust our Lord. Alexander of Greece was warned by a friend that his physician was seeking an opportunity of poisoning him; but, when the physician next time presented the cup, Alexander looked in his face steadfastly, and then, taking it in his hand, said, I drink to show my trust in thee! (W. Birch.)

I will take the cup of salvation.—

Taking from God the best giving to God

It is a most natural thing, as all languages show, to talk of a mans lot, either of sorrow or of joy, as the cup which he has to drink; and there are plenty of instances of the metaphor in the psalms, such as Thou art the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup, Thou maintainest my lot. My cup runneth over. That familiar emblem is all that is wanted here. The cup of salvation expresses, by its plural form, the fulness and variety of the manifold and multiform deliverances which God had wrought and was working for the psalmist His whole lot in life appears to him as a cup-full of tender goodness, loving faithfulness, delivering grace. It runs over with Divine acts of help and sustenance. As his grateful heart thinks of all Gods benefits to him, he feels at once the impulse to requite and the impossibility of doing it. The great thought, then, which lies here is that we best requite God by thankfully taking what He gives.

I. Now, I note how deep that thought goes into the heart of God. Why is it that we honour God most by taking, not by giving? The first answer that occurs to you, no doubt, is–because of His all-sufficiency and our emptiness. No doubt that is quite true; and, rightly understood, that is a strengthening and a glad truth. But is that all which can be said in explanation of this principle? The principle of our text reposes at last on God is love and wishes our hearts, and not merely on God has all and does not need our gifts. He delights in no recompense, but only in the payment of a heart won to His love and melted by His mercies.

II. But now let us look at the elements which make up this requital of God in which He delights. And, first, let us be sure that we recognize the real contents of our cup. It is a cup of salvation, however hard it is sometimes to believe it. How much blessing and happiness we all rob ourselves of by our slowness to feel that! Then, again, another of the elements of this requital of God is–be sure that you take what God gives. There can be no greater slight and dishonour to a giver than to have his gifts neglected. Do not complain of your thirsty lips till you are sure that you have emptied the cup of salvation which God gives. One more element of this requital of God has still to be named–the thankful recognition of Him in all our feasting,–call on the name of the Lord. Without this, the preceding precept would be a piece of pure selfish epicureanism–and without this it would be impossible. Only he who enjoys life in God enjoys it worthily. Only he who enjoys life in God enjoys it at all. This is the true infusion which gives sweetness to whatever of bitter, and more of sweetness to whatever of sweet, the cup may contain, when the name of the Lord is pronounced above it. If we carried that spirit with us into all our small duties, sorrows, and gladnesses, how different they would all seem! We should not then find that Gods gifts hid Him from us. Nothing would be too great for us to attempt, nothing too small for us to put our strength into. There is an old legend of an enchanted cup filled with poison, and put treacherously into a kings hand. He signed the sign of the cross and named the name of God over it–and it shivered in his grasp. Do you take this name of the Lord as a test. Name Him over many a cup which you are eager to drink of, and the glittering fragments will lie at your feet, and the poison be spilled on the ground. What you cannot lift before His pure eyes and think of Him while you enjoy, is not for you. Friendships, schemes, plans, ambitions, amusements, speculations, studies, loves, businesses–can you call on the name of the Lord while you put these cups to your lips? If not, fling them behind you–for they are full of poison which, for all its sugared sweetness, at the last will bite like a serpent and sting like an adder. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Taking in giving

What shall I render? Take! Why, the whole essence of Christianity is in that antithesis, if you think about it. For what does the doctrine that a man is saved by faith mean, if it does not mean that the one thing that we all have to do is to accept what God bestows? And the same attitude of reception which we have to assume at the beginning of our Christian life must be maintained all through it. Depend upon it, we shall make far more progress in the Divine life if we learn that each step of it must begin with the acceptance of a gift from God, than if we toil, and moil, and wear ourselves with vain efforts in our own strength. I do not mean that a Christian man is not to put forth such efforts, but I do mean that the basis of all profitable discipline, and self-control, and reaching out towards higher attainments, either in knowledge or in practical conformity to Jesus Christ, which he puts forth, must be laid in fuller acceptance of Gods gift, on which must follow building on the foundation, by resolute efforts to work Gods gift into our characters, and to work it out in our lives. All around you, Christian men, there lie infinite possibilities. God does not wait to be asked to give; He has given once for all; and continuously as the result of that once-for-all giving, just as preservation is but the prolongation of the act of creation. He has given, once for all, and continuously, all that every man, and all men, need, for their being made perfectly like Himself. We hear people praying for larger bestowments of grace. Let them take the bestowments that they have, and they will find them enough for their need. God communicated His whole fulness to the Church for ever when He sent His Son, and when His Son sent His Spirit. Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it. Take what you have and you will find that you have all that you need. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Receiving and rendering

The two component parts of true religion are receiving and rendering. As to the first disciples, so to each one of us, according to the several providential gifts and spiritual graces bestowed upon each, the Master still says, Freely ye have received, freely give. And I doubt not many a financial loss that has overtaken wealthy or well-to-do members of the Church has been visited upon them because while they received they failed to render. The true record of the bankruptcy of many a Christian merchant might be written thus:–First, he failed to render to his God; then, and therefore, he failed to receive from God (for God could no longer give where no adequate return was made), and then, lastly and consequently, he failed to pay his fellows. But whether or not such retribution overtakes the unjust steward in this life, there can be no doubt that when the Lord returns He will require the balance-sheet to be presented–a balance-sheet in which the receiving and the rendering alike will he faithfully chronicled; and then the Lord will render unto every man according to his work.

I. The psalmist refers to the great benefit of personal salvation (verse 16). It is true that as you were not redeemed with such corruptible things as silver and gold, so such things as silver and gold can never make adequate repayment to your Redeemer. He claims your love, your life; not yours, but you. And yet shall we refuse these corruptible things when by them we may bring honour to our Saviour and help to extend His kingdom?

II. The psalmist refers, again, to the great benefit of pious parentage. The son of Thine handmaid–how great a blessing is acknowledged in those simple words! Through this small loophole we can see the inestimable advantages of a religious home. The psalmist makes no reference to his father, but his mothers pre-eminent piety stands before him still, and he recognizes it as one of his choicest blessings when he says, I am Thy servant and the son of Thine handmaid. How many of us have to thank God for this priceless benefit–the benefit of a pious parentage and religious training!

III. The psalmist also refers–and, as it is the occasion of the psalm, refers at length–to the benefit of restored health and prolonged life. Through pain and weakness he had been brought low. Disease held him fast in its fierce grip, so that he found trouble and sorrow. The sorrows of death compassed him–came crowding round him on every side, till there seemed to be no escape; and the pains of hell–the mysteries of the unseen world and the darkness of the grave–got hold upon him. Then in his pain and misery he cried unto the Lord, and God heard his voice and his supplication. Precious in the sight of the Lord was the death of His saint; i.e. it was not lightly regarded by God that His servant should perish. He rebuked the destroyer, made Death ungrasp his fainting prey. He delivered his soul from death, his eyes from tears, his feet from falling. And now, with health restored and life prolonged, the psalmist cries, What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits towards me? And he answers, I will walk before God in the land of the living; I will pay my vows unto the Lord; I will offer to Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving. (J. H. Grooves.)

The cup of salvation

In the Bible the cup is used to represent the condition of a man, his circumstances, and his portion (Psa 11:6; Psa 16:5; Psa 23:5; Psa 60:3; Psa 75:8). The cup of salvation is the condition of deliverance, which this psalm celebrates, not the drink-offering appointed by the law, not the cup of blessing. Noahs deliverance was a cup of salvation. To call upon the name of the Lord is a phrase of greater power than to call upon the Lord. There is a reference, in the use of the word name, to the manifestations of God, to historical Divine manifestations (Exo 3:13-15).

I. God giving.

1. A personal God.

2. Something which the personal God has provided and arranged, held out to His creatures.

3. A recognition of a relation with us upon Gods part, and of dependence upon our part.

4. Kindness shown. The cup of blessing is a revelation of love.

II. Man taking. Here it may be said, Will he not invariably take? Must he not take? The taking here is not a simple laying hold of that which God gives, but the use and enjoyment of what God bestows. To take the cup of salvation is to receive a blessing in all its fulness, to the utmost limit of our receptive capacity, and of our power to accept and to enjoy.

