Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Psalm 116

I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my supplications. Because he has inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live. The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell got hold upon me. I found trouble and sorrow. Then call upon the name of the Lord. Oh Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yeah, our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple.

I was brought low and he helped me. Return unto thy rest on my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believed, therefore, have I spoken. I was greatly afflicted. I said in my haste, all men are liars. 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. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Oh Lord, truly I am thy servant. I am thy servant and the son of thine handmaid. Thou hast loosed my bonds. I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving and will call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people in the courts of the Lord’s house, in the midst of thee, O Jerusalem.

Praise ye the Lord.

Right after family camp anyway, August 30th I think it was. And in their communion liturgy, at least the one that they used the day I was there, they recite antiphonally Psalm 116, which we just read as our sermon text. And as we were doing the liturgy, we came to Psalm 116. The phrase that struck me in the middle of that psalm—well, which seems very appropriate, of course, for communion—”I take the cup of salvation in the presence of God’s people,” etc.

In the midst of that psalm, there’s this line. I said, “In my haste, all men are liars.” And it kind of startled me. You know, you read a verse of scripture over and over, and I’ve read that one a lot, particularly in Seattle, they use it a lot in their communion literature, but all of a sudden, it kind of strikes you. And it struck me that day that it was a very interesting verse to be in the middle of that psalm.

And so, I thought, I wonder what that means. And as I looked at it, continuing that day and then on into the week, I thought that would be good to talk about to the congregation at Reformation Covenant Church. And I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with the first sermon back. I thought I’d really kind of plan to get back into Joshua next Sunday. And so I had kind of an open Sunday where I could have gotten back in, done some reviewing, etc.

But I thought instead it’d be good to look at Psalm 116 and particularly focusing at least in somewhat on the verse where David says or the psalmist says, we don’t know that it was David. It probably wasn’t actually. It was probably written quite later. But in any event, whoever wrote this psalm wrote, “I said in my haste, all men are liars.” What does that mean? So that’s why we’re going to do this today.

You might also be interested in knowing that this psalm of deliverance and salvation and then the joy to God for salvation is used the bulk of it is used in the liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer in the liturgy for the churching of women after childbirth—the thanksgiving of women. They have a liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer which of course came out of the Reformation in England. When a woman has a child she comes to the church, she pays a small gift to the pastor, to the priest.

And then this particular liturgy or form of worship is followed through and much of it involves Psalm 116 and of course if you look at it—”how the pains of hell and cords of death surrounded me etc.”—it’s very applicable to childbirth and then the release from childbirth and the life that God gives to the mother and the new birth as well the child. So it’s interesting in that respect.

What I want to do here is I just want to kind of walk through this psalm first.

And I didn’t prepare an outline for today. I kind of did this a little different I guess. I don’t have computer written notes either. I’ve got handwritten notes kind of deliberately. I’m not sure why exactly, but I wanted to sort of focus on several points. And instead of having a long outline with many points which we’ll return to next week, I wanted to focus on three main points in this psalm. But first before we do that, I want to look over the whole psalm and look at several portions of it and the way it kind of flows through.

So, if you have your Bible there in front of you, we’ll just go through Psalm 116 and do an overview of it sort of and then go back and look at the three major sections of the psalm and look at what that teaches us about our Christian life. It begins in verses 1 and 2. The way it ends, it ends in “Praise the Lord.” And it begins really on that same note of praise in verses 1 and 2. It’s kind of a summary of what will follow.

“I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and my supplications. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.”

There’s an acknowledgement that he’s been delivered from something here—that God has graciously heard and answered his prayer for deliverance. And the result of that is praise and love for God.

Love for God is really stressed in verse one. A more literal way of reading the verse would be “I love because the Lord has heard my voice and my supplication.” So it starts with a very emphatic description of love. And love of course has always has an object and the object is described then as the one who heard his voice and supplication and then it ends on praise. And those two bookends of love and praise should really characterize of course our Christian life.

So verses one and two are kind of introductory and then in verse three we have the situation which led to the writing of this psalm. Verse three tells us the dilemma that the psalmist found himself in.

“The sorrows of death compassed me and the pains of hell got hold upon me. I found trouble and sorrow.”

