Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 116 | Date: April 16, 2023 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Introduction to Psalms of Grateful Praise

My feet from stumbling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believed, even when I spoke, “I am greatly afflicted.” Then I said in my alarm, “All mankind are liars.” What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. O Lord, I am your servant. I am your servant, the son of your maidservant. You have loosed my bond. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord.

Let’s look to the Lord in prayer.

Our Father, we have found that we have so much to learn from the Psalter on so many levels. We learn about you. We learn what praise is, what praise ought to be. We’ve learned what kind of worshipers we ought to be. We pray that this evening, you will teach us again and help us to learn how to praise you with songs of grateful praise. We pray that you’ll use this to stir our hearts to a deeper sense of gratitude for what you have done for us. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

All right, again, individual songs or psalms of grateful praise. And it’s characterized by what I have there on the outline: I cried, God heard, and he delivered. There are various kinds of terminology that’s used for this genre of psalms. I have that on your outline. It’s called declarative praise psalms. That’s to be distinguished from descriptive praise, where you might say God is holy, God is sovereign, and you describe the attributes of God in praise. This is not that. This is where we’re just declaring God’s praise or acknowledging God’s goodness to us. So, Psalms of Acknowledgement, or as they’re more popularly called, Thanksgiving Psalms. We’ll see something about that terminology in a little bit.

Distinctions to Be Made

Some distinctions to be made here. First of all, individual songs of grateful praise in relation to praise psalms. These are praise psalms, but it’s something of a subcategory of a praise psalm. Typically in praise psalms or hymns, there’s this description of God and his greatness, his attributes, his works, and so on. This is a subset of that in that these psalms focus on God’s help to me individually, and I’m offering praise to God for what he has done for me personally. So, individual psalms of grateful praise is what we’ll call these. These are individually focused.

And then I have for you, distinguishing it from lament psalms. And we might say here best that individual psalms of grateful praise are the later counterpart to lament psalms. Now you’ll remember when we looked at lament psalms, the heart of the lament psalm is not the lament. The heart of the lament psalm is the petition: “Help me. Deliver me. Destroy my enemies, forgive my sins.” The heart of the lament psalm is the petition, asking for God’s help. These psalms of grateful praise, then, look back on those kinds of occasions and offer praise to God for the help that was sought and given.

So I asked the Lord for help, he gave it, and these psalms now are written to praise God for the help that was given. So you might have a lament that is written in the midst of some awful danger and tragedy or something like that, and then now they’ve asked for help, and now after God has given deliverance, we have an individual psalm of grateful praise, where they offer praise now for God’s answer to prayer and the deliverance that was given. So in the lament psalm, the psalmist expresses confidence—remember we saw that—trust that God would deliver, and now he gives praise to God in these psalms because God did, in fact, give the deliverance that was requested.

In fact, there are a couple of explicit examples of that in the Psalter, and I want you to look at those, and here we’ll look at the superscript in particular. Look at Psalm 56. Psalm 56 we have in the superscript: “A mictam of David… when the Philistines seized him in Gath.” You remember that episode from the life of David, 1 Samuel chapter 21, where David is running from Saul. He’s running for his life. He’s desperate, doesn’t know where to go. He ends up going to, thinking that he can hide under the shelter of King Achish of the Philistines, which was a questionable move. We’ll talk about that when we come to expound Psalm 34 and Psalm 56. But this psalm was written—Psalm 56 is a lament psalm—and it’s written during that episode. David is in hiding, he’s been seized by the men of Gath, recognized for who he is, he’s not sure if he’s going to live through this thing, and he’s struggling with all of that, and he writes Psalm 56. So that’s in that episode.

Now look at Psalm 34. This is the psalm of individual grateful praise. And notice the superscript again: “Of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, which evidently is another name for King Achish, so that he drove him out and went away.” You remember the episode? David was running from Saul. He goes to Philistines in Gath, and he’s hiding out there. And then they discover who he is. And so to get out of it, he acts like he’s crazy. And he’s slobbering all over himself and pretending that he’s a madman. And they believe him and let him go. That’s this episode. Psalm 56 is written as a lament during that episode. Psalm 34 now, he identifies the same episode. But now, this is an individual song of grateful praise. He’s looking back on it, and he offers God praise for the deliverance that was given. In Psalm 56, he’s in this episode, asks for deliverance. Psalm 34, written in the same circumstances, only now an acknowledgement of God’s deliverance that he gave.

