Trusting God’s Deliverance: Reflections on Psalm 40

Don Carson reflects on David’s expression of waiting for God’s deliverance from a metaphorical pit, highlighting the importance of trust, patient perseverance, and praise for God’s faithfulness and salvation. Carson emphasizes how personal testimony of God’s rescue can lead to public declarations of His goodness and inspire others to trust in the Lord.

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“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 towards us; none can compare with you! I will proclaim and tell of them yet that they are more than can be told. Sacrifice and offering you have not desired, 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 desire to do your will, O 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 desire 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, O my God!”

This is the Word of the Lord.

The way we commonly have our devotions is to read a chapter, or something like that, which means there’s a jolly good chance that when we’re reading today’s chapter, we’ve forgotten yesterday’s chapter. That means, in turn, that we may forget that there is a sequence that is being established by Scripture.

You pick it up in narrative parts of the Bible more easily. There are many psalms that are actually clumped together in groups that work thematically. You lose something of their power when you read an isolated psalm all by itself and fail to see it belongs to one of these clumps. In this particular case, Psalm 37 underscores the importance of waiting on God.

“Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the Lord. Commit your way to the Lord. Be still before the Lord; do not fret when people succeed in their ways. Refrain from anger for those who are evil will be destroyed. A little while, and the wicked will be no more.”

This encouragement in one fashion or another to persist, to persevere, to wait on the Lord. Then the application of this waiting on God is worked out in painful self-examination in Psalms 38 and 39. Now in Psalm 40, at least initially, the gloom is lifted. Here there is a triumphant outcome. “I have waited on the Lord,” David says. And the Lord has helped him. That brings us to the first of the two divisions of this Psalm.

1. Joyful praise to the God who has come to the rescue.

Joyful praise to the God who has helped. Verses 1–10. This section can usefully be broken down into four parts.

A. Personal testimony.

Verses 1–3. “I waited patiently for the Lord.” Patiently is perhaps too calm and static a word to capture what is meant in the original. I waited perseveringly. It’s not a passive waiting. I waited, waited for the Lord. In due course, the Lord answered.

“He turned to me and heard my cry.” What is it that David was waiting on the Lord for? More precisely, what was the problem, what was his felt need that he cast before the Lord? Because he describes it in purely metaphorical terms, the short answer is, “We don’t know.” He says, “He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire.” A muggy bog.

A picture that conjures up horror on the one hand and floundering helplessness on the other. It could be sickness. It could be his own sin. He talks about his own sin a little later in the psalm as we’ll see. It could be the machinations of others, the challenges he was facing as king. It could be peril of some sort. We just don’t know.

As I indicated briefly yesterday, that may be a good thing. Because if we knew exactly what it was to which this metaphor referred, we might restrict its application to exactly the same sort of miry bog. Whereas in fact, this is surely the universal experience of Christians across a vast array of wretched times.

We go through these things and find ourselves in floundering muck. We wait on the Lord. In due course, he hears us. David, in this instance, has been rescued from the slimy pit. Not just rescued, but now established with his feet on solid ground. “He gave me a firm place to stand. He set my feet on a rock.”

Even so David, quite remarkably, does not focus all of his attention on his own release, as if he is at the center of the universe. Even in the rescue he quickly says, “God put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him.” In other words, it’s almost as if his words giving praise to God flow outward to others so that they likewise will learn from what he has gone through.

This new song language … the expression shows up about eight times in the Old Testament … it tends to be used where there is a new manifestation of God’s manifold grace. The most dramatic place where it’s used in the New Testament is in the great vision of Revelation 4 and 5. In chapter 4, which is the setting for the drama in chapter 5, God is displayed as transcendent, glorious, distant, almighty, awesome, and fearsome.

All of the created order bows before him and acknowledges his sovereignty in creation. With this as the setting, God is described in chapter 5 as having a scroll in his right hand. He has a scroll that has all of God’s purposes for redemption and judgment. A challenge goes out from the mouth of a powerful angel to everyone in the universe,

“Who is worthy to approach the God just described and take the scroll from his hand and slit the seals (which, in the symbolism of the day, meant effect what is in that scroll, bring to pass what is in that scroll)? Who will be God’s agent to bring to pass all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing?”