So we have depression, sorrow, sadness, and we have physical danger being spoken of here. The pangs of hell or Sheol get hold upon me. In the scriptures, death, hell, Sheol, hard times are things that get a hold of us. “The pains of hell get hold upon me.” And it’s very much described in an animated fashion in the old testament certainly, but also the new testament. And certainly when you go through a trying time, you feel as if hell or the powers of darkness had just reached out and got a hold of you. And that’s the language that’s used here.

It’s very graphic descriptive language that describes the anguish of the person caught in the throes of your mortal enemy. So that’s the dilemma that the psalmist finds himself in. And certainly there are those of us who can relate to that at various points in our lives. There are people in the context of this church and the church in Seattle that for instance in terms of physical distresses I’m sure felt that grip of terrors of death getting a hold of them almost literally through various things happening in their bodies and in their physical torments. And that’s the sort of thing that’s described here by the psalmist.

He goes on then to talk about his prayer. What does he do in the context of this tremendous attack from without? “Then I called upon the name of the Lord. Oh Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.”

At the center really of this psalm are two things. One, the cry for help and then the basis of his faith which we’ll get to later on. But this calling on God for help in time of trouble again is a characteristic of the Christian faith. And in those times when death gets a hold of us or the sorrows of death encompass about and the pains of terror grab us, that’s when we’re to call on God. And that’s what the psalmist does. He calls upon the name of the Lord in verse 4.

So we have an introduction, we’ve got a dilemma, we’ve got a prayer, and then of course we have the central part of this—the largest number of verses, verses 5 through 8—that describe the answer of God and the salvation that has been affected.

“Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yeah, our God is merciful.”

The answer to the prayer comes out of God’s very character. God doesn’t do something for the psalmist that is unusual for him. He does something that is an extension of his person to the psalmist, to those that are elect, to those that God has called forth to demonstrate his mercy and compassion on. So out of the center of this salvation, it comes out of the center of God’s very being in verse 5.

Verse 6: “The Lord preserves the simple. I was brought low and he helps me.”

The simple can be translated silly or stupid here. That’s the kind of the word it is. There’s nothing in us that deserves this from God. He reaches out and helps those who are so simple and so silly that they get themselves into these sorts of dilemmas. From the human perspective, of course, in the perspective of God, he has brought this to pass for a specific reason—to increase our thanksgiving to him.

As we’ll see as we go through this, the Lord preserves the simpler, the silly. “Return unto thy rest, oh my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.”

In other words, the dilemma, the terror, the death that was coming upon him that caused tremendous unrest in his soul. He was in great anguish and torment of soul. He was in the dark hour of the soul, the midnight of the soul, so to speak. He was not at rest.

And so when salvation comes, salvation is characterized not just out of flowing out of the person of God, but then changing us as he reaches out to us. He takes us from unrest and he translates us into a position of rest. And so the psalmist acknowledges this and says, “Return unto thy rest, oh my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.”

“My soul from death”—we see there the release from despondency and physical torment, as well as a spiritual torment. “My eyes from tears”—sadness, and anguish that results in the eyes being overwhelmed with tears. “And my feet from falling”—you delivered me also from sinning even further in my rebellion against you. He spares his feet from falling in terms of sin or calamity. And so the deliverance is portrayed in verses 5 through 8.

The salvation that God brings to us, springing out of his character, being gracious to us, preserving us though we’re sin, returning us to a state of rest by releasing us from physical danger, from spiritual torment, from sadness and despondency, and from sin itself. And that’s the nature of salvation portrayed for us here. And then verse 9 says, “I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.”

That’s really a further extension of the picture of salvation. In other words, “I was in the land of death. I was in the land of dismay and God’s face not shining upon me and despondency. And now I’ve been returned into the land of the living and I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.”

And then verses 10 and 11, I think here at the heart—we had an introduction in verses 1 and 2. We had the dilemma pictured for us in verse 3. We had the prayer for deliverance in verse 4. We had salvation pictured in verses 5-9. And then in verse 10 and 11, we have, I believe, the confession of faith that leads to this deliverance. At the core of this is the prayer for deliverance. But there’s also a profession of faith here. And that’s what’s described for us, I believe, in verses 10 and 11.

And this is what helps us, I think, to properly understand the phrase “all men are liars.”

Verses 10 and 11 read: “I believed, therefore have I spoken. I was greatly afflicted. I said in my haste all men are liars.”

