"...May the LORD think of me."

Psalm 40:1–17 ESV

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, 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. In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, 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 delight to do your will, O 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, O Lord. I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart; I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your 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 delight in 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, O my God!

Scripture: Psalm 40:1-17

Sermon Title: “…May the LORD think of me.”

           We began our series in the Psalms last week, and I said starting this week we’d take a psalm from each of the five books. The book of Psalms has a lot of variety. As you probably know, when you come across titles in the Bible at the beginning of a chapter or starting a new section, usually those titles have been inserted by translators or editors at some point. Rather than just seeing continuous words, these scholars have added chapters and verses and titles to help us as readers see a particular account or concept in a certain set of lines.

In the Psalms, some of those titles exist, but we also come across things at the start of individual psalms like “A Psalm of David,” or “To the choirmaster: [for some instrument],” “A Psalm of Asaph,” “A Song of Ascents,” and others like those. Those lines, usually they’re printed in a different font, are actually from the original manuscripts. Whether they tell us the author, a recipient, the usage, or a genre, that’s what those are and where they come from. There are also different types of psalms: joyful hymns, sad and even depressing laments, thanksgiving, royal songs, confession of faiths or confidence. When I talk about the five books of Psalms, the organization isn’t necessarily that Book One, for example, is all written by one author or has one specific style or type of writing, and that’s completely distinct from the other 4 books. Theologian Ernest Lucas describes the books as being smaller collections of psalms compiled over time.

Today we’re in Book One. If you have a Bible open, you can flip back to Psalm 1 and likely see those words above that. If you flip back to Psalm 40 and look between the end of Psalm 41 and beginning of Psalm 42, you should find the words Book Two. Some of the characteristics that Lucas points out about this section are that most of these are written “of David,” “most…are individual laments,” and God is most often referred to in the four letters that have been pronounced Yahweh, Jehovah, and which we find capitalized “LORD.” The introduction notes in the ESV Study Bible characterizes Book One like this, “Prayers issuing from a situation of distress dominate, punctuated by statements of confidence in the God who alone can save.” There are also “reflections on ethics and worship with integrity.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the “slimy pit” this passage is referring to is believed to be a tar pit. It’s the kind of pit that pictures have been made of for large land animals being sucked down into the thick, black sludge. It’s so heavy that they were unable to free themselves and met an unexpected end.

I’ve never experienced those, thankfully, but I’ve gotten myself stuck in other stuff plenty of times. Most often it’s been in snow, and the ones that stick out in my mind are the rare occasions that I’ve gone out hunting with someone. I can remember trying to hunt snow geese with a couple young men in South Dakota, and I was driving us in my truck down some minimum maintenance roads that were covered in snow. These are roads that are typically more dirt than gravel, and occasionally can just be rutted-out grass. They’re really just meant for the neighboring farmers. We could see where the road rose about an eighth of a mile ahead of us, where we hoped to get to, and yet I did not hit the gas right or drove into the lowest spot possible—and we were stuck. My truck would have been helpless had it not been for a nearby farmer and his tractor. Needless to say, we didn’t end up shooting any snow geese that day.

Another time, and this was just mud, not snow, a guy took me to some of his family’s land to hunt deer. We had a long walk out to the spot where we sat waiting for a couple hours, and no deer showed up. Finally, we decided to head back to the truck, and rather than take the same route back, we thought we’d try a short cut without any real, defined path. We were getting into some really soft ground, but I thought I had a pretty good idea of where to step, and then all of a sudden, I plunged my boot into the softest mud I’ve ever been in. I watched in what felt like slow-motion as my boot filled with the water that I thought I had avoided. When I tried to lift my foot out of the mud, all that came up was my sock-covered foot. Cold and wet and discouraged, I now had to reach down and tug that boot out.