No one is found who is worthy, not after the description of God in the previous chapter, where even the highest order of angels cover their faces before him and bow and cry, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,” not even daring to look upon him. Who would volunteer to be an agent for a God like that?

No angel, no human being, no one in the abodes of the dead. No one is found. John weeps. Not because he’s a nosey parker and he’s frustrated because he can’t sort out his eschatology. But because in the symbolism of the vision, unless someone comes to take this scroll and slit the seals and bring to pass God’s purposes, then God’s purposes will fail.

So the suffering of the church means nothing. The forgiveness of Christians is not possible. We’re just damned. The whole thing is pointless. Then as he’s weeping, an interpreting elder taps him on the shoulder and says, “Stop your crying, John. Look, the lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed to open the scroll.” “So I looked,” John says, “and I saw a lamb.” Not two animals parked side-by-side, a lion and a lamb. The lion is the lamb.

Apocalyptic uses mixed metaphor all the time. Immediately, there comes a new song. A new song is sung now to the Lamb himself, a song of redemption. For he by his blood has bought men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation and given them to his heavenly Father. It’s a new song now. Not the song of praise to God for his creative sovereignty, but a song of redemption. So there is a new song, testifying to the renewed grace of God, but immediately after this personal testimony comes …

B. Public principle.

Verses 4 and 5. There is a hook word between the end of the first section and the beginning of the second section. At the end of chapter 40, verse 3: “Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him.” Then this is universalized to public principle.

“Blessed are those who make the Lord their trust.” In other words, he has learned from himself and gives testimony himself, but now he universalizes the lesson. “What is true in my case is universally true. The person who puts his trust in the Lord, who makes the Lord his trust, is indeed blessed.”

So the private testimony of verses 1–3 is universalized. “Blessed are those who make the Lord their trust, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods.” In other words, the alternative to putting your trust in the Lord is, at the end of the day, idolatry. If God is the Sovereign and he can be trusted, anything less is intrinsically a false god. It is intrinsically idolatry.

It’s not as if some people simply withdraw their trust but don’t slip into idolatry. Withdrawing your trust is already slipping into idolatry. The alternatives are stark. “Blessed are those who make the Lord their trust, who do not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods.” Indeed, God’s sovereignty in this sequence of events, not only the rescue, but the mucky bog before it, is acknowledged. God remains sovereign.

“Many, Lord my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us.” That’s a not uncommon theme in the Psalms. Do you recall what Psalm 139 says in this respect? “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body …” Then this. “… all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!”

Those two lines are connected. It’s not, “Oh, by the way, you really do have a lot of wonderful thoughts, God.” The point is that all the things ordained for me are already bound up in the thoughts of God. Do you hear the connection? “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!”

One of the things that happens to us when we go through difficult times … as a CU leader, because of illness, bereavement, or opposition … one of things that we face is a kind of closing down of our horizons. The world seems smaller and narrower. The problem seems to occupy our entire field of vision. Interestingly enough, when we come out the other end, in the mercy of God, either because he has put our feet on a solid rock or, in the case of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, because he simply added more grace, then our horizons expand again.

We start saying, “Yes, you have been good in this place, and I should’ve seen your good all the time. You’ve been good here and here and here and here. This is my experience, my testimony right across all of my existence. Why was my horizon so narrow?” When you’re in the miry bog, you don’t say things like that. Not unless you’re a very mature Christian. The bog itself consumes you.

When you come out on the other end, you testify not only to God’s wisdom and sovereignty and goodness in your life, but you now universalize and you realize, “He hasn’t changed. He is still that same God. He is still sovereign. He is still good. Before we were born, God knew us. Before we did anything, God sovereignly thought things through. All of his thoughts are marvelous such that in fact we can trust him. Nothing takes him by surprise.” Even while we’re calling on him, it’s not because we’re informing God of something he doesn’t know anything about.

Over against idolatry then is this God-centeredness that trusts him because, in the mystery of providence, he does know the end from the beginning. He knows us through and through. He is trustworthy. “Many, Lord my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us. None can compare with you. Were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare.”

