Psalm 116 – Because God brought us back to life, we respond with thanks

Remember when you were dead? Remember when there was no hope? Remember when sin seemed so strong, when death seemed so final, when there didn’t really seem to be a future, just a past that you just wanted to forget?

And remember when you realized that nothing you did was going to revive that hope? Remember when you realized that there was nothing you could do to fight that sin? Remember when you just gave up trying to create a future for yourself, when you just quit trying to forget the past?

That was the day of your resurrection. The day you called out to the Lord. The day you came back to life, and began living your eternal life. It was your Good Friday. It was your Easter. We are at the 3^rd week of the Easter season. Two weeks ago, we celebrated Good Friday and Easter. It was a great weekend, remembering Jesus’ death and seeing Him living again. But we’re not finished. One weekend isn’t enough. We’re in the season of Easter. We have a whole season to remember His death and resurrection. Because, if Jesus is your savior, if Jesus is your Lord, then His death and resurrection are your death and resurrection, too.

When Jesus hung dying on that cross, you were hanging dying there, too. Paul writes, in Galatians 2:20:

You died, with Christ, when you let go. You let go of your worries, you let go of your dreams, you let go of your regrets, you let go of your expectations. You died when you let go of your life, when you let it slip out of your hand and into the sure strong hand of God.

And make no mistake. This was excruciatingly hard. Those dreams meant something to you. Those hopes were what kept you going. Those expectations had been engrained in you from the time you were four. And letting go was like surgery without the anesthesia. It hurt. It was grueling. It was deadly.

But we had no choice. Because we had tried everything and everything had failed. We had looked for happiness and satisfaction and meaning and security in so many corners, and there were times that we had found little bits and scraps here and there. But we hadn’t found the mother-lode, the abundant life we’d heard about, the showers of blessing we kind of suspected was there. We had tried money, and we kind of knew that it wouldn’t work, but we tried anyway. But the stuff was just stuff, and it got old and broke. Recession hits and there goes the happiness. Investments lose month after month. Retirements seem less possible. Money didn’t work.

So we tried to make everyone like us. We thought that if people talked good about us then we’d feel good about us. So we tried to meet everyone’s expectations about how our house should look and about how our hair should look and about what we should be like. But we never arrived, we could never live up to their expectations, because there’s no way to make everyone like you.

So then we tried church. We got busy with committees and council and Bible studies and fellowship dinners. And they’re all good things, important things to do. But they still couldn’t give us what we were looking for, that assurance that no matter where we are, no matter how old we get, no matter what happens, we’re okay. We tried, we tried really hard. And we started to get a little tired. The holy work became a burden, only it wasn’t supposed to be a burden, so we were kind of stuck. We tried everything.

Until we just gave up and cried "Mercy. Enough. I quit. I don’t know the answer." And the Lord heard. He heard your voice giving up, and He answered. Verse 1:

We tried all those other things, and none of them had ever answered. We cried out to so many places, until we cried out to the Lord. And, verse 2:

The Lord heard us, and everything just clicked in place and made sense and we were safe. And having been heard by the Lord, there’s no need to cry out to all those other things. Having been heard by the Lord, we’re going to call on Him, and only Him, as long as we live.

And He heard us, just in time:

We were drowning. Life wasn’t working. We were trying hard. Maybe people around us didn’t think we were trying hard enough. Maybe everybody had all kinds of advice to give us for how to live our lives better. But none of it ever worked, and we were tired of listening to other people. We were going under. We were up to our eyebrows in despair, and there was no way to survive this.

But then, verse 4:

Not everybody does this, you know. Everybody finds out that a life without the Lord is a dying life. Everybody finds this out at some point. But not everybody calls on the Lord. Those who don’t call on Him will stay dying, eternally. We call this hell.

But those who call on the name of the Lord, though they die, yet shall they live. Verse 5:

And if you died with Christ, then, Ephesians 2:4

Now that we’ve let go of everything, now that we’ve died in Christ, now we’re made alive in Him. We’re living alive lives, not dying lives.

So, verse 7:

I want to ask you a moment. Is your life at rest? Is your soul quiet? Is your mind peaceful? I know this sounds too good to be true. I know that we think that this is what we’ll experience when we get to heaven, but until then, we just need to hunker down and get by.