What does this mean? Some people believe that this is a confession of sin. “I said in my haste all men are liars. I shouldn’t have been hasty. I should have spoken more slowly. I should have considered the words of my mouth.” This is a confession of sin. But others believe it is actually a confession of faith. And I think that’s what it is as well because of the context.

I think what the psalmist here is saying is that in the middle of his dark hour, in the middle of his time of trouble, he didn’t turn to men because he knows that all men are false or deceitful. Men cannot deliver him. Men cannot bring him salvation from the terrors of death and the pangs of hell that grab a hold of and have him in their icy grasp. Men cannot deliver us from that.

Instead, the psalmist turns to God for deliverance because God is the only one who is true. God is the only one who can expect deliverance for him from the pains of hell. And I believe that’s what’s being said here.

Now, I think one of the reasons that I believe this is that verse 10 relates to verse 11. The speaking here—”I said in my haste, all men are liars”—it relates his speaking to faith itself. Verse 10 says, “I believed, therefore have I spoken.” Whatever is said by the psalmist is related to his faith. God grants him faith. And it is that faith, that belief that relates to his speaking. Then a word that may not seem logically or rationally to do any good at all in terms of his problems, but it is the only word—the profession of God as his deliverer—that will lead to salvation for the psalmist and joy and peace and rest.

“I was greatly afflicted, but I said in my haste, all men are liars.”

He rejected the normal answer which we have, and we are in great affliction. We turn to people. We don’t turn to God in our natural fallen state. We turn to people and so he rejects that and instead turns to God.

It is interesting that verse 10 is repeated in the New Testament quoted by Paul in a slightly different fashion. He actually quotes from the Septuagint but Paul quotes this verse in the context in 2 Corinthians of ministers of Christ who speak though they are in persecution. They suffer persecution for the word of Christ yet they believe and therefore they speak that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life.

So the profession of faith in Christ in the midst of persecution is how Paul applies verse 10. And I think in the in the context then what the psalmist is saying in verse 11 is that in my haste—now that word “haste” can be translated urgency, trembling. It can be translated “in my consternation.” In the middle of this problem, greatly being troubled and the resulting trembling of his soul, he then doesn’t turn to salvation from men for salvation, but rather he presents the same word of faith in God the deliverer that the ministers of the gospel are portrayed as saying as a result of their belief in 2 Corinthians as Paul quotes from verse 10.

Now this is a view that is not held by all commentators but it is held by a great many of them. Jamie Alexander for instance in his comment on verse 11 says that he translates this phrase “I said in my terror all mankind are false”—quoting from Alexander—”even in the midst of his excitement, terror, panic he would turn away from all mankind and would trust in God alone.”

Matthew Henry in his commentary actually thinks the other way—that it was a hasteful statement by the psalmist. And yet he goes on to say that the other view is also very plausible. He says that you can translate the word “haste” as “consternation.” “I was in consternation or in my plight.” He says he can translate it that way. And he says that specifically he says “in this sense the apostle seems to take it” and in Romans 3:4 and he quotes from Romans 3:4.

We read that “let God be true and every man a liar” in comparison with God, all men are fickle and inconstant and subject to change. And therefore, let us cease from man and cleave to God.”

—Matthew Henry

There’s another reason why I think this is the correct interpretation. Turn to your Bibles to Psalm 62. And I think that this can be seen in parallel with the particular psalm we’re looking at now. Psalm 62 is a statement of God being the only refuge for those who are in distress. Begins for instance in verse one, “truly my soul waiteth upon God. From him cometh my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not be greatly moved.”

And then he goes on to speak in this manner. Verse 5: “my soul await thou only upon God.” And then in the context of this, read verse 9: “Surely men of low degree are vanity and men of high degree are a lie. To be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity.”

Now, this is no confession of sin. This is not a sinful statement made about mankind. This is an accurate statement made about all classes of men. Those of low class and those of high class are together of vanity and lightness. They are vanity and they are a lie. They are altogether lighter than vanity. “Trust not an oppression,” he goes on to say.

So, Psalm 62, I think, is parallel to Psalm 116. And it tells us again that when David or the psalmist whoever it was wrote in his consternation of distress that all men are liars, what he is saying at the heart of this psalm is a profession of faith in God alone for the ability to deliver him from the pains of hell.

And so we have I think at the center of this psalm a statement of trust in God. “All men are liars.”

