Psalms 116:1. I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.
You cannot help loving God if he has heard your prayers. Have you tried him? If you have, you can join with David and thousands of others in confessing that he is a prayer-hearing God, and therefore you love him. I find the verse might be read, «I love the Lord, because he hears.» He is always hearing. I am always speaking to him, and he is always hearing me, and therefore I love him. Can you imagine a better reason for love?
Psalms 116:2. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.
«He hath inclined his ear» stooped down, as it were, as you do to a sick person to catch his faintest word. «He hath inclined his ear.» He has heard my prayer, when I could hardly hear it myself. When it was such a broken prayer, such a feeble prayer, that I was afraid I had not prayed, yet he heard me. He inclined his ear, and «therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.» That is, I will never leave off praying, and I will never leave off praising.This is the best gratitude we can show to God. Now, if a beggar were to say to us, «If you will help me today, I will beg of you as long as ever I live,» we should not be very thankful to him; but when we say this to God, he is glad, for he wants us to be thus continually calling upon him.
Psalms 116:3-19. The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the LORD; O LORD, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.
He felt as if he had been hunted. As in hunting, they sometimes surround the stag with dogs as with a cordon, so he says, «the sorrows of death compassed me. There was no getting away. I was in a circle of sorrow.» Worse than that, his pains of conscience and heart were so great that he says, «The pains of hell gat hold upon me» got the grip of him, as though he were arrested by them as though those dogs had come so close as to seize and grasp him. «Then,» says he, «I called.» At the worst extremity he prayed. There is no time too bad to pray in. When it is all over with you, still pray. Often the end of yourself is the beginning of your God. He means to get you away from every other confidence, that you may fling yourself upon him. «Then called I upon the name of the Lord.» And what was the prayer? A very short one: «O Lord, I beseech thee deliver my soul.» God does not measure prayers by the yard. It is not by the length but by the weight. If there is life, earnestness, heart in your prayer, it is all the better for being short. Read the Bible through, and you will scarcely find a long prayer. Prayers that come from the soul are often like arrows shot from the bow quick, short, sharp; and God hears such prayers as these «O Lord, I beseech thee deliver my soul.»
Psalms 116:5. Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;
Wonderful combination gracious and yet righteous. And if you want to know how this can be, look at Calvary, where Jesus dies that we may live. «Oh! the sweet wonders of that cross, where God the Saviour loved and died» where there was the justice of God to the full, and the mercy of God without bound. «Gracious is the Lord and righteous.»
Psalms 116:5-19. Yea, our God is merciful. The LORD preserveth the simple:
Those that have such a deal of wit may take care of themselves, but «the Lord preserveth the simple,» the straightforward, the plain-minded those who believe his word without raising questions. «The Lord preserveth the simple.»
Psalms 116:6. I was brought low and he helped me.
Oh! many of you can say this, I trust, and if you cannot I hope you will before long «I was brought low, and he helped me.»