When we learn that sort of lesson afresh, either because we’ve been rescued from this miry bog, this slimy pit, or because God in his mercy has added more grace, it’s important to embed that lesson so deeply in our consciousness that when we slip into the next pit our horizons don’t narrow down too much. So there’s the public principle, and then …

C. Personal self-dedication.

What is the only proper response to such deliverance? Surely we must bring our entire being to God, our heart and will. Merely offering up a sacrifice isn’t enough. Verse 6: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—but my ears you have opened …” That’s a difficult line. We’ll come to it in a moment. “… burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require. Then I said, ‘Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, my God; your law is within my heart.’ ”

In other words, it is an inadequate response to come before God with mere ritual, as if by playing the religious game properly we have discharged all obligation before him. “I’ve paid my tithe. I’ve been to church. I’ve gone to Holy Communion.” Or in the ancient system, “I’ve offered the prescribed sacrifices. I’ve been really quite good in this regard. So you’ve rescued me and I’ve given you two turtledoves. We’re square now.”

That’s not the way it works because at the end of the day, the ritual, however important it is, however God-prescribed it is, can never displace the fundamental core of the matter. We are God’s own image-bearers made by him and for him. The only adequate response to God is to offer up our total beings to him. Anything else is, again, idolatry. To think that ritual displaces that ultimately is to make of ritual something profane.

But 6b is a difficult line to understand. Our English translations render it a number of different ways. “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire …” Some of our versions then have “… but my ears you have pierced …” Where the rendering is put that way, often what is presupposed to be at issue is the ear piercing ceremony of Exodus 21.

In the ancient world, this was not done in jewelry shops. It had to do, rather, with the fact that there were no bankruptcy laws in the ancient world. In the ancient world, you could become a slave because of a military skirmish, some sort of attack or full-scale war, but as often as not you became a slave in the ancient world because there were no bankruptcy laws.

You borrowed some money to get a business going. Then the economy took a nose dive. Your business went belly-up and you only had one recourse. You sold yourself and/or your family into slavery to the person who held your note. Under Israelite law, sometimes observed rather more in the breach, it was not to be a permanent slavery.

It was supposed to be a kind of indentured service and you came to the end of seven years and were released. As I say, it was often observed in the breach. But that was in theory what happened, and when Israel was at her best, that’s the way it was to operate. You paid back by so many years of service, but it was not meant to be perpetual slavery.

Supposing you came to the end of that time and the economy is still so bad that there’s 30 percent unemployment. You still have to feed your family. It so transpires that you have fallen into the hands of a really good person. You might be his slave, his indentured servant, but on the other hand, he’s left you with a house and your family is intact and you’ve got enough to eat and you’ve got good work and he’s promised you security.

Then you might choose to become not just an indentured servant, but a permanent long-term slave. So there was this ear piercing ceremony. Your earlobe was taken to the door of the house and a sharp awl was used and your ear was pierced. Thus you were attached, as it were, to the house. It became a ceremony to indicate that by your own will you were choosing to be a permanent slave.

So perhaps, it is argued, that’s what this text means. David is saying, “The only proper response from so wonderful a rescue is that I be God’s slave forever. My ear you have pierced. I am yours.” Possible. But what we know of that ceremony always has only one ear pierced. This text says, “My ears (plural) you have pierced.”

Now just figuring out how to do that at the same time is already raising certain biological questions about the shape of ears in the ancient world or something. Maybe it was done one at a.… It’s easier simply to say that’s not what is going on here at all. The verb rendered pierced can equally mean dug, or we would probably say in English dug out. My ears you have dug?

Good grief, what does that mean? If you don’t know what it means, you never met my mother. My mother had all kinds of interesting expressions. She was an East London girl. Came to Canada when she was 14. Where she got some of her expressions, I’ll never know. When she was thoroughly exasperated with us when we were kids she would say, “Oh, dig out your ears!”

Now are any of you from East London? Any of you have Cockney background? My mother was born within the sound of Bow Bells. She was an honest-to-goodness Cockney. Tell my high breeding. Did you get that expression at all? No? I don’t know where she got it, but in any case, I heard it many times. “Dig out your ears!” This was not meant to be taken literally.

