Psalm 40

Mark Dunagan
08/22/10 - Sunday Morning

 

Psalm 40

40:1 “I waited patiently for the Lord”

What a relief to know waiting is normal! And even a righteous, inspired and spiritual man such as David had to “wait” for an answer to his prayers. Like the road sign that says, “Expect delays”, our prayers are sometimes, but not always immediately answered (Luke 18:1) . “Why (do we need to wait?) Because the Lord is inept? Because He is remote, and I should convert to Deism? No, because He respects His own creation and is interested in me as a person. God wants to teach me faith, not zap me with it. There is waiting because God wants a relationship with you, not a ‘one-nighter’”(Andree Seu). Yet, what kind of waiting is this? Everyone must wait – even movers and shakers and red-carpet people of this world must wait for all sorts of things, yet waiting . How do you wait? There is nervous waiting, back-and-forth-pacing-the-floor waiting, angry-waiting, making-everyone-uncomfortable waiting, blaming God waiting, and the ever popular “whining and waiting”. The waiting in this Psalm is waiting that is full of positive thoughts towards our God. “It strains to see every potential in every new development. The blacker the situation appears, the more this kind of waiting expects that God is up to something big” (Andree Seu).

Patient Waiting Knows:

• “I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13).
• “My God shall supply all your needs” (Philippians 4:19).
• “The Lord will deliver me from every evil deed” (2 Timothy 4:18).

What Does Patience Do when Waiting?

It keeps refuting the devil’s lies about why there has been a delay.

40:2 “He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay”

The “pit of destruction” is often the trap laid for us by the devil, a trap that we willingly walked right into – often despite the courageous and loving warnings of others. Yet there is great news here for all “pit-dwellers” – God wants us out. It is not God’s desire that we remain in the pit of destruction for rest of our lives, rather He wants us to experience the abundant life (John 10:10). The idea of the miry clay or bog is the concept of helplessness, a place where you can’t seem to get your footing or make any headway. Do you feel completely powerless to free yourself from a “pit of destruction”? Do you feel helpless in the face of the world’s temptations, lust, anger and the whole lot? For years have you tried to escape only to flounder, slip, and slide right back into the pit? God has better plans for you.

Applications

The following are a few ideas from “Get Out of that Pit”, by Beth Moore:

• There are no lost causes, no permanent pit-dwellers except those who refuse to leave. “You don’t have to stay there, even if you’ve been there your whole life” 
• “Frequent pit-visiting has a way of turning into pit-living. The earlier we enter the pit or the longer we stay there, the more it feels like home. We start hanging our pictures on the wall, tidying up the place, and making ourselves comfortable. We invite others over to visit us in the pit, and sometimes they feel sufficiently enough at home to unpack their bags”.
• “Don’t let anybody – particularly someone touting a twisted doctrine of grace – talk you into thinking you can’t be liberated from willful sin and blatant rebellion just because he or she hasn’t been, I know for a fact (1 Corinthians 6:11) that you can be completely set free from every sin that rules over you”.
• Hopelessness is simply when you have more faith in the Devil’s lie than in God’s power and His promises.

40:3 “He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God”

Observe how David does not dwell on the past or on his “ordeal”, the song should not be about our suffering and struggles, but rather, about our deliverance. What song have we been singing for most our lives? “All my life I was partial to sad songs. I thought it was just a musical preference. But a lot of it, I think, is that I was a pit-dweller... I thought I was hard-wired in the minor key” (Andree Seu). What is this new song all about? David says, “Many will see and fear, and will trust in the Lord” (Psalm 40:3). It seems that this song includes telling others what God has done for him (Mark 5:19; Psalm 51:13). Observe particularly the following passages in this Psalm (40:5,9,10,16).

