Deliverance and indebtedness.
We can never measure what we owe to God for his daily loving-kindness. Indeed, it is only the wise who observe and take account of the Divine source of all human blessings, that at all understand how great is our debt of gratitude (Psalms 107:43). But we are too apt to overlook God's goodness to us even in the more striking events of life. How often in the course of our life are we cast upon the kindness of the Divine Redeemer!
I. THE MANIFOLDNESS OF OUR NEED.
1. Our necessity takes various temporal or bodily forms. It may be:
2. Our necessity often takes the much more serious aspect of spiritual evils. These may correspond to those of the flesh. They may be:
II. THE TRUE ACCOUNT OF OUR DISTRESS. Its origin is to be found in ourselves—in our own folly, in our own iniquity, in our willful departure from God; and in the consequent penalty which God's righteousness exacts (see Psalms 107:11, Psalms 107:12, Psalms 107:17).
III. THE ONE REFUGE OF THE HEART. Men that forget God at every other time remember him in the hour of trouble and of danger. When they are brought very low, when there is "none to help" (Psalms 107:12), when the gates of death are seen (Psalms 107:18), "then they cry unto the Lord." The refrain of the psalm is the habit of the heart of man when his case is desperate, and his soul is "faint within him." Nothing but the dark night will bring out the heavenly star.
IV. DIVINE INTERVENTION. (Psalms 107:7, Psalms 107:13, Psalms 107:16, Psalms 107:20, Psalms 107:29, Psalms 107:30.) Sometimes very markedly, sometimes indirectly and through various agencies or instrumentalities, God makes his delivering power to be felt. But in whatever way, directly or indirectly, it is in the exercise of his power and by forces which he has ordained, originated, and maintained, that the wanderer finds his way home, that the fever abates and the patient is healed, that the deer of escape is opened and the prisoner comes forth. It is of him and through his grace that the prodigal returns, that the tyrannous habit is broken, that the soul is made pure and sound, that peace and rest come back to the troubled heart, that the light of heaven shines clear on the pilgrim's path.
V. THE PLACE OF GRATITUDE IN THE HEART AND LIFE OF MAN. (Psalms 107:1, Psalms 107:2, Psalms 107:8, Psalms 107:15, Psalms 107:21, Psalms 107:22, Psalms 107:31, Psalms 107:32.) This should be a very large place. The redeemed of the Lord should "say so." They should sing his praise with joyful lips; they should daily offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving; they should carry with them everywhere a sense of deep indebtedness; they should feel that for the special temporal mercies of God, and also for his restoring and reconciling grace in Christ Jesus, they owe a continual, an unbroken, an abounding gratitude—a gratitude that should find vent in sacred song, in blameless conduct, in cheerful submission, in earnest and persevering labors.