Whether with small shovel or a graceful spoon or a Q-tip or whatever you use to dig out your ears, it was a way of saying, “Pay attention! Listen up! You’re not letting my words in!” That’s what it means, which is why the translation that I’m using here actually has, somewhat periphrastically, but I think accurately … “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have opened.”

My ears you have dug out, and as a result, they’re open. This expression (It’s not exactly the same word in Hebrew, but it’s the same thought exactly) is bound up with one of the great servant songs of Isaiah. It’s a wonderful passage and it has a bearing on this one, as we’ll see in a moment. Isaiah 50, verses 4 and following.

The servant says: “The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears; I have not been rebellious, I have not turned away. I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced.”

In other words, it’s precisely because the suffering servant has had his ears opened to the will of God that he submits to all this abuse. Manifested perfectly in the Lord Jesus who says, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Because his ears were opened to hear and do his Father’s will. I think that’s what David is saying here.

“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire …” That is, maintain the ritual. Even though the law did demand the ritual. The law actually prescribed the ritual. David is not now abolishing it, but he says, “It’s not fundamental. My ears you have opened.” Then he repeats the idea in true Hebrew parallelism.

“Burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.” No, no, no. “Then I said, ‘Here I am. I have come. I desire to do your will, my God.’ ” That is, my ears have been opened and I want to do what you say. Even the little line, “It is written about me in the scroll.” That’s hard to understand. It may already be an indication that God has so illumined David’s heart that he knows.

He stands in this insipient dynastic order of things. We looked at 2 Samuel 7 yesterday. He is the head of a dynasty that finally brings about the ultimate God-kingdom. “It is written about me in the scroll. I am to be this kind of servant. I am to be this kind of king. I am to be obedient. My heart is yours. I desire to do your will, my God. Your law is within my heart.”

All of that, I think, makes good sense of the passage. But before we leave this section, it is important to remember that these verses (6, 7, and 8) are quoted in the epistle to the Hebrews. There applied to Christ. Let me draw your attention just for a few moments to Hebrews 10. Chapter 10 begins: “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves.

For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year …” The reference in the context is primarily to the sacrifices of Yom Kippur, the sacrifice of bull and goat on the Day of Atonement. “It can never make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered?

For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore …” Verse 5. “… when Christ came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me.”

That line has changed. We will come to that in a moment. “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, my God.’

First he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them’—though they were offered in accordance with the law. Then he said, ‘Here I am, I have come to do your will.’ He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

What do you do with this sort of quotation from the Old Testament? Part of it is, once again, something we discussed yesterday, Davidic typology. That is where you have a person or an institution or an event that is repeated again and again in Scripture, ratcheted up each time in intensity. It begins to constitute a pattern, a type, which intrinsically points forward until there is an antitype, a fulfillment of it.

So that the sacrificial system of the Old Testament ultimately looks forward to the ultimate Lamb of God, the ultimate sacrifices of the Day of Atonement, the ultimate tabernacle, and so forth. Likewise, this Davidic kingship ultimately looks forward to the ultimate Davidic King. There’s a lot of Davidic typology in the Old Testament.

If indeed David can say this sort of thing, then the argument is, “How much more great David’s greater son who comes in the perfection of obedience and understands that while David rightly hierarchized Old Testament theology and saw that obedience was more important than merely observing the sacrificial system, how much more Jesus makes the distinction all the sharper?”

The old sacrificial system cannot be the final answer to anything. The final answer is in the ultimate David, the ultimate suffering servant who comes to do his Father’s will. Most of this makes perfect sense. The only question is, “What do you do with this changed line?” It’s one thing to say that the Old Testament Hebrew says, “My ear you have pierced” or “My ear has been dug out,” but what do you suddenly do when you come across this quotation in the New Testament, in Hebrews 10 and now it’s “but a body you prepared for me?”

In fact, that is the way it is found in the LXX, in the Septuagint. That is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Somebody made this change in moving from Hebrew to Greek even before the New Testament era. Why? There’s not enough evidence to be sure. One should not be too cynical too fast when there’s not a lot of evidence.

My best guess is for some reason such as this. I was brought up in French Canada. Anybody who is fluent in two or more languages knows that there are certain kinds of things that you can’t say in the other language exactly the same way. There’s a different idiom. There’s a different structure. In English we say, “I’ve got a frog in my throat.”