III. Gods servant seeing God in what he takes. There is a name of God on every cup and in each act of offering a cup. The words, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, represent the God who is to be seen in the lives of these men. But God is as really in the lives of Robinson, and Smith, and Jones, as in the lives of the patriarchs. God is in health and in healing, in wealth and in extrication from poverty, in prosperity and in lifting up out of adversity. In His giving and working and ministering and protecting, God is ever writing His name. One point of difference between the godly and ungodly is that the former see God in connection with their cup, and that the latter see Him not. As far as a landscape without sunshine is inferior to a landscape upon which the sun sheds his rays, is the appearance of blessings when separated from God, to the same blessings when regarded as the gift of His hand.

IV. Worship, the fruit of what we receive and see. And will call upon the name of the Lord. Past and present gifts on the part of God should encourage us in three things–prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. (S. Martin.)

Taking all God offers

How much more happy we should all be, if we only received all that God offers and accepted more cordially that which we do take! A writer in The Reader, in an admirable article on Thermo-electrical Science, observes, Like windmills, thermo-electric batteries might be erected over the country, and entrap, finally converting into mechanical motion, and thus into money, gleams of sunshine, which would be as wind to the sails of the mill. What stores of fabulous wealth are, as far as our earth is concerned, constantly wasted by the non-retention of solar rays poured on the desert of Sahara. Nature here refuses to use her wonderful radiation net, for we cannot cover the desert sands with trees, and man is left alone to try his skill in retaining solar energy. Hitherto helpless, we need not be so much longer, and the force of a Sahara sun may be carried through wires to Cairo, and thence irrigate the desert, or possibly, if need be, it could pulsate under our streets, and be made to burn in Greenland. Take up your neglected mercies, my brethren. Take the cup which you have overlooked and despised. Take the cup entirely, which you have taken but partially, and with the taking of every cup call upon the name of the Lord. (S. Martin.)

The cup of life

The whole lot in life of the psalmist appears to him like a cup full of tender, good, loving faithfulness and delivering grace. And why is it that the best return for Gods goodness is by further taking, not by giving? The principle upon which this text rests ultimately is that God is love, and wants our hearts, and not merely that God has everything and does not need our gifts. Take the illustration of our own case. Do we not feel that all the bloom and beauty are gone from a gift if the giver hopes to receive anything in return? Love gives because it delights to give. It gives to express itself, and to bless the giver. If there be any thought of return, it is only the return of love. And that is how God gives. As St. James expresses it, He is the giving God. I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. The Jewish father at the head of his family on the old Passover day, at a certain period in the family feast, solemnly lifted the wine cup and breathed a thanksgiving to God, and then drank of it with all around him. This word here I will take we may fairly translate as I will raise. Perhaps it is intended that there should be preserved for us within the sacred word that old picture as emblematic of the consecration that should rest upon all our happiness and upon all our life–the remembrance of God, the calling upon the name of the Lord. Christ gave us not merely the ritual of an ordinance, but the pattern of all our life, when He took the cup and gave thanks. And so common joys become sacraments, and enjoyments in our homes and in our innocent pleasures become worship, and the cup of mingled bitter and sweet that is provided for each of us by our loving Father becomes a cup of blessing and of salvation over which and by reason of which we can come more fully to recognize and praise the goodness of God. (M. Hartley.)

The cup of salvation

This cup of salvation is standing on the table of infinite love, filled to the brim with the wine of the Kingdom; all heaven is there in solution, all joy, peace, comfort, security, for the word salvation covers all. How came it there? Ages back man was tempted and drank of a forbidden cup; it wrought madness in the brain, enmity in the heart, and the poison spread into all parts of his being, and as the result of the first draught he had to drink of another, the cup of sorrow. But over and beyond there is a third cup of Gods holy anger against sin, deep and filled with wormwood and gall. The Man Christ Jesus comes in a body like our own, He looks on the cup of Divine anger, He takes and begins, to drink, and finds it a cup of trembling and amazement, but never a moments pause or hesitation till He came to the dregs, and His anguished soul cried, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? and He puts it down and says, It is finished. He rises again; and now the cup which He had drained is as full of blessing as it was of woe. It is the cup of Gods salvation. Take the cup of salvation, not make. So many are wanting to tread out grapes of their own good works and put them into the cup, but that is filled with the wine which comes from Jesus Himself, having been trodden in the winepress. Take, not admire and wonder. Take, not only hold it in a trembling hand, but drink, put it to thy lips and say, I will take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. All believers may take a fresh and a deeper draught, and the more you drink of this wine the more sober you become, and the deeper and sweeter, for there is more in Christ than was ever dreamed of, and a delight in Gods salvation that could never be thought possible. (A. G. Brown.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 12. What shall I render] mah ashib, “What shall I return?”

For his benefits] tagmulohi, “His retributions,” the returns he had made to my prayers and faith.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Yet notwithstanding all my dangers and my distrust of God too, God hath conferred so many and great blessings upon me, that I can never make sufficient returns to him for them.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

12-14. These are modes ofexpressing acts of worship (compare Psa 116:4;Psa 50:14; Jon 2:9).

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

What shall I render unto the Lord?…. He considers the Lord only as the author and giver of his mercies, and has nothing to say of his own merits, nor of other persons, who might be instruments of good to him; but is for giving all the glory to God: not as though he could render anything proportional or equivalent to what he had received, but as having a grateful sense of mercies, and willing, to express it; though at a loss, in a great measure, in what manner to do it, and therefore puts this question to himself and others:

[for] all his benefits towards me; or, “all his benefits are upon me” m. This being a clause of itself; and shows what moved him to put the question he did; a sense of divine favours was impressed upon him, a load of benefits lay on him, and he wanted to ease himself in expressions of gratitude. These benefits were the blessings of nature and providence; his being, and the preservation of it, food, raiment, c. and the blessings of grace spiritual blessings, all things pertaining to life and godliness, sanctification, adoption, pardon, justification, and eternal life. These may well be called “benefits”, since they spring entirely from the free grace of God; and they were many, more than could be counted and reckoned up, and set in order before the Lord; and yet he was desirous that none of them might be forgotten, but that praise might be rendered to the Lord for them all.

m So Montanus, Junius & Tremellius, Cocceius, Michaelis.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

12. What shall I render unto Jehovah? He now exclaims with devout admiration, that the multitude of God’s benefits was greater than he could find language to give expression to the grateful emotions of his heart. The question is emphatic, What shall I render? and imports, that it was not the desire, but the means, of which he was destitute, to enable him to render thanks to God. Acknowledging his inability, he adopts the only means in his power, by extolling the grace of God as highly as he could. “I am exceedingly wishful to discharge my duty, but when I look around me, I find nothing which will prove an adequate recompense.” Some understand the phrase, upon me, to intimate, that David had the recollection of all the benefits which God bestowed on him deeply engraven upon his mind. Others, along with the LXX., supply the particle for, What shall I render unto Jehovah for all his benefits towards me? But it is much better to make the first clause of the verse a complete sentence, by putting a period after Jehovah. Because, after confessing his incompetency, or rather his having nothing to offer to God as a sufficient compensation for his benefits, he at the same time adds in confirmation of it, that he was laid under such obligations, not by one series of benefits only, but by a variety of innumerable benefits. “There is no benefit on account of which God has not made me a debtor to him, how should I have means of repaying him for them?” All recompense failing him, he has recourse to an expression of thanksgiving as the only return which he knows will be acceptable to God. David’s example in this instance teaches us not to treat God’s benefits lightly or carelessly, for if we estimate them according to their value, the very thought of them ought to fill us with admiration. There is not one of us who has not God’s benefits heaped upon us. But our pride, which carries us away into extravagant theories, causes us to forget this very doctrine, which ought nevertheless to engage our unremitting attention. And God’s bounty towards us merits the more praise, that he expects no recompense from us, nor can receive any, for he stands in need of nothing, and we are poor and destitute of all things.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

12. What shall I render From the memories of human faithlessness, which, if dwelt upon, would have awakened only censoriousness and bitterness, the psalmist turns to the deliverance wrought by his faithful God, and to his duty of love and praise.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

DISCOURSE: 691
HOW TO REQUITE THE LORD FOR HIS MERCIES

Psa 116:12-14. What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me! I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people.

