Psalm 40 written by David. If you read Psalm 40: 13 – 17 you will find that it is like Psalm 70.There are very few differences. Why do these words come twice in our Bibles? If you look at Psalm 35: 4, 21, 26 and 27 you will find that most of Psalm 70 is there also, so it really comes three times! Perhaps the word “remember” at the top gives us help. David thought that it was important to remember the words of Psalm 70, because he was often in danger. Perhaps he used them when he was not thanking God for an answer to his prayer (as in Psalm 40). There are two other examples of psalms coming twice: Psalms 14 and 53; and Psalms 57,60 and 108.
1 I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.
2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.
3 He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him.
4 Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods.
5 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.
6 Sacrifice and offering you did not desire— but my ears you have opened — burnt offerings and sin offerings d you did not require.
7 Then I said, “Here I am, I have come— it is written about me in the scroll.
8 I desire to do your will, my God; your law is within my heart.”
9 I proclaim your saving acts in the great assembly; I do not seal my lips, Lord, as you know.
10 I do not hide your righteousness in my heart; I speak of your faithfulness and your saving help. I do not conceal your love and your faithfulness from the great assembly.
11 Do not withhold your mercy from me, Lord; may your love and faithfulness always protect me.
12 For troubles without number surround me; my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails within me.
13 Be pleased to save me, Lord; come quickly, Lord, to help me.
14 May all who want to take my life be put to shame and confusion; may all who desire my ruin be turned back in disgrace.
15 May those who say to me, “Aha! Aha!” be appalled at their own shame.
16 But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who long for your saving help always say, “The Lord is great!”
17 But as for me, I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; you are my God, do not delay.
SECTIONS:
I Proclaiming joyful deliverance
II Willing servant proclaims God’s praise
III A heartfelt plea for help
THEME: Faith persevering in trial
QUESTIONS:
Who does David say is blessed?
How does David’s reaction to wait patiently differ from our usual behavior?
What does David say God has done for him?
What has David tried to do for God?
What are some characteristics of God that David describes?
Are you surprised by how many times David mentions his sin in his psalms?
What does David hope for those who want to harm him? Do you think if is right for David to express his feelings in this way to God?
Do you extress your true feelings to God? How do you express your frustrations to God?
David begins this psalm declaring that he is waiting patiently for the Lord. Even though he was being disciplined by God and describing his suffering as receiving blows from a hand, David patiently waits for these things to end. David give some imagery of what his experience is like. He described it as a “slimy pit.” All of us have and will endure times that are truly “the pits.”
Many times one sin leads to another sin and we have great difficulty trying to extract ourselves from the mire. The help we need is not simply one another, because we are each in our own slimy pits of sin. We must ask God to help us out of our mess. Many times our pit is dealing with failure. If we have set our heart to desire to be like God, it is a devastating thing to continue to fail. We want to do better and we have great intentions to improve our lives, but it’s not working out. We have all failed but we must admit and bring our failures to God.
A difficult pit to extract ourselves from are destructive habits. Habits are very difficult to manage and break. Uncontrolled temper, alcohol, laziness toward God, drugs, patterns of self-pity, sexual sins, we all have to deal with habits that are not acceptable and work to break them. But we need God to help us out of these pits.
Many times the circumstances of our lives are the pits. How many times do we find the apostle Paul in terrible circumstances? In the midst of all that pain and mess, Paul could say, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).
God will hear our pleas when we draw near to him. In David’s previous psalms of David that we learn we are to draw near to God for God to draw near to us. As David turns his cries to the Lord, the Lord responds by turning to David. God can change our circumstances. He can take the mud of our sinful clothes and give us holy, white robes. He can help us overcome our destructive habits. We underestimate the impact that God can make in our lives. The problem, I believe, is that we don’t believe God is this active in our lives and can make radical changes. David is telling us it happened to him and it can happen to us.
David declares that he is able to put his trust in the Lord because of the great works that God has done in the past. We must remember that God has carried us through other terrible circumstances. It may not have been easy, but we made it because the Lord was there for us. He can get us out of the pit today as well as he did in the past.
David mentions that doing good deeds does not appease God. Good actions do not take care of our sins. God doesn’t desire good deeds when we have violated His law. Rather, God wants us to desire to do His will and have His law in our hearts (vs. 8). The sacrifice of Jesus Christ removes our sins and our guilt away from us. Our sins have been fully dealt with by Christ and we are now sanctified. How great it is to be washed in the blood of the Lamb!
David sees his need for God to take care of his sins. Is it any wonder that the Lord declares David to be a man after his own heart? Clearly this was one of the reasons why David was a man after God’s own heart. David understood that sacrifices were not going to be enough and that there was nothing he could do to remove the stain of sin that were on his hands. He knew he was deserving of the just punishment for his sins. We have the same need as David. We need to see that there is nothing we can do for our sins. We can do good deeds, be good moral people, and have changed lives, but that does not remove our sins. This is the point in Ephesians 2:5 when Paul told Christians “by grace you have been saved.” Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
https://bible.org/seriespage/psalm-40-when-you’re-pit
The late Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, said to his frustrated, impatient daughter, “My dear, if you would only recognize that life is hard, things would be so much easier for you.”