Being stuck in mud or snow is no fun, but neither are the metaphorical pits, mud, and mire that we find ourselves in throughout our lifetimes. Last time we spent a bit of time considering one type of pit, that being the pit of death or tragedy and the grief that comes along with those situations. In his commentary on Psalm 40, James Boice asks the question, “What is your slimy pit?” and he describes some other ones. There’s “the pit of sin,” similar to what David experienced in his adultery with Bathsheba and killing her husband Uriah. Boice writes, “…One sin has led to another. You know what is happening, but you can’t get out of it.” He also talks about the “pit of defeat…whether at work or school or in the home or in some other setting or relationship. Some people would say their entire lives have been one long and unending defeat. They have never succeeded at anything…” “The pit of bad habits.” “The pit of circumstances” where you experience one hardship and trial after another. We’re not talking about the occasional bad day or feeling just a little bit off your game, not your best. No, these are situations, extended periods in your life, when nothing feels right or good. Times of depression or oppression, times of addiction, all of which can put us in spot where we know that we are not able to get out of on our own.

This psalm is written addressing those situations. We begin this morning, then, by asking the question, when do we cry out to God for help? We heard in those opening verses that it can be when we are in the pit. “I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire…” The psalmist’s experience and his cries come not just when things have started to get a little troublesome; but he called out to and was waiting for God while having spent some time in one of these pits.

Similarly, verse 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. Be pleased, O LORD, to save me; O LORD, come quickly to help me. May all who seek my life be put to shame and confusion; may all who desire my ruin be turned back in disgrace.” David, the author, senses danger, he faces the wrath of others, he knows and understands his guilt. In all of this, his very life feels like it’s draining away. That’s a time to call on the LORD.

All of it leads to verse 17, “Yet I am poor and needy; may the LORD think of me.” There is not a time when the believer should think they must give up calling on God. There is not a trouble that we find ourselves in that we should think, God can’t or won’t do anything for me in this situation. We have a variety of responses that the psalmist had experienced or hoped that God would provide, that he believed and trusted he could grant him. He’s been lifted out, had his feet set on a firm rock, and given a new song. Because of God’s wonders and provision, he’s confident to praise the LORD and tell of his wonders. He’s asking for salvation and that the LORD would move speedily. Why? Because “You are my help and my deliverer; O my God, do not delay.”

When you are in the pits of life, believers, call on the LORD our God. Call on the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, because he is able and willing to answer you. He’s able and willing to do that by his grace—“for Jesus’ sake.” In talking to his disciples when a rich young man approached him in Matthew 19, Jesus identifies the hardship of the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, because it requires giving up all we have to follow God. His disciples asked, “…‘Who then can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”

We are to call upon the Lord when we believe that to be true. For myself—and maybe some or many of you feel this way, too—this may be an area of our lives, of our faith, that we have to ask God to grow our faith. When others ask us to pray for them, for God to do what seems impossible and miraculous, we’re fine with doing that. But the hardest part is sometimes asking God to do that for ourselves. It’s easier to look at problems from a distance that we may know we’re not able to do much about, but when it’s right in front of us, when it’s our problem, we’re hesitant. It can be due to pride. It can be that we say, “That person has things so much worse—they really need God, my situation isn’t that bad. I can suck it up and get through it.” If that is our posture, who are trusting in? We’re trusting in ourselves and our strength. We can delay so much in turning to God we deem ourselves not worth God’s help. Yet at any point, not just in the pit, the LORD welcomes us to call on him in faith; he will provide according to his will and kindness.

Following up on that, our second point is remember the innumerable, or uncountable, works of the LORD. Listen again to verse 5, “Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you have planned for us no one can recount to you; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare.” We have an incredible gift and blessing in Scripture. By going to this book, these words, we get to look back throughout history all the way to creation. We get to follow the lives of the patriarchs and the Israelites, the Jews in Jesus’ day and how the church developed in the first century. We have these words, by the work of the Spirit, in passing it down through the generations. Now in this printed and bound book or projected on a screen or looked up on a phone or computer or listened to, we get to see what happened as time went on. Why our tradition places such an emphasis on Christian education—at home, at church, and potentially at school—is not only that we are grounded generally in our faith, but that we would be built up with all of God’s Word.

Sometimes that can seem like we just want people to know stories or to show off that we know so many verses or names or places or things like that. Yet part of the reason and value of receiving Scripture and nurturing and discipling one another in it is that we get to hear about what God has done. God created all things. God destroyed the world with a flood but had this family build an ark to survive and then put a rainbow in a sky with meaning. God called a man named Abram and then worked through the following generations of his family—dealing with their morality and immorality. God freed slaves from Egypt with plagues and miracles. God sent manna and quail and kept these people going through 40 years in the wilderness before enabling them to take a land he had promised to them. He intervened repeatedly on their behalf through judges and kings and prophets. He sends Jesus who taught in ways that captivated people and who performed amazing miracles. He, the Son of God, died and rose again and gave his Spirit after he ascended.

