So thanksgiving psalms typically begin with an expression of praise. Here it is, "I will love You, O Lord." And the other one we saw was, "I will extol You." Others say I will praise You or something along that line. Very often it is not "I will thank You."
Notice, this is another little tidbit of the formatting of these psalms. It says, I will praise You. I will extol You. I will praise You. It puts it in the future tense. It shows that because of what has happened in the person's life—whether it is a blessing or some sort of deliverance—that it has put them under obligation, so they are intending now to do this into the future: I will extol You. I will praise You. I will love You, because of this obligation they have because of what God has done.
So this signals that the psalmist has received some blessing or intervention or help from God, and being now under obligation, he will do something. He must do something. And here the intended act is to love the Lord. Now this is a strange one actually among the psalms of thanksgiving because this word love here, it is raham. It is the only time that word appears in the Old Testament that it is translated as love.
Now it cannot really be translated as anything else in this particular context. Raham means—it does mean to have great affection for or care for or loyalty for another—but most of the time when it is used, it is used to have compassion for somebody or to have pity because of their lowly state or their particular circumstance. Now you cannot do that in terms of God. You cannot have pity on God. He has everything. He is the best in everything. He can do anything He wants. You cannot really have compassion on God. He is never in a state where He needs our help. So the only other way you can think about it is that you have affection or you will care for or you will be loyal to God. Now remember that loyalty is part of the covenant. We have a covenant obligation to God—because He is loyal to us, we have to be loyal to Him.
And so normally it is a different word. I am thinking off the top of my head and I cannot think of the word that is normally used. But David used raham here and was obviously thinking about this covenant loyalty or love to God. One lexicographer in defining what this word meant here in this particular place defined it as "to love deeply based upon an association or relationship manifesting in acts of kindness." So he would be kind to the Lord, and he would be loyal to the Lord because of this association or relationship under the covenant that he would have.
So love is better than compassion, or pity as it could be, because it implies a reciprocal obligatory affection or care for due to God's kindness toward David. Because God was kind to David, it was obligatory upon David to be kind to God, to have this affection. And the way you are kind to God is to do what He says and to be loyal and faithful to Him. And so this is the idea that is brought out here.
Now the word is modified a bit in verse 3 by the word "call." He says, "I will call upon the Lord." So in verse 1, he says, "I will love You, O Lord," and then he says, "I will call upon the Lord." This is part of his future action that he is going to do, and it is to come before God and ask Him for things, and that is a word that there are a lot of ideas expressed by it. It stands for not just appealing to God for help, but engaging in other acts of worship and service.
So when you call upon the Lord, say, that is what Abraham did or Isaac, they called upon the Lord. Well, that does not mean they just asked Him for things or they just praised Him. It also meant that they did all the other things of worship that were necessary under the covenantal relationship that they had. When you see that in Genesis that Abraham called upon the Lord, it just does not mean he spoke to Him. It means a whole basket of other things that he did as God's … . . .
In the Hebrew, it is much stronger than that. It says, Fervently do I yearn over You. Maybe that is a little too syrupy for those of us in this day and age. But that is what it says. Fervently do I yearn over You! And then comes a literal torrent of names of God. There are eight of them, right in a row.
David knew God's attributes as expressed by His names, and, thus, he conducted his life accordingly. He called upon the name of God. By faith, he trusted God to intervene in the affairs of men. He knew what God would do (i.e., what He could be trusted to do) by the way that God expressed Himself through His names.
I will put this into a very simple illustration. You are doing things like this virtually every day with other human beings. If your car breaks down, do you take it to the dentist? No, you take it to the person who has the name - auto mechanic. (Or, the person who has the reputation.) You call upon that person, when you are in need to repair your automobile. When your teeth need fixed, you do not go to the bank teller. You go to the person who has the name, the title, and the reputation of being able to take care of your teeth.
It is this same principle that is at work with God. By His names, He illustrates what He is skilled at doing, and not only skilled at doing, but what He will do. Sometimes the name will even describe the parameters of His blessing, or the conditions that are imposed upon receiving the fulfillment of that.
So that is what David was doing here, in his prayers. He was calling upon God, as God had revealed Himself by His names. And he would be confident - just as you would be confident in taking your automobile (or whatever it was) to the person who had the reputation of having the skill to be able to do that. You would call upon that person. That is what David did, and that is what you and I need to do. That is why you need to know the names of God. God is skilled, and God is willing to help. Through His names, He reveals what He is willing to do.