THE influence of faith on our eternal salvation is obvious to all who have any just views of the Gospel: but its operation on the mind in this present life, and its efficacy to produce peace and holiness, are by no means generally understood. In this view however the psalm before us is peculiarly instructive. David, when his faith failed him, overlooked all the mercies that he had received at the Lords hands, and rashly concluded, that all which had been declared to him respecting the purpose of God to establish him on the throne of Israel, was false: I said in my haste, all men are liars. But, when his faith was strengthened, he no longer gave way to such querulous expressions and desponding fears: on the contrary, he then was full of peace and joy; and with the liveliest emotions of love and gratitude, exclaimed, What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards me? That we may be brought to this happy state of mind, and may be led to abound in praise and thanksgiving, let us contemplate,

The benefits which our God has conferred upon us

On such an inexhaustible subject as this, we can do no more than suggest a few leading thoughts, which may be more largely prosecuted in our secret retirement. To contemplate them in all their fulness will be the blissful employment of eternity. Let us notice those,

Of creation

[How distinguished is our condition above all other creatures upon the face of the earth! In bodily powers, it is true, we are exceeded by many; who have not only far greater strength and agility than we, but their senses also, of sight, and hearing, and taste, and smelling, and of feeling also, far more exquisite than ours. But the endowment of reason elevates us far above them all, and puts them all, in some degree at least, in subjection under our feet. In them indeed is instinct, and that too in such perfection as almost to border on the province of reason; but in us is a capacity to comprehend things of spiritual and eternal import, and an ability to know, to love, to enjoy, to glorify our God. Say whether these be not mercies which call for the devoutest gratitude at our hands?
Nor is it a small matter that we have been brought into the world at such a time, when the light of Gods truth is so clearly seen, and in such a place as Britain, where it shines forth, as it were, in meridian splendour. We might have been born of Mahometan or Heathen parents; or even in our own country have been so situated, as to hear but little of Christ and his salvation. Surely we should not overlook these great benefits, nor forget what a mercy it is to live in this present day, when there exists such an ardent zeal for the propagation of the Gospel, and such unprecedented efforts are made for its diffusion throughout the world.]

Of Providence

[Innumerable are the deliverances which we have all received from dangers seen and unseen. Millions have been taken out of the world before they had attained our age; and it is to Gods gracious care alone we owe it, that we have yet space given us for repentance, and time afforded us for securing the things belonging to our peace. And how different might be our condition from what it is! We might be so destitute of every comfort, and so oppressed with pain and anguish, that our very existence, instead of being a blessing, might be a burthen and a curse. We all, it is true, have trials of some kind or other; but we all have our consolations also; and those who have most afflictions, have in themselves an evidence, how greatly we are all indebted to our God for that measure of consolation which is given to mitigate our sorrows, and how infinitely short of our deserts is any trouble which is allotted us in this world.]

Of Redemption

[But how shall we speak of this? Who can comprehend the height and depth of Gods love displayed in it? That God should so pity us as to give his only-begotten Son to die for us! that he should lay our iniquities on him, as our Surety, and thus make a way for the display of all his own glorious perfections in the salvation of man! What shall we say to this? It is a love that passeth knowledge. Every part of it is described as far exceeding all finite comprehension. The riches of grace contained in it, are unsearchable: the peace flowing from it, passeth understanding: the joyimparted by it, is unspeakable and full of glory. The whole mystery of redemption, as contrived, as executed, as applied, and as experienced in the souls of men, is so great, that we cannot contemplate it a moment, without exclaiming, O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out [Note: Rom 11:33.]!]

Having thus briefly touched upon the mercies of our God, let us proceed to mark,

II.

The sense we should have of them

It is not any slight acknowledgment that becomes us: we should contemplate them,

With overwhelming gratitude

[This is implied in the Psalmists expression, What shall I render unto the Lord? It is not a calm inquiry, but the language of a heart oppressed, as it were, with a load of obligation. A man who can speak calmly on such a subject, nay, I had almost said, a man who can speak at all upon it, feels it not as he ought; it is too big for utterance: as, in a mind overwhelmed with conscious unworthiness, the Spirit of God maketh intercession with groans which cannot be uttered, so methinks, if we had a just apprehension of the benefits conferred upon us, our sense of them would be expressed rather in a way of silent adoration, than of verbal acknowledgment. We do not mean by this, that men should not sing praises to their God, and tell of all his wondrous works; for it is our bounden duty to celebrate them to the utmost of our power [Note: Isa 12:4-6.]: but, in our present state of darkness and ignorance, it is rarely given to men so fully to behold all the wonders of Gods love, as to have their organs of vision blinded by the overwhelming splendour of the light: we see at present only in part: we behold things only, as in a mirror, darkly: as Moses put a veil upon his face to hide from the admiring Israelites that glory which they were unable steadfastly to behold, so God has, in mercy, veiled even his goodness from us, because we are incapable of supporting the ineffable effulgence of his glory. Of what we do see, we must say, with Job, Lo, these are parts of his ways; but how little a portion is heard of him! but the thunder of his power (we may add too, the riches of his goodness) who can understand [Note: Job 26:14.]?]

With practical self-devotion

[However overwhelmed our minds may be, there must be in us a determination of heart to render to the Lord all the service of which he has made us capable. Our gratitude to him must be, not in word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth. His love must have a constraining influence on our souls: it must constrain us no longer to live unto ourselves, but unto Him who died for us, and rose again [Note: 2Co 5:14-15.]. Every blessing we enjoy must lead us to Him, who of his great mercy and bounty has bestowed it on us: and the consideration of redeeming love especially must animate us to a total surrender of ourselves, in body, soul, and spirit, to the service of our God [Note: 1 These. 5:23.]. As, under the Law, the slaughtered victims were wholly burnt by fire upon the altar, so, under the Gospel, must we offer ourselves up wholly to the Lord as living sacrifices. This is nothing more than our reasonable service [Note: Rom 12:1.]: We are not our own; we are bought with a price: and therefore we should glorify God in our body and in our spirit, which are his [Note: 1Co 6:20.].]

But let us somewhat more distinctly consider,

III.

The way in which we should requite them

The example of the pious Jews is very instructive
[The Jews were encouraged under their troubles to betake themselves to God, and to make vows unto the Most High: and these vows they were required strictly to perform. On paying their vows to their heavenly Benefactor, they presented certain sacrifices, of which they and their families were permitted to partake, in remembrance of Gods mercies towards them, and as an expression of their gratitude to him [Note: Lev 7:12. Deu 12:6-7; Deu 12:17-18.]. On these occasions, it was common for the master of the family to close the feast by taking a cup of wine, and drinking of it, first himself, and afterwards all his family in succession; and then to close the whole with a hymn. To this custom it should seem that David refers in other psalms [Note: Psa 66:13-16; Psa 107:22.], as well as in the passage before us: and our blessed Lord adopted it as a suitable method of commemorating the wonders of his dying love [Note: Mat 26:27.]. He took a cup, and blessed it, and gave it to his disciples, that they, and all his followers, to the very end of time, might drink it in remembrance of his blood shed for the remission of their sins [Note: 1Co 11:25.].]

After this example we should pay our vows, and receive the cup of salvation, or, as that used by the Jews was called, the cup of deliverances
[Is it asked, What sacrifice are we to offer? I answer, The sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving [Note: Heb 13:15.]. The calves of our lips are far more acceptable to God than all the burnt-offerings that ever were offered [Note: Psa 50:13-14. with Hos 14:2.]. And surely the sacramental cup, of which every Believer should frequently partake, may at once remind us of all the mercies we have ever received, and be taken by us as a memorial of Gods unbounded love to us, and of our unfeigned surrender of ourselves to him. In these expressions of our love and gratitude we should have all the powers of our souls called forth: all that is within us should bless the name of our God: and the entire devotion of ourselves to his service should bear witness to our sincerity before him. Never are we to be restrained by fear or shame: no; we must pay our vows in the presence of all his people. If we are ashamed of Christ, what can we expect, but that he will be ashamed of us? But, if we confess him before men, then will he also confess us in the presence of his Father and his holy angels. Here then is the service which we are to render unto God in return for all his benefits: we are to confess him, to magnify him, to adore him, to give up ourselves to him as his redeemed people, to live altogether by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, receiving all out of his fulness, and improving all for the honour of his name. So entirely should we be the Lords, that whether we eat, or drink, or whatever we do, we should do all to his glory [Note: 1Co 10:31.].]

Address
1.

Those who have never yet instituted this inquiry

[Alas! how many have never made any other use of Gods mercies, but to render them means of self-destruction, and instruments of dishonouring their God! Has he given them abundance! they have employed it in riot and excess. Has he vouchsafed to them health and strength? they have turned these blessings into an occasion of more unbridled licentiousness. Has he bestowed intellectual powers upon them? they have perverted these to justify their evil ways, and to dispute the authority of God. The very Gospel itself they have abused as sanctioning their presumptuous hopes, and as affording reason for dissipating all fear of Gods displeasure. Ah, Brethren! what will be the end of these things? Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people, and unwise? How will ye answer it at the last day? When your Judge shall put the question, What could I have done more for my vineyard than I did? what excuse will ye offer for bringing forth only wild grapes [Note: Isa 5:1-4.]? Do but think of these things, ere it be too late. But if ye will not lay these things to heart, then know assuredly, that, if ye will not render unto the Lord according to his works of mercy, he will render unto you according to your aggravated iniquities.]

