I. Introduction - the Benefits of Reading Psalms
One of the benefits of reading the Psalms is that they present us with pictures of what godly people in the past have experienced and how they got through them. And when we read those stories it gives us encouragement to keep on living for God even if we are experiencing troubles and difficulties.
Psalm 40 is one of the clearest psalms that tell us a pattern of how a person with faith in God goes through life when he encounters troubles.
You’ve already heard the first 11 verses read. As we concentrate on the first 3 verses this morning, we see a pattern of life that emerges that looks like this:
In vs. 2 it describes King David admitting that He is in a pit. That’s the first stage of the pattern.
Then we see he cries out to God for help at the end of vs. 1.
The third stage is patiently waiting for God to deliver him.
Then we see God rescues him by drawing him out of the pit in vs. 2.
The fifth stage is God gives David a new song to sing in vs. 3.
And finally we see many others come to trust in God because of his testimony.
Let’s look at each of these stages.
II. Six Stages
1. He Is in a Pit
The first thing that we read is that David is in a pit. But this may not mean a literal pit; David may be describing a situation in which he feels as if he was in a pit.
Although we are not sure the exact situation that he is facing, we can get a sense of what David felt when he uses the imagery of a slimy pit.
I have not been in a pit, or trapped inside it, but I have seen deep pits in cemeteries where the workmen have dug holes for burial. Suppose a dry pit like that is not covered and it rains some. Pretty soon the pit will turn muddy and slimy. That is what mire means in vs. 2. Mire is deep mud and slush. It is tough enough to be in a deep pit that is dry, imagine if you are stuck in it when it is muddy. As hard as you try to get out, you keep on slipping and falling back into the pit.
Maybe this is what Joseph in the Bible experienced when he was thrown into a cistern by his brothers. The word translated "cistern" in Joseph’s experience is the same word as "pit" here. And the prophet Jeremiah was also thrown into a cistern, a pit, by King Zedekiah, where it says "there was no water in the cistern, but only mire and Jeremiah sank in the mire" (Jer. 38:6).
I hope we have not fallen into a physical pit like that ourselves. But what could it represent in our life?
I think when there is a sense of hopelessness and desperation, like you are stuck for a long time in a bind and you can’t get out, no matter how hard you try, and no one is coming to help you, that is what being in a pit feels like. In people’s lives today, it could be the breaking point for someone who is overworked at their place of employment, where they work 10 or 12 hours per day and it just goes on and on.
Or it could be the limit of a mother with small children at home, it could be the impossible expectations of too many classes in school, it could be the physical and recurring pain of someone who suffers an illness, or the constant strains of not having enough money. These are the pits we might face.
You scratch and claw to try to get out and get some air and relief, but you keep falling back into the pit and there seems to be no hope of improvement. A sense of desperation and futility settles in.
David felt like that.
What does he do next?
2. He Cries Out to God for Help
He cries out to God for help.
David cries out to ask God for help, and he is most likely crying tears of pain because the suffering is so great.
David cried tears at other times too. In Ps. 6:6 David says, "I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears." In the NASB translation of Ps. 56:8, David writes, "Put my tears in Thy bottle, Are they not in Thy book?"
David was an emotional man. In other words, David lived a real life. He did not hide his tears when it hurt. Jesus said to his disciples, "Blessed are those who mourn." It is very manly, very human, to be able to mourn.
When a broken man cries out to God, it is a beautiful thing. It shows a realization that he cannot do it on his own, he needs help; he needs God’s help.
This is another thing we see. David cries out to God, he did not cry out to other people for help. Some people are willing to say they need help, but they will seek it anywhere else but from God.
But not David. He knew from his experiences that human help couldn’t save him in many situations. There are times that are so desperate that only God can help us.
A good example of this is King Asa. God punished him for relying on Syria as an ally instead of on God. But Asa refused to learn his lesson and at the end of his life, it says in 1 Chron. 16:12, "In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was afflicted with a disease in his feet. Though his disease was severe, even in his illness he did not seek help from the LORD, but only from the physicians."