Do you have any idea how weird the French find you when you say, “I have a frog in my throat?” Do you know what they say? They say, J’ai un chat dans la gorge. “I have a cat in the throat.” You might think it’s a bit odd to have a cat in your throat. They think it’s a bit odd to have a frog in your throat.

Supposing you’re translating something from English into French and the expression in English includes, “I’ve got a frog in my throat.” How do you translate it into French? Probably you change it to cat if it’s just a free idiom. But supposing there’s something deeply theological connected with the word frog? Then you’ve got a really difficult choice to make in your translation.

If you preserve frog it sounds really weird, but you’ve preserved the accuracy of the symbolism bound up with frog-ness. On the other hand, if you have cat then you lose the symbolism bound.… Translation is full of those kinds of things. Do you know that there’s no French word for the English word home? There’s no French word for home. None.

“I’m going home.” Je vais chez moi or chez nous or au foyer or ‡ la maison, or house, hearth, my place, our place, but there’s no word for home. How many of our idioms and even our sociology is bound up with this notion of home-ness? We have a word that captures it. It’s not that French don’t have any notion of home-ness. It’s just that the way they think about it is not bound up with one single word.

My guess is that when the Septuagint translator came to this line, “My ears you have dug out,” he thought, “If I put that in literally, nobody’s going to understand that one. That is just so weird.” He put down a paraphrase. “I’m yours. My body is yours. You prepared a body for me. I’m yours. I give myself up to you,” which is very close to the kind of language Paul uses in Romans, chapter 12.

There we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. We offer up our whole beings to him. That’s exactly the same thought as the LXX of this second line. Our bodies are presented to him. He’s our God and we’re his. In any case, because of Christ’s perfect obedience in line with the suffering servant psalm, which turns on the suffering servant having an open ear to listen to the demand of his heavenly Father that he suffer the abuse, Jesus presents his whole body, his whole being before God.

That offering becomes the new sacrifice, which renders forever obsolete all the temporary sacrificial structures of the old covenant. For there is now one sin offering. Has it struck you that demonstrably in Scripture, demonstrably especially in the Johannine writings, but elsewhere too, Christ’s deepest, most personal, most poignant motive in going to the cross is not that he loved Don Carson or Richard Cunningham or anybody else in this room, but that he came to do his Father’s will.

That will was, in fact, to bear our sins in his own body on the tree. I understand that. I’m not saying that he was indifferent to us. Of course he loved us. Nevertheless, Christ’s prayer of anguish in Gethsemane is not, “Heavenly Father, I don’t really want to go but I love them so much so give me the strength so I can really suffer for them.”

His prayer instead was, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Just a few hours earlier, according to John 14, he had said, “The world must know that I have come to do my Father’s will.” He had his ears open, and the sacrificial system wasn’t going to cut it. He had to be the sacrifice. In some derivative measure, that is all of our calling too. In our sacrifice, then we don’t become an atoning substitute, but nevertheless our whole calling is to say, “Not my will, but yours be done,” isn’t it? It is to confess Jesus as Lord. The ritual won’t cut it.

We follow a Master who himself has become one of us and followed that principle so absolutely and perfectly that he did become our substitute, for his ears were opened and all of these channels of types and models from the Old Testament coalesce together in one line to make him in the antitype the bloody sacrifice, the perfect Davidic King, the suffering servant, the Lamb slaughtered before the foundation of the earth, the tabernacle of God. He became it all. The High Priest.

In some measure we are called, derivatively, as David was called even before the events derivatively, to follow in exactly that track. The ritual isn’t enough. So David now moves from public testimony to this articulation of the only appropriate response to God. Personal self-dedication. He prays, “Burnt offering sacrifice you did not desire—but my ears you have pierced. I have come to do your will, O my God.” Then, finally, in this first section, there is …

D. Public proclamation.

Verses 9 and 10: “I proclaim your saving acts in the great assembly; I do not seal my lips, Lord, as you know. I do not hide your righteousness in my heart; I speak of your faithfulness and your saving help. I do not conceal your love and your faithfulness from the great assembly.”