Another, Psalm 51. This is a very familiar one for you. Psalm 51. Notice again the superscript: “A psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.” You remember the episode, of course, in 2 Samuel 11 and 12, particularly chapter 11, where David’s notorious sin with Bathsheba, Uriah, and all of that. Nathan came and confronted him about his sin. David breaks and he repents of his sin. And this is a record of that repentance. This is a lament psalm. In this particular case, the lament is his sin. It’s not the enemy that’s coming after him. It’s his sin that he has committed. And the petition is that God would give forgiveness. So that’s the lament of Psalm 51. He’s asking for mercy. He’s asking for pardon because of his sin.

Now look back at Psalm 32. Now, we don’t have a historical situation identified for us in Psalm 32. All we have is a type of psalm, and that it’s of David, a maskil of David. But we surmise from the content of the psalm that Psalm 32 is, again, written in the wake of that episode now, the same Bathsheba episode. Only now, David is not asking for forgiveness and lamenting his sin. Now he’s rejoicing in the forgiveness that was given. So in Psalm 51, we have the lament, the petition for forgiveness. In Psalm 32, now he writes that God has given that forgiveness and he rejoices in it. “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord does not impute sin,” and so on. So that’s the individual psalm of grateful praise. It’s something of a later counterpart to a lament, although it’s not necessarily following a lament psalm, but it’s that in concept at least. In the lament, he requests, he laments the situation, asks for deliverance. In these individual psalms of grateful praise, they turn and acknowledge that God has been good and answered prayer and has delivered.

And I’ve given you a list of samples there, then, of this type of psalm. And you’ll even see a couple of them, 1 Samuel 2, before David’s time, and then after David’s time. In Jonah 2, verses 1 to 9, we have another psalm of grateful praise. All right, so that’s what this genre of psalm is all about.

Background and Setting

Now let me give you some background and setting. Moses’ law provided that a thank offering could be given. A worshiper could come and give an offering to God voluntarily and offer to God a sacrifice of various kinds in thanks to God for what he has done. Let’s take the moment and look back at Leviticus. Leviticus chapter 7. And I’ll just take the time to read verses 11 to 15. Allergy season, that time of year.

Okay, Leviticus chapter 7, I’ll begin with verse 11: “And this is the law of the sacrifice of peace offerings that one may offer to the Lord. If he offers it for a thanksgiving, then he shall offer with the thanksgiving sacrifice unleavened loaves mixed with oil, unleavened wafers smeared with oil, and loaves of fine flour well mixed with oil. With the sacrifice of his peace offering for thanksgiving, he shall bring his offering with loaves of leavened bread. And from it he shall offer one loaf from each offering as a gift to the Lord. It shall belong to the priest who throws the blood of the peace offering, and the flesh of the sacrifice of his peace offering for Thanksgiving shall be eaten on the day of his offering. He shall not leave any of it until morning.”

All right. You could read further on this if you’d like in Leviticus. This is not a required offering. This is a voluntary offering. A worshiper feels particularly moved for God’s answer to prayer. He has been gracious to him in some way. And so he goes to the house of God and he offers this sacrifice of thanksgiving to God, a sacrifice of praise, in acknowledging that God has heard him, God has been gracious and merciful in whatever particular kind of way. So we have a sacrifice that’s offered as a voluntary act of worship. This was not prescribed. In this one, this sacrifice that was offered, the one offering it could partake in it as well, in eating it. It might be a burnt offering, it might be a grain offering. In either case, the offering is given to God in grateful praise and acknowledgement of what God has done.

Now, if that’s sort of as a quick backdrop to these individual Psalms of Grateful Praise in the Law of Moses, look again at Psalm 116 that we’ve just read, and notice how all of that background is reflected here. Verse 1, I’ll begin there again. We have here the expression of grateful praise. “I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy, because he inclined his ear to me. Therefore, I’ll call upon him as long as I live. The snares of death encompassed me. The pangs of Sheol laid hold on me. I suffered distress and anguish, and then I called on the name of the Lord. Oh, Lord, I pray, deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple,” and so on. Verse 8: “For you’ve delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.”

