And for our New Testament reading, please turn to the book of Hebrews chapter 10. And our reading will be verses 1 through 10. Hebrews 10, 1 through 10. Listen to this. This is the very word of God. For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come, instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near.
Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year, 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 you have 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.
And now for our Old Testament reading and the text for tonight’s sermon, please turn to Psalm 40. Which we. Lately sang and which was quoted in our New Testament reading. The 40th Psalm. Psalm 40. To the choir master, a Psalm of David. 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, oh 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, oh my God. That’s the reading of God’s word. Let’s pray for his blessing upon it. Oh, Heavenly Father, we come to this song, familiar passage of your word. We ask you, please, to bless your word as we consider it together tonight and that you would magnify before the eyes of our faith, your son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, our deliverer. And we pray in his name.
Amen. something that keeps coming to my mind as I reflect on this psalm is when you, if any of you are involved in any, to any extent in investing, purchased mutual funds, a lot of times there’s a disclaimer. In fact, almost every time there’s gonna be some kind of disclaimer with a mutual fund, and it’ll say something like, past performance is no guarantee of future results. And The reason that keeps coming to my mind is because the psalmist here in Psalm 40 is praising the Lord for past deliverance. And he’s confident that because the Lord has delivered him in the past, he will deliver him in the future as well. Because God has been merciful to him in the past, he trusts in the Lord to show his mercy in the future.
And that’s what we see here in this psalm. We see praise for past deliverance. We see prayer for present deliverance. And then we see that coming through in our reading from the book of Hebrews, prophecy of the promise to deliver. And those are our three points tonight.
This psalm teaches us that Jesus Christ is the mighty savior of his people throughout the ages. But it also teaches us that we can rely on Jesus, and we can take his past deliverances, his past performance, we might say, as promise. of future results, especially of those future results that come in the age of glory when he takes us to himself. Jesus Christ is the mighty savior of his people throughout the ages.
So I’ve given you the three points. I apologize, I had these actually by the time the bulletin went to print, but I forgot to give them to Brianna, so they’re not there. So here they are again. Praise for past deliverance. Number two, prayer for present deliverance.
And number three, prophecy of the promised deliverer. So as the Psalm starts out, you see this statement, I waited patiently for the Lord. And in God’s word, we see many references to waiting for the Lord. And so we ought to ask, well, what is biblical waiting?
It’s not the same as waiting at a bus stop for the bus to show up. Biblical waiting is more than just sitting there. It’s not temporal waiting. It’s more like serving. So what is biblical waiting? First of all, biblical waiting is active waiting. It’s not sitting around, it’s not idleness.
Biblical waiting involves a God-oriented attitude. So you notice that the psalmist says he waited for the Lord. And in the midst of his waiting, he’s devoted to prayer. Prayer is a very godly waiting activity. When we’re calling upon the Lord, when we’re seeking him for deliverance, Prayer is a godly way of engaging ourselves in an active kind of biblical waiting.
And another thing that characterizes this active waiting, this biblical waiting that is active in nature, is a steadfastness in duty. So in other words, while waiting for God, we press on in faith. So biblical waiting is active waiting. Secondly, biblical waiting is patient waiting. The psalmist says he waited patiently for the Lord.
And in fact, the verb in the Hebrew is doubled. That’s one way, that’s one of the primary ways in Hebrew, they emphasize something, they double the word. Which is why in the tabernacle, for instance, you’ve got that holy place, and then the one, the room behind the holy place that no one was allowed to go into except for the high priest and him just once a year. We call that the most holy place. What it literally says, and sometimes it’s translated this way, that’s the holy of holies, to holies, and that’s the way Hebrew works, to emphasize something or to to give emphasis or to raise something to a more superlative degree, it doubles the adjective or the attribute, which is also why God is not just holy. He’s not just holy, holy, but he’s holy, holy, holy. It’s one of the few things in all of scripture that’s elevated to that third degree.
But patient waiting, it’s patient, patient waiting. It’s the opposite of fretting. Biblical waiting is the opposite of fretting. It’s patient waiting. And it’s, even though this is an Old Testament scripture, it’s fair and very reasonable to say biblical waiting is Christian waiting. It’s waiting in faith. It’s a kind of waiting that knows it is not waiting in vain.
So the psalmist says he he waited for the Lord. And in response, he testifies that the Lord inclined to him and heard his cry. The scriptures portray. For us, a God who stoops down, he listens to us. He hears. And the psalmist says, he delivered me. He delivered me by rescuing me from danger. You see what verse two says? He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog. He rescued the psalmist from danger.
