I doubt that any one of us feels that we need an instruction manual on how to handle happiness. I’m not aware of any book written on how to cope with unbridled joy. We may feel at any point in our lives that there are a hundred things we’re not equipped to handle, but I doubt many of us feel unequipped to handle good things happening in our lives. There are ministries set up that revolve around ministering to those who have been diagnosed with cancer, but I don’t know any whose goal is to help people handle life after cancer has been eliminated. I doubt that a book with the title, “How to Go Forward after Your Depression Is Gone” would be a big seller. Simply put, we don’t need help concerning how to deal with good things happening to us. Or do we?
After all, there are a few examples in Scripture where good things are not handled properly. Perhaps the most obvious example is Jesus’ healing of the ten lepers. All ten of them were completely comfortable crying out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us” (Luke 17:13) when they were in distress. But nine of the ten failed to do what was right when they were cleansed. Little did Herod know that the most dangerous time in his life was not a moment when he was leading his armies into war but a time when he was delivering an oration to a people who proclaimed that he spoke with the voice of a god. The Scripture says, “Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory” (Acts 12:23). The last feeling he must have known before his death was one of deep satisfaction and joy. We might also note that when God gives his people a warning in Deuteronomy 8, prior to their coming into the promised land, it is a warning about how to conduct themselves once they get the inheritance that they’ve wanted for so long. Clearly, knowing how to respond when things go well for us and produce deep joy in our hearts is more challenging than we might think.
In fact, some of us may be in a very trying situation this morning because there’s much cause for joy. Maybe you’re here with your depression seeming to have left you. Maybe you’re here and you finally got that job. Maybe you just got a raise at work, or someone has just told you how great you are, your sickness is gone, or your kids are really starting to behave well and be less awkward. If that’s the case, then I’ve got good news for you, Psalm 40 is written to help you, to give you instruction, to provide you with a guide to assist you in knowing how to handle times of joy, blessing, and deliverance.
Psalm 40 is a Psalm written by David after he had been brought out of a trying and difficult time. We don’t know what the struggle was exactly. He simply calls it the “pit of destruction” and the “miry bog.” And as we’ve noted many times over, it’s helpful for us not to know the situation exactly because although we might not ever find ourselves going through exactly what David is going through here, we probably can relate to walking through a time or situation that we might describe as the “pit of destruction” or a “miry bog.” Moreover, we know that David had walked through this time over a great while. When he starts the psalm, saying in verse 1, “I waited patiently for the Lord,” this means that he had endured a while before he ever received the merciful response from the Lord.
However, at this point, David has been delivered from his situation. He notes in verse 1 that the Lord “inclined to me and heard my cry.” He continues, in verse 2, “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.” David had been delivered from the miry bog. He’d prayed, as he was in the pit, and the Lord saw fit to answer him by lifting out of that situation and putting him in a better place. He’d moved from the miry bog of the pit to a rock on which he could stand.
That’s the situation of this psalm. So then, how does David respond? What did he do once he was delivered and knew the joy of being lifted out of the miry bog? That’s what I want us to see this morning because I think it’s instructive for us in how we should conduct ourselves once we know the Lord’s deliverance and blessing. First, we see:
Notice what David said happened after the Lord delivered him. He writes in verse 3, “He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.” David praised God in song. Now, he writes it passively. God put a song in his mouth. However, we are right to understand David here to be saying that he sang a song of praise to God.
And we might be tempted to think that this was a private matter. Perhaps he got alone in his bedroom and began to praise God. That certainly would be fitting, and perhaps David did that. But we know that David did not only do that because we quickly see that his heart is for others to know what God has done. In the latter half of verse 3 he declares that “Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.”
David wants others to know what God has done for him so that they too will trust in the Lord as he did when he was waiting patiently for the Lord (v. 1). In verses 4-5, he stresses that the man who is blessed is the one who trusts the Lord, not the one who trusts in others or in lies. And God has given ample reason to trust, thus David notes, “You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none cam compare with you!” And then he finally adds, “I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told.”
David’s aim, after tasting of the Lord’s gracious deliverance from his situation is to tell others what God has done so that others might see God as trustworthy and trust in him. Once more we see this (probably most clearly in all of the Psalm) in verses 9-10, where David declares, “I have told the glad news of deliverance in the 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.”
David has not restrained his lips from telling others of how God has delivered him. He did not conceal this testimony of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness. Rather, he told the glad news when he was with God’s people in the congregation. He spoke of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness.
You see, just as we are responsible to cry out to God in the trenches of life (or from the pit of the miry bog, we might say), as Aaron noted last week from Psalm 61, so we are responsible to tell others of God’s faithfulness and love toward us when he delivers us.
