Psalm Chapter 116

Psalm 116: The Love That Begins with a Reason

"I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications." There is something almost scandalously honest about this opening — the psalmist does not love God in the abstract, as a philosophical proposition, but because God did something specific: He listened. The sorrows of death had wrapped around him, the pains of hell had taken hold, and in that drowning moment he called out, and God inclined His ear. That word — inclined — suggests God leaning in, turning His head, the way you bend toward someone who is speaking very quietly. And the response is not a theology lecture but a love song. "Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee." Then comes the line that has echoed through centuries of funerals and martyrdoms: "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." Not precious as in valuable, but precious as in costly — it matters to God, it is not cheap to Him, when one of His own passes through that door. And so the psalmist asks the only question worth asking after such a rescue: "What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?" The answer: take the cup of salvation and call upon His name. The response to grace is not payment but more receiving.

00:00 I Love the Lord
00:15 The Sorrows of Death
00:25 Return Unto Thy Rest
00:40 Delivered from Death and Tears
00:50 I Believed, Therefore I Spoke
01:00 What Shall I Render?
01:15 Precious Death of His Saints
01:30 The Sacrifice of Thanksgiving
01:50 In the Courts of the Lord