He uses the description of a pit. Not just in the Bible, but in many contexts, a pit. is a place of fear. It’s a place of helplessness, you’re you’re in, you’re stuck in this hole, and you can’t get out, you can’t climb the walls, you can’t reach the top. And also, particularly in Scripture, the term, or the the concept of a pit is often used to refer to the grave itself to death. And it’s almost as saying the Lord delivered me, he delivered me from death. And then miry clay, in addition to the filthiness of that, it’s a place of sinking. It’s a place with no firmness. No foothold is available.
And this almost is actually using these as metaphorical descriptions of danger that he experienced, and we can employ that too. We can make use of these images, this imagery in Scripture, where for us it can speak of being bogged down, for example, in our sins. Being in the pit or being in the miry clay can be a description of when we suffer some kind of a defeat. When we’re without hope of recovery. When we’re going through some circumstance that to us seems unbearable.
And we can take heart that Christ is strong to help us in trials like that. and in all of our trials. And we can take heart because His Spirit is with us, His Spirit is in us in the midst of such trials, when we feel as if we’re in the pit or in the miry clay.
And the psalmist goes on to say that the Lord delivered him by establishing him in safety. So he drew him up from the pit, out of the miry bog, and he set his feet upon a rock. He made his steps and his feet secure. So to be set on a rock, that of course, that’s the opposite of the miry clay where there’s no foothold. On the rock, you have a place of firmness, a place of security, a place that’s safe, a solid place on which you can stand and walk.
And the psalmist testifies when he says the Lord delivered me. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God, and says, blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust. What he’s saying is that if you put your trust in the Lord, you will be blessed. And we have endless testimonies in God’s word, endless testimonies in the history of the church, endless testimonies even here among us, that that is true, that God has delivered. And when we put our trust in him, we were blessed and he came to our aid. And David, in this Psalm gives us some wonderful examples of a godly response to God’s mighty salvation. Look at verse three with me again. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. So it’s proper and appropriate and good and right that when God delivers us, when he shows his goodness and his grace to us in the midst of a trial, it’s right for us to sing praises to him.
And in verse five, he says, you have multiplied, oh Lord, my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts towards us. None can compare with you. I will proclaim them. I will proclaim and tell of them if they’re more than can be told. But you see twice in this psalm, it speaks of God thinking on us. He thinks about you. His mind dwells on his children, those whom he loves. And commenting on that, Charles Spurgeon said this, God’s thoughts of you are many.
Let not yours be few in return. So it’s an encouragement to us to meditate on the Lord and his attributes and his blessings and his word. So the example that he gives us here of a godly response to God’s mighty salvation, first of all, is to praise him. And then secondly, to proclaim what he’s done for you to others. Look at verses nine and 10 with me again.
He says, I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation. Behold, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, Lord. I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart. I’ve spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation. I’ve not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.
So he testifies and publicly praises God for his past deliverances. So that’s looking back, reflecting on past deliverance and praising God for it, but then In the second place, he speaks of prayer for present deliverance. God’s past help encourages us to seek him in present trials. So again, God’s not like those investments where past performance doesn’t guarantee future results. It’s different with God. With God, we’re encouraged to look back for his help.
And doesn’t he testify again and again in his word? of how he’s been faithful in the past. And because he has, it shows and proves that we can trust him to be faithful in the future also. And take encouragement from his faithfulness. His faithfulness to us, his faithfulness to each other, his faithfulness to his people. And so the psalmist takes courage.
Look at what he says in verse 11. As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from me. Your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve me. Take note of that word restrain in your ESV Bible there in verse 11. Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from me. You see the word restrain earlier when he’s talking about his testimony about God’s goodness, when he says, I’ve not restrained my lips.
As you know, O Lord, we’re going to come back to that. So just keep that in mind, this idea of restraining. All right, but first, there’s a problem. He’s praised God for past deliverances, but now he’s got new issues. And so he’s praying for present deliverance. He’s calling upon God again. He’s reaching out again.
New crisis has come. Look at verse 12. Evils have encompassed me beyond number. My iniquities have overtaken me. I can’t see. So when he says evils have encompassed me, he’s talking about a new trial, a new difficulty, something new from which he needs to be delivered by God.
And the passage, the psalm, speaks both of internal troubles and external troubles. Now, whether they’re part of the same overall package of trials, we don’t know. The psalmist experienced both, and so do we. Internal trouble. In this case, as we see in verse 12, his own sin. My iniquities have overtaken me, he said. His own sin and the consequences of his sin are a trial from which he needs deliverance from God. But then there are also external troubles, as we saw in the words of verses 14 and 15. He has enemies. And he’s got enemies that are seeking to do him harm. And so he offers up continual prayer for help. He offers up continual prayer for deliverance, that God would be his deliverer once again.