I think what we can gather from this example with David the fact that God has at least two aims in any act of deliverance or blessing that he brings to any one of us. The first, of course, is the deliverance or blessing itself. In David’s case, the Lord delivered him, setting his feet upon the rock and making his steps secure, so that he might get out of the pit of destruction and miry bog. But the second aim God has in his works of deliverance and blessing for his children is to demonstrate to other believers that he can be trusted. That’s why David instantly turns from saying in the first half of verse 3, “He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God,” to saying in the second half of verse 3, “Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.” And he immediately follows that up by saying in verse 4, “Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust.” God delivers us in our struggles both for our sake and to demonstrate to others that he can be trusted. So, for example, God provides for your need so that your brother might trust God to meet his need.
But there is a needed step in order for this to function rightly. Your brother must know that God has met your need. You cannot conceal God’s deliverance, restraining your lips from praising God in the midst of the congregation, and send the message to your brother that God can be trusted. If you conceal what God has done, not letting others know and not praising God in their midst, then your brother is not helped. Rather, you’re acting as if God intends for his blessing to terminate with you. But that is not God’s intent. He blesses you so that you might praise him, telling others of his blessings, so that they might turn and trust him as well.
So, the first thing we see in this text is that the deliverance and blessing of God comes with a responsibility. You must make God’s blessings, provision, and deliverance known through praising him before your brothers and sisters in Christ so that they might be encouraged to turn and trust in the Lord as well.
But David doesn’t stop with his public praise of the Lord. We also see in this Psalm:
As David continues to declare what is his appropriate response to the Lord, he turns to noting that he is committing himself in obedience to God. He writes in verse 6, “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.”
Now, there are a couple of questions that we should answer to help understand this verse. First, why would David say that God does not delight in or require burnt offerings and sin offerings? After all, we just finished going through the book of Numbers, where God meticulously prescribed burnt offerings and sin offerings and very much appeared to delight in them as they gave off an aroma pleasing to the Lord. So, why would David say this when he is living under the Mosaic Law where such offerings were clearly prescribed?
Well, I think the answer is in understanding that David is not suggesting that God didn’t require or delight in such offerings at all. Rather, he is saying that such offerings as empty acts of worship are not what God wants or delights in. That is, an Israelite who has no heart to love and obey God, but faithfully brings his offerings is not doing what God requires or delights in. And the reason I think we should understand that this is what David is saying is because of the phrase in the middle of verse 6, namely, “but you have given me an open ear.”
And that brings us to our second question: “What in the world does that phrase mean in the middle of verse 6?” I could start with the fact that the phrase is more literally translated, “Ears you have dug for me,” but I doubt that that makes the phrase clearer for any of us. So, what does it mean?
Well, for David to say that he has ears (or has been given ears by God) is to say that he is ready to listen and obey. He is saying that God has all of him. It is an idiom. No doubt there were a number of Hebrew mothers who would tell their children, “Give me your ears, kids,” and what they were meaning was, “I want you to get ready to obey me.” To have one’s ear was simply symbolic of having their whole body, their whole self. For this reason, when this psalm was translated into the Greek Old Testament (known as the Septuagint), the text wasn’t literally translated as “ears you have dug for me,” because that idiom didn’t communicate to most Greek speakers. Therefore, when this phrase was translated, it was translated as, “a body you have prepared for me.” After all, that is the meaning, isn’t it? David didn’t mean God had given him ears so that only his ears would function properly. Rather, he was saying to the Lord that he recognized that God had given him his entire body for the sake of using it to obey the Lord. God had prepared David to obey him with his whole self.
This is why David continues on in verse 7, saying, “Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.’” That is, David is saying that what is written for him in the Scriptures, what is prescribed for him in the scroll, is written for him to love, desire, and obey. David acknowledges that God gave the Scriptures in order that David might read them, see God’s commands, desire to obey, and obey them. God didn’t want from David that he merely bring his burnt and sin offerings to the tabernacle. He wants David’s whole self to be dedicated to the Lord in obedience. And that’s what David is saying he desires. He’s responding to the Lord’s deliverance with a commitment of obedience.
That is indeed a right response. It’s not only a fitting expectation for David but for us. God has prepared for us bodies, everything we are, for the sake of obeying him. This is no doubt in Paul’s mind when he writes in Romans 12:1, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, with is your spiritual worship.” Thus, Paul wants us to know that our act of worship to the Lord is not to come and offer animals as sacrifices but to offer our bodies (our entire selves) in dedication, commitment, and obedience to the Lord.
When we taste of God’s deliverance and blessing in our lives, it is right for us to praise God publicly so that our brothers and sisters learn to trust him as well. That is his design. And we are also to commit ourselves in obedience to God. We are to obey him. We are to obey him despite the sacrifices involved. In this way, the message we are sending to our brothers and sisters in our praise (i.e., that the Lord should be trusted), we are also reinforcing by trusting God with our obedience.
Yet David adds one more note. In verses 11-17, we see:
Do you see it in the text? David has spoken of God’s goodness, trustworthiness, and his worthiness of David’s obedience. And this produces in David greater trust to continue to rely on the Lord in his future. Note the future-looking aspect David shifts to in verse 11. He writes, “As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from you; your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve me!”