So here’s his expression of grateful praise. We’re not given the specific circumstances, but we’re told that God has intervened when the psalmist prayed and has delivered him. Now, verses 12 and following, he vows what he will do in response to that deliverance, and he says, verse 12: “What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?” Answer? “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.” Look at verse 17: “I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of his people.” So now we have the people gathered around together at the temple. And he is acknowledging what God has done for him. He’s brought deliverance. He’s offering this sacrifice. He’s lifting the cup of salvation in praise to God for what he has done. And he wants all the congregation to hear his expressions of praise to God. It’s a temple scene, and he’s giving public praise to God for his intervention in his life personally.

Now, at this point, it’s good to have a brief note on terminology. This might seem a little funny to you, a little odd, but it’s worth recognizing, I think. Thanksgiving, Psalms of Thanksgiving, or the sacrifice of Thanksgiving—that terminology is just a little bit of a misnomer. There is in the biblical Hebrew, in the Old Testament, no word for thanksgiving. No one says, “thank you,” to God. That’s not exactly what’s going on. Now clearly, gratitude’s in the atmosphere and all that’s going on, but that’s not quite the terminology they use. We translate it that way just to help to make better sense of it to our English ears, and you have it in several places, like in Psalm 92, verse one, it’s good to give thanks to the Lord. The superscript of Psalm 100 is a psalm for giving thanks, and that’s the way we translate it into English, and there are several other places like that.

But in the Hebrew Old Testament, no one says, “thank you” to God. The word that’s used there means to confess, to acknowledge, to declare. Now again, clearly, gratitude’s in the atmosphere, but the point is not that the worshiper is saying thank you to God. The idea is that he’s confessing or declaring or acknowledging what God has done for him, and he’s doing it in the hearing of the rest of the congregation. So he’s offering praise, clearly it’s praise of thanksgiving, so it’s not a bad translation, but the point of it is he’s acknowledging that God has intervened, and he’s declaring what God has done in the hearing of all of the other people. He confesses God’s goodness. He confesses or acknowledges God’s actions on his part.

And it’s never private. It’s an important part of these psalms. It’s never private. This is public praise that is given. Praising God by confessing his kindness to others and declaring to them what God has done on his behalf. We saw that already in Psalm 116. If you look at it, verse 13: “I’ll lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.” That’s a temple scene. Verse 14: “I’ll pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of his people.” It’s a public setting. Verses 17 and 18: “I’ll offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord. I’ll pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.” Let me give you a few other examples of it. I have it for you there in your outline: Psalm 35, verse 18: “I will thank you in the great congregation. In the mighty throng, I will praise you. I will confess your goodness. I’ll acknowledge your mercy, your kindness to me.” Psalm 40, verse five: “You have multiplied, oh Lord, my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us. None can compare with you. I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than that can be told.” Psalm 66, verse 16: “Come and hear all you who fear God and I will tell what he has done for my soul.”

Now you’ll see this in many of the psalms, particularly in these psalms, individual psalms of grateful praise. Well here the psalmist is not just thanking God, he’s praising God by confessing and acknowledging his goodness to him in the hearing of other people. So we call it then psalms of grateful praise. It’s the occasion of public praise. So then for this matter of background again, Moses’ law provided for offerings to be offered to express grateful praise. Leviticus 7 tells us about that, and it’s accompanied by a communal meal. And that’s reflected in these Psalms as well, lifting the cup of salvation and so on. But with David now, we have the institution of psalm singing to accompany the Mosaic sacrifices. And there’s this singing in the temple worship, and there’s this musical dimension to it. So now you have that offering that Moses prescribed, but accompanying that now is a song, a psalm of grateful praise that is sung, confessing God and his kindness to them. So these psalms are individually oriented. They’re intended for community use in the temple, acknowledging what God has done.

Typical Form of These Psalms

All right then, as I’ve done before, a note on the typical form of these psalms. By the way, I’ve talked about the form of the praise psalms, the hymns. I’ve talked about the form of the lament psalms, and I’ve said it at each point, but I want to emphasize it again. These psalms are not set in concrete. These are typical. These are typically the form that is followed. These components of these psalms are usually evident.

First of all, you have in these individual psalms of grateful praise a proclamation: “I will praise the Lord.” Or like we have in Psalm 116, the opening line is not, “I will praise the Lord.” It’s simply just the praise itself: “I love the Lord.” Usually we have here the proclamation opening up the psalm. “I will praise the Lord.” And then you have, right on the heels of that, an introductory summary statement of what God has done. “Because he has heard my voice.” That’s what marks these Psalms. I love the Lord because he’s heard. I’ve cried and he heard. We have the introductory statement.