The scriptures tell us that in Romans 3 it says “let God be true and every man a liar.” Now he’s speaking, you know, not directly as a direct statement. He says, “If this is the case, then let all good, let God be true and all men be liars.” But verse 9 of Psalm 62 clearly tells us of a description of all men as being deceitful and incapable of bringing salvation, really not desirous of it as well.

Now this doesn’t mean that men are always characterized by lies, that everything they say are lies. It means that in relationship to what the psalmist is talking about—his need for deliverance—all men are false. No man is holy and righteous altogether. No man is capable then of bringing him into salvation except of course the Lord Jesus Christ.

So we have at verses 10 and 11 a confession of faith and then verses 12 and following tells us the response of the psalmist to the deliverance that has been affected through this confession of faith that God has led him into.

“What shall I render unto the Lord for his benefits or bestowments toward me? So what is the proper response when you understand the depth of the salvation that’s been wrought for us? Understanding the depth of our misery the response says, “I’ll 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 his people.”

Now, if you look down now to verses 17 and 18, the same basic statement is repeated again a couple of verses later.

“I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, will call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of his people.”

So, there’s a twice repeated emphasis here upon the proper response. We have the cup of salvation calling upon the name of the Lord, paying the vows in verses 13 and 14 and verses 17 and 18. “I’ll take the sacrifice of thanksgiving call upon the name of the Lord pay my vows”—so essentially a parallel thing relating the cup of salvation to the sacrifice of thanksgiving.

Now in the providence of God as this psalm looks forward to the great deliverance to come in Jesus Christ and the commemoration of that in the eucharist, that’s what we have don’t we have. And we’ll have today as we do every Lord’s day—the second half of our worship service is a sacrifice of thanksgiving. And it involves taking the cup of salvation.

Now in the Old Testament, there were drink offerings that were poured out to God. But there was also rejoicing—times of meals of God, the sacrifices be given to God, they’d be returned to man for his ingestion. An Old Testament prefigurement of communion. And that’s what the psalmist here is talking about. He’s talking about temple worship, I believe. And this is why I don’t think it was written by David.

It was written later, probably in the restoration from Babylon. But in any event, the proper response to this understanding—the reliance upon God alone and not a trust in mankind for all men are liars—then the proper response is not interestingly enough some sort of existential movement away from the sacrificial system that God had given in the Old Testament or the formal worship system in the New Testament.

The response is formal. Okay? And secondly, the response is congregational. He does these activities—this proper response of taking the cup of salvation, calling upon the Lord, paying his vows—in the presence of all his people, repeated in verses 16 and 18. So this is a balance to what we’ve just said.

At the core of our being in terms of our salvation, all men are liars and we’ve got to trust in God alone for salvation. But the result of that salvation, the proper response brings us back into the worshiping community—the Old Testament in terms of the application of this psalm specifically in its context, Psalm 116. And so the proper response is a liturgical response. And it’s a liturgical response performed in the presence or in the context of the congregation of God’s people.

Now, of course, it doesn’t end there. He’ll walk in the land of the living in light of God. In response to him, his soul is filled with great joy and thanksgiving. That’s what this psalm is all about—is that kind of tremendous overflowing of joy in his life. But it takes in its primary aspect a liturgical response in terms of the congregation.

Verse 15, verse 16: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Oh Lord, truly I am thy servant. I am thy servant and the son of thine handmaid. Thou hast loosed my bonds.”

This talks about a relationship to God. There is a formal liturgical relationship and response that’s called for, but there’s also a relational aspect that’s stressed in verse 16. He says, “I am the son of thine handmaid.”

Now, he’s not talking there about the benefits of the handmaid of God, Mary, or any of that kind of stuff. I think what he’s—the reference here is that the Old Testament tells us clearly that homeborn servants had a closer relationship to the master of the household than those that were purchased from outside the house.

So what he’s talking about is the closeness of his relationship to the one who has redeemed him. He is as if he was a homeborn servant. He is a child of God. He is that kind of relationship to him. And of course, what a tremendous blessing. Not simple deliverance, but deliverance—being brought into the household of God as a homeborn servant—to be part of the family of God and a child of God is what he exalts in here, what he rejoices for.

It’s interesting, too, that he’s a servant. The bonds of death is what had previously what he sought deliverance from. And now he’s brought into the bonds of love, the bonds of service to God, the creator of the universe and his redeemer. So the translation here, you got to serve somebody, you know, as Bob Dylan said, out of the bondage of death that had a hold about him—into service to God, his redeemer—in terms of the relationship being one of the father to the son.