Those who profess to feel their obligations to their God

[Examine, I beseech you, the returns which you have made: do they not fill you with shame and confusion of face? Are ye not perfectly astonished at your own ingratitude? O! see what need there is to walk humbly before God. But yet, do not despond. Your God is able to make all grace abound towards you: and, if you call upon him, he will give you more grace, even grace sufficient for you, so that you shall be able to render to him, in some measure at least, according to the benefits he has conferred upon you. You see how he wrought in David, and in his holy Apostles: and is his arm shortened, that it cannot reach to you? Arise, and bless your God; walk joyfully before him; let your hearts be lifted up in his ways: come, and take the cup of salvation; and, as one great family, hand it round, each, as it were, to the other, that all of you may be encouraged, and all be comforted, and all be strengthened. Now, even now, take the blessed cup into your hands; and drink of it in the presence of all his people; yea, drink, and live for ever. And inquire with yourselves, inquire of each other, yea, inquire of God himself, what you can do for him; and let your capacity for his service be the only measure of your exertion.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

Reader! do observe: The question is, What shall I give unto the Lord? under a sense of his mercies. A strange answer is returned. I will receive the cup of salvation. Yes! Jesus and his gospel are the free unmerited gift of God in Christ; not held forth for our purchase, but for our acceptance. The bountiful Giver needs not the gifts of his creatures. Besides, the things themselves are too costly to be purchased. Precious Jesus! thou drankest the cup of trembling. And thy people are called to take the cup of salvation! Zec 12:2 ; Isa 51:17 ; Joh 18:11 ; Luk 22:17 .

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Psa 116:12 What shall I render unto the LORD [for] all his benefits toward me?

Ver. 12. What shall I render unto the Lord ] This he speaketh as one in an ecstasy ( Amor Dei est ecstaticus ), or in a deep demur what to do best for so good a God. Such self-deliberations are very useful and acceptable, and thereunto are requisite, 1. Recognition of God’s favours. 2. Estimation. 3. Retribution, as here.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Psalms

REQUITING GOD

Psa 116:12 – Psa 116:13 .

There may possibly be a reference here to a part of the Passover ritual. It seems to have become the custom in later times to lift high the wine cup at that feast and drink it with solemn invocation and glad thanksgiving. So we find our Lord taking the cup-the ‘cup of blessing’ as Paul calls it-and giving thanks. But as there is no record of the introduction of that addition to the original Paschal celebration, we do not know but that it was later than the date of this psalm. Nor is there any need to suppose such an allusion in order either to explain or to give picturesque force to the words. It is a most natural thing, as all languages show, to talk of a man’s lot, either of sorrow or joy, as the cup which he has to drink; and there are numerous instances of the metaphor in the Psalms, such as ‘Thou art the Portion of mine inheritance and of my cup, Thou maintainest my lot.’ ‘My cup runneth over.’ That familiar emblem is all that is wanted here.

Then one other point in reference to the mere words of the text may be noticed. ‘Salvation’ can scarcely be taken in its highest meaning here, both because the whole tone of the psalm fixes its reference to lower blessings, and because it is in the plural in the Hebrew. ‘The cup of salvation’ expresses, by that plural form, the fulness and variety of the manifold and multiform deliverances which God had wrought and was working for the Psalmist. His whole lot in life appears to him as a cup full of tender goodness, loving faithfulness, delivering grace. It runs over with divine acts of help and sustenance. As his grateful heart thinks of all God’s benefits to him, he feels at once the impulse to requite and the impossibility of doing so. With a kind of glad despair he asks the question that ever springs to thankful lips, and having nothing to give, recognises the only possible return to God to be the acceptance of the brimming chalice which His goodness commends to his thirst.

The great thought, then, which lies here is that we best requite God by thankfully taking what He gives.

Now I note to begin with-how deep that thought goes into the heart of God.

Why is it that we honour God most by taking, not by giving? The first answer that occurs to you, no doubt, is-because of His all-sufficiency and our emptiness. Man receives all. God needs nothing. We have all to say, after all our service, ‘Of Thine own have we given Thee.’ No doubt that is quite true; and rightly understood that is a strengthening and a glad truth. But is that all which can be said in explanation of this principle? Surely not. ‘If I were hungry I would not tell thee; for the world is mine and the fulness thereof,’ is a grand word, but it does not give all the truth. When Paul stood on Mars Hill, and, within sight of the fair images of the Parthenon, shattered the intellectual basis of idolatry, by proclaiming a God ‘not worshipped with men’s hands as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all men all things,’ that truth, mighty as it is, is not all. We requite God by taking rather than by giving, not merely because He needs nothing, and we have nothing which is not His. If that were all, it might be as true of an almighty tyrant, and might be so used as to forbid all worship before the gloomy presence, to give reverence and love to whom were as impertinent as the grossest offerings of savage idolaters. But the motive of His giving to us is the deepest reason why our best recompense to Him is our thankful reception of His mercies. The principle of our text reposes at last on ‘God is love and wishes our hearts,’ and not merely on ‘God has all and does not need our gifts.’

Take the illustration from our own love and gifts. Do we not feel that all the beauty and bloom of a gift is gone if the giver hopes to receive as much again? Do we not feel that it is all gone if the receiver thinks of repaying it in any coin but that of the heart? Love gives because it delights in giving. It gives that it may express itself and may bless the recipient. If there be any thought of return it is only the return of love. And that is how God gives. As James puts it, He is ‘the giving God,-who gives,’ not as our version inadequately renders, ‘liberally,’ but ‘simply’-that is, I suppose, with a single eye, without any ulterior view to personal advantage, from the impulse of love alone, and having no end but our good. Therefore it is, because of that pure, perfect love, that He delights in no recompense, but only in the payment of a heart won to His love and melted by His mercies. Therefore it is that His hand is outstretched, ‘hoping for nothing again.’ His Almighty all-sufficiency needs nought from us, and to all heathen notions of worship and tribute puts the question: ‘Do ye requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise?’ But His deep heart of love desires and delights in the echo of its own tones that is evoked among the rocky hardnesses of our hearts, and is glad when we take the full cup of His blessings and, as we raise it to our lips, call on the name of the Lord. Is not that a great and a gracious thought of our God and of His great purpose in His mercies?

But now let us look for a moment at the elements which make up this requital of God in which He delights. And, first I put a very simple and obvious one, let us be sure that we recognise the real contents of our cup. It is a cup of salvations, however hard it is sometimes to believe it. Of how much blessing and happiness we all rob ourselves by our slowness to feel that! Some of us by reason of natural temperament; some of us by reason of the pressure of anxieties, and the aching of sorrows, and the bleeding of wounds; some of us by reason of mere blindness to the true character of our present, have little joyous sense of the real brightness of our days. It seems as if joys must have passed and be seen in the transfiguring light of memory, before we can discern their fairness; and then, when their place is empty, we know that we were entertaining angels unawares. Many men and women live in the gloom of a lifelong regret for the loss of some gift which, when they had it, seemed nothing very extraordinary, and could not keep them from annoyance with trifles. Common sense and reasonable regard for our own happiness and religious duty unite, as they always do, in bidding us take care that we know our blessings. Do not let custom blind you to them. Do not let tears so fill your eyes that you cannot see the goodness of the Lord. Do not let thunderclouds, however heavy their lurid piles, shut out from you the blue that is in your sky. Do not let the empty cup be your first teacher of the blessings you had when it was full. Do not let a hard place here and there in the bed destroy your rest. Seek, as a plain duty, to cultivate a buoyant, joyous sense of the crowded kindnesses of God in your daily life. Take full account of all the pains, all the bitter ingredients, remembering that for us weak and sinful men the bitter is needful. If still the cup seem charged with distasteful draught, remember whose lip has touched its rim, leaving its sacred kiss there, and whose hand holds it out to you while He says, ‘Do this in remembrance of Me.’ The cup which my Saviour giveth me, can it be anything but a cup of salvations?

Then, again, another of the elements of this requital of God is-be sure that you take what God gives.

