Psalm 40: Out of the Pit

Psalm 40, June 14, 2020, Cornerstone Community Church, Kouts, IN.

We live in chaotic times and we can be depressed about them. Yet political systems and decisions aren’t the answer! The Lord has his purposes. We are living in this time for a purpose, as Mordecai told Esther, “and who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this”? God has put us in this place, this time, for his purposes.

We have been going through the Psalms, especially the Laments.
Psalm 40, written by David, doesn’t exactly fit the pattern of most laments, but it has elements of it. For me, this Psalm is a pattern for living life in this world, where there will always be troubles and tribulations as Jesus promised in John 16:33. There are four sections of this Psalm: I call them Rescue, Relationship, Proclamation, Troubles.

Rescue

v. 1-5 I waited patiently for the Lord, and he turned to me and heard my cry for help.
He brought me up from a desolate pit, out of the muddy clay,
and set my feet on a rock, making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear, and they will trust in the Lord.

Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, who does not look to the proud,
to those who turn aside to false gods.
Many, Lord my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us.
None can compare with you; were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare.

These verses express the salvation of God after a period of waiting. It doesn’t specify when David wrote this and what his circumstances were at the time, but the picture of being taken from a desolate pit, out of the mud, to a rock, to a secure place could apply to any of the troubles and down times in his life. Remember Jeremiah, lowered into a well and sinking in the mud, and he called out to God and was rescued.

For me, this perfectly describes how I felt when I turned to the Lord from my life of rebellion against him. I had dug a deep pit for myself, and was wallowing in the mud of my own pleasures and selfishness. He rescued me, put a new song in my mouth and heart, and many people in my life certainly noticed! He delivers us, we don’t really have much to do with it other than go along with his program, accepting his help. And when he does deliver us, we are changed!

Relationship

v. 6-8 You do not delight in sacrifice and offering; you open my ears to listen.
You do not ask for a whole burnt offering or a sin offering.
Then I said, “See, I have come; in the scroll it is written about me.
I delight to do your will, my God, and your instruction is deep within me.”

The writer of Hebrews quotes these verses in 10:5-7, attributing these words to Messiah, Jesus “as he was coming into the world, he said…” So David, writing under the power of the Holy Spirit, describes what our relationship with God is based on:
NOT OUR WORKS FOR HIM, but HIS WORK IN US!

He opens our ears to hear his voice, he puts his word inside of us, so that we delight in doing his will. Hebrews 8 also quotes Jeremiah 31, where God says “I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts”.
Because Jesus came to do his father’s will, we are rescued from depending on our own works. We have a relationship rather than a religion.

Proclamation

v. 9-10 I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly; see, I do not keep my mouth closed — as you know, Lord.
I did not hide your righteousness in my heart; I spoke about your faithfulness and salvation; I did not conceal your constant love and truth from the great assembly.

This is a challenging section. Too often, I close my mouth when I have the opportunity to proclaim him. Our relationship with him is private in a sense, but he calls us to to proclaim him, his righteousness, faithfulness, and salvation. There are two aspects to this:
The way we live our lives should be very noticeable, very different from the “world”. Back in v. 3, “many will see and fear, and they will trust in the LORD.”
We not only proclaim through our actions, but with our words as well, in the assembly, publicly.

Troubles

v.11 Lord, you do not withhold your compassion from me. Your constant love and truth will always guard me.
12 For troubles without number have surrounded me; my iniquities have overtaken me; I am unable to see.They are more than the hairs of my head, and my courage leaves me.
13 Lord, be pleased to rescue me; hurry to help me, Lord.
14 Let those who intend to take my life be disgraced and confounded.
Let those who wish me harm be turned back and humiliated.

15 Let those who say to me, “Aha, aha!” be appalled because of their shame.
16 Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; let those who love your salvation continually say, “The Lord is great!”
17 I am oppressed and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my helper and my deliverer; my God, do not delay.

Here’s the lament part of this Psalm. We will have trouble as Jesus promised in John 16:33.
Sometimes things just happen because we live in a sinful world. In 12a and also Matt 5:45, he sends rain on the just and the unjust
Some of it is a result of our own sin (v.12b) (the only category where we have some control)
Some of it comes from others (v.14-15).
Through it all, David writes that we can cry out to him for deliverance, and wait patiently (v.1-3). We seek him and rejoice, we continually proclaim his greatness in the midst of our troubles (v.16). We acknowledge our weakness and our inability to rescue ourselves (v.17)

Habakkuk

One of my favorite prophets is Habakkuk, who lived in a time much worse than ours.
His book is kind of a lament, as he complains about the wrongdoing among his people which included idol worship, child sacrifice (that sounds familiar), and injustice of various kinds. When God tells him he will fix the problem by raising up the Babylonians to punish Israel, Habakkuk is really upset. “Lord, why would you use a people even more unrighteous than Israel to judge us?” But he decides to wait for God’s answer to his complaints.

However, God doesn’t answer his questions, but tells him to wait. In 2:2-3, Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.
For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.
In God’s time, there is never any delay! Everything happens how and when he determines.

The revelation he gives Habakkuk is that He will judge the Babylonians for their sin. But he never tells Habakkuk why he is doing what he does.
Isn’t that true in most cases when we ask God “why?” We don’t understand, and never will, because “his ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts are higher than ours”.
In all of Job’s questioning, the “why” is never answered.

As the angel told Joshua when asked “whose side are you on””, “neither, for I am captain of the LORD’s army.” And Abraham Lincoln said in his 2nd Inaugural address, after noting that each side prayed to God for their cause, but neither got what they wanted entirely. In the end, he said, “the Almighty has his own purposes”.

What We Can Do

We may ask today, “why the virus? Why the extreme (in my opinion) reactions to it?” When will we get back to “normal”? But the bottom line is, God allows everything that happens, and “the Almighty has his own purposes”. And his own timeline. He will not delay!

God gives Habakkuk this key principle in 2:4, “the righteous one will live by his faith”. Paul quotes this verse in Romans 1:17. What God does, and when he does it, is sometimes incomprehensible to us, but “we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor 5:7). It is not for us to know or understand all of his purposes; our job is to trust him in everything.

In the end, Habakkuk learns the lesson. In 3:16-19, he decides to wait quietly for the day of distress. And no matter what happens, famine, suffering, he makes this great confession in 18-19:
YET I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,he enables me to tread on the heights.

YET, nevertheless, even though, regardless,
I WILL rejoice. Paul from imprisonment in Rome, I WILL REJOICE. Making the decision to rejoice no matter what, is a statement that we are truly living by faith, knowing that he is at work. It is a choice to walk by faith and not by sight. Trust Him, because He is trustworthy.