The point here is not that we should avoid seeing doctors when we need to, but that it is a mistake to make a doctor your God, to think that with him alone is healing. And this is true for whoever else we put our hopes on. It could be your husband, your wife, your boss, your parents, or even your pastor. They are not able to help us just by themselves. We also need God.
A fine summary of this principle is in Ps. 146:3-5, "Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God…"
Is your hope in the Lord your God rather than man?
And when we find ourselves in difficult circumstances, make sure we go on to stage 3.
3. He Patiently Waits for God to Deliver Him
Stage 3 is to wait patiently for the Lord to deliver him.
Having cried out to God for help, we then need to wait. And wait patiently. The first reaction when we are in a pit may be to try harder, to get ourselves out, but that may just be tiring us out even more. The new pattern of life calls us to wait patiently.
But the funny thing is that most of us when we call out to God for help don’t wait long enough for God to act. After a short while, we start to do things on our own again instead of continuing to ask God and wait for him to act.
David waited patiently for God to act and God in his time, acted. He lifted David out of the pit and set him on a rock.
Joseph in the book of Genesis waited patiently for God to act. And soon enough he was lifted out of the pit and brought into Egypt for what would be an incredible turnaround in his life.
Jeremiah waited patiently for the Lord to act. In Jeremiah’s case, God used an official to plead Jeremiah’s case to the king and the king told the official to take thirty men to lift Jeremiah out of the pit. Jeremiah didn’t even ask for help, but God brought it to him.
Jesus was in the greatest pit of all. He was crucified on the cross and then buried in the cave. And all he could do was wait for God his Father to act to save him.
Whatever you might be facing in terms of a pit you may be in, continue to wait for God to act.
A man who was baptized two weeks in our church gave a moving testimony about the life he lived before he became a Christian. He got into all kinds of troubles, including gambling and getting involved with other women, and it tore his family apart. Yet his wife kept on praying and waiting for God to act. And God changed this man. Through the pain he experienced, God brought him to repentance and he gave up his old ways and turned to God. And in the baptism service, he shared this with everyone, and his whole family was standing with him on the stage and they all started to cry, including his kids and his wife.
God acted. But his wife and family had to wait patiently.
What does it mean to waiting patiently for the Lord?
What it does not mean is just saying, "OK, Lord, I’m just going to sit here and wait for something to happen."
Waiting patiently for the Lord means actively seeking him. In fact, some versions of the Bible translate the word "patiently" as "intently," - "waiting intently for the Lord."
It means continuous praying to God for help. It means continual obedience to God even as we wait for him to solve our problems. It means considering and reflecting on God’s words that he has spoken to us in the Bible. It means to focus all of our energy on him. That’s waiting intently and patiently. It is not neglecting God and denying the problem, but it is actively waiting and hoping in God.
And how long will it take for God to answer our prayers? We don’t know for sure. It could be years. It’s been that way for us waiting for our new church building. It was years for that wife waiting for her husband to change. There were times when King David had to wait for years for his prayers to be answered.
It doesn’t matter how long. We don’t know how long it will take for our situation to be changed, but our responsibility and our comfort is to wait patiently for God to act. Because he will.
4. God Rescues David by Drawing Him Out of the Pit
The fourth stage is that in God’s time, he rescued David by drawing him out of the pit.
God may have healed him of some illness. Or perhaps God restored his name in the face of his enemies who were putting him to shame and disgracing him. Or perhaps it was his own sin. In vs. 13, David admits he had sinned and that was part of the contributing factor to his being in the pit. Sometimes we also share in some part in the pit we are in.
Whatever it was, God rescued him from the pit and gave him a rock to stand upon.
What is the rock?
Vs. 17 tells us that "You are my help and my deliverer; O my God, do not delay."
God is the rock. He is the solid ground for David.
5. God Gives David a New Song to Sing
And as a result of his rescue by God, God gives David a new song to sing.
