The God Who Helps

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of church issues from Psalm 40 from The Gospel Coalition.

We thank you, heavenly Father, for the mercy and condescension that bring you to help us again and again. In truth you have declared, “You have not because you ask not.” So we come before you and ask this evening. We ask that you will speak to us from your own Word that we may see you more clearly, trust you more wholly, obey you more instantly, love you more truly, and find in you our help in every need. For Jesus’ sake, amen.

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If you live long enough, you will get kicked in the teeth. The only thing that will prevent it is not living long enough. If you live long enough, you will be bereaved. The only alternative is bereaving someone else. If you live long enough, you will face major disappointment. You may lose a job. You may lose a friend. You may lose a marriage. You may find yourself impoverished.

You may find yourself so enslaved by vicious sins that you loathe yourself. You are so addicted to the porn on the Internet, and you don’t know what to do! Or you have nurtured wretched bitterness against members of your family, and you don’t know how to escape. You know it’s not right. It is poisoning you, and you don’t have a clue what to do about it.

If you live long enough, you will get kicked in the teeth. To all such who sense their need on front after front after front, this psalm that was read for us earlier this evening, Psalm 40, speaks volumes of relief. God is our helper. Sometimes we are inclined to think of the psalms as 150 individual pearls on a string. But many of the psalms are grouped together in important ways.

Psalm 37 underscores the importance of waiting on God. Psalms 38 and 39 give us the application of this waiting-on-God theme worked out in painful self-examination. And now, in Psalm 40, at least initially, the gloom is lifted. There is a triumphant outcome. David has waited on the Lord, and the Lord has helped him. That brings us to the first of the two major divisions of the psalm.

1. In verses 1–10, the psalm is full of joyful praise to the God who helps. This could usefully be broken down into four stanzas, four parts.

A) Personal testimony

Verses 1–3. Verse 1 bursts with delight. “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.” This rendering is almost too weak; it’s almost too static. “I waited patiently.” I was just sort of stuck there, and I waited, and eventually he showed up. That’s not the idea. This is an active, purposive, resolved waiting. “I waited, waited for the Lord, and he came and fulfilled his promise and met me.”

Now what was it that David was saved from? Verse 2 describes it metaphorically. “He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.” Some miry bog. The image suggests both disgust and floundering helplessness. But what was it? Sickness? Enchaining sin? Discouragement? Peril from enemies? I don’t have a clue.

This is one the places where it’s a great blessing that we don’t have a clue, for if we knew exactly what it was, we would be inclined to make appropriate application only if we were in exactly the same peril. By preserving the metaphor and not identifying it precisely, God has given us a kind of generic insight. We can fall into many different kinds of bogs, and God is our only rescuer. One is reminded of Paul’s thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians, chapter 12. “There was given me,” Paul says, “a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan,” to teach him humility.

What the thorn in the flesh was? Well, there have been scores of answers. In my mind, I can narrow them down to a probable three or four. Beyond that point, I can’t quite be certain. Once again, the metaphorical ambiguity is a great help. I don’t know you. Most of you, I don’t know. But God knows you intimately. He knows what kinds of bogs you are either in, have come through, or will fall into, if you live long enough. Here, this psalm provides David’s testimony precisely to that kind of experience.

David, extending the metaphor, has been rescued from this slimy pit, from this miry bog. Not mere escape, like Jeremiah in Jeremiah 38, but now with a new place on which to stand. Even so, quite remarkably, David does not focus all of his attention on his own release, as if he were the center of the universe. Rather, immediately, his words give praise to God and flow outward to others. Verse 3: “He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.”

New song language in the Scripture always marks some new blessing from God that then evokes a new song. It’s as if all the songs that we’ve already sung are inadequate to praise God for the new blessings that we have received. The most remarkable new song passage in all of Holy Scripture, of course, is the one found in the great apocalyptic vision of Revelation 4 and 5. Do you recall it?

In Revelation 4, God is presented in colorful metaphor, spectacular apocalyptic language, as the sovereign God, the transcendent God, the creator God. All of the highest orders of angelic beings bow before him and cast their thrones before him. They acknowledge their utter dependence upon him, and they come together and sing, “You are worthy … for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”

Once this setting is established.… God transcendent, God powerful, God the Creator … then the drama unfolds. Revelation 4 is to Revelation 5 what a setting is to a drama. Once God’s great transcendent glory is established in the setting of chapter 4, the drama unfolds in chapter 5. In the right hand of him who sits on the throne, we’re told, is a scroll sealed with seven seals.

