Psalm 116 — I Love the Lord, Because He Has Heard

✦ A Sunday in a Fourth Country

France, Belgium, the Netherlands — and now Germany. Aachen, the old city of cathedrals, on the Lord's Day. And Le opens a psalm of thanksgiving — a song the people of Israel sang after the Passover meal, and very likely the hymn Jesus sang with His disciples before going out to the Mount of Olives (Matthew 26:30). 🙏

✦ He Inclined His Ear

The psalm begins where love begins: I love the Lord, because He has heard. Not because I understood everything. Not because every prayer was answered my way. Because He listened.

He has inclined His ear to me — a picture of God bending down, leaning close, the way a parent bends to hear a small child. The God of heaven stoops to listen. September 15 — Le wrote: God is listening to my questions. He is aware of my thinking. That is verse 2.

And the response is lifelong: therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live. The God who bends to hear makes the heart want to keep speaking. October 12's shut door; October 8's greenhouse of prayer. He listens — so we keep coming. 🙏

✦ Return to Your Rest, O My Soul

The psalmist does what Psalm 42 did on October 11 — he speaks to his own soul. Then it was why are you downcast? Now it is return to your rest. Come home. Settle down. The Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

And he counts the reasons. Three deliverances:

My soul from death — the old house demolished, the new heart given (October 1). My eyes from tears — Comfort, yes, comfort My people (October 2). My feet from falling — Guyon's mule stopped at the edge of the precipice (October 3).

Then the walk: I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. The same land of the living from Psalm 27 — I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (October 13). Seeing His goodness and walking before Him — on this side of glory, on these roads, in this country. 🙏

✦ The Lord Preserves the Simple

Le's eye goes straight to verse 6: the Lord preserves the simple. Blessed assurance.

"Simple" here does not mean foolish. It means undivided, open, childlike — the heart that has no hidden corners and no clever defenses, that simply trusts. Jesus thanked the Father for hiding things from the wise and revealing them to babes. The simple heart is the one God protects.

October 10 — Le drew the line between confidence and assurance. Self-confidence leans on its own abilities; assurance leans on Him. The simple heart has the blessed kind — it does not trust its own strength, so it is held by His. I was brought low, and He saved me.

And then Le's doxology, echoing the psalm's own: Gracious is the Lord — how gracious is the Lord. 🙏

✦ What Shall I Render?

The question every grateful heart asks: what can I give back? And the psalm's answer is surprising. Not a payment. Not an offering to even the score. The answer is to receive more: I will take up the cup of salvation.

October 7 — Spurgeon said the Spirit offers us the cup and lifts it to our lips. The way to thank God for salvation is to keep drinking from the cup He offers — and to keep calling on His name. Gratitude is not repayment. Gratitude is open hands that keep receiving.

And on this Sunday, a cup and a song: Jesus sang these psalms on the night He took the cup. The cup of salvation the psalmist lifted is the cup Jesus filled. 🙏