Psalm 40
In God’s word, this is Psalm
40. It says, to the choir master, a Psalm of David, I waited patiently
for the Lord. He inclined to me and heard my
cry. He drew me up from the pit of
destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put
their trust in the Lord. Blessed is the man who makes
the Lord his trust. who does not turn to the proud
or to those who go astray after a lie. You have multiplied, O
Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us.
None can compare with you. I will proclaim and tell of them,
yet they are more than can be told. Sacrifice and offering
you have not desired, but you have given me an open ear. burnt
offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said,
behold, I have come in the scroll of the book it is written of
me. I desire to do your will. Oh my God, your law is within
my heart. I have told the glad news of
deliverance in the great congregation. Behold, I have not restrained
my lips. As you know, Lord, I have not hidden your deliverance within
my heart. I have spoken of your faithfulness and of your salvation. I have not concealed your steadfast
love and faithfulness. from the great congregation.
As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from
me. Your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve
me. For evils have encompassed me beyond number. My iniquities
have overtaken me and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs
of my head. My heart fails me. Be pleased,
O Lord, to deliver me. O Lord, make haste to help me.
Let those be put to shame and disappointed altogether who seek
to snatch away my life. Let those be turned back and
brought to dishonor who desire my hurt. Let those be appalled
because of their shame who say to me, aha, aha. But may all
who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. May those who love your
salvation say continually, great is the Lord. As for me, I am
poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are
my help and my deliverer. Do not delay. Oh my God. Amen. This is God’s word. May he bless the reading and
explanation of it to our hearts. About 20 years ago, I think it
was about 20 years ago to this date, my family moved from Burlington
to Wilmington. And so my dad, as he is wont
to do, got this big idea that he wanted a flat bottom boat
so that he could go explore the marshes and all the estuaries
along the coast. Someone had an old John boat
in their yard and we went and fetched it and cleaned out all
the snakes and the spiders and whatever else. And we found a
couple oars and a couple life jackets. And so my dad, my mom
and I, my spring break, I believe of my junior year of college,
we went exploring the waterways of the Wilmington coastline. Well, a couple of things we didn’t
take into account. One was the tide, and that was
the tide going out. Other thing we didn’t take into
account is when the tide goes out, it exposes oyster beds.
The other thing we didn’t take account was the mud. And so this
was about a six-hour trip, and the first two hours was fun.
It was great. It was beautiful. There was enough water to float
in, enough enough to make our way. But the last four hours
was miserable. No, it was worse than miserable.
It was survival. There was a lot of pushing. There
was a lot of tugging. There was a lot of grunting. There was a lot of difficulty
as we tried to make our way out of, um, what was then a high
and dry title area back to enough deep water to get back home.
And so you can imagine six hours of sunburn, six hours of mud
and muck and pushing, I ruined a brand new pair of tennis shoes.
And then I got this brainy idea I would take my shoes off and
go barefooted because I thought the new shoes, I can’t, you know,
I don’t want to buy new ones. And so my feet ended up getting cut
up pretty badly. And I remember thinking, Oh,
Lord, if you’ll get me out of this, I’ll never go out in a
boat with my father again. He’s never lived it down. He
has never ever lived it down. And I do not go boat riding with
him unless I’m the one who’s driving. But it took a month
of healing. It took a couple trips to the
ER for both my mom and me. And it was not a memorable time. Now that’s a interesting story
about being in a real mud pit. But what is the psalmist here
speaking of? He’s speaking of spiritual mud pits. He’s speaking
of us getting into situations where our heart faints within
us. He’s speaking of situations where
we get in so deep that we don’t know if we will get unstuck.
I have a couple of notes in my Bible, both here at Psalm 40
and at Psalm 70. And it’s a reminder to me about
the faithfulness of God because there was a period of time in
my life far worse than being out in a john boat on the coast
with my father who had a great idea to go riding when tide was
going out but there was a time in my life where I have a note
in my Bible that says August of 2012 and I know exactly what
that moment is and it’s right beside the words in verse 12
that says my heart fails me My family will remember this time
very well. Very difficult time in the life of the church. Very
evil times in a certain situation. And I remember lying in bed and
peeking out from under the cover saying, if I get up, something
bad will happen today. And I had this figure, you know,
I was 30 some years old. If I stay in bed and stay under
the covers, I’ll be okay. And that’s where King David is.