I know some of this is culturally determined. Both my parents were born over here. I was brought up in French Canada, so there’s a romance side to me, a Latin-French side to me that is culturally imposed. I can actually avoid shaking hands and give people big hugs and kisses on the cheek, men even. I was brought up in French Canada. That happens.

You learn that how people respond to disaster varies enormously from culture to culture. If somebody goes through a really painful death in this country, granted that they’re old English stock, then you ask after the event, “How did they bear up?” The highest commendation will be something like, “They were given great strength to bear it very well.” Which is testified to by the fact that during the funeral or the memorial service they sat there and maybe allowed a tiny misting of the eye, but no shrieks, no sobs.

Have you ever been to an Arab funeral or a Greek funeral? There you’re considered letting down the side unless you do have an awful lot of emotional outburst. They look at us and they just think we’re frigid. We look and them and we think they’re wretchedly uncontrolled and immature. It’s merely cultural expression. That’s all it is.

In Jesus’ day, in fact it’s the more vociferous sort that was the norm. You find, for example, at the grave of Lazarus, there are mourners there. According to the stipulations of the time, even a poor family was supposed to provide at least one flautist and two wailing women. The point of the flautist was to provide dirge music. No banjos, please.

The wailing women? If the tears were drying up, they just began to shriek and cry and get everybody in the mood again. Because this family was filthy rich, they probably had a whole flaming orchestra there. There was a lot of noise going on. That’s when Jesus weeps at the tomb and is upset and outraged by what he sees going on.

All of this shocking display of emotion at death because death itself is so final and so ugly. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s all the result of sin. So also when we give our testimonies, when we talk about what God has done for us. Some of this is culturally shaped or it’s denominationally shaped.

You get somebody from a more reserved stock, from a more reserved church, maybe a nice, strict Baptist and good, English Suffolk stock. Now you start piling on the Job sacrifices. You lose your wife. Your house is burned down. Your dog dies. You get fired. “How are things going, Brother?” “Things have been better.” Because if you say more than that, you’re letting down the side.

Then some years go by and you’re happily remarried. You built another house. You got promoted at work and you have another dog. “How are things going, Brother?” “There are blessings for which to give thanks.” Whereas if you come from a different sort of stock and maybe come through a really heated charismatic church, then you say to somebody on the Lord’s Day, “How are things going in your life, Brother (or Sister)?”

“Oh, I was so ill this week! The Lord healed me! It was a miracle! It was a wonderful thing. I was so down and discouraged. I prayed to the Lord.” You had a cold. Buy a box of Kleenex! It’s just so over-the-top and outrageous you want to say, “Give me a little reserve, please!” You begin to realize how many of these things are culturally constrained.

Sometimes in our cultural constraint, we actually neglect to give God praise. Sometimes in our lack of restraint, we say a lot of stupid things. Somewhere along the line we need to get this right. We need to learn to teach the new generation coming up behind us how to give proper thanks to God. That’s what David is talking about in verses 9 and 10.

“I will not hide this righteousness in my heart.” Not that I will not be righteous in my heart, but I will not hide it there. I will talk about it. I won’t conceal it. I will talk about God’s goodness and his faithfulness. Because it’s not simply a question of getting across the truth of the propositions about God, there is also a personal testimony that is itself astonishingly powerful and convincing.

I know that there are some people who try to proclaim the gospel by giving their testimonies and they never actually get around to articulating the gospel. It is, after all, the gospel that is to be proclaimed. You can proclaim the gospel and you can train your students to proclaim the gospel in such a way that they never sound committed.

They’re merely arguing about the gospel. They’re arguing about propositions. All of their apologetics is along that line. They say this; you say that. They say this; you say that. You learn to handle a postmodern objection and you learn to handle a Dawkins’ objection. You learn to handle a … whatever.

Somewhere along the line, do your students learn to say, “I don’t know how to answer that question, but I do know once I was blind and now I see. I was just so guilty and now I’m clean. For I have not hidden these things. I have not concealed them in my life.” That’s what David is saying here.

It is important to articulate the truth. Don’t misunderstand me. There’s a way of articulating the truth that always sounds one step removed from us. It is not testimony to the truth. It may even be in defense of the truth. It may even be capable defense of the truth, but it’s not testimony to the truth.