That scroll has all of God’s purposes for redemption and judgment. That’s what the scroll contains: all of God’s purposes for the entire universe for judgment and redemption. It is sealed with seven seals. In the symbolism of the day, whatever is in that scroll can be enacted only if you slit the seals.

For example, the last will and testament of the emperor Vespasian likewise was sealed with seven seals. Though people knew what was inside, the will, as it were, went to probate once the seals were slit. That is what effected what was in the document. So in the drama, this scroll, with all of God’s purposes, is sealed with seven seals. Now a mighty angel challenges the entire universe, “Who is worthy to approach this God, take the scroll from his right hand, slit the seals …” and thus bring about all of God’s purposes for redemption and judgment?

No one is found who is worthy. Not the cherubim and seraphim. Not the elders. No one on the earth. No one under the earth in the abodes of the dead. No angel. And John weeps. John weeps not because he’s a nosey parker whose curiosity is thereby stifled, but because in the symbolism of the vision, this means that God’s purposes for judgment, justice, and blessing will not be brought to pass.

As he is weeping, an interpreting elder taps him on the shoulder, as it were, and he says, “John. John. Stop your weeping. Look! The lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed to open the scroll.” “So I looked,” John says, “and I saw a lamb.” We’re not to think of two animals parked side by side: a lion and a lamb. Apocalyptic literature loves to use mixed metaphors. The lion is the lamb.

He’s the lion of the tribe of Judah, but he’s also the Lamb of God who was slaughtered. A slaughtered lamb, yet a lamb with seven horns. In the symbolism of the day, that means a slaughtered, sacrificial lamb that, nevertheless, has the perfection of all kingly power. That’s what the horn symbolizes in ancient apocalyptic literature.

In consequence of this, because he comes from the throne itself and takes the scroll out of the hand of him who sits on the throne, he prevails to bring about all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing. Therefore, the cherubim and the elders and ten thousand times ten thousand angels surrounding the throne open up with all of the orchestra, and they sing a new song!

What is this song? It’s no longer the song praising God for creation, as great as that song is, as legitimate as it is, as perennial as it is. It is a song addressed to Christ. “You are worthy to open the scroll.” He shed his blood to rescue men and women drawn from every tongue and tribe and people and nation. They shall reign in the new heaven and the new earth. Here is a new song brought about by the new event at redemptive history of the lion-lamb bringing about all of God’s purposes.

Now, this vision here, in Psalm 40, is not quite so salvation-historically transcendent. I understand that. Yet, in our experience, is there not time when we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good? We do know that God is faithful. We have known of God’s provision in the past. Then we go through some new, agonizing thing, God pours out his grace upon us in spectacular ways, and we sing a new song.

Sometimes it’s after bereavement. Sometimes, in the life of a church, it’s after decades of a really difficult, challenging situation. Suddenly there is massive movement. In the Provence of Quebec, where I grew up, my father was one of the first pastors back into French Canada after liberalism had decimated the relatively few churches in a population of about 6.5 million French speakers. He started in the late-30s with another man from Switzerland, William Frey.

Gradually, numbers of pastors from the United States and from English Canada returned and started planting churches. There was a lot of persecution. Baptist ministers alone spent eight years in jail between ‘50 and ‘52. We kids were regularly beaten up because we were maudits Protestants, damned Protestants.

As recently as 1972, there were only about 35 or 36 evangelical churches of any description, most with not more than 40 people, in all of this population of 6.5 million. Then in eight years, we grew from 35 churches to 500, and God put a new song in our mouths, even praise to our God. Here is personal testimony.

B) Public principle

Verses 4–5. One of the wonderful things is that David immediately turns that to public principle. He turns the personal testimony to public principle. Instead of talking in the first person, he now talks about the third person. He connects the two sections by a little hook word. Have you noticed? The end of verse 3 says, “Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.”

Now he talks generically. Verse 4: “Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods. Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders you have done. The things you have planned for us no one can recount to you …” This is wonderful.