But Jesus said, in Matthew 11:

Is it possible? Could we really live a life of rest and peace? See, that’s our Easter, our resurrection. Verse 8:

We don’t die, those of us who have let go of life and called on the Lord. We don’t die. Our bodies will rest for bit at some time, but we…don’t…die. Should I repeat this for a while, so that it sinks in? We go to be with Jesus. That’s not death, that’s life. We don’t die. The Lord has delivered our souls from death.

But it’s not just the end of our lives that He’s delivered. He’s delivered our eyes from tears. I’m not saying that we can’t cry. It’s not that Christians can never be sad, that we have to somehow keep that smile frozen on our face. It’s just that, if we knew the truth, if we could remember reality, we would really have nothing to cry about. Even in great sorrow, even through the tears, we can smile with hope, because the Lord has delivered us.

And He has delivered our feet from stumbling. The tears are gone, and so are the temptations. Satan may still come after us, making us thing right is wrong and wrong is right. Sin may try to make us stumble. But we can see it coming now. We know temptation for what it is. We recognize the lies that Satan pitches at us, and we don’t swing. We don’t fall for it. The Lord has delivered our feet from stumbling.

So that, verse 9:

Being followers of Jesus isn’t just about giving things up. It IS about giving everything up. But it’s also about getting life back. Walking with the Lord in the land of the living is living eternal life. We know we’re walking with the Lord when we’re in our Bible study or sitting in worship. That’s easy. But we walk with the Lord when we go to work tomorrow. We walk with the Lord when we get the phone call we were dreading. We walk with the Lord when we go to the job interview. We walk with the Lord when we’re balancing our checkbook. We walk with the Lord when we’re putting the kids to bed, and they’re not going to bed. We walk with the Lord when the hours alone in the house seem to stretch. We’re walking before the Lord in the land of the living, because we have already died.

And walking before the Lord is a good way to walk. He’s right behind us. He has our backs. He steers us back in the right direction when we get a little distracted. He speaks words of encouragement when we start to get a little scared about where we’re heading. Life before the Lord is so good. Verse 12:

This is the question we wake up with in our minds. This is the question that drives every action we perform, every choice we make, every word we speak. It’s not a question of obedience out of fear. It’s not the burden of holiness that we used to feel before we died. It’s the eagerness of repaying the Lord for all His goodness.

But how can we repay all His goodness? Even the best of us, with our best intentions, are just little attempts to repay. Verse 13 gives a surprising answer for how to repay God’s goodness. How can you repay? Verse 13:

In response to the drying of our tears, in repayment for His protection from temptation, with Him walking behind us, holding us up, we can’t do anything for Him. All we can do is to receive His gift, and to keep calling on His name. Our obedience is not repayment for His salvation. Our holiness is not the cost we have to pay in order to go to heaven. Salvation is a gift, and the only thing we can do with a gift is receive it.

But something wonderful happens as we receive this gift of salvation and continue to call on His name. We start to act different and talk different and think different. We become totally different people. Those of us who have lived here all of our lives can see that sometimes. We know how people were in high school, in their twenties, and it wasn’t always so good. And now they’re different, they’re changed, they’ve died and they’ve risen again.

We can see that in our own lives, just looking back. We’ve accepted the cup of salvation, and our language has changed. We’ve called on the name of the Lord, and our time alone with Jesus has increased from a couple of minutes a day to larger blocks of time. We’ve received the new life of our own personal Easter, and we’re much more likely to say the name "Jesus" to people who don’t know Him. Not out of repayment, but because we have been saved, verse 14:

We’ll do what we want to be doing, and we won’t do what we don’t want to be doing.

All because we’ve already died, in Christ. This work of bringing us back to life required a very high cost. Verse 15:

But Jesus willingly, readily paid that price, so that we could die and live again.

This is the life of every Christian. Maybe it never was financial, maybe you never cared about what other people thought. Maybe you never hung your hopes on being good enough. But it had to have been something. Every Christian knows the despair of having run out of options. Every Christian knows the relief and rest of having the Lord hear your voice.

This despair and relief, the dying and the rising, this will continue, often daily, until we’re finally finished. Until we look back over our entire lives, sitting there in heaven, and we shake our heads and turn to the person next to us, and we say: