09042021 Psalm 40

Dear Missionary Lady,

Greetings in the name of the God of compassion and lovingkindness, who constantly thinks about us and repeatedly delivers us even from the most desperate situations.

I spent some time this morning in Psalm 40 and found it to be a great blessing. This psalm is interesting in that I would tend to reverse the first and last sections. Verses 1-3 talk about the wonderful victory, and verses 13-17 are the desperate cry for help. I believe God, through David, is giving the conclusion first, and leaves us as a final impression the type of prayer that resulted in such a conclusion. The psalm is front-heavy on hope. In fact, pretty much the entire psalm is filled with hope, before concluding with the desperate prayer to the God who provides that hope.

Verses 1-3 talk about the victory. There is hope in these verses, because they talk about waiting on God and crying to God, and about God's response and answer and deliverance, even abundantly and dramatically. “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings” (v. 2). The situation was really bad, but God ended it with such dramatic deliverance that it brought a song and praise and increased trust by many.

Verses 4-5 also provide hope, as they talk about trusting a God who has done so much for us and who thinks about us so much. God is rightfully the source to turn to. His interest and interaction have been and continue to be great. “Many, O LORD my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered” (v. 5).

There is hope and something like affirmation in verses 6-10, when we are able to realize that this has been our desire. First, to do God’s will. “I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart” (v. 8). Second, to make it a practice to speak of God and His goodness. “I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation: I have not concealed thy lovingkindness and thy truth from the great congregation” (v. 10). There is something stabilizing and encouraging to someone who has made a practice of speaking about God and declaring His goodness to others. To a certain extent, this puts us in a position to cry to God and expect His response and favor. It’s not like we are rebels who think about God or cry out to Him only when life gets really desperate. Rather, our record is that we love and follow Him all the time and that we love our relationship with Him.

There is the hope of God’s expected response to extreme difficulty in verses 11-12. “Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O LORD: let thy lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me” (v. 11). God loves us and cares for us, and He isn’t going to stop. That is important because of verse 12, that the evils and oppressions are so innumerable, and so overwhelming. David talks about being compassed about (surrounded), having been taken hold of, being unable to look up, and finally that his heart has failed (forsaken) him. Can we not sometimes relate? We can sense the accumulation of so many pressures that are just more than we can deal with. There is real impact on our spirit and even on our ability to function.

Then the final verses 13-17 end in prayer. Earnest and dependent prayer is the right response. Asking God fervently to deliver us quickly. Asking Him to defeat our enemies, to defeat the forces that want to destroy us. Asking for the end result that God would be magnified by His deliverance. “But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: thou art my help and my deliverer; make no tarrying, O my God” (v. 17).

If you sense anything of a failed heart or of surrounding troubles today, seek hope in the God who loves you deeply and who is constantly thinking of you. There is no situation so difficult that He cannot deliver. Indeed, His deliverance can be so amazing that there will be “a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD” (v. 3). Praise the Deliverer for the salvation He will bring! God bless you, my sisters, as you faithfully serve Him.

Love in Christ,

Peggy Holt

member at Open Door Baptist Church in Lebanon, PA