There can be no greater slight and dishonour to a giver than to have his gifts neglected. You give something that has, perhaps, cost you much, or which at any rate has your heart in it, to your child, or other dear one; would it not wound you if a day or two after you found it tossing about among a heap of unregarded trifles? Suppose that some of those Rajahs who received presents on a royal visit to India had gone out from the durbar and flung them into the kennel, that would have been insult and disaffection, would it not? But these illustrations are trivial by the side of our treatment of the ‘giving God.’ Surely of all the follies and crimes of our foolish and criminal race, there is none to match this-that we will not take and make our own the things that are freely given to us of God. This is the height of all madness; this is the lowest depth of all sin. He spares not His own Son, the Son spares not Himself, the Father gives up His Son for us all because He loves, the Son loves us, and gives Himself to us and for us, and we stand with our hands folded on our breasts, will not condescend so much as to stretch them out, or hold our blessings with so slack a grasp that at any time we may let them slip through our careless fingers. He prays us with much entreaty to receive the gift, and neglect and stolid indifference are His requital. Is there anything worse than that? Surely Scripture is right when it makes the sin of sins that unbelief, which is at bottom nothing else than a refusal to take the cup of salvation. Surely no sharper grief can be inflicted on the Spirit of God than when we leave His gifts neglected and unappropriated.

In the highest region of all, how many of these there are which we treat so! A Saviour and His pardoning blood; a Spirit and His quickening energies; that eternal life which might spring in our souls a fountain of living waters-all these are ours. Are we as strong as we might be if we used the strength which we have? How comes it that with the fulness of God at our sides we are empty; that with the word of God in our hands we know so little; that with the Spirit of God in our hearts we are so fleshly; that with the joy of our God for our portion we are so troubled; that with the heart of God for our hiding-place we are so defenceless? ‘We have all and abound,’ and yet we are poor and needy, like some infatuated beggar, in rags and wretchedness, to whom wealth had been given which he would not use.

In the lower region of daily life and common mercies the same strange slowness to take what we have is found. There are very few men who really make the best of their circumstances. Most of us are far less happy than we might be, if we had learned the divine art of wringing the last drop of good out of everything. After our rude attempts at smelting there is a great deal of valuable metal left in the dross, which a wiser system would extract. One wonders when one gets a glimpse of how much of the raw material of happiness goes to waste in the manufacture in all our lives. There is so little to spare, and yet so much is flung away. It needs a great deal of practical wisdom, and a great deal of strong, manly Christian principle, to make the most of what God gives us. Watchfulness, self-restraint, the power of suppressing anxieties and taking no thought for the morrow, and most of all, the habitual temper of fellowship with God, which is the most potent agent in the chemistry that extracts its healing virtue from everything-all these are wanted. The lesson is worth learning, lest we should wound that most tender Love, and lest we should impoverish and hurt ourselves. Do not complain of your thirsty lips till you are sure that you have emptied the cup of salvation which God gives.

One more element of this requital of God has still to be named, the thankful recognition of Him in all our feasting-’call on the name of the Lord.’ Without this the preceding precept would be a piece of pure selfish Epicureanism-and without this it would be impossible. Only he who enjoys life in God enjoys it worthily. Only he who enjoys life in God enjoys it at all. This is the true infusion which gives sweetness to whatever of bitter, and more of sweetness to whatever of sweet, the cup may contain, when the name of the Lord is pronounced above it. The Jewish father at the Passover feast solemnly lifted the wine cup above his head, and drank with thanksgiving. The meal became a sacrament. So here the word rendered ‘take’ might be translated ‘raise,’ and we may be intended to have the picture as emblematical of our consecration to all our blessings by a like offering of them before God and a like invoking of the Giver.

Christ gave us not only the ritual of an ordinance, but the pattern for our lives, when He ‘took the cup and gave thanks.’ So common joys become sacraments, enjoyment becomes worship, and the cup which holds the bitter or the sweet skilfully mingled for our lives becomes the cup of blessing and salvation drank in remembrance of Him. If we carried that spirit with us into all our small duties, sorrows, and gladnesses, how different they would all seem! We should then drink for strength, not for drunkenness. We should not then find that God’s gifts hid Him from us. We should neither leave any of them unused nor so greedily grasp them that we let His hand go. Nothing would be too great for us to attempt, nothing too small for us to put our strength into. There would be no discord between earthly gladness and heavenly desires, nor any repugnance at what He held to our lips. We should drink of the cup of His benefits, and all would be sweet-until we drew nearer and slaked our thirst at the river of His pleasures and the Fountain-head itself.

One more word. There is an old legend of an enchanted cup filled with poison, and put treacherously into a king’s hand. He signed the sign of the Cross and named the name of God over it, and it shivered in his grasp. Do you take that name of the Lord as a test. Name Him over many a cup of which you are eager to drink, and the glittering fragments will lie at your feet, and the poison be spilled on the ground. What you cannot lift before His pure eyes and think of Him while you enjoy is not for you. Friendships, schemes, plans, ambitions, amusements, speculations, studies, loves, businesses-can you call on the name of the Lord while you put these cups to your lips? If not, fling them behind you-for they are full of poison which, for all its sugared sweetness, at the last will ‘bite like a serpent and sting like an adder.’

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Psa 116:12-19

12What shall I render to the Lord

For all His benefits toward me?

13I shall lift up the cup of salvation

And call upon the name of the Lord.

14I shall pay my vows to the Lord,

Oh may it be in the presence of all His people.

15Precious in the sight of the Lord

Is the death of His godly ones.

16O Lord, surely I am Your servant,

I am Your servant, the son of Your handmaid,

You have loosed my bonds.

17To You I shall offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving,

And call upon the name of the Lord.

18I shall pay my vows to the Lord,

Oh may it be in the presence of all His people,

19In the courts of the Lord’s house,

In the midst of you, O Jerusalem.

Praise the Lord!

Psa 116:12-19 This strophe has all imperfects (except Psa 116:16 c), which denotes ongoing, continuous idolatry. The psalmist describes what he will do in worship at the temple and in life (cf. Psa 116:9) because of YHWH’s great care and deliverance (cf. Psa 116:12).

1. he will lift up the cup of salvation, Psa 116:13 a – AB (p. 149) says it was a ritual part of the thanksgiving sacrifice in the temple; it denotes a libation, not a drink (cf. NIDOTTE, vol. 2, p. 618)

2. he will call upon the name of the Lord, Psa 116:13 b,17b (see Special Topic: The Name of YHWH )

3. he will pay his vows, Psa 116:14; Psa 116:18 (cf. Leviticus 27)

4. he will offer sacrifice, Psa 116:17

5. he will praise YHWH in the temple, Psa 116:19 (cf. Psa 116:14) – this imperative may go at the beginning of Psalms 117 (LXX)

Psa 116:15 The adjective precious (BDB 429) is usually used of valuable items. In this context it denotes the fact that YHWH cares deeply when His faithful followers go through trials and sickness on earth (cf. Psa 72:14). He is aware of their situations and quickly comes to their aid (cf. Exo 3:7).

In a fallen world, not every believer is physically delivered. Crises, problems, and fears do come. Even if we do not see God’s presence, He is with us and for us. One day we will be with Him!

The NIDOTTE, vol. 2, p. 525, has a suggested an emendation that an n has dropped out of the word death and the root should be seen as the Aramaic word for trust, thereby rendering the line as

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the faith/trust of His loyal ones.

The problem is the use of precious with death. Surely the death of saints is not precious (i.e., valuable). Some scholars have changed the meaning of the Hebrew precious (BDB 429) to costly or painful. It grieves YHWH for His faithful followers to suffer and die! The terrible results of the Fall were never His purpose in creation!

saints See note online at Psa 16:10; Psa 30:4.

Psa 116:16 Notice I am Your servant is repeated for emphasis. The term servant (BDB 713) has a wide semantic field but here it probably denotes worshiper.

The next line, the son of Your handmaid, is also found in Psa 86:16 and denotes

1. a righteous mother

2. an Israelite mother

3. an idiom of humility

4. a slave family or faithful servant family

The psalmist bases this conclusion on the fact that YHWH has loosed (BDB 834, KB 986, Piel perfect) his bonds (BDB 64), which could denote

1. saved him from terminal sickness (straits or Sheol)

2. saved him from enemies

3. saved him from prison or exile

4. saved him from distress (the term [BDB 865] straits in Psa 116:3 [twice] is used in Psa 118:5 and Lam 1:3 of distress)

A simple way to express this verse would be Here Am I or I am available for service. YHWH has saved him, now he will willingly and fully serve Him (cf. Rom 12:1-2).