Jesus told the disciples to expect trials in John 16:1, 2. “These things I have spoken to you so that you may be kept from stumbling. They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God.” John 16:33, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”
In spite of these words and many other similar Scriptures (John 15:18; Acts 14:22; 1 Thess. 3:3-4; 2 Tim. 3:12), many Christians fall away when they get hit with various trials. If you’re going to persevere with Christ, you will face times when you are in the pit, and you must know what to do when you’re there. Rather than turning away from the Lord, learn to turn to Him to rescue you.
Psalm 40 is a song about the pits. In the first half (1-10), David tells how God got him out of one pit and he sings God’s praise. But he did not then live happily ever after. It’s evident from the second half of the psalm (11-17) that he’s in another pit, crying out to the Lord to deliver him. Because David waited intently on the Lord to rescue him from the first pit, he knew how to wait on God to get him out of the second pit.
David doesn’t specify his trials in the first pit. The second pit clearly involved the consequences of David’s sins (12) and many enemies that were trying to destroy him (14-15). The first pit David only describes as a “pit of destruction” and “the miry clay” (2). Some think that it referred to David’s enemies, while others think that it referred to physical illness or deep emotional distress. Perhaps we aren’t told so that we can relate all of our trials to David’s situation.
Your pit could be poor health, the loss of your job, former friends that turned against you, an unfaithful mate, rebellious children, or any other overwhelming problem. You may be responsible for being in your pit, or you may be a victim of the sins of others. David’s situation in the second pit seems to have been a combination of both. He acknowledges his many sins. I don’t think he’s referring to sins that he was currently committing, but rather to the consequences of past sins. But the consequences involved wicked people who were intent on destroying David (14).
When you’re in a pit, it’s very easy to grab onto any way of escape, even if it means compromising your faith. God’s timing often doesn’t coincide with our timing. We want it done instantly, but God has other purposes. But when you’re in a pit, there is a sense of urgency. In verse 1, David mentions his cry, which may have been as simple as, “Help, Lord!”mOne reason we often don’t cry out to God for deliverance is because we don’t see ourselves as afflicted and needy. Our tendency, even after salvation, is to think that we can do it ourselves by our own ingenuity, strength, and efforts. God graciously puts us in one pit after another, so that we learn to lean on him, and cry out to Him.
Waiting on the Lord gives you time to think. But you’ve got to direct your mind to think about the right things. If you think, “Oh no, God has abandoned me! I’m doomed!” you will panic or turn to the world for help. But if you think about God’s many wonders and how He has worked in the past to help you, you will wait for Him with expectant hope.
As David waits, he reflects on who God is and what He’s done. God established the earth so that it is hospitable for us to live here. He waters the earth, providing crops for our food. He preserves us from many catastrophes that we don’t even know about. I heard recently that a meteorite came uncomfortably close to earth. If it had hit, it would have wreaked major damage. And yet I never heard any newsman giving thanks to God for preserving us from destruction!
David may have thought about God’s many wonderful acts of delivering His people from trouble. He brought them out of Egypt and preserved them in the wilderness. He enabled them to conquer the powerful Canaanite nations and occupy the Promised Land. David had seen God deliver him from the bear and the lion, not to mention from Goliath and from Saul’s repeated attempts to kill him. If you have known the Lord for any length of time, you can think back to many times when you were brought low and God delivered you. As you wait on Him now, in whatever pit you’re in, recount His many wonders and love for you.
Seek God and not just deliverance from your pit. Sadly, many “use” God like Aladdin’s Genie and put Him back on the shelf when they get what they want. The reason that David waits and seeks God is so that God will be glorified. If David turned to some human scheme for deliverance, then David and his ingenuity would get the credit. David repeats himself to make it plain that God had done great things for him, while others would chalk it up to David’s good luck or to his natural abilities. David wants everyone to know that he was helpless and sinking. He never could have rescued himself. All he did was cry out to God and wait expectantly for God to deliver him. And when God did rescue him, David made sure that God got all the praise. We would do well to follow his example.
http://hopechristianchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/podcast/sermons/Psalm%2040%20-%20The%20Practice%20of%20Patience%20-%20Sermon.pdf (Michael CJ Bradford)
About three thousand years ago the prophet Samuel declared that David was a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:13-14). But we also know that David was a man whose heart was prone to wander. Whether it was because of David’s determination to follow the will of God, or to the folly of his own sinful desires, or the evil intentions of others, David was often in difficult circumstances. When David was inspired to write Psalm 40, he was reflecting on at least one (but likely several) of these circumstances. David was, metaphorically speaking, in a miry pit.
Have you ever been in a difficult circumstance, a horrible, miry pit, because of some external source? Or have you ever been in a difficult circumstance as a consequence of your own sin? I would guess that many of us feel like we’re in a miry pit RIGHT NOW. When facing a difficult circumstance what does it look like to practice patience? The Hebrew word Kä·vä’ (kah-vah) implies that to wait patiently involves hope, with anticipation of deliverance. The Greek word for waiting patiently is hü-po-me’-nō (hoo-pah-man-oh) which involves willfully abiding in subjection and/or submission.