Both in the way we bear witness and speak ourselves and in the way we train our students, they must be able not only to articulate the gospel accurately, they must be able to bear witness to the gospel out of their own experience so they can say, “Once I was blind but now I see.” Public proclamation. “I proclaim your saving acts in the great assembly; I do not seal my lips, Lord, as you know. I do not hide your righteousness in my heart; I speak of your faithfulness and your saving help. I do not conceal your love and your faithfulness from the great assembly.”

For there is a pedagogical function even in the way we give thanks, even in the way we bear witness. We are training another generation how to respond to God. That’s the first part of the Psalm and it’s the biggest part. The rest of it I can cover very quickly, but it is an important part.

2. Renewed anticipation of rescue from God.

Verses 11–17. Trouble is still around. Some people think that because they’ve gone through one really deep bog, therefore, they are spared all further bogs. You have to face the fact that just because you’ve been divorced does not mean that you won’t get cancer.

Just because you’ve been diagnosed with cancer does not necessarily mean you won’t lose a child in an accident. Just because your wife has cancer, it doesn’t mean you won’t get typhoid. Been there, done that. They multiply when you get older. If you live long enough, you get kicked in the teeth. If you live longer yet, you get kicked in the teeth again and again and again until you die.

The only way of avoiding getting kicked in the teeth is dying early enough before you get kicked in the teeth. It’s the only way, because it’s a damned world. David is realistic enough here to know that although the Lord has helped him out of this slimy pit, out of this miry bog, there are more bogs down the road.

So he says.… Now verse 11 can be understood either as a petition or a statement. It can be as a petition, “Do not withhold your mercy from me, Lord. May your love and faithfulness always protect me.” I think it is better rendered as a statement. “You, O Lord, will not withhold your mercy from me. Your love and your truth always protect me.” We sing this sometimes better than we understand it.

O God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come.

So also here. “You, O Lord, will not withhold your mercy from me. Your love and your truth will always protect me.” As you protected me in this instance. “Your love and your truth will always protect me. For …” then in verses 12 and following you have a variety of domains in which God’s love and truth will help us.

A. God helps in the arena of personal sin.

Verse 12. “For troubles without numbers surround me; my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails within me. Be pleased to save me, Lord. Come quickly, Lord, to help me.” Some of the troubles we go through are the direct or indirect result of our own sins.

The truth of the matter is, the more closely you grow toward holiness, the more you can see the dirt. The dirt can be pretty discouraging at times. What will you do when you grow in holiness and become progressively dissatisfied with your prayer life, with your purity of thought and motive, with the corruption and mixture of our own desires and passion to be independent and free, not accountable to anybody, nurturing bitternesses against others.

They come to all of us. In our more sober moments you look at them again and you think, “I’m such a disgusting Christian.” That can be just horribly debilitating in and of itself. How can you preach when you’re thinking in those terms? Do you start saying to yourself, “Well, I guess I’m not really as disgusting as all that.” Is that any sort of solution?

The truth of the matter is the more you read your Bible, the more you discover that you’re even more disgusting than you think. Whenever somebody comes to me and says, “I don’t know how I can go on. I am such a failure as a Christian. I just find it very hard to believe that God loves me.” My response is always exactly the same. “You’re even more disgusting than you think you are.”

I always begin that way. Because this kind of self-exoneration by saying, “I’m so bad. I can’t believe God loves me,” they’re eliciting something. They’re wanting from me some sort of pardon, some sort of atonement. “God loves you anyway. God is that kind of God.” They must first see that they don’t merit the grace of God. They don’t win God’s love by God saying to them, in effect, “You’re not really all that bad. I can name some people that are worse.” No, no, no, our hope finally again is in God himself, isn’t it?

“Do not withhold your mercy from me. For troubles without number surround me; my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see. I get blinded by them. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails within me.” God helps in the arena of personal sin, hate, bitterness, lust, gambling, prayerlessness, greed, laziness, pride, resentments.