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

This is a study guide commentary which means that you are responsible for your own interpretation of the Bible. Each of us must walk in the light we have. You, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit are priority in interpretation. You must not relinquish this to a commentator.

These discussion questions are provided to help you think through the major issues of this section of the book. They are meant to be thought provoking, not definitive.

1. Explain the possible life settings of this Psalm.

2. Is it unusual for death and Sheol to be personified?

3. List the characteristics of YHWH.

4. Why is Psa 116:10-11 so hard to interpret?

5. What OT imagery lies behind Psa 116:16?

6. List the words, phrases that reflect temple worship.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

What shall I render . . . ? Note the answer in next verse.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Psa 116:12-14

WHAT SHALL I GIVE TO GOD IN GRATITUDE?

“What shall I render unto Jehovah

For all his benefits toward me?

I will take the cup of salvation,

And call upon the name of Jehovah.

I will pay my vows unto Jehovah,

Yea, in the presence of all the people.”

“Vows were never commanded in the Old Testament; the point stressed was that, once made, they had to be kept punctiliously. Apparently, vows were often made and seldom kept. In the case of Jonah’s prayer from the belly of “the great fish” he promised God that, “I will pay that which I have vowed” (Jon 2:9). Here the rescued psalmist asks, “Just what could be appropriate as a gift to God in appreciation for all he has done for me?” It would be well indeed for every Christian to ask himself the same question.

We naturally ask questions similar to this when we have received outstanding favors from our earthly friends. “How much more proper is it to ask such a question in view of the favors we receive from God? As we come to think of it, indeed, “What can be an adequate return for love like God’s, – for mercies so great, and so undeserved?”

The pledge of the healed psalmist here is that he shall engage in a ceremony of thanksgiving in the Temple before all the people and that his gift shall also be presented.

E.M. Zerr:

Psa 116:12. The goodness of God is so great that no human service can repay it. However, we are assured that it is not expected of man to match the Lord in any respect. All that is required is that we show our appreciation by a life of faithful service.

Psa 116:13. Cup of salvation is a figure of speech, meaning the gracious provision that God has made for the salvation of the world. But all of this provision will be of no avail unless it is received wholeheartedly. That is why David said he would take the cup, which denoted a willingness to accept it on the terms attached.

Psa 116:14. The cup of salvation is offered to man on certain conditions. Among them, in the days of the Mosaic system, were the ceremonies pertaining to the religious activities, and David lived under that system. That is why he stated he would pay his vows, for he had just agreed to take the cup of salvation, and he knew that he would be required to do his part.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Praise Him for All His Benefits

Psa 116:12-19; Psa 117:1-2

The psalmist dwells joyfully on his enslavement to God, because in and through it he had found perfect liberty. Thou hast loosed my bonds. They who become enslaved to Christ are set free from all other restraints. See Joh 8:31-36. Do not forget to pay your vows! In trouble we make promises, which, when the trouble has passed, we find it convenient to forget. See Gen 40:23.

Psa 117:1-2 is the shortest chapter in the Bible and its center; but, small as it is, it breathes a world-wide spirit and reaches out to all nations. It is a dewdrop reflecting the universe. The Apostle quotes it in Rom 15:11, as foretelling the call of the Gentiles. Here, as in Isa 11:10 and elsewhere, the spirit of the singer overleaps all national exclusiveness and comprehends all people and all time.

Let us learn to exercise the spirit of praise in our daily sphere. Surely we also can say that Gods loving-kindness has been, and is, mighty over us. Where sin abounded grace did much more abound. The permanence of this love is guaranteed by Gods faithfulness; for his truth is his troth. The shortest prayer of praise should find room for Hallelujah! See Rev 19:4.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

What shall I Render?

What shall I render unto the Lord

For all his benefits toward me?

I will take the cup of salvation,

And call upon the name of the Lord.

I will pay my vows unto the Lord,

Yea, in the presence of all his people.Psa 116:12-14.

1. The psalm from which this text is taken is a psalm of thanksgiving. It is one of six called the Great Hallel, extending from the 113th to the 118th, which were sung by the Jews at their great festivals, especially at the Passover. It was probably one of these psalms that was sung by our Saviour and His eleven disciples when He instituted His own supper, at the close of His last Passover with them; as we are told in the evangelic story, When they had sung a hymn, they went out unto the mount of Olives.

2. It appears that the Psalmist, when he wrote this psalm, had been delivered by God out of some mighty trouble. How great that trouble was may be gathered from the telling language in which he describes it. The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow. But while in this terrible situation he directed his thoughts heavenward, and looked for help where he had often found help before. Nor did he look in vain; for he says, Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. And in the text he communes with his own soul, and considers how he may most effectually prove his gratitude for this timely deliverance. What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?

A Bountiful Giver

1. The Psalmist was not one of those thoughtless and indifferent men who pass through life receiving all, enjoying all, expecting all, without ever bestowing a thought on the bountiful Giver. On the contrary, he seems to have been so overwhelmed by the magnitude and multiplicity of Gods benefits that he scarcely knew how to express his gratitude. The language he employs is that of a man perplexed, bewildered, overcome, hardly knowing what to say or how to act. For all his benefits toward mebenefits great, benefits small, benefits temporal, benefits spiritual; but all benefits unmerited and free. For all his benefits; as they rose before his view, a vast, countless host, they laid him under a debt of obligation which he could never hope to discharge.

My fathers gift of appreciation was of a most charming type. The constant repetitions of a blessing never dulled the fine edge of his gratitude. He had a sunlit bedroom, and every morning, so my mother tells me, he said, What a beautiful bedroom! We must thank God!1 [Note: Love and Life: The Story of J. Denholm Brash (1913), 156.]

2. Few of us are adequately thankful for the commonplace blessings which surround us; we take them as a matter of course. We do not know what it is to be without them; we see no prospect of being deprived of them. If the world has not gone very well with us, it has not gone very badly; because we might have more to complain of, we forget for how much we ought to be grateful. Let us contemplate, as in the presence of God, all the proofs that we have experienced of His mercy; the pure affection that He has inspired, the sins that have been forgiven us, the snares which we have escaped, the protection we have received. Let our hearts be touched with the remembrance of all the precious proofs of His goodness. Add to this the sorrows that He has sent to sanctify our hearts; for we should look upon these also as proofs of His love for us. Let gratitude for the past inspire us with confidence in the future. Let us never distrust Him; let us fear only ourselves and remember that He is the Father of mercies, and the God of all consolation. He sometimes takes away His consolations from us, but His mercy ever remains.

O God, for my existence, my life, my reason; for nurture, protection, guidance, education, civil rights, religion; for Thy gifts to me of grace, nature, worldly good; for redemption, regeneration, instruction in the truth; for my call, recall, yea, many calls all through life; for Thy forbearance, longsuffering, long long-suffering, toward me, even until now; for all good things received, for all successes granted to me, for all good deeds I have been enabled to do; for my parents honest and good, for teachers kind, for benefactors never to be forgotten, for religious intimates so congenial and so helpful, for hearers thoughtful, friends true and sincere, servants faithful; for all who have helped me by their writings, sermons, conversations, prayers, examples, rebukes, and even injuries; for all these, and for all others which I know, and which I know not, open, hidden, remembered, forgotten;What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits?1 [Note: Bishop Andrewes, Preces Privat.]

3. Our share of Gods benefits may not be as complete as we desire, but perhaps it is much more than we deserve. If we lack this or that benefit, so copiously showered on another, shall we venture to suggest that a greater measure of it would be for our eternal good? His wealth might be my curse; my health might rob him of the necessary discipline of suffering. This mans loneliness is meant to make him introspective and spiritual; that mans adversity will teach him humility and compassion. The Lord knows what is best. And, realizing that, let none of us question or complain. Let us see in the distribution of the commonplace benefits of life, not an erratic or partial bestowal, but a Divine assignment of mercies and blessings. Let gratitude and thankfulness and faith possess our hearts and minds. There are indeed moments in life when we awake to the fact of Gods boundless, multitudinous, all-encompassing love, and when we are almost overwhelmed by the thought of it. A devout soul in habitual worship acknowledges much, and even then feels more than is expressed, and finally sees more than is felt. Yet, alas! the goodness of God recognized by us is by far the least part of it. There is the goodness we overlook. Gods gifts are multiplied like the dewdrops or the snowflakes, and, gliding into life just as silently, are easily undiscerned by careless eyes like ours.