He is in a bad situation where he feels like He is down in a
pit, he is down in a hole, and the mud is not just up over his
ankles, it is creeping up his legs. He can’t get unstuck, he
is held fast, and he is in darkness, he is destitute, he is bogged
down, and he is in the pits. And some of you may have been
there in real life, and maybe it’s been a situation with your
own sin, Maybe it’s been in a situation where you can’t succeed. Maybe
it’s been in a situation where you have had self-destructive
behaviors or circumstances overwhelmed you. But that’s the situation
David is speaking in. And verses one through three
speak to this very well. A little section I just have
on my notes here called, This is the pits. This is the pits. David says, I waited patiently
for the Lord. He inclined to hear me and heard
my cry. He drew me up out of the pit of destruction. Now,
if you’ve read your Bible enough, especially your Old Testament,
you know that the pit is a common term for being in a hard, even
impossible place. It says, God drew him up from
the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and he set my feet
on a rock, making my steps secure. Now, I can remember in church
singing a song, and it went something like this. I’m not gonna sing
it, so don’t worry. Something about being in a clay, and it’s,
let’s see, how did it go? What’s that? He pulled me up
from the miry clay. He set my feet on the rock. Yeah,
and Jesus came down, down, down, and he lifted me up, up, up.
You remember that? I remember singing that. Yeah,
we used to sing that. I remember that as a kid from church. But
it’s a, he lifted me up. This is King David speaking of
a difficult situation. Now, where in the Bible, where
in the Old Testament, I’m thinking of two people in particular,
where do we read stories of people being put in pits? Joseph. Joseph
was one, his brothers hated him because he got to coat him in
colors. They stuck him in a pit. Daniel, yeah. Jeremiah. Yeah,
the lion’s den. That’d be a little similar. I
was thinking about Jeremiah too. Jeremiah, remember, told King
Zedekiah, you’re gonna lose. The Chaldeans have surrounded
you. They’re gonna beat you. If anybody stays in the city,
you know, he’s walking around the city of Jerusalem yelling,
all who stay here will die. But if you leave and run to the
Chaldeans, you’ll live. What do you think Zedekiah thought
of that? Not much. What’s that? Thought he was a
traitor, not much. And so what did they do? They
put him in a well that was empty of water, but full of mud at
the bottom. And you know what the last words of Jeremiah 38
are? And it says, and Jeremiah stuck
fast. Okay, when the Bible gets a little
specific like that, what do we understand? he stuck fast. It was a bad situation. And so
David, of course, before Jeremiah’s time, but we who look back, we
understand that spiritually we can get in some messy situations.
Sin catches us, it ensnares us, it entangles us, it’s like our
feet sinking in quicksand. Think about even just King David,
the psalmist, what did he get his ankles stuck in, maybe even
his knees? He got him stuck in Bathsheba
and adultery and murder and all the last table of the commandments
that he so grievously broke. But sin can ensnare us, it can
bog us down, but can God deliver us? Absolutely. How about lack
of success? Do you know somebody who maybe
you’ve been through it yourself where you just can’t win, just
no success, everything you do doesn’t turn to gold, it turns
to mud or whatever. Just can’t win. Can’t make good
grades. You can’t get out of school.
You can’t get a job. You can’t make money. You know, you add
insult to injury. I was walking through the neighborhood
the other day, and we have a neighbor whose house caught fire maybe
back in January. And so they’ve been out of the
house three, four months. And the other day, during all the
wind and rain, a tree fell. And I thought, what insult added
to injury. They can’t even live in the house
and they’re putting all this money into it, getting it put back
together, and then a tree falls. And that’s sometimes the way
it is for some people. They just have what we call a
good run of bad luck. And so nothing’s going well.
Or how about self-destructive behavior? We see it more often
now and it’s become very white collar. We get addicted to pain
pills, we get addicted to drugs or substances or alcohol, we
get addicted to things that help us cope with the hardship of
life. And so we find ourselves in self-destructive patterns.
And that can be other things, too, not just substance abuse.
It can be lack of self-control. It can be temper problems. It
can be gambling. It can be all kinds of things
that cause self-destruction. And then there’s just circumstances.
There’s that $10,000 question, why are there poor people? Well,
why are there poor people? Well, sometimes it’s because
they can’t get a job. Sometimes it’s because all the
money they earn they spend. Sometimes it’s because people
exploit them. You can go on and on and list
all kinds of reasons, but people get in hard circumstances. And
we don’t always know why they’re in hard circumstances. It could
be from their own foolishness, but sometimes it could just be
the part of the world and the situation in time that they live
in. But we can have all kinds of
different pits. and problems and difficulties.