There is reflection now in David on all of the good things that God has done. You come through one of these wretched experiences, you come out the other side of a miry bog, and it gives time for you to take a deep breath and think about all God’s plans for you. You look back, think again, and marvel at all of God’s goodness. There is a marvelous parallel passage to this in Psalm 139, sometimes I think slightly misunderstood. Do you recall Psalm 139, verse 13?

“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. 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! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.”

Did you see? This is not simply a passage that is marveling at God’s omniscience. How can you ever possibly begin to grasp the innumerable thoughts of God? No, in the flow of the sequence, it is very personal. God has created us in the womb. His sovereignty is so sweeping that even before we are born our days are ordained for us.

God knows the terrible things we will be going through, the bogs in this fallen and broken world that we will ourselves fall into. He knows them all. His sovereignty is extended even to all of these details. He thinks about them. He knows about them all. All of his thoughts concerning us are innumerable, and still he can be trusted as the sovereign, good God who comes to rescue his people.

C) Personal self-dedication

Verses 6–8. What is the only proper response for such deliverance? Slaughter a lamb, perhaps? Bring a bull? Well, maybe you’re poor, so two turtle doves will do instead. Is that an adequate response to this sort of God? Ultimately, we must bring our entire being to God, our heart and will. So we read, “Sacrifice and offering, you did not desire …”

Now the next line is extremely difficult; I’ll come back to it. “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have pierced; 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, O my God; your law is within my heart.’ ”

Now the general thought in these three verses is clear. Mere formal offering of sacrifice is not an adequate response to a God who saves us from all of these miry bogs and whose sovereignty extends to every dimension of our life, who can be trusted with helping us in all kinds of situations. The only adequate response is to say, “Here I am. I have come to do your will.” It’s the only ultimate response that is even the beginnings of being adequate.

Yet before we press further, we do need to think about this second line in verse 6. It is difficult to understand. Many English versions have, “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have pierced.” The Hebrew verb can be understood that way. Then people wonder if this is a reflection of something that takes place in the book of Exodus, in Exodus 21.

In the ancient world, sometimes people fell into slavery because of raiding parties or military activity, but sometimes they fell into slavery because there were no Chapter 11 and Chapter 13 laws. There were no bankruptcy laws. So you borrowed some money, then your business went belly-up, and the only way out was to sell yourself and perhaps your family into slavery.

Perhaps, in fact, you fell into the hands of a really good master who provided food and shelter for you and your family at a time when the unemployment rate is a nasty 20 or 25 percent. Under Jewish law, when the Israelites were actually observing it, after a set number of years, you were supposed to be released. In other words, slavery in Israel was not supposed to be open-ended; it was a form of indentured service rather than being open-ended.

Supposing someone came to the end of this period, this seven years of indentured service, looked around and saw that the economy wasn’t very good, and the master was really good. Maybe he should just stay on as a slave; it might be just a wee bit better. Then he went through an ear-piercing ceremony. His earlobe was put on the door of the master’s house, and the master took a sharp awl and just pierced his ear. It was a way of saying, “From henceforth, this man will belong to this household.”

Perhaps that what it’s saying. “From now on, David will belong to the household of God.” The problem with that interpretation is that everything we know about this ear-piercing ceremony (and it’s not much) describes only one ear being pierced. Here the text says, “My ears you have pierced.” There is another way of understanding that verb in Hebrew. Literally, it means my ears you have dug out. What does that mean? If you are reading the ESV, you’ll note that reading at the bottom of the page, “My ears you have dug out.”

If you don’t know what that means, you never met my mother. My mother was an English woman, a Cockney, born in the East End of London within the sound of Bow Bells. She brought with her to Canada, when she came as an immigrant, all kinds of interesting expressions that I have only heard from other Cockneys. One of them, which she repeated to us when we were children pretty often, was, “Dig out your ears!”

This was not meant to be taken literally, neither with a spade nor with a Q-tip. It was merely a way of saying, “Listen up! What’s blocking your ears? Pay attention!” This is why the ESV main text has rather periphrastically rendered it, “You have given me an open ear.” Do you see? That makes sense, too.

