Love Your Salvation

LOVE YOUR SALVATION

Psalm 40:1-17

INTRODUCTION: Verse 16 is at the heart of my focus for this psalm-love your salvation. And in this psalm, I see some of the things we will be doing if we love our salvation.

How do we love our salvation?

• We remember what God did for us (vs.1-2). Sometimes, if you’ve been a Christian for a while you can forget what you once were and where you once were. We can forget that we were once poor, helpless sinners who were in the stinky, slimy pit of sin. We were sunk in mud and sludge of our old nature. We were covered in filth; drowning in putrid waste. We needed rescuing. David said, “HE lifted me out…” He couldn’t pull himself out, he needed God to pull him out. So, we become saved, we move along in our salvation and we grow stronger and the things of the Spirit grow more common to our character. And in doing so we can forget what and where we once were. We can forget how desperate we were, how dangerous our ground was; the sinking sand we were in. We forget what it was like to be rescued. We forget the relief, the joy, the gratitude; the love. David reminded himself how God pulled him out. David recalled what exactly God did for him in his moment of despair; in his time of desperation. We need to remember that too if we are going to love our salvation.

• We sing a new song (vs. 3). Whether we can do it well or not, most of us like to sing along to our favorite songs. Whether we’re just a shower singer or an opera singer we enjoy belting out the songs we enjoy. When we were saved God placed a new song in our hearts. A song of deliverance, a song of gratitude, of thanksgiving, of joy. And when we love our salvation we will come before him and sing that new song. When we sing worship songs here on Sunday morning or on Wednesday night we are singing new songs. Songs we weren’t singing before our salvation. Songs about our salvation and our hope. Songs of recognition of our great and awesome God. Perhaps you’re here today and you’ve been born again but when the congregation sings you don’t. Perhaps you’re nervous singing in front of others. Okay, but are you trying to overcome that nervousness? Where is your heart? Is the desire there? You may need to ask yourself, ‘where is the joy of my salvation? Where’s my love for my redeemer?’ Where did it go; why isn’t it there? Am I not singing that new song because I’m not happy with how the Lord is handling my life? Am I discontent, always found wanting what I don’t have? Am I allowing the imperfections of life to take the focus off my life in Christ? Has the Lord snatching me from eternal damnation become old news? Maybe we’re too much like the Israelites. When God delivered them out of Egypt they soon after started complaining when times were tough in the desert. “Hey, Moses, there’s no water out here. What did you do, bring us out into the desert to die of thirst? We might as well go back to Egypt; at least we had food and water there.” We can be like that. We can become dissatisfied with salvation when it doesn’t seem like our life is much better than it was before. We can foolishly think we had it better before when we were slaves under a ruthless master. The Israelites were fickle, impatient people and oftentimes we’re no different. However, if we love our salvation, instead of songs of anger, hatred and complaint there will be songs of glory to God, songs of blessedness, songs of peace. This will be the music in our heart. This will be the song of our heart. If we love our salvation we will have a new song in our heart and it will come out of our mouths. [Shaun singing worship songs]. As a father, that brings such a joy to my heart to hear him do that. How much more so will it bring joy to our Father’s heart when he hears us praise him? How much does it grieve him when we don’t? If we love our salvation there will be music in our hearts and on our lips.

• We trust God (vs. 4). If we love our salvation then we will have trust in God and in his abilities. We’ve decided to trust him with our eternal life and we’ve decided to trust him with our everyday life. Because of our love for God and his salvation we’ve decided to no longer trust in our own understanding. We’ve decided to no longer trust in anyone who isn’t in line with God. We’ve decided to trust God with our lives and decisions. We’ve decided to lean on God’s wisdom and foresight and knowledge. Psalm 62:5-8. Where is our salvation? In God alone. Where is our trust placed? In God alone. We don’t trust in riches, we don’t trust in falsehood, we don’t trust in anything in this world. If we love our salvation we will trust in God.