And then verses 17 and 18 and finally in verse 19: “in the courts of the Lord’s house in the midst of thee oh Jerusalem”—that describes again where this liturgical action takes place. And then finally, “Praise ye the Lord”—overflowing praise to God.

Now there are some who think that Psalm 116 was written after the Babylonian captivity. There is evidence to support that. I won’t bore you with all the details but it is an interesting application of it to think that as the people went into captivity in Babylon for their sins, they were in the land of death. They were actually literally gotten hold of as they were taken out.

When they were before they were taken into captivity, they turned to foreign alliances to try to help them against what was the judgment of God. And those alliances were deceitful and completely worthless against the judgments of God. “I said in my haste, all men are liars.” Those that they turned to try to keep them from captivity actually became their own persecutors in the history of Israel in the Old Testament.

And then they’re brought into the land of the living. They’re taken out of captivity by God’s grace—miraculous work. He has done his work of purging them and he brings them back into after the exile period—back into the land of the living, back into their rest. And so the concept of returning to your rest means the land of rest in Canaan or Israel. And so that whole theme, this theme applies not just I think on a personal level, but it applies also on a congregational level.

And the church for instance has been brought into captivity as we have been through the result of our sin and persecution by our enemies through the hand of God, chastening his church such as we are in. We’re in a time of exile now. Essentially, we can look at this psalm and realize that the only answer for us as we look forward to a future of a blessing from God hopefully is to trust only in God, not to trust in men.

So, it has congregational implications as well.

But I want to talk now briefly on these three main points. Now, I told you I didn’t give you an outline because I wanted a simple sermon, but I’ve given you a complicated one already with six or seven parts of this psalm. But I want to boil it down now to three basic elements.

As I was looking at these verses, beginning at the center with the declaration that all men are liars, and look at the psalm, the way it flows, it seems to me that this psalm follows very nicely the pattern that Dave H. has talked about in one or two of his sermons. The pattern that’s given for us in the Heidelberg Catechism in the summation of what we need to know to live and die happily in the faith of Jesus Christ.

“What three things must I know to live and die happily in the in the in this faith of Jesus Christ?” the catechism asked, the Heidelberg Catechism.

You know what those three things are? Some of you do. The first thing is how great my sin and misery is. The second thing is how I am redeemed from all my sins and misery. And then the third thing is how I should be thankful to God for such redemption.

Now that’s an accurate summation I think of the Christian faith and what Christian living is all about. And I think it’s also the flow of this particular psalm. How great my sin and misery is. How I am redeemed from all my sins and misery. And then finally, how I am to be thankful to God for such redemption.

Let’s look at the psalm then in terms of that.

**How great my sin and misery is** described for us by the desperate states of the psalmist in the first few verses where he talks about the pains of hell getting hold upon him and the chords of death encompassing him. He talks about the greatness of his despair.

Now this greatness, these desperate straits, how great our sin and resultant misery are things that we don’t even think of very often—except perhaps in the Lord’s day or when we read a particular portion of scripture that the spirit uses to convict us. But it is true positionally at all times of the people of God. Positionally, we are always to be seeing ourselves in light of the need for redemption from God. Redemption accomplished in Christ, of course, but it never changes the fact that we do still sin.

When we come forward every Sunday, we have a confession of sin. Why? Because we know we’re still sinners and we’ve been saved, but we’ve not been delivered from the presence of sin yet. We have been delivered from the power but not the presence and its presence in our own hearts as well.

The desperate states of our sin and misery, the depths of those things are things we need to think about on a regular basis because it’s true positionally, experientially. When your when you reach your midnight hour of the soul, when you reach your time of trouble, when you reach that time when God’s fingers through using the mechanisms of death or enemies or persecution have you in their grip, grasp. That’s one of the things that God calls you to meditate on in terms of this psalm I think—is the greatness of our misery and our sin.

And there are positionally this is positionally true all the time. Experientially it’s true of us in various portions of our life.

Now I know you know I know this congregation. I know what people are going through—not all of it of course—but I know that this last year a number of you have gone experientially through times when you’ve realized the depths of misery and hopefully you’ve thought through the depths of your own personal sin. God has taken us through various things this past year, many of us, where we can relate to Psalm 116 real well, whether it was emotional in nature, physical, financial for some of you. These are things that happened to us from time to time.