In other words, what is required here is not merely offering of sacrifice but an open ear before the Lord so that we hear what he says and listen to him. In fact, there is a wonderful passage in one of the servant songs of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 50, with exactly the same thought. Not the same verb, but the same thought.

Here is Isaiah 50:4 and following, where the suffering servant of Yahweh 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, and I have not been rebellious; I have not drawn back. I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard.”

Do you see? This is an anticipation of the suffering servant’s suffering, an anticipation of Jesus crying in Gethsemane, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Because his heavenly Father gave him an open ear, not a blocked ear, a dug out ear, so that he listened to the word of his heavenly Father and was perfectly obedient. If David was obedient in measure, how much more, great David’s greater son?

There is an even deeper thing to think about here. When this verse was translated from the Hebrew in which it was written into ancient Greek, 200 or more years before Christ, so that Jews who were scattered in the ancient empires could read it, they rendered it differently again. They rendered it this way: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire but a body you have prepared for me.” Now where did they get that? The reason that’s important is because that’s the way it’s actually quoted in the New Testament, as we’ll see in a few moments.

Now I can’t prove what I will propose to you. I can’t quite prove it, just because we don’t have enough information. Sometimes when you translate, you have to find an equivalent expression simply because the receptor language doesn’t work exactly the same way. For example, I can tell you, “Tomorrow morning, I am flying home,” and you understand what I mean. But I was brought up in French. You know, in French, they don’t have a word for home. They just don’t.

They say, Je vais chez moi. “I’m going to my place.” Or, Je vais ‡ la maison. “I’m going to my house.” Or chez nous. But there is actually no word, in French, for home. There is au foyer, the hearth, the foyer, but no actual word for home. You have to find some sort of equivalent to get the same idea across. I suspect some translator, two or three centuries before Jesus, saw this Hebrew, “My ear you have dug out,” and thought, “What am I going to do with this one? That doesn’t make any sense in Greek.”

He realized that it really did have to do with trying to listen to the Word of God so that with my whole being I bow before him and obey him, so he rendered it somewhat periphrastically. “A whole body you prepared for me so that with my whole being I respond to you, with my whole body and life.” I suspect that is what the translator did. Now we’ll look at how this is quoted in the New Testament in a few moments.

In any case, the main thought, whether the ESV’s paraphrase or the ancient Greek, is pretty clear. David says religious right and sacrifice is not the crucial issue, but.… Do offer myself to you because I listen to your Word? With my whole being I respond, with body and will and soul and mind. I said, “Here I am. I have come to do your will. In fact, it’s written about me in the scroll.”

This may even have an intonation here of prophecy so that great David’s greater son actually is the subject written about in antecedent Scripture. Great David thus becomes a picture of his son who is the subject of the scroll of God, the Word of God. He fulfills this so perfectly, as we shall see. “I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is written in my heart.”

That brings us, then, to the passage that quotes this in the New Testament. It is found in the epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 10. This is in the context where Hebrews is talking about the ways in which the Old Testament sacrificial system pointed forward to the ultimate sacrifice. The ancient tabernacle pointed forward to the very presence of God, the heavenly tabernacle.

Indeed, we read, chapter 10, verse 1. “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, make perfect those who draw near to worship. […] Therefore, when Christ came into the world …” And now these words. “ ‘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, O God!” ’ First he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them.’ (although the law required them to be made).” That was true in David’s day. It was true in Hosea’s day, who says something very similar. The law did require them! But they can’t have this final efficacy if they can be shunted aside for something more fundamental. Indeed, “Then he said, ‘Here I am, I have come to do your will.’ ”

The perfection of the obedient will of the Son issues in the incarnation and in the death of the Son, bearing our sin in his own body on the tree. In other words, Jesus’ obedience transcends David’s, but it’s already pictured in David, who understands that biblical religion is not mere religiosity.

There is a form of religion that comes and participates in the hymn sing, participates in the Lord’s Supper, reads the Bible now and then, shows up at annual meetings, and things like that, but, nevertheless, does not learn to say, “Your will be done. You are sovereign. You are God. You own me. Dig out my ears that I may listen. Let me be yours in thought, word, and deed, my whole body serving you.”

Isn’t that same thought found in the apostle Paul? “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” And before that, “I beseech you brothers, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” There’s Paul saying something very similar to David. Do you see? But the ultimate one who hears God’s words in this way is Christ himself, and it takes him to the cross. That is what is required of us by way of response to the fact that God takes us out of miry bogs.