B. God helps in the arena of bitter enemies.

Verse 13b–15: “May all who seek to take my life be put to shame and confusion; may all who desire my ruin be turned back in disgrace. May those who say to me, ‘Aha! Aha!’ be appalled at their own shame.” In other words, they do not have the right to take advantage of David’s fall. Although his own sin discourages David, the smug attacks of his enemies can arouse in him a sense of injustice. Surely this too must be brought before the Lord and God himself must defend us.

C. God helps all those who seek him.

All, that is, who seek God’s glory. Verse 16: “May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who long for your saving help always say, ‘The Lord is great!’ ” Or it could be rendered, “The Lord be exalted.” It’s just two words in Hebrew. Gadal Yahweh. I said this at a conference and spelled it out. A few days later I found a whole lot of T-shirts with Gadal Yahweh right across them. The Lord is great. May the Lord be exalted.

“May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who long for your saving help always say …” This is looking for God’s help, not as the sort of bankroller of all our debts, but as the one who is great. We approach him because he’s that kind of God. We say, “Gadal Yahweh. May the Lord be exalted. May your name be proclaimed. Hallowed be your name. The Lord is great.” There’s a sheer God-centeredness to this petition. Then the Psalm ends very personally.

D. God helps even me.

Verse 17: “But as for me, I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; you are my God, do not delay.”

Let me conclude with a story. A number of years ago, there was an American missionary, we’ll call him Mike, who went to Bolivia. Mike was about six-foot-four, tall, skinny as a bean pole. He went out single to Bolivia, served there for quite a number of years, and met another single missionary out there. Eventually, both in their late 30s, they got married and had a little girl. By this time, he was thoroughly fluent in Spanish and the culture and so on, towering above all the little Bolivians with his six-foot-four frame, but nevertheless thoroughly enculturated.

His mission then sent him to Trinity, where I teach, to do a PhD because they were trying to upgrade theological education in the country. He already had a couple of degrees, and he was able to do a PhD, so they sent him to Trinity. Six months into the program, his wife was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer.

Obviously, he slowed the program right down and looked after her. She went through a double mastectomy, chemo, and all that sort of thing. Things my wife has been through. She came out the other side of it. He resumed the program. Then he was diagnosed with acute stomach cancer. Although Chicago has some brilliant cancer hospitals, in fact, none of them said that they had anything for him.

He was sent by the mission up to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, which is world famous for its advanced diagnostics, its teamwork, and so on. They didn’t offer him much hope, but they said that they would be willing to try some experimental colon cancer medicine on him. They took out 90 percent of his stomach, started the treatment, and lo and behold after six months, they thought they had beaten it.

By this time, he was waking up to eat a little bit every two to three hours, because he didn’t have enough stomach left to store any food. If he was skinny and a bean pole before, he was skinnier and more of a bean pole now, but he was alive and back at Trinity working on his program. Six months later, his wife’s cancer came back and she died.

In due course, he finished the program. His little girl was 3 when they came to Trinity. I last saw her when she was 9 going on 10 because her father had come back to our church (our church is one of the supporting churches) on his way back to Bolivia. He was going back to Bolivia bringing his almost 10-year-old daughter back with him. He spoke in the morning service, and for 40 minutes all he did was articulate with gratitude the sheer goodness of God.

He could itemize some of the ways in which that goodness was manifested, the faithfulness of Christian friends, the people who had helped looking after their daughter, the willingness of the mission to support him in all of this. Lots of things. Godly parents from which he had sprung. But he went back to the mission field in sheer gratitude to God for his goodness. I tell you, that is normal Christian living. Anything else is subnormal. Let us pray.

We do not want to treat the words of testimony of King David 3,000 years ago merely as a text to be studied, heavenly Father, but as a stance to be emulated, not least because it was best emulated by great David’s greater son, who had his ears open to do your will perfectly. So work in our understanding and in our wills that increasingly we may be conformed to joyful obedience and trust in you who gives grace to those who slip into miry bogs or who pulls them out of bogs and puts their feet on a solid place again and a new song in their mouths.

Grant, Lord God, that we may trust you as the one whose thoughts precede us and whose plans ordain our ways and whose every action toward his people is good, secured by the blood of his own dear Son. So we pray for one another and for those with whom we are connected in various IFES relations around the world. We pray that you will make us faithful in measure increasingly conformed to the likeness of the Lord Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.