Bible Commentaries

GOD’S DELIVERANCE

‘Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.’

Psalms 116:8

If we were asked to name the evils from which we should most wish to be delivered, we should probably answer that these were death, sorrow, and sin. And it is just from these three evils that our Psalmist says that God has delivered him. ‘Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.’

I. There is a deliverance from death.—From death of all kinds—death of the body and death of the soul, death of self, and death of friends, the thought of the ever-living God has always been the one and only deliverance. The greatest apostle of the New Testament could declare with thankful heart that God, through Christ, had taken the sting from death and the victory from the grave. But the death spoken of here is a death of the soul—the hopeless state of mind into which the writer had fallen when the sorrows of death had compassed him and the pains of hell got hold upon him, and he said in his haste, ‘All men are liars.’

II. There is a deliverance from sorrow.—It is interesting to note that in the Bible joy and sorrow are often found together. The joy promised by God to His people is not the light-hearted gaiety of those who have never known trouble. It is rather the joy of God’s comfort and consolation. It is not like the sun, but like the rainbow after the storm.

III. There is a deliverance from sin—the chief deliverance of all. For it is in sin that both sorrow and death find their chief strength and power.