Now they don’t happen every week. Every week doesn’t involve a tremendous torment in our soul and a tearing apart of it and wondering what is going on and where is God in the midst of some of the things that we go through. But these are things that are inevitable to the Christian life as we progress and mature in the faith. In fact, it’s the very mechanism why God causes us to progress and mature in the faith.

The progress of history and the progress of the individual Christian are very similar. And the way that works is God builds you up. Then he shows you your faults. He shows you again the depths of your sin in misery. You thought you knew before how sinful you were, but you didn’t. You thought you knew before what misery was, but you didn’t, because God takes you to a further point of misery and sin and a realization of your own sin. The sin isn’t greater, but your realization of it grows.

To what end? So that you can be miserable before God? No, no, no. So that you can reach the end of Psalm 116. Praise the Lord.

Because it’s only if you understand the depth of your sin and misery that you understand the greatness of the redemption offered through Jesus Christ. And then you respond with the greatness of increased thanksgiving to God for such redemption. And that’s what Psalm 116 gives us a picture of.

Now, what I’m saying is if positionally, excuse me, if experientially this last year, this last 6 months, this last month, or even this last week, found you in a position of despair where you thought, “I need help. I need deliverance. I cannot find a way out of whatever the situation is. I wish things were different.” If you find yourself in that position, realize the nature of this psalm. Take joy in the result of it and the flow of as we go through it.

Now, if you haven’t yet, take this information, stash it away in your soul, in your head, piece of paper, that when your time of trial comes, when you are abandoned by men or when you are physically on the point of death or whatever it is, remember this psalm and the flow of it.

In the midst of the greatness of your sin and misery, turn to God for redemption. Turn to God for comfort in the context of that trial. I mean, after all, we’re not talking here about in Psalm 116 about a salvation experience. I don’t believe. I believe we’re talking about somebody who already is a relationship to God who’s been brought into captivity or got into troubles. It was David. The king is after him, whatever it is, and he feels in despair and he then turns to God for help and deliverance in a temporal sense as well.

The midnight of the soul—turn to this. And then secondly, so you understand the death of your sin and misery, you may become that and you realize how I am redeemed from all my sins and misery.

**How are you redeemed?** Well, the fact is you are of course but how as well. Number one comes as I said the realization—the despair comes to teach us the greatness of the redemption and how we are redeemed. We are not redeemed by men. All men are liars. All men are useless when it comes to the midnight of the soul.

When it comes to the dark hour of the soul, God himself must be our stay at the center of our Christian being. We must have relationship with God as the center pin, the pivotal hinge of who we are. That’s got to be the anchor of our soul. Or when the time of trouble comes, if it’s not the anchor, you’ll either make God your anchor—as I said before—you’ll blow away. You’ll apostasize. You’ll leave the faith. You can walk through a Christian life performing the external mechanisms of it and live in the context of God’s people and will not have at the center of your life a reliance upon the person and work of Christ, a dependence upon him alone for deliverance in time of trouble.

You may be here precisely because you depend upon men. You think that men somehow can help you in the time of trouble. Well, God does use secondary means. I’m not saying that men aren’t important. We’ll see that in the third portion. How to be thankful to God. But at the core of our being, it must be a personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It must be an awareness that God himself and not men can deliver us.

We are redeemed. How we are redeemed from that sin and misery is through God and not through men and not through ourselves. We stress the importance of families. We stress the importance of the institutional church. We stress the importance of the civil community. These things however are not at the center of our faith and are not at the center of the deliverance from depression, trials, physical torments etc.

At the center of our faith must be reliance upon God and not our father, not our mother, not our sister, not our pastor, not our elder, not our wife, not our husband.

Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t love those people. I am firmly, well, we’ll get to that a little bit later, but I’m firmly convinced we understand this point. That’s when you can really love your wife or love your husband or love your kids or love your fellow parishioners at the church.

See, all men are false. And if we rely upon men, whether it’s the church, church officers, wives, children, parents, if we rely upon them for our ultimate sense of deliverance, what’s that going to lead to when they let us down as they always do? Because they’re men. They’re not God. They will let us down in some way. And if we’re relying upon them for our sense of well-being, we’re going to hate them. That’s probably what we’ll end up doing.