Now let’s do an analysis of how David prays. Let’s consider how he prays in the midst of his trials. First of all, as we already saw in verse 11, he’s assuring himself of God’s power and of God’s willingness to save. And that’s a good thing for us to do in our prayers. And I don’t know, I rather doubt that we do that as much perhaps as we ought to, or as much as would be helpful. but in our prayers before God to assure ourself, to assure our own hearts that God is powerful to deliver and he’s willing to deliver. So there’s that, that’s one aspect of his prayer, assuring himself before God. But then secondly, he’s appealing to God. Verse 13, be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me. O Lord, make haste to help me. And then with reference to these enemies. Thirdly, he’s asking God to make his enemies plans backfire. Make what they intend to do turn back on them.
That’s a very common petition you see in scripture. It’s also a very common wisdom theme that you see in the book of Proverbs frequently, like someone who rolls a stone, it’s gonna roll back on him. The idea there being someone’s rolling a stone to push it down a hill and hurt somebody else by it, but then they’re pushing the stone and it comes back on them and hurts them instead. That’s kind of what David is praying here. that his enemy’s plans would backfire and that God would cause that to happen, that can be, when it’s prayed in the right spirit, that can be a very God-honoring way to pray. Appealing to God that we have enemies that are seeking to do us harm and that he would then turn their devices back on themselves. Appealing to that, That God-ordained spiritual law that whatever a person sows, that also he will reap.
And the very God-honoring posture of leaving vengeance to God. I’m not going to lash out against my enemies. I’m not going to devise a countermaneuver against them. But I’m going to look to God and trust in him to take care of my enemies. meet out vengeance according to his perfect wisdom and according to his perfect timing.
So he assures himself, he appeals to God, he asks God to make his enemy’s plans backfire, and then finally, notice he’s praying not just selfish prayers, not just for himself, but he prays for all those who love the Lord. Verse 16, may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. May those who love your salvation say continually, great is the Lord. And then the psalm closes with a. A prayer of humility, a prayer of submission. 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, oh my God.
This idea of being poor and of being needy, that’s often used in scripture to reflect a person’s or a people’s sense of their total reliance upon the Lord. It brought to my mind the prayers of God’s people under Hezekiah when they’re under threat of invasion. And as Hezekiah was leading the people of Judah in prayer against this threat of a foreign army, he said, O our God, this is 2 Chronicles 20, 12. O our God, will you not execute judgment on them?
For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do. but our eyes are on you. He’s acknowledging his helplessness, his utter inability to stand against the invaders, his weakness, and so forth. But our eyes are on you, he says.
That’s another way of saying and beautifully expressing the idea of being poor and needy. And as David makes that comment, at the end of Psalm 40, what is his hope as he reflects on his poverty and his need? His hope is that the Lord takes thought for him.
These are important biblical truths. I’ll call them Christian truths. I’ll even refer to them and commend them to you as foundational Christian truths. They’re so foundational that you see almost these exact thoughts in the exact same order with just slight differences in wording repeated in Psalm 70. Verses 13 through 17 of Psalm 40 are repeated in Psalm 70.
This idea that we call upon the Lord, ask him to make haste to help us. plead with him against the foe and plead our own poverty and need before the Lord God. These things teach us to trust in the Lord and to wait patiently for him. Well, then finally, thirdly, and finally, we have in Psalm 40, a prophecy of the promised redeemer, the prophecy of the promised deliverer. So you have the psalmist past deliverances, And they signify the saving work of Christ because Christ ultimately is the one who draws us up from the pit and the miry clay of our sin. Maybe we can think of the miry clay as being the mess that our sin gets us into. And then that pit is the death and the hell that we deserve because of our sin.
And Jesus lifts us up from it. He secures us. He places us in a place of safety. And ultimately, that place of safety in which he places us is himself. He is our rock. He’s the one that urged us to build our house upon the rock. And he is that rock. And then the new help that the psalmist seeks here signifies the gospel hope that we have in Christ. The deliverance that we so earnestly desire, the help that we desperately need can only be found in Christ. As we see in the New Testament, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us because He’s our Savior. His name, His given name was Jesus. It’s Yeshua, Joshua. And what does that name mean? It means Yahweh is salvation. And we have in this psalm prophetic word about the coming Redeemer. David understood it in his own immediate context, but he must also have understood that he was speaking and proclaiming something that was yet future, something of his greater son, whom the Lord would raise up to be the anointed one, the Messiah.
And so in these verses, which were quoted for us in Hebrews 10, in sacrifice and offering, you have not delighted, but you’ve given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you’ve not required. Now, in the law of Moses, in Levitical law, the sacrifices did require sacrifices. They did require offerings that animals be slain in the tabernacle and in the temple as an offering for sin.
But here you have David saying, you haven’t asked for that. Ultimately, he hasn’t required it. Ultimately, it’s not what he needs or what we need. We need a sacrifice that truly can take away sin. And so those animal sacrifices, God doesn’t take any delight in him, he says, because ultimately they’re all passing away. Because when the reality comes, when Christ came, then all those sacrifices would be of no more use, of no more purpose, because the sacrifice who truly can take away sin had finally come.