One day in the town of Sonora, in the southern mines of California, after a very heavy rain and freshet, a man was leading his mule-cart up the steep principal street, when his foot struck upon a large stone; he stooped down to remove it, and found it was a solid lump of gold, about twenty-five pounds weight, which had been exposed by the storm, and many hundreds of people had passed over it daily. So do we daily blindly trample on blessings richer than all the wealth of California. There is the goodness we misconstrue. We count sublime things commonplace, and reckon as losses and disappointments the discipline which brings incorruptible treasure. The benefits of God are not the pleasant things merely, but all the things of pain and tears.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Education of the Heart, 253.]

4. To perceive and appreciate our benefits necessitates a very refined soul. That is so upon the merely human plane. There are some men who cannot appreciate kindness. They either never see their benefits or they misconstrue them. They are the victims either of dulness or of pride, and both these foul spirits make this kind of appreciation impossible. But this spiritual numbness is even more apparent in our relationship to God. We receive multitudes of benefits, but we do not see the Divine mark upon their foreheads. We take them in, but they are not revealed to us as the Kings bounty. It is amazing how fine is the perception of other souls! They never open their eyes without seeing the presence of the hosts of God. The mountains are full of horses and chariots. Having nothing, they yet possess all things.

It has been my lot to pay frequent visits to a man who had cancer in the throat. I have watched the awful advances of the insidious and inevitable disease. I have heard the manly voice sink into whispers, and then entirely cease. And yet when speech was silenced there was a light in the face like the radiant noon. He would take his pen in hand, and write a catalogue of the mercies by which he was beset, and in the contemplation of the multitude he almost forgot his calamity and pain. What an eye he had for the benefits of the Lord! I went into another house which had been suddenly plunged in the darkness of bereavement. The hale and genial father was taken away in a day, and the happy united family rudely broken up. And yet as soon as I opened the door, and met the sorrowing widow, these were the first words that leapt to her lips: How good God has been! Even in the night-time she had been counting the stars, and in the awful pangs of bereavement she had felt the amazing consolations of Christ. What an eye she had for the benefits of the Lord!1 [Note: J. H. Jowett.]

A Grateful Recipient

1. As his grateful heart thinks of all Gods benefits to him, the Psalmist feels at once the impulse to requite and the impossibility of doing so. With a kind of glad despair he asks the question that ever springs to thankful lips, and, having nothing to give, recognizes the only possible return to God to be the acceptance of the brimming chalice which His goodness commends to his thirst. The great thought, then, which lies here is that we best requite God by thankfully taking what He gives. The Psalmist asks what he can render, and he answers that he will further take! And this is the very essence of true gratitude. The best return we can make for a gift of God is to take a higher gift. Have we thanked Him for our daily bread? Then the best return we can make is to take the bread of life. Have we thanked Him for our sleep? Then the best return we can make is to take His gift of rest and peace. Have we thanked Him for our health? Then the best return we can make is to seek His gift of holiness. I will take the finest thing upon the Lords table! He has given me this gift, now I will take a bigger gift! We do an ill thing to our Lord if we are profuse about His secondary gifts and leave His best upon the table. My joy I give unto you. Have we taken that yet? My peace I give unto you. Have we taken that yet? Glories upon glories hath our God prepared. And the first element in all praise and worship is to take the richer gifts the Lord is offering unto us.

2. Do we not feel that all the beauty and bloom of a gift is gone if the giver hopes to receive as much again? Do we not feel that it is all gone if the receiver thinks of repaying it in any coin but that of the heart? Love gives because it delights in giving. It gives that it may express itself and may bless the recipient. If there be any thought of return, it is only the return of love. That is how God gives; and we requite Him by taking rather than by giving, not merely because He needs nothing, and we have nothing which is not His. If that were all, it might be as true of an almighty tyrant, and might be so used as to forbid all worship before the gloomy presence, to give reverence and love to whom were as impertinent as the grossest offerings of savage idolaters. But the motive of His giving to us is the deepest reason why our best recompense to Him is our thankful reception of His mercies.

3. The key-note of the highest and happiest life is thankfulness. Thankfulness means personal communion with God; a perpetual longing to do His will, an absorbing anxiety not to offend Him. Thankfulness involves a passionate love for the human race, a deep sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters in Gods royal family, active endeavours to allay the ills around us. Thankfulness necessitates the strengthening and refreshing of our immortal souls by every grace and every agency we can command. So be thankful! The years that we are here are few and fitful. It is worth taking some trouble to make them fragrant and interesting. They may be so if we will. Life is full of opportunities; it is for us prayerfully, profitably, thankfully, to use them. They may not lead us to all that we hope for; they may not open upon realities we have long sighed after; they may not help us to gratify material aspirations; but they will always point us to avenues of gratitude and thankfulness, to possibilities of effort and goodness. And though there be vouchsafed to us nothing more gloriousas men count glorythan the elementary endowments, the ordinary mercies, the commonplace benefits of life; though fame and wealth and honour never cluster round our names, none the lessnay, all the moremay we lie down at last in peace and quietly commend our souls to Him who gave them, to do for them and with them what He thinks wisest and best in the harvest of the hereafter.

There was an expression which Samuel Rutherford constantly useda drowned debtor to Gods mercy. He meant that he was over head and ears in debt to God: he could not tell how deep his obligations were, so he just called himself a drowned debtor to the lovingkindness and the mercy of his God.

The question in the text recalls a well-known incident in the life of a famous soldier, who also became a famous ChristianColonel James Gardiner. One night, when he was little thinking of Divine things, but on the contrary had made an appointment of the most vicious kind, he was waiting for the appointed hour, when he saw, or thought he saw, before him in the room wherein he sat alone, a visible representation of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, and he was impressed, as if a voice had said to him to this effectO sinner, I did all this for thee; what hast thou done for Me? The vision and the words he heard were the means of Colonel Gardiners conversion. The words quoted, it may be added, suggested Frances Ridley Havergals well-known hymn beginning:

I gave My life for thee,

My precious blood I shed,

That thou mightst ransomd be,

And quickend from the dead.

I gave My life for thee;

What hast thou given for Me?

Miss Havergal was staying with a German divine, in whose study was a picture of our crucified Saviour, beneath which was placed the motto: I did this for thee; what hast thou done for Me? She had come in weary, and, sitting down in front of the picture, the Saviours eyes seemed to rest upon her. She read the motto, and the lines of her hymn flashed upon her, and she at once wrote them in pencil on a scrap of paper. Looking them over she thought them so poor that she tossed them on the fire, but they fell out untouched. Some months afterwards she showed them to her father, who encouraged her to preserve them, and he wrote the tune Baca specially for them. The hymn was published in Good Words, and becoming a favourite soon found its way into the hymn-books of the Christian Church.1 [Note: Canon J. Duncan, Popular Hymns, 215.]

III

A Consecrated Life

1. God bestows so many blessings upon us that we can in one sense of the word return absolutely nothing to Him for His gifts. The Psalmists words imply this: I can bring Thee no great gift, I can lay no priceless offering at Thy feet, I have nothing that is not already Thine own, for all has come from Thee. I will take the cup of salvation. I will accept Thy bounteous mercy with a thankful heart. I will seek to link all my life to Thee. This thought helps us to meet a very common temptation. A man may realize something of the goodness of God. He may say to himself: If I had very large means like some men, how much I would try to do in return! I would build a stately cathedral for the service of God, a noble house of prayer for all time. I would endow a hospital to minister to human suffering. I would put the highest education within the reach of the poorest man. But I have so little income, it scarcely overlaps my own pressing wants. Then, because he cannot do great things, he sinks back and does nothing at all. He would reform an empire, but does not order his own house. He dreams of cleansing a city, but never sweeps before his own door. The Psalmist teaches us the true lesson, and shows us what we may all do. We may give ourselves first of all, and then the avenues of service will open out before us according to His will.

Any dreams which she may have harboured of literary distinction, she had put resolutely away from her. Oh God, she had written in her diary at Cairo, Thou puttest into my heart this great desire to devote myself to the sick and sorrowful. I offer it to Thee. Do with it what is for Thy service.1 [Note: Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 95.]

2. Taking the cup of salvation, in its simple, full meaning, expresses the pledging of our personality to God, the consecration of ourselves to His service. We recognize Him as Redeemer, Deliverer, and Friend, and acknowledge ourselves His in life and death. Our trustful heart, our acquiescent will, our obedient life, our whole personality must be surrendered in the power of love. Christ Himself gave us not only the ritual of an ordinance, but the pattern for our lives, when He took the cup and gave thanks. And now for us common joys become sacraments, enjoyment becomes worship, and the cup which holds the bitter or the sweet skilfully mingled for our lives becomes the cup of blessing and salvation drunk in remembrance of Him. If we carried that spirit with us into all our small duties, sorrows, and gladnesses, how different they would all seem!

