Psalm 116: 1-2, 12-14 (NIV)

I love the LORD, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live. What shall I return to the LORD for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD. I will fulfill my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people.

How many times has the Lord rescued you out of a troubling situation or season in life? I can think of many occasions when either myself or both my wife and I cried out to God with our cares and concerns and requests…sometimes in complete desperation. He has brought us through many trials and tribulations—more than we can recall and count—but there are also the innumerable ways that we are unaware of in which He moved in our lives to protect us, bless us, or both. Not only has God delivered us out of afflictions brought on by the world and the devil, but also out of trying times that were entirely self-afflicted. Spurgeon noted that, “His benefits are so many, so various, so minute, that they often escape our observation while they exactly meet our wants.”

“What shall I return to the LORD for all his goodness to me?”

Gratitude drove the Psalmist to consider what return he could make to the God who so generously shared His benefits. It was good for him to consider this, making him like the one grateful leper among the ten Jesus healed (Lk. 17). Are we like the one healed leper who returned to offer thanks to the Lord who cleansed him, or more like the other nine who gladly received Jesus’ blessing and then went on their way without stopping to thank the one who made their new way forward possible? We scoff and shake our heads when we read stories like this in the Bible, but before we wag our fingers too vigorously, perhaps we should spend some time in the mirror (Jas. 1:23-24).

“I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD.”

It’s a strange concept. In order to show appreciation for all the Lord has done for us, the psalmist calls on us to lift up the cup of salvation and ask for more? The reality is that before we can do anything toward Him, we begin with gratefully receiving. “It is a profound insight,” Pastor James Boice said. “The only way we can repay God from whom everything comes is by taking even more from him.” Paul said in Acts 17:25, God is not “served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” In other words, you can’t give anything to God or do anything for God that he hasn’t first given to you and done for you. You see this again in 1 Corinthians 15:10, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” So, none of our work can ever be a payment to God, because the very work is another gift from God. With every deed we do for God we go deeper into debt to grace.

What an amazing thought.

We simply cannot re-pay God for all He has done…and thankfully, He is not asking us to do that. If He did, the gift of salvation would no longer be a gift of grace, but merely a transaction. In response to His grace, we simply are called to praise His name —both publicly and privately— and to obey his commands. This is an on-going taking of the cup. An on-going fulfillment of our vows as followers of Christ. Spurgeon captured this beautifully when he wrote, “Upon the table of infinite love stands the cup full of blessing; it is ours by faith to take it in our hand, make it our own, and partake of it, and then with joyful hearts to laud and magnify the gracious One who has filled it for our sakes that we may drink and be refreshed. We can do this figuratively at the sacramental table, we can do it spiritually every time we grasp the golden chalice of the covenant, realizing the fulness of blessing which it contains, and by faith receiving its divine contents into our inmost soul. Beloved reader…let us pause here and take a long and deep draught from the cup which Jesus filled, and then with devout hearts let us worship God.”

Amen and Amen.