I watched a little expose a I guess on Jerry Lewis. I’ve talked to you about some of this—his he had his telethon, you know, for muscular dystrophy. And I watched a thing on one of the news format shows. I don’t know which one it was, one of the network shows. And there are like 15 or 20 people that used to be Jerry’s kids and now they don’t like Jerry Lewis because he wrote some article a year ago that offended them. And they think that he is patronizing toward the handicapped.

And I was watching this show and here you got Jerry Lewis, not a man of faith as far as I know, but nonetheless, he’s done—he’s raised I think billions of dollars for MDA. He’s put incredible amounts of his life and energy into helping people who have some a crippling disease like this and people—some people are now trying to pick at him and of course the news show instead of looking at the thousands or millions of people that support what he’s doing, they look at the 15 or 20 who don’t.

But you know, if you look at it and you read some of the things that Jerry Lewis has written, they’re right probably in some ways. He probably doesn’t have a completely self-conscious position and understanding of what handicapped people are about. Right? I mean, if you look at it, you know, it’s true. You don’t live a partial life if you’re a handicapped person. Life is life. And if God gives us life, we have life. All of it, not some of it. And he wrote that he was you could only live kind of a partial life.

But so what you see those people, the reason why they’re so bitter and angry against Jerry Lewis, these 15 or 20 people, is cuz they’re relying upon men for their sense of deliverance from their disease or whatever it is they have. If they and when you rely upon men, even a man like Jerry Lewis who has put tremendous amounts of money, time, and energy into trying to help you, he’s not going to be perfect. And his imperfection will get to you at some point in time. And you will be not thankful anymore for what he does for you. You’ll be bitter against him.

But the same thing is true of your wife, your husband, your children, your parents, your church officers, your church members, the fellow parishioners, the civil, whatever it is. You rely upon men, you’re going to end up hating them.

At the center of your being has to be a profession of faith in God by professing that all men are deceitful. They’re all crooked bones. They don’t shoot straight. Well, they can. I mean, you know, it’s I was thinking as I meditated the last 3 weeks upon this psalm about some lyrics from contemporary music. I don’t want to quote entire songs but the basic idea is “I never had a lot of trust in human beings, but somehow sometimes we manage to shine like a light on earth beaming up into space.” Something like that.

And it’s true. I mean, if you understand that all men are twisted, all men are sinners, all men when they come for the worship God of the Lord’s day should immediately start with confession of sin. If you understand that, then you can enjoy when men shine. See, isn’t that great what God has done in that person’s life. But otherwise, you’re not going to be a happy person.

All men are liars, not to be relied upon. And that includes not just the guy in the pew next to you or your wife or your husband, your child, whoever it is. That includes you. And in America, that is the worst idol. That’s probably the predominant idolatry is not an alliance from the civil state for deliver—yeah, they look to the civil state for all kinds of benefits now and all that sort of stuff, but really at the heart of the American culture is self-realization and individual dynamics and everything. And even both sides, you know, kind of promote that.

The the conservative side does the same thing. The self-made man, Horatio Alger reliance upon self. But see, all men are liars means that everybody are liars, including me, the person who makes the declaration. I can’t rely upon myself. I can’t rely upon my intellect when the dark hour of the soul comes. I can’t rely upon my money. I can’t rely upon my petty rationalizations of what occurs around me. I can’t rely upon my rational mind to say, “I shouldn’t feel this way.” God punches through all that stuff.

You are also shifting sand. And if at the core of your understanding of who you are, you have reliance upon yourself instead of upon God, forget it. When the dark out of the soul comes, you’ll either make God your anchor, as I said before, you’ll blow away. You’ll apostasize or you’ll leave the faith.

So, this is hard stuff. This is not easy. And if you think it’s easy, and if you don’t understand what I’m talking about, that’s okay. But maybe one of these days, you’ll—when the dark of your soul comes, when some trouble comes to your life, you’ll think about it a little more, and God will use these verses in your life.

If you think it’s easy, though, you haven’t got the point. It is hard stuff because it’s death to yourself and your reliance upon yourself or the extension of yourself in the people around you. Jesus said you got to take up your cross daily. Our cross is a tough thing. Crucifixion is a horrid picture of a way to die and a way to suffer. But it’s the picture that Christ applied to us to crucify ourselves.

And it’s in this sense here—of reliance upon ourselves. It doesn’t mean you want to not take care of yourself. What it means is at the core again of your being—die to your own reliance upon self for deliverance and live then and be reborn into a knowledge of God as your deliverance.