And what does the psalmist comfort us with? Verse one, he says,
in my pit, I waited patiently for the Lord. And notice the
action of God. He inclined his ear. He inclined
to me. He heard my cry. He drew me up
from the pit out of the miry bog. He set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure. And he put a new song in my mouth.
There are five things right then and there. that when you go,
as it says later, and tell the great congregation about how
good God has been to you, that you can say, God inclined toward
me. How do we say it? The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord turned his face towards us. He inclined his direction
towards us. He heard us. He drew us up. He set our feet on solid ground
and gave us a new song so we can give testimony to God’s goodness. But he says, this is the pits,
this is the difficulty I’m in. Well, the second little section
that he takes us through, we find in verses four through 10,
it’s kind of the center of the psalm. And he’s saying over and
over, God is good. And he can say this because he
has seen over and over God being good. Now, if David, whatever
age he is in this situation, he’s a 40 year reigning king,
he was a shepherd boy before that. But if he’s in a pit now,
Where was his metaphoric and even physical place of difficulty
before the pit? What other physical crevice in
the land did he find himself in a lot? It was a cave or caves
as who was pursuing him, Saul. And so David has been in lots
of holes in the earth. And so, it’s probably old hat
to him by the time he’s getting around to writing Psalm 40. But
he says over and over, God is good. Look at verses four and
five. He says, blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust,
who does not turn to the proud or to those who go astray after
a lie. Sounds like Psalm 1, doesn’t it? You have multiplied, O Lord
my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts towards us. How
can you say that after God has put you in a pit? That’s the
godly thing to say. Those of you who are studying
Job on Sunday morning, you understand that whatever God gives us is
a grace and a blessing, even if it’s hardship. But you have
multiplied your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us.
None can compare with you. I will proclaim and tell of them,
but they are more than can be told. So he says, trust God,
God is good. But another thing he says, and
the writer of Hebrews, whoever he was, picks up on this in Hebrews
10. God doesn’t want our external behavior. Now, does the Christian
life require external behavior? You know, we get up and we come
to church. That’s external behavior. But what does God really want
out of us? Well, six through eight tell us. Sacrifice and
offering you have not desired, but you have given me an open
ear. That’s a weird little saying.
We’re not exactly sure what it means. But it says, burnt offering
and sin offering you have not required. But then I said, behold,
I have come and in the scroll of the book it is written of
me. I desire to do your will. Oh my God, your law is within
my heart. What does God really want? Does
he want outward behavior? No, he wants inward change. He
wants a heart that is submitted to him that wants to serve him.
Now go back up to that verse six. It says, but you have given
me an open ear. Some think that it’s an Old Testament
reference. Remember if you were a bond servant
in a Hebrew household and you decided that living here under
this certain master is a good thing, what could you do? You
could have your ear pierced at the doorpost and you could say,
I belong to this master forever. And that’s in a sense what we
do when we come to faith in Christ. So it’s saying, my whole life,
my whole being follows you. That’s one way that could be
interpreted and it would be a fitting way but it could also simply
mean you have given me a body that can serve you. Now this
passage comes up in Hebrews 10, and it’s at the spot where the
writer of Hebrews is saying that Jesus is the greater sacrifice,
that Jesus is a sufficient sacrifice. And why is Jesus the great sacrifice? Is it because of all his outward
behavior? No, it’s because he has a heart that does the will
of the Heavenly Father, even goes to the cross for the salvation
of sinners. So in this little section, verses
four through 10, he says, trust God, verse four to five. Submit
your heart to God, verses six through eight. And then in nine
and 10, he says, listen up. He says, I’ve told the glad news
of deliverance in the great congregation. Behold, I have not restrained
my lips, as you know, oh Lord. Now, maybe some of y’all been
in a church before where there was a little time, where you
could speak up and say something that God’s been doing in your
life. I remember having that as a kid at our church and usually
we went home from church and as little sarcastic kids we were,
we would kind of snicker at some of the things said because some
people like to hear themselves talk. But wouldn’t that be a
neat thing if in a sanctified way, we could stand up in church
for 10 or 15 minutes and say what God has done. Now we know
somebody always gets up and they get to preaching. whatever, doesn’t
usually work that well. But that could be a very godly
thing, couldn’t it be? To give testimony to Almighty God before
the whole congregation, God has delivered me in this way. And
that’s what David is speaking of. But he wants everybody to
listen up and hear. He says, I’ve not hidden your
deliverance, verse 10. I’ve not restrained my lips,
in verse nine. I have not concealed your steadfast
love and your faithfulness. Now, What is David’s position? He’s king over Israel. And so
when the king speaks, what should others do? They should listen.