And then typically what we have in these Psalms, and this is usually the meat of the Psalms, if you will, a reflection on the past need and a report of the deliverance that was given. So at this point in the psalm now, he started out, “I’ll praise the Lord,” then he gives the introductory statement, “because he heard me,” and now he backs up and he says, “I was in a pit. I was almost gone. I was crying. I cried out that I had no help. I was helpless. And God intervened, and he helped.” And so there’s the report on the past need and a reflection on what the situation was and a report that God had come and intervened and helped. I cried. He heard. He delivered. And here the psalmist might even echo a previous lament psalm that he’s written, like we saw in a couple of those examples.

So we have the proclamation at the beginning, introductory statement, summary of what’s going on in the psalm, and then he gives the details of it. You find that, for instance, with Jonah in his psalm of grateful praise. “I was in the deep, and I was a goner, and God brought me out.” There’s a reflection on the need and God’s deliverance, and then the psalm turns around and ends again with this praise. “Come join me in praise,” or something like that. So this is typically how these psalms will work.

I’ve mentioned Jonah. Let’s look at that one. We have that there in your handout. The superscript to the psalm is verse one: “Then Jonah prayed to the Lord.” You remember the setting now. He didn’t want to go to Nineveh and God sent a submarine to bring him back. We heard about that this morning. Jonah prayed to the Lord, his God, from the belly of the fish. Now we have in verse 2—by the way, this song of grateful praise does not begin with an initial proclamation, but we have a summary statement. Verse 2: “I called out to the Lord out of distress, and he answered me out of the belly of Sheol. I cried, and you heard my voice.” That is, I was as good as dead. I called to the Lord, and he heard me. So there’s the summary of what he’s going to say.

Now, verses 3 and following have his reflection on his time of need. Jonah’s time of need, of course, was he’s out in the ocean. And he’s in a fish. “You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me. All your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I’m driven away from your sight. Yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ The waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me. Weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains.” So you get a picture of Jonah’s experience here as he describes it poetically. So there’s his reflection on his time of need.

Now verse 6, at the end of the verse, he begins his report of deliverance. “I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever, yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord and my prayer came to you in your holy temple.” And now in this case, we have in verses 8 and 9 a brief homily, an exhortation. “Those who pay regard to vain idols, forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord.” And this is what he wants everyone to hear. So Jonah has made a vow, maybe in the belly of the fish. He’s made a vow, and now he goes to the temple to offer a sacrifice and pays his vow. And there he declares to everyone, “Salvation is of the Lord. The Lord delivers.” The individual psalm of grateful praise.

All right, next you have Psalm 30. In the superscript, we have a psalm of David, a song at the dedication of the temple. So David wrote this ahead of time, anticipating Solomon’s building of the temple. It begins with the proclamation, verse one: “I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me.” We have a summary statement, verses two and three: “O Lord, my God, I cried to you for help and you have healed me. O Lord, you have brought me up, brought up my soul from Sheol. You restored me to life from among those who goes down to the pit.” And there in the beginning of verse 4, we have the congregation now is called to praise the Lord with him: “Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name, for his anger is but for a moment his favor for a lifetime.” And so on.

Then verses 6 to 10, we have the report of deliverance. “As for me, I said in my prosperity, ‘I shall never be moved.’ By your favor, O Lord, you made my mountains stand strong. You hid your face. I was dismayed. To you, O Lord, I cry. And to the Lord, I plead for mercy. What profit is there in my death if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? Here, O Lord, be merciful to me. O Lord, be my helper.” And it concludes with praise, as you can see.

I have another example for you, Psalm 34. Again, we have the superscript. It’s the Psalm of David when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out and went away. It’s the one we mentioned earlier. This is the counterpart to Psalm 56, which was a lament of the same situation. Now he looks back on it. He begins with a proclamation of praise, verses one to three: “I will bless the Lord at all times. My soul makes its boast in the Lord. Magnify the Lord with me. Let us exalt his name together.” He begins with his proclamation of praise. Verses four and six, we have his reflection on his time of need and the report of deliverance: “I sought the Lord, he answered me, delivered me from all my fears.” Verse six: “This poor man cried, the Lord heard him and saved him.” And then verses seven to 10, we have his praise: “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” and so on. And then he has the last half of the psalm, he gives a homily, which is a wisdom psalm. And then at the end of that, actually, he concludes with the return to the theme of deliverance and the note of grateful praise.