And see, we think we do that. When you become a Christian, you think you know all that stuff. And then as you grow in Christ, you think you know that stuff. But the older you get, the more you realize is that there’s a lot of self-reliance, a lot of reliance upon false and deceitful men left in your heart. And God and his grace and love to you is going to burn it out of you increasingly over time. And when these times of trouble come to our souls, that’s one reason for them—that God would cause us to burn those things out and to live to him.

It’s hard work, but you know, on the other hand, it’s joyous thing. The end result is joyous.

I was thinking about a movie that I mentioned that’s on—Habitation of Dragons by Horton Foot. Really was interesting to watch that in the context of preparing this sermon. At the end of the movie as they’ve gone through their terrible times of trouble and then respond to it some of them in a positive sense, the theme music that plays is not the sad music. It’s this joy, this harvest theme, because see it’s the harvest that’s beginning to happen now.

God has taken them through hard, difficult times—death of children, adulterous wives, disappointments, long years of bitterness. But the end result of that is the harvest. And the harvest is a time of joy. It’s not a time of light-hearted joy in terms of ignoring what happened during the hard work when you planted the crops. “He who plants with tears will sew with joy, will bring forth the crops.” But harvest then—it is a hard task, but the end result of that task—it is joy and its harvest, its rest and its peace.

So in any event, the second part of this then is to realize how I’m redeemed from all my sins and misery and at the core of that redemption is a reliance upon God as the anchor of our soul and not men.

And now okay what’s the third part then?

**Three things you guys have to know.** First part: how great my sin and misery is. The second: how I’m redeemed from all my sins and misery. And the third: **how I am to be thankful** to God for such redemption.

How I am—how I am to be thankful. Well, we know we’re supposed to be thankful. And Psalm 116 tells us some ways in which that thankfulness is expressed.

And this is the balance to the middle of the psalm—that all men are liars—because the result, the proper picture of thanksgiving as I said before takes place in the context of community. It’s the presence of all those lying people including yourself. God restores you to a proper sense of who men are through this process.

So when I say that all are liars, you know, you could sinfully take that and think what I mean then is just pull back into yourself and kind of be self-pitying. I used to do that when I was in high school. I had my first kind of crush on a girl, you know, in the high school and I spent one whole summer listening to music about love lost, etc. I mean, kind of a self-pitying thing.

And then for a while, too, I was really big on a particular contemporary folk song which expresses the idea that “I am a rock. I am an island. Rock feels no pain. An island never cries.” And you could look at it that way. All men are liars. I’m going to be a rock and, you know, stoic and just, you know, not get too involved in people’s lives.

But no, Psalm 116 says, if you understand the depth of your sin and misery, how you are redeemed through reliance upon God and not those people, then you’re brought into community then in terms of giving that thanks to God. And so the psalmist in verse 16 ends in a picture of that thankfulness being portrayed as I said before in formal liturgical actions and in a depth of an understanding of our relationship to God on a minute-by-minute, moment by moment basis. He is our father. We’re a homeborn servant now. We are a servant of his. And all that happens in the context of the family of God or the worshiping community of God at Jerusalem.

And so how we are to be thankful brings us back into a correct perspective of our relationship one to the other. And of course the basis for that then is if the psalmist has asserted that all men are liars and then he gets down to the last half of the psalm and he says that he’s going to worship God in the context of all those people, what has he done for those liars? Well, he’s forgiven them hasn’t he? You brought into a position of forgiving your wife or your husband or your child for the pettiness and for the sins that they perform.

And as I mentioned the Habitation of Dragons—that was Horton Foot’s whole point in that movie—is that in the context of very difficult times, those trying times that come upon us in the providence of God, there are lessons to be learned. And one of the big lessons, having understood that the relationship must be seen in relationship to God alone, then you can then begin to learn lessons in terms of forgiveness of others. You forgive yourself. You understand the redemption forgiveness offered through Christ and you also then can turn around and forgive other people.

It’s interesting. There were two characters along this line in the movie again that I could use as illustrations. There was two brothers originally in the movie. One is already dead, so you don’t see him. The other brother’s an older man, and you see him, he comes to his other brother’s children and tries to—he wants really a place to live. Well, in any event, the older the living brother, an older man, is talking about a dream that he had and he had been…

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