This new song means new words of praise to God that he did not possess before. Due to this rescue of his life, David has experienced the help of God in a way that he did not before, and this results in new words. Perhaps psalm 40 is the new song that David wrote after his rescue.
Each time you go through a new experience with God and are rescued by God, you will have a new appreciation and new words to say and sing about God.
Some songwriters can write hundreds of songs. How do they do it? By having gone through different experiences they come up with different songs.
God is in the business of giving us new experiences with him, experiences that we did not have with him before. We might think God is very routine but actually God wants to give us fresh and new experiences with him all the time. When I think about the experiences that God has given me, I am amazed how different they are. I don’t have two experiences with God that is the same. What I learned this week is different than what I learned last week and so forth, but God is constantly teaching me new lessons.
My new song this week is being overwhelmed at first at the many things that I felt we needed to do for our cell groups. I was so overwhelmed that for a day and a half I didn’t know where to start. But after our prayer meeting on Wednesday night, on Thursday morning became clearer to me the few things I should concentrate on. God showed me that he is with me and will not leave me.
And each time we go through a new experience with God, we have a new story to tell about what he has done. Some people are gifted so that when they reflect more on their experiences with God they can actually write it in the form of a new song. David could do that.
6. Many Others Come to Trust in God
And there is another reason God gives us a new song in our life. Not only so it benefits us, but it is also that other people can come to trust in God more.
In vs. 3, it says that "Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord."
This is one the results of us receiving help from God. We now have a concrete testimony and story to share with others. We know that many people came to know Jesus Christ or become curious about him because of Christians’ testimonies about what God has done for them.
People do listen. And it makes them think. It makes them think that since God helped you perhaps God can also help them in their troubles. And they begin to seek God.
So don’t keep your testimonies all to yourself. That’s why I didn’t keep my testimony just to myself, but shared it with you. Yes, it felt a little awkward at first, but I know now it’s the right thing to do. Why should I hide what God is doing in my life from you? I shouldn’t.
God wants us to share our stories and testimonies with others. That is one way to draw others into a search for God. You can write for the Rock newsletters, you can share your stories in prayer meetings or in your cell groups or with friends. This is also personal evangelism in its most natural way. And all of us can do this. Your personal story of how God saved you and helped you is a powerful tool to share God with others. This isn’t complicated. You can do it.
And when we share our testimonies and stories of God acting in our life with others we must remember one thing.
We must remember that we can influence people through our words and actions, but we cannot control people. We don’t know what they will do with what they hear from us, but at least we have influenced them.
I was reminded of this in an article I read this week in Focus on the Family magazine.
In an article by a pastor about times in his ministry when he felt his effort was wasted and just not getting the result he was hoping for, he wrote this:
"Spiritual work has limits. Consider the difference between the work of a farmer and that of a cabinetmaker. With tools like saws and routers, a cabinetmaker directly and immediately molds his products to conform to his vision. A farmer, on the other hand, works in partnership with a host of forces beyond his control: soil, sun, seed, weather, pests, fertilizer and ultimately, God. Because he deals with living things, a farmer cannot directly shape his corps. He must wait patiently for the process to be completed" ("Faith for the Low-Yield Years," Craig Brian Larson, Focus on the Family, Jan. 2002, p. 14).
III. Conclusion
Did you catch that? "Wait patiently for the process to be completed." That is what we have to do when we are working with people and working for God.
This is what David is writing about in Ps. 40.
I have to remember this too. My work is not measured in how quickly something happens, but my work is measured by how faithful I do my work and how patiently I look to God to act.
My job and your job may be to plant seeds in people. Maybe we will harvest the crops later on. I hope so, but when that happens is beyond my control and your control. But that doesn’t excuse us from not doing our part, which is to sing of what God has done for us and what God can do for others too. That is what God has called us to do. The rest is to patiently wait for him. Let us pray.
John Tung is English Pastor of the Chinese Bible Church of Maryland.
