Introduction

Example: Gritty documentary vs. a sitcom.

• Documentary: raw, real, gruesome details.
• Sitcom: everyone has worked out all their troubles by the end.
• The Psalter is not a book of sitcoms.

Psalm 40 is stunning. It includes one of the starkest mood-reversals in the Psalms, and is striking for its blunt documentation of a man’s journey with God.

• The first and last lines:
  • First line: I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction.
  • Last line: 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!
  • So we start looking back on the pit, but we end right back in the mud.
• Title: On the Summit in the Pit
  • We will find a man simultaneously winning and losing, cooking and crashing, climbing the mountain and stuck in the valley, at the summit and in the pit.
    • Note: this has shocked people so much that many try to say these are two separate psalms stitched together, but there is compelling evidence this is one, unified psalm.
  • Our plan today:
    • Do a fly-through of the Psalm, observing its flow.
    • Consider David’s experience.
    • See how Christ is the better David in this case.
    • See how Christ gives us life in the pit.

1. Look At This Guy (1-17)

Powerful Testimony (1-3)

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. 1 I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. 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. 3 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.

• Testify. David starts with a recounting of Yahweh’s faithful deliverance.
  • I was in a pit.
    • What was his pit? We don’t know what David’s particular pit of destruction was (2).
      • But because it isn’t specified, we can use it as a placeholder for many of the pits in which we find ourselves.
  • I waited for the Lord.
    • What did he do in the pit? He waited patiently for the Lord (1).
      • Note: there is an intensity in the Hebrew phrasing that is lacking in English—he focused his attention on waiting for Yahweh.
  • The Lord came through.
    • What happened? An active and attentive Yahweh drew him up from the pit and set him on a solid rock (2). This made David so glad that he sang a new song, a song of praise to God (3).
      • Richard Sibbes: “A Christian singing God’s praises to the world is like a bird singing. Birds sing loudest when the sun rises and warms them; and so it is with Christians.” (Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith)

Compelling Message (4-5)

4 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! 5 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.

• Preach. On the heels of his powerful testimony, David begins to preach.
  • The Lord blesses those who trust him (4).
  • The Lord does not turn to those who are proud or turn to lies (4).
  • The Lord does wondrous deeds and thinks wondrous thoughts toward us (5).

Strong Commitment (6-8)

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. 7 Then I said, “Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: 8 I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”

• Commitment. David would not engage in empty sacrifice, but would instead live by God’s word.
  • Though Yahweh created the sacrificial system, it wasn’t the sacrifices and offerings themselves that blessed him (6).
    • David: Obedience outranks ritual.
  • Yahweh wanted people to use the open ears he gave them to respond to the scroll of his book—a book filled with his will and law (6-8).
  • David committed: The Law, the will of God, Yahweh’s book describes how I’m going to live my life. I’m a man of the scroll. It is within my heart (8).
    • Note: Israelite kings were to make their own handwritten copy of the Bible at their inauguration—a way for them to declare submission to the Book (Deut. 17:18-20).

Faithful Witness (9-11)

9 I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; behold, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O Lord. 10 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. 11 As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from me; your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve me!

• Witness. David had stewarded his testimony well—everyone in the great congregation heard the glad news of his deliverance (9).
  • A barrage of words: I have told the glad news; I have not restrained my lips; I have not hidden your deliverance; I have spoken of your faithfulness and salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love (9-10).
  • Confidence: Your steadfast love and your faithfulness will preserve me (11).
• He is at the summit.

Doomed (12)

12 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.

• I’m doomed. My own evils and guilt have become a new pit for me (12). They are so many—more than the hairs of my head (12). My heart cannot go on (12).

Desperate (13-15)

13 Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me! O Lord, make haste to help me! 14 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! 15 Let those be appalled because of their shame who say to me, “Aha, Aha!”

• I’m desperate. I need you to deliver me (13)! Hurry up and help me (13)! As for all the people who would love to watch me fail, put them to shame and make them disappointed altogether (14-15). They want me to hurt—don’t give them what they want (14).

Dependent (16-17)

16 But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation say continually, “Great is the Lord!” 17 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!

• I’m dependent. I hope those who seek you will rejoice and be glad (16). I pray those people of the book who love your salvation will be able to perpetually sing of your greatness (16). I’m poor and needy (17). But Yahweh thinks of me (17). You are my help and my deliverer (17). Don’t delay, O my God (17)!

2. This Guy (1-11) Had That Life (12-17)

Our feeling. The sequence is wrong—we want the psalmists to move from the pit to the summit, but this one moves the other way around.

• Example: Christina—worst first (hike).

But this is life.

• Heart (Motyer):
  • The obedient heart: your law is within my heart (8).
  • The testifying heart: I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart (10).
  • The failing heart: my heart fails me (12).
• This spiritual whiplash is more normal than we think.

And that guy had this life. He was blessed, blessed, blessed, but also doomed, desperate, and dependent.

• This psalm—and others like it—offers comfort to the bifurcated Christian.
  • This psalm portrays the Christian life well.
    • “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33, ESV)
  • We often live a dual reality—both great victory and great loss.
    • Note: and—often—the loss is of our own doing.
      • Yet prayer is still available to us—and we can still hope in him.

3. Our Guy Chose That Life (1-17)

A Scriptural Key. Hebrews 10:5-10

• 5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; 6  in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. 7  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.’ ” 8 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), 9 then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:5–10)

Bonhoeffer’s take on the Psalms. They are perfectly fulfilled in Christ.

• If we want to read and to pray the prayers of the Bible and especially the Psalms, therefore, we must not ask first what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible)

  • The Three-Story Prayer:
    • 1. David
    • 2. Jesus
    • 3. Us

Jesus chose.

• The pit; the miry bog (2). Innumerable, all-encompassing evils (12). He was overtaken by all our iniquities (12). Those who sought to snatch away his life and delighted in his hurt (14). Poverty and need (17).
• On top of all that, he chose to become the sacrifice and offering that would end (fulfill) the Yahweh-ordained sacrificial system (6). He was the pure sacrifice, the perfect embodiment of the book (7-8).
• Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5–8)

4. Our Guy Gives Us Life (16-17)

Because Jesus chose that life, we can partake of his resurrection life.

• We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Romans 6:4–5)
  • We have been delivered from the pit.
  • We sing a new song.
  • Yet we still need resurrection—now and when he returns.
• Paul’s desire must become ours.
  • That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:10–11)
• Paul and Silas: singing in the pit (Acts 16:22-34).
  • Because of Jesus’ work, they were on the summit and in the pit.
  • Because Christ descended into the pit and allowed our iniquities to overtake him, we can live.