But what should be the topic of the king’s speech? Well, it’s
of the great salvation of Almighty God. And so that’s what he wants
to say. And then the last little section, 11 through 17, is a
prayer. And he says, as for you, O Lord, you will not restrain
your mercy from me. Your steadfast love and your
faithfulness will ever preserve me. So he’s looking forward.
I’m going to get in more pits. I’m going to get my feet hung
up in the mud yet again. More troubles will come and it’ll
come through sin. You think David has thought through
that? I’ll get caught up in sin yet again. Or it could be a stretch
of bad luck and nothing successful. It could even be self-destructive
behavior. It could be bad circumstances.
All these pits that fall upon us are coming, but he says, God,
your mercy, you’ll not hold back from me. Your steadfast love
and your faithfulness will ever preserve me. And then he says
in verse 12, evils have encompassed me beyond number. My iniquities
have overtaken me and I cannot see. Our culture is a culture
of blame. Any of y’all watch, what’s that
show on Fox News? Is it Greg Gutfield? Is that
his name? You ever see that show? Did you see the fake sponsor
he put up? It was called Blame It All. Did y’all see that? The medicine
called Blame It All. And it was a medicine you take
so that you can blame others for your problems. And of course
he used some of our recent political gaffes to illustrate this. But did you notice what King
David says in verse 11 and 12? Particularly verse 12, he says,
evils have encompassed me. Okay, my circumstances are bad.
But what does he quickly and freely admit? My iniquities have
overtaken me and I cannot see. How refreshing would it be if
we would just hear from our own hearts and hear from the hearts
of others, look, I have sinned. I am the one who has done this.
There is no one else to blame but me. I mean, yes, circumstances,
yes, a good run, a bad luck, yes, this, that, and the other,
Satan, evil, the world, whatever. But my iniquities have overtaken
me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs
of my head. My heart fails me. Why is it
that David’s heart fails? Is it because of circumstances?
Partly. Is it because of a good run of bad luck? Maybe. Is it
because of other situations beyond his control? Maybe so, but what
does he primarily blame it on? My own sin. Oh, we could use
a good dose of that, couldn’t we? And then he says in his prayer,
verse 13, be pleased, oh Lord, to deliver me, make haste to
help me. And then he moves into the imprecatory
mode. Let those be put to shame and
disappointed altogether who seek to snatch away my life. Let those
be turned back and brought to dishonor who desire my hurt.
So what’s David’s pit here? It’s probably some outside opponents
who want him dead and gone and off the throne. Let those be
appalled because of their shame. Then he says about the righteous
in the land, may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you.
May those who love your salvation say continually, great is the
Lord. And then there’s a touch of hope
at the end. As for me, I’m poor and needy,
but the Lord takes thought for me. You’re my help, you’re my
deliverer. Do not delay, oh Lord, my God. So this is a wonderful psalm
for us when we are in the pits. Now a little New Testament perspective. How bad can it get? It can get
pretty bad, can’t it? You ever been through depression?
You ever been through utter human loss? You ever been through the
madness of your own sin? You ever been through pain that
won’t go away? All those things. But we take
those to the cross and remember that Jesus has endured all those
things in order that we will never have to endure what he
went through. And that is the pain of the wrath
of Almighty God. Yes, we’ll experience death.
Yes, we’ll go through suffering, but he has taken away the sting
and the pain and the misery that could come upon us because he
is a merciful God. And so where do we run when we’re
in the pits? Well, technically you can’t run
anywhere. but we look to God and we have our hope in him.
Let’s pray together. Our great and gracious God, we
thank you this night for the perspective that we get from
King David, that though life is difficult from our own doing
and from the circumstances around us, we have you to call upon
and we thank you that you turn toward us, you hear us, you lift
us, you place us. and you put a song in our lips
so that we can tell others in the great congregation about
how good you are and wonderful of a savior you are. Help us
not to forget that when things get hard and we get introspective,
we look at what we don’t have and we get dissatisfied with
our misery. Help us to see everything is
from your good and gracious hand. This we pray in the name of Jesus,
amen.