And it says, you’ve given me an open ear, or you even have a footnote probably in your Bible, what the Hebrew says literally is you have dug ears for me. Speaking of ears to hear and obey, the sacrifice of Jesus fulfills and ends everything that all the animal sacrifices symbolized. So therefore, it says, burnt offering and sin offering, God is not desired. Now, if your biblical antenna was up, then you notice that in the psalm, it says that he’s dug ears, you’ve dug ears for me, you’ve given me an open ear. But in Hebrews, it said a body you have prepared for me. And you’re right to wonder, well, how do we get from the one to the other?
And I’m not gonna deal with that tonight. I might preach another sermon on it, or maybe we can talk about it in a Bible study sometime. But suffice it to say, the Holy Spirit has liberty to breathe out what he will. I’d be happy to discuss that with you, but I just, I wrote a paper on it, in fact. So I’ll be glad to talk with you about it. But suspend, please, your curiosity about that. And notice, something that’s maybe more relevant and certainly more clear.
Verse seven, behold, I have come. I’ve come to do your will. And that certainly speaks of Christ. As he came in the flesh, incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary and came and dwelt among us and did God’s will. Obeyed the law that we could never do. Fulfilled that demand that the law be obeyed in the scroll of the book It is written of me that speaks to the fact that all the prophets bore witness to the Lord Jesus Christ Christ during his earthly ministry said Moses spoke of me you search the scriptures He said to the scribes and the Pharisees you search the scriptures because you think that in them that you have eternal life But they speak of me And he delights in God’s will. And God’s law was in his heart.
It says in verse eight. That was certainly Christ. So Psalm 40 is a prophecy of Christ. It’s a prophecy of Christ’s perfect obedience, a prophecy of Christ’s submission to his heavenly father. It also even catches the captures the work of the Holy Spirit of sanctification in us. So when you get right down to it, really the entire messianic hope is encapsulated in these verses.
These verses that prophesy of the promised Redeemer. Well, our brothers and sisters, our fellow saints in the Old Testament, looked confidently to the future for a Redeemer that they knew and believed was coming. They looked confidently to their Redeemer, and they trusted in Him for their present needs and trials as well. We, on the other hand, confidently look back to the finished work of our Redeemer, and as the Old Testament saints did, we trust Him for our present needs and trials, and for our future needs and trials, and for our eternity. So I say again, the Lord Jesus isn’t like a mutual fund, in which past performance is not a guarantee of future results. With Christ, past deliverances give us hope and confidence to pray for future deliverances, which he surely will send.
And before we close, I wanna go back to that word, restrain. Verse 11. where it says, as for you, O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from me. You see how the Bible speaks of the Lord’s steadfast love in such bountiful terms. You will not restrain your mercy from me.
That word means, It’s the word that’s used when the Philistines sent the Ark of the Lord back to Israel. They put it on a cart and the cart was pulled by these two nursing cows and they restrained their calves. A calf that’s nursing from its mother is gonna wanna be with its mother and it wants to go after its mother because it’s hungry. and they had to restrain those little calves. It’s the word that’s, it’s used several places to refer to holding something back, even the waters of the deep in the days of Noah’s flood. That restraint was broken.
This word is used to celebrate God’s covenantal love as something that just Naturally, because of God’s nature bursts forth to us. And God isn’t going to restrain it. It’s like in Psalm 23, where David wrote, surely goodness and mercy shall show what follow me all the days of my life, but follow isn’t really the best way to translate that word. It’s beautiful. It’s poetic. But what the word means is to chase. It means to pursue. And you understand the difference between following somebody and chasing somebody, don’t you?
Well, God’s mercy will chase you all the days of your life. And that’s the term, that’s the expression. Those are the illustrations that he uses to describe the covenantal love of God, his chesed, that love that never dies, it never fails because he loves you and he’s in covenant with you. His covenant love and mercy is hot on the heels of those whom he loves. It can’t be held back, it overflows. And that’s why you can be confident of his deliverance.
We serve the same Savior that David loved and served. And so let’s confidently do those same exercises that David did and that all the godly throughout the ages have done. Remember God’s past mercies, thank him and praise him. and trust Him for the future. Let’s pray.
Father in heaven, we declare that You have delivered us when we called to You. Thank You, Lord, for the great confidence we can have that You will always do so. And we thank You, Lord, that when this passing world is done, You will receive us to Yourself. We look forward to that final and culminating and climactic and eternal deliverance. And we hope in it, and we look to it, we look for it, and we thank You that You’ve assured us of it in Christ Jesus, Your Son. We pray in His name. Amen.