Thanksgiving for the Miracles of God’s Deliverance
For Thou, O God, hast proved us, as an assayer tests ore for precious metals; Thou hast tried us as silver is tried, casting them, as it were, into a smelting furnace or pot, to remove all the dross adhering to them by sufferings directed by Him.
V. 11. Thou broughtest us into the net, into an enclosed tower; into great straits; Thou laidst affliction upon our loins, the muscles of this part of the body coming into consideration in the carrying of heavy burdens.
V. 12. Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads, in a subjugation with disgraceful treatment; we went through fire and through water, into perils of death in their most extreme forms, so that calamity seemed about to consume and overwhelm them; but Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place, to the richest abundance of a blessed prosperity, thereby more than compensating them for the dangers to which they were submitted. An individual believer now takes up the strain of the psalm.
V. 13 will go into Thy house with burnt offerings, to make a sacrifice for the expiation of sins; I will pay Thee my vows, such gifts serving to bring about a closer fellowship between the believers and the covenant God, v. 14. which my lips have uttered, with a quick opening, due to the great extremity in which he found himself, and my mouth hath spoken when I was in trouble, the believer, under the stress of his difficulties, making a vow to the Lord to perform certain things if he were but delivered from the present emergency.
V. 15. I will offer unto Thee burnt sacrifices of fatlings, lambs and bullocks, the chief animals of Old Testament sacrifice, with the incense of rams, as a free-will offering accompanying the burnt sacrifice; I will offer bullocks with goats, here again both classes of offerings being named side by side. Selah.
V. 16. Come and hear, all ye that fear God, the believers of all times and in all places being addressed, and I will. declare what He hath done for my soul, what the speaker had experienced in the form of spiritual blessings.
V. 17. I cried unto Him with my mouth, with loud and urgent supplication, and He was extolled with my tongue, a hymn of praise being under his tongue in readiness for the deliverance of whose coming he felt sure.
V. 18. If I regard iniquity in my heart, if he had knowingly been guilty of a transgression, the Lord will not hear me; for conscious and deliberate sinning cuts off the sinner from the communion with God; it is impossible for one burdened with such a feeling of guilt to pray in a manner acceptable to the Lord; v. 19. but, verily, God hath heard me, thus showing that the line of communication had not been broken by deliberate and willful transgressions; He hath attended to the voice of my prayer, in mercifully granting his request.
V. 20. Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, by rejecting it, by letting it pass by unheeded, nor His mercy from me, for the fulfilling of his petitions was due altogether and alone to the unmerited fatherly favor of the Lord. Christians must always be conscious of the fact that it is nothing but grace and mercy on the part of God which upholds them throughout their life. This serves to make their prayer confident.