That is, knowing who God is through God’s merciful act of deliverance, David realizes that if this is who God is, then this is who God will continue to be. David knows that God is merciful and good, and if that is the case, then God will not withhold his mercy from him but will rater pour out his steadfast love and faithfulness, as he continues to preserve him. So, what does this cause David to do? It leads David to turn and pray for more deliverance from the troubles in which he finds himself.
He notes in verse 12 that he is now again encompassed by evil. We don’t know if this means that this section was written at a later time or was another psalm attached to this psalm. Or maybe David simply turned from one area where God had delivered him to focusing on another area where he needed God’s deliverance. Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter because the point in the same: it is right for us to respond to the Lord’s deliverance and mercy by trusting in him and continuing to cry out for mercy.
In this case, David is suffering in some measure because of his own sin. He says, “My iniquities have overtaken me” in verse 12. So, don’t think that it’s okay to cry out to God as long as you’re suffering innocently but that God doesn’t want to hear you if you’re suffering because of your own sin. No, God, actually uses our sins to break us and humble us so that we’ll cry out to him, doesn’t he? And it seems David is there.
So, he cries out for God to deliver him and help him in verse 13. He asks God to spurn the attempts of his enemies to hurt him, perhaps as they’ve gotten the upper hand because of David’s sin (v. 14). He wants his enemies to be appalled at their sin and judged by the Lord (v. 15). And he wants those who trust in the Lord to see God’s greatness and praise him (v. 16). That is, David’s heart hasn’t changed. He’s still wanting others to trust in the Lord and praise him, even as he has.
But David is in a place of need. Thus, he ends the psalm, “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!” (v. 17).
You see, David has been listening to his own preaching. As he praised the Lord in the midst of the congregation, he listened as well. In fact, perhaps he heard others doing the same. And it convinced him more and more that God takes thought of him. It convinced him more and more that God can be trusted. So, he cried out to God for more help and more deliverance.
This is the same kind of reality we find when a dad convinces his young child to jump to him off the side of the pool. If any dad has experienced this with a young child, then you know it’s hard work. You talk to the child, explain that all will be well. You plead with them to trust you. And then, after you’re weary of it, they finally jump, you catch them, and you say something like, “Wasn’t that great? See, I caught you didn’t I?”
Now, why go through that? Why continue to talk to them after they jump? Why make them acknowledge it was fun? Why make them recognize that you caught them and proved trustworthy? It’s because you didn’t put in all that hard work for them to jump off the side of the pool to you one time. You want them to keep jumping.
Well, that’s what David has recognized about God here. God didn’t just deliver David from the pit so that David might praise him and convince others so that he might be trusted with their lives. God delivered David so that David might realize that God can continually be trusted. God delivered David from the pit so that David might cry out to God again when he finds himself in the pit and the miry bog.
And if you are in the pit this morning, then recognize that he’s delivered others before and he’s delivered you before so that you might trust and cry out to him now. It is not only permitted but good and right to say, “God deliver me. Help me. I need you,” when you’re in the pit of life, even when you’re there because of your own sin.
But let’s ask one more question. Why would God be willing to hear and answer us if we’re suffering because of our sin? I mean, why did David have the audacity to ask God to help him when he was overtaken by his own iniquities, especially after he’d just committed his body to the Lord’s commands? I think the answer to why we can and should approach the Lord, trusting that he is willing to hear us when we’re in the pit of our own sins is found back up in verses 6-8.
You see, these verses are picked up in the New Testament and applied to Christ. The author of Hebrews, as he is writing in Greek, picks up the Greek translation of these verses and writes in Hebrews 10:4-10, “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me;
In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, “Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.”’ When he said above, ‘You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings’ (these are offered according to the law), then he added, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will.’ He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”
You see, the reason David could have confidence and the reason we can have confidence that God hears us and is merciful toward us as we cry out to him from the pit of our own sins is because Christ has sanctified us. The Lord knew that no matter how much we long to obey him with our bodies, our whole lives, we would fail. The law was given, in part, to prove that. Therefore, he sent his own Son and gave him a body, a fully human nature, so that as the God-man, he would perfectly obey God on our behalf and would shed his blood, dying on a cross, as the necessary sacrifice.
The reason we love Christmas so much as believers is because we understand that God the Son becoming incarnate, taking on a body (a fully human nature), was necessary for our salvation. He obeyed God perfectly because we couldn’t. He paid for our sins by the sacrifice of himself because no other sacrifice would do. And it is because of the work of the incarnate Son of God that we have confidence that God will hear us and respond mercifully to us when we cry out from the pit and miry bog – even when we’re there because of our own sin.
Therefore, let us this morning look to the gospel as our only hope and our forgiveness. Let us praise God every time he delivers us so that others might be strengthened to trust him. Let us commit ourselves in obedience to him, for he has made us to obey him. Let us continue to cry out to him, knowing that he who was faithful to us in the past will continue to be faithful. And let us do this with confidence because of the life, death, and resurrection of the incarnate Son of God, whose work we will now celebrate as we come to the table. Amen.