In many difficult circumstances we have no choice and must wait for relief or the difficult circumstance to end. In other cases, we could act hastily in an attempt to end the waiting, often to the detriment of ourselves and/or others.
Consider the patriarch Abraham. God promised him that his descendents would one day be exceedingly numerous (Genesis 15:1-5). But Abram and Sarai were elderly and had doubts. Instead of patiently waiting for God’s promise to be fulfilled, Abram took Sarai’s advice; he took Sarai’s maidservant Hagar as a concubine and she bore him a son: Ishmael (Genesis 16:1-16). God didn’t fulfill His promise to Abram for another fourteen years. Abram and Sarai needed to wait patiently, but they didn’t. The consequence of their impatience and doubt was Ishmael, a boy who would later become the patriarch of twelve tribes whom God said would live in hostility toward every man (Genesis 16:12). Psalm 83 indicates that by the time of David the Ishmaelites were largely hostile toward God and the people of Israel. And so it is to this day.
When facing a difficult circumstance the key is not to wait impatiently, or to wait with anxiety, or to wait in anger, or to act impulsively, but to wait patiently and focus on God.
David provides the answer on how to wait patiently in these verses:
Sing praises to God! (3)
Trust Him! (4)
Reject the proud (including the pride within)!
Cling to His truth!
Identify personally with the Lord “MY” God! (5)
Remember His many wondrous works!
Go to Him! (7)
Delight in doing His will! (8)
Proclaim God’s good news, His gospel, without restraint! (9)
Declare His faithfulness, His salvation, His lovingkindness, His truth! (10)
Acknowledge your sins, yield to confession and forgiveness (12)
Cry out to God, and God alone, for deliverance. (13)
Christians are able to experience and practice patience in difficult circumstances because God has provided His Holy Spirit. Whenever you’re experiencing a difficult circumstance (James 1:2-4), count it all joy, “knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience (hoo-pah-man-ay). But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”
My Reflection:
Who has not been in a pit at least once in their life? I know I’ve been there many times! It starts out with me feeling helpless and hopeless. I don’t feel there is any way out. It’s dark, scary and lonely. There are no rungs of a ladder to grab on to in a pit. You slip and slide and get no where.
I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety all my life and used to have many panic attacks. It comes from my past but it also runs generationally in our family. But as I grew in faith my panic attacks became less and less. I rarely get them now. And God began to teach me things from his Word. So many times in scripture Jesus tells us not to worry. But I had trouble following that advice. Yet, I began to see that many things that I worried about never occurred. Since I am a visual person, I decided to make a “worry box.” I found a nicely decorated box and put a label on top that said “Worry box.” Every time I began to worry about something I wrote what concerned me on a slip of paper and put it into that box. Then I waited for God to act, but sometimes not as patiently as David does in this psalm. I soon found that after reviewing my many “worry slips” not a single thing I had worried about had happened! No, not one! I think the reason was because God wanted to teach me something really important about trusting him. He showed me how much time and effort I had put into worrying rather than time and effort into spending more time with him. Eventually I stopped using my worry box! I didn’t need it anymore.
I realize just because I found not one worry in my worry box had come to pass that doesn’t mean bad things won’t happen. I guess I had a tendency to magnify my worries into really horrible things! There have been some trying circumstances that have occurred in my life since then, but the lesson I learned from God is not to worry so much through them. That God would be at work and he would either stop my troubling circumstances eventually, or change them, or get me through those trials! No matter what , God always had my back. I could trust him completely. Like David said, God set my feet on a rock and give me a firm place to stand and he is my Rock! He’s given me reason to praise and I look back and see the many wonders God has done in my life. He truly did put a new song in my heart-a hymn of praise.
So do I still worry? Yes and no. Sometimes things do get to so bad that I can get depressed and feel down. Worrying is described as “mental uneasiness” and sometimes I do get that feeling, especially when looking at the state of our world without God. But that is more sadness over so many people rejecting God than what I consider worrying. Even so, I know and trust that God is at work. He is moving. He has a plan even if I don’t understand that plan. So I am more on the side now of trusting God then worrying. I may not always like what is going on. I may even have a hard accepting my trying circumstances. But eventually, I focus on God and he turns my thoughts so that I see things from his perspective.
So like David, I find that now I can reflect on what God has done for me in my past (my worry box helped me see that). And tend to keep my focus more on God than on my problem because I have come to know his character! He is completely worthy and deserving of all my confidence and trust in him, even through the most difficult times in my life. I can rejoice that I have a God who loves me and will get me through any trial. And, like David, I love to share stories of what God has done in my life. Unfortunately a lot of people don’t believe in God and they think my trials turned around because of good luck or cooincidence. But that doesn’t stop me from sharing. I think even a small seed we plant in others when we tell them about God can grow with God’s grace.
SONG: Your Grace Finds Me- Matt Redmond