40:4 “How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust, and has not turned to the proud, nor to those who lapse into falsehood”

David’s trust is settled, he pondered before the decision was made and it is thus deliberate. Sounds like David, as with many of us, had been burned by other trusts – talent, people, youth, money, looks, his own strength, the views of experts and so on. “From now on he will plant himself firmly on the rock – and this time he is determined to do it for the rest of his life” (Andree Seu). It is also wise to commit completely to God in advance of the trials that surely lie ahead. “When disaster strikes suddenly there is no time to decide how I am going to act. It is now, when the seas are relatively calm, that I should plan and envision my response to God in the event of losing my job, my health, my friends” (Andree Seu). “Not turned to the proud”: It is odd why as a society we tend to respect and glorify arrogant individuals. We say they had nerve, guts or gall, or that they “did it their way”. Yet pride is a moral defect, and why would anyone or any of us admire a person with a glaring blind spot in their life? The person who claims that they do not need God is laughable. They cannot create a single molecule of matter, are unable to keep themselves alive for even a second, and are incapable to foreseeing the future, even a day in advance (James 4:16). The next verse gives us a very good reason for not turning to the proud of this world – they haven’t done anything to help us out of the pit – but God has done many wonders.

40:5 “And His thoughts toward us”: “When I was a parent of young children, I thought I knew what biblical parenting was: feed them, shelter them, teach them, discipline them. Years later I realized I missed one or two... One was: delight in them. The other; think thoughts toward them, stay up nights trying to figure out creative ways to build them up, bless them, encourage them, help them in their weakness, make them all they can be. God has these thoughts toward you. Isn’t that wonderful? Did you worry that your little problems were unimportant, and that God had other fish to fry?”(Andree Seu).

40:6-8 “Behold I come; in the scroll of the book it is written to Me; I delight to do Thy will, O my God’”

In the context, the greatest wonder that God has ever performed was still in the future for David. This is a prophecy of what Jesus would say when He came into this world to deliver us from sin (Hebrews 10:5-7). Why did Jesus come? Because He loved us? Yes. Yet, there is an even greater love – His love for the Father. He came because it was the Father’s pleasure – (John 5:19-20). His ultimate delight was to do the will of the Father.

40:11 “You, O Lord, will not withhold Thy compassion from me; Thy lovingkindness and Thy truth will continually preserve me”

Observe how David thanks God in advance for His future protection and faithfulness. “I have plenty of times prayed: ‘Lord, please don’t withhold your mercy from me; Lord please let your steadfast love and your faithfulness ever preserve me”. And that is legitimate praying. But once every blue moon, wouldn’t God find it refreshing if I spoke in the indicative rather than subjunctive mood? Just for a little variety?”(Andree Seu). I like how David talks about God. He doesn’t sit around with other believers and express his doubts about God. What type of relationship would that be? It would be like trashing your lover over coffee with a friend – yet do we do that with God? When we talk about God do we “share” all our doubts and complaints about Him or do we glorify and praise Him?

40:12 “My iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to see; they are more numerous than the hairs on my head”

It’s no use – we are just incompatible with sin. Sin will blind us to reality and it is impossible to dabble in sin and remain untouched. Before you know it, you are over your head and drowning. Like a cold swift river on a hot summer day and lures people in – only to take their lives.

40:13 “Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me; make haste, O Lord, to help me”

The writer had started the Psalm with waiting “patiently” – but also pleads for God to “make haste”. Here is child-like faith. I am not self-sufficient, I am not a rock – God is. I can’t hold out forever – I desperately need Him.

40:15 “Who say to me, ‘Aha, aha!’”

These are the people who are watching and waiting for us to fail. They have their questions prepared, their “dilemmas” and “what-ifs” and can’t wait to say, “Gotcha”. Yes, let them be appalled because God has answered their “gotchas” (Matthew 22:29), and God always has a response.

Cain kills Abel – yet Seth is born and men began to call upon the name of the Lord. For years Noah works on an ark and nothing happens – then one day vindication comes. Abraham and Sarah are just too old to have a child – then Isaac shows up. Moses is not the great deliver for the first 80 years of his life – then he encounters the burning bush. Samson wasted much of his life – then a prayer was answered and God demonstrated that He is indeed sometimes an 11th hour God. Here is a warning to all skeptics: let God hear you say, “Aha!”, and you are setting up yourself to be shamed. As a believer – I can wait patiently to see that!

Mark Dunagan/Beaverton Church of Christ/503-644-9017
www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net