Salvation can scarcely be taken in its highest meaning in our text, both because the whole tone of the psalm fixes its reference to lower blessings, and because the word is in the plural in the Hebrew. The cup of salvations expresses, by that plural form, the fulness and variety of the manifold and multiform deliverances which God had wrought and was working for the Psalmist. His whole lot in life appears to him as a cup full of tender goodness, loving faithfulness, delivering grace. It runs over with Divine acts of help and sustenance.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]

3. Many cups may be offered us as we go through life. We may for the moment be dazzled by the gemmed and sparkling cup of earthly pleasure, or the cup of worldly aims and ambitions. Let us put them aside. Let each one say, I will take the cup of salvation. I will accept and use all Gods offered mercy. The chalice of redeeming love shall be my chiefest treasure. I will take itI will seek to be Gods true child, the grateful son of so loving a Father. I will endeavour in all things to do His will, hoping to be guided ever by His grace and shielded ever by His protecting care.

There is an old legend of an enchanted cup filled with poison, and put treacherously into a kings hand. He made the sign of the Cross and named the name of God over it, and it shivered in his grasp. Do you take that name of the Lord as a test? Name Him over many a cup of which you are eager to drink, and the glittering fragments will lie at your feet, and the poison be spilled on the ground. What you cannot lift before His pure eyes and think of Him while you enjoy is not for you. Friendships, schemes, plans, ambitions, amusements, speculations, studies, loves, businessescan you call on the name of the Lord while you put these cups to your lips? If not, fling them behind you, for they are full of poison which, for all its sugared sweetness, at the last will bite like a serpent and sting like an adder.2 [Note: Ibid.]

A Vow and its Fulfilment

When the cords of death compassed the Psalmist (Psa 116:3), he had made a strong and secret vow. He said to himself, If I get over this I will live a more pronounced life unto the Lord. If I get my strength back, I will use it for the King. If I get out of this darkness, I will take a lamp and light the feet of other men. And now he is better again, and he sets about redeeming his vow. The midnight vow was redeemed in the morning. As soon as he was out of the peril he remembered his covenant. Now! There must be no delay. In this sphere delays are attended with infinite peril. We may trifle with anything rather than with a fresh and tender vow. Well begun is half done. And he will also surround the redemption of his vow with publicity. He will do something publicly which will strongly proclaim him on Gods side, and tell to all men that he has given his devotion to Him. And that must be our way. The vow we made in secret must be performed openly. We must do something to indicate that we have passed through a great experience, and that we are remembering the benefits of the Lord. We can speak His name to another. We can write some gracious letter to a friend. We can attach ourselves publicly to the Masters Church. We can commit ourselves openly and outwardly as professed followers of the King. And wherever we are, throughout all our life, we must continue to pay our vows. In joy, in sorrow, in the valley, on the mount, the vow must perpetually be redeemed. And if that be our part, fervent and unbroken, the Lords part will also endure. He will continually be pouring His benefits upon us, and we shall grow in riches with every passing day.

Hugh Miller, in his letters, gives an interesting account of his experience. He thought he was falling into consumptionthat stone-cutters tuberculosis was settling upon his lungsand, realizing that death might not be far away, he thought of living a new and better life. He had always piqued himself on being true to his word. If he passed his word to a fellow-workman, no man could ever say that he had broken it, even if it was a promise given to an idiot boy that passed his time around the shed. To him the promise was sacred and most honourably kept. Well, why not pass his word to God, why not give a promise to the Almighty, and then in his native honesty begin a life of holiness and love? Fascinated with the idea, he gave his solemn vow,alas! only to break it and befool himself, and clothe his soul with shame. He, so honest before men, so staunch and upright and true, found out he was little better than a bankrupt and a liar in the presence of the living God. This led to a humbling exercise of soul, and a truer knowledge of grace. The lesson is a valuable one, and we are slow to learn it. Our cold dead vows, apart from God, are nothing.1 [Note: R. Waterston, Thoughts on the Lords Supper, 136.]

Literature

Burrows (H. W.), Parochial Sermons, iii. 154.

Ketcham (W. E.), Thanksgiving Sermons, 245.

Kirkpatrick (A. F.), The Book of Psalms (Cambridge Bible), 690.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Psalms li.cxlv., 273.

Maclaren (A.), The Book of Psalms (Expositors Bible), iii. 226.

Martin (S.), Rain upon the Mown Grass, 273.

Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, vii. 73.

Rowlands (D.), in Jesus in the Cornfield, 173.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xvi. (1870), No. 910.

Stevens (H.), Sermon Outlines, 307.

Tyndall (C. H.), Object Sermons in Outline, 162.

Waterston (R.), Thoughts on the Lords Supper, 129.

Watkinson (W. L.), The Education of the Heart, 253.

Wilkinson (J. B.), Mission Sermons, i. 222.

Christian World Pulpit, xxxii. 394 (R. H. Hadden); xxxvi. 396 (P. Mearns); lvi. 229 (J. Percival).

Church of England Pulpit, xlviii. 195 (J. Percival).

Examiner, Oct. 5, 1905 (J. H. Jowett).

Homiletic Review, New Ser., xxxix. 29 (T. H. Stockton).

Literary Churchman, xxxviii. (1892) 334 (F. St. J. Corbett).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

Psa 51:12-14, Psa 103:2, Isa 6:5-8, Rom 12:1, 1Co 6:20, 2Co 5:14, 2Co 5:15

Reciprocal: Num 31:50 – an oblation Deu 11:8 – Therefore 2Ki 20:5 – thou shalt go 2Ch 32:25 – rendered Ezr 8:35 – offered burnt Psa 26:7 – That Psa 43:4 – Then Psa 50:14 – pay Psa 66:17 – I cried Psa 107:22 – sacrifice Psa 109:30 – I will praise Nah 1:15 – perform Mar 1:31 – ministered Mar 5:18 – prayed Mar 5:33 – and told Luk 4:39 – and ministered Luk 8:38 – besought Luk 17:15 – General Joh 5:14 – in the

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Psa 116:12-14. What shall I render unto the Lord Yet, notwithstanding all my dangers, and my distrust of God also, he hath conferred so many and great blessings upon me, that I can never make sufficient returns to him for them. I will take the cup of salvation Or of deliverance, as Bishop Patrick renders , thus interpreting the clause: I will call my friends together to rejoice with me, and taking the cup, which we call the cup of deliverance, (because, when blessed and set apart, we are thus wont to commemorate the blessings we have received,) I will magnify the power, goodness, and faithfulness of God my Saviour before all the company. The phrase is doubtless taken from the common practice of the Jews in their thank-offerings, in which a feast was made of the remainder of the sacrifices, and the offerers, together with the priests, did eat and drink before the Lord; and among other rites, the master of the feast took a cup of wine into his hand, and solemnly blessed God for it, and for the mercy which was then acknowledged, and then gave it to all the guests, who drank successively of it. According to Dr. Hammond, this cup, among the Jews, was two-fold; one offered in a more solemn manner in the temple, Num 28:7, the other more private in families, called the cup of thanksgiving, or commemoration of any deliverance received. This the master of the family was wont to begin, and was followed by all his guests. On festival days it was attended with a suitable hymn, such as that sung by our Lord and his disciples on the night when he advanced that cup into the sacrament of his blood, which hath ever since been to Christians the cup of salvation; and which all penitents should now receive in the church of Christ, with invocation, thanksgiving, and payment of their vows made in time of trouble.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

3. Another promise to praise God 116:12-19

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

It is difficult to tell if the writer used "cup" in a literal or in a figurative sense. Perhaps it was a literal part of his thank offering to God. On the other hand, the cup may represent his reward in this life, which was physical salvation. Either way he would praise God. Israelites offered votive offerings when God answered their prayers regarding a vow they made. These were peace offerings (Lev 7:16; Lev 22:18-23) and public offerings that reminded other worshippers of God’s goodness. The NIV rendering of the end of Psa 116:14 is probably best. It reads, ". . . in the presence of all his people."

Think again of Jesus singing Psa 116:12-14 and raising the cup as He sang. The Jews traditionally sang Psalms 116 after the Passover meal. It is probable that when He sang these verses, He raised the third of four cups of wine the Jews drank at that meal. They called the third cup "the cup of salvation." He knew that that cup would only become a true cup of salvation if He paid His vows to the LORD and proceeded to the cross.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Disfruta de miles de canciones cristianas en exclusiva sólo en Bibles