Those are just the highlights, though. The Bible isn’t a quick read. Yet it presents us with chapter after chapter, day after day, year after year, generation after generation with the ways that God shows up. One of things we have to remember is not every moment, every person, every action, every thought is recorded in the Bible. We’ve been given the sufficient account, by the Spirit, for salvation. When you read the Old Testament and New Testament, there are so many more incredible details of God’s works, but that doesn’t mean that the Bible provides the record of every last one of them. We know God’s done even more than what’s just recorded here!

Why am I going on about this? Well, Scripture is a gift informing us of the many ways that God has been and continues to be at work. It might be easy to look for ways that God is with us when things are going well, but especially when we are troubled and in despair, it is vital that we remember what God is able to do and how he has faithfully fulfilled his promises. We find throughout Psalm 40 that the works of the Lord and meditating on them bring David to: trust the LORD, to desire to do his will, to proclaim his righteousness, speak of his faithfulness and salvation, to not conceal his love and truth. Those don’t have to be in the abstract. They don’t have to just be flowery language that we have to wonder if God actually is like that. No, because of what unfolds across the pages of Scripture—telling the account of history—we’re able to see how God works, in the lives of his people, his children, his redeemed throughout all of history. It benefits us to remember his works when we we’re left wondering if and what he might do.

That brings us to our final point: the psalm points us to the saving work of Jesus! I began this message talking about my experience in slippery places where I’ve gotten stuck. Those situations were not enjoyable when I was going through them, but I was never really in danger. Afterwards I can laugh and hopefully learn some things so I don’t repeat the same mistakes.  The pits and the troubles the psalmist describes throughout Psalm 40, though, were dangerous; his life in certain cases hung in the balance. Metaphorically, when each of us or any person is without Christ, when we are living on our own, by our own desires and will—we don’t always realize how our lives are in jeopardy. Without Christ, the reality is there can be no rescue.

Looking through different study Bible notes and commentaries, what we read in verses 6 through 8 are a joyful dedication that David makes to the will of God. Again, we read, “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have pierced; burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require. Then I said, ‘Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do you will, O my God; your law is within my heart.’” All who love the Lord can desire to take that stand, to give ourselves to our God—yet we still know our dedications fall show.

The author of Hebrews, however, in chapter 10 interprets these words as Jesus being their fulfiller. In Hebrews 10 verses 5 and 6, we find a slightly modified reading of those verses. He follows that by talking about how the sacrifices and offerings were the law, which Jesus set aside to establish God’s will. Picking up in verse 10, “And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Jumping to verse 12, “…When this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”   

The life described in Psalm 40 is not the holy life, the perfect life, the sinless life. It is a life that is in need of rescue, of help, of a Savior. It needs the blood of Jesus to grant salvation, to be fully obedient and righteous how God desired for his creation to live in relationship to him. That’s what you and I receive by faith in Jesus, by placing our hope in him, by crying out to him and trusting for everything we need. Article 23 of the Belgic Confession puts it this way: “We believe that for us to acquire the true knowledge of [the atonement] the Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts a true faith that embraces Jesus Christ, with all his merits, and makes him its own, and no longer looks for anything apart from him…We justly say with Paul that we are justified ‘by faith alone’ or ‘by faith apart from works.’ However, we do not mean, properly speaking, that it is faith itself that justifies us—for faith is only the instrument by which we embrace Christ, our righteousness. But Jesus Christ is our righteousness in making available to us all his merits and all the holy works he has done for us and in our place…When those benefits are made ours, they are more than enough to absolve us of our sins.”

We are called to honor the will of God, to obey him in love and gratitude, but we do that knowing there is only One who can satisfy God, which he has done on our behalf. Christ did not die for us to keep us down in misery. He died for us that we might experience the hope and reality of new life. He did not die to push us back in the pit; he died to lift us up and put us on the rock where we can praise and testify to him. So, as we go through the pits of life, may we join the psalmist in asking for the LORD to think of us—and let us be patient, not forgetting, by faith kindled by the Holy Spirit—he has remembered and will not forget us. Amen.