All right, another, one more sample here, Psalm 66, verses 13 to 20. Now sometimes—this is a good example you’ll see sometimes—where he combines in one psalm two different types of psalms, and these usually end up being longer ones, of course. Verses one to 12 is a community-oriented praise psalm. And then beginning with verse 13, he narrows to an individual psalm of grateful praise. And you’ll see in verse 13, his proclamation: “I’ll come into your house with burnt offerings.” He’s proclaiming his praise, his intentions of what he will do. Note that these verses here, 13, 14, 15, speak of the thank offering itself. “I’ll offer to you,” verse 15, “I’ll offer to you burnt offerings of fatted animals with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams. I’ll make an offering of bulls and goats.” So he’s speaking of the thank offering itself.

And then next, in verses 16 to 20, he reflects the accompanying service that surrounds that. The introductory summary, verse 16: “Come and hear all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for my soul.” Verse 17 begins the reflection and report: “I cried to him with my mouth. If I cherished iniquity, he would not have heard me, but truly the Lord God has listened. He has attended to the voice of my prayer.” And he ends with praise: “Blessed be God because he has not rejected my prayer, removed his steadfast love from me.” So you can see that these components of the psalm are generally followed in this type of psalm.

I was going to take time for Psalm 116 at this point. You have that on the—no you don’t. Yeah, we’ll catch Psalm 116 at another time. If you want to jot down quickly the sections of those Psalms, those of you who want to make notes of that: Psalm 116 verses one and two, we have the proclamation of praise. “I love the Lord because he’s heard my voice and my pleas for mercy.” That’s verses one and two. Then verses three to 11, he has his reflection on his time of need and his report of deliverance. 3 to 11, his reflection on this time of need. “The snares of death encompassed me, but the Lord heard.” And then verses 12 to 19, we have his concluding praise.

Application to the New Covenant Community

All right. That may have more application to you, knowing all of that, than you initially expect. This tradition of rendering grateful praise to God in the congregation is not for Old Covenant worship only, but in fact the tradition continues in the New Covenant community as well. It continues in the church today. It has been the custom in many churches, I think more in the past than it is today, but it has been the custom in many churches to have a time of congregational praise. We open up for that on at least three of our Sunday evenings per month for that. I think it was something that was more deliberate, at least in my experience. In the old days, it was more pointed. There’d be a time of congregational praise. It would be opened up for, “Let’s have some testimonies. Anybody want to praise the Lord for anything?” And one after another, you’d have people: “I want to thank the Lord for saving me. I was on my road to hell. I was sinning. I had no—God saved me. Thank God.” Somebody else would say, “I want to thank God for giving me a Christian home. My parents led me to Christ.” Another one stand up and “I’m going to thank God this week. He did this and the other.” And there’s this great, this grateful praise, acknowledging, confessing God’s goodness to the congregation.

And it’s something of a carryover of this often at those prayer or those testimony meetings, those times of congregational prayers, of course, be accompanied with a song and prayer as well. And very often, most often, there were testimonies of thanks, of salvation, of God interrupting us in our sin and saving us. It’s a wonderful practice that we do well to follow. Both the testimony that is given verbally and the song that we sing verbally—these are our sacrifice of praise today in the New Covenant Church.

I think we can see that if you would turn to Hebrews chapter 13, and you’ll see something of that reflected in the language of the author here. Hebrews chapter 13. Look at verse 15, Hebrews 13:15: “Through him, then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God.” There it is. We continue to offer sacrifice. But what kind of sacrifice? “That is the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.” So there’s the language of Psalms of acknowledgement, grateful praise given to God in the context of sacrifice. This is the sacrifice we offer to God. Verbally, we express his goodness to us. We don’t offer animals anymore, but we meet in the congregation. We express that God has intervened in my life. He has been good. He has given mercy to me in saving me and in a host of other ways. And so in our response to God’s intervention in our lives and his deliverance from sin, we like the psalmist, offer grateful praise to God. And we do it with our lips. And of course we do with our lives in grateful obedience and service to Christ.

All right, that’s an introduction then to these psalms of individual grateful praise. Any questions before we go on with our service? It’s a wonderful category of psalms, and when we continue in our expositions in the morning, we will investigate several of them.