D) Public proclamation

Verses 9–10: “I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly; I do not seal my lips, as you know, O Lord. I do not hide your righteousness in my heart.” That is, I don’t hide it in my heart so that it’s entirely private. I announce it. I speak of your faithfulness and salvation. I do not conceal your love and your truth from the great assembly.

Now I know full well that there are different styles of displays of thanksgiving that are, in part, culture driven. I understand that. This is true even in greetings, isn’t it? A number of years ago, I worked part-time with the World Evangelical Fellowship. Part of my job was bringing people together (Christians … leaders, pastors, and theologians from around the world) to work on one project or another. Just watching them enter a room was an education.

In came the German, and he shook everybody’s hands. If he had to go out to the car again to get something, he’d probably shake everybody’s hands on the way out, too. In came one of the Latinos, with their cheek kissing and, “Brother!” If he were an Arab Christian, it’s usually three kisses, and I could never remember which cheek to start on, which always gets embarrassing when you get close.

Then, of course, the Indian is coming in with a lot of this, and the Japanese is coming in with a lot of this, and how far down you bow depends on who’s older, who has more money, who has more education, and who has a more prestigious job, and I can never remember all of the rules. Just bow down! Just bow down; then you’re honoring the other side!

Off in the corner was an Englishman in his Harris Tweed coat, standing there looking somewhat bemused at all of this energetic greeting. He stood there (I won’t mention his name; I dare not) as Pablo Perez from Mexico descended on him, all 300 pounds of him. “Brother!” he said. The Englishman looked up and said, “Have we been introduced?” In comes the American, “Hi, everybody. Sorry I’m late.” This is before you start your conversation! Culture, culture! It’s spectacular, isn’t it?

Of course, this sort of thing comes out also in how we give thanks to God. There are some people who come from more Latin temperaments or more charismatic traditions. To me, they seem a wee bit over the top. They have a little sniffle, some small cold, something that nobody else would even mention. When it comes to testimony time Sunday night, “Oh, the Lord healed me from a dread disease! It was a wonderful thing! I had sniffles! And now the Lord has healed me! Praise God!” I want to say, “Good grief, it was a sniffle.”

Then there is the other sort, more tied perhaps to an Anglo-Saxon temperament with some Scottish reserve. You lose your spouse, your house burns down, you get sacked from your job, and your dog dies. You’re asked by some believer, “How’s it going?” “Things have been better.” Some years go by. You are happily re-married, you have rebuilt your business, you live in a lovely house, and you have a new Border Collie. Somebody asks, “How’s it going?” “There’s a lot to be grateful for.”

David is realistic. You see, I think sometimes some of us from more reserved traditions are afraid to let it hang out lest people will look down on us. David’s not quite in that camp, is he? (He’s gone from preaching to start meddling.) Listen to what David says. This is the Word of God now. This is the Word of God. “I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly. I do not seal my lips, as you know, O Lord. I do not hide your righteousness.… I speak of your faithfulness and salvation. I do not conceal your love and your truth from the great assembly.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, those of us who have been through these deep waters owe it to the entire assembly to speak of God’s goodness and mercy in the public arena so that others, a new generation coming along behind, those who have not had many miry bogs yet, learn how to give thanks to God.

It’s not just that you show the way, as it were, a kind of example, a kind of mentor, for actually going through the bog. You also show the way for how to give thanks afterwards. As Christians give thanks to God Almighty for all of the blessings they have received, not least in the hardest times, they teach a whole new generation to trust the living God.

Let me tell you of a seminary student I know. We’ll call him John. John went out as a single missionary to Bolivia. While he was there, in his mid- to late-30s, he married a woman, a female missionary out there. They had a child, a little girl, who was 3 or 4 when they came to Trinity to do a PhD. His mission wanted him to get advanced training so he could go back and up the level of theological instruction in Bolivia.

By this time, he knew the language well. He understood the culture. He wanted to be there all the rest of his life. So they agreed to pay for his doctoral studies at Trinity. He was there barely six months when she was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer. She went through all of the wretched treatments. It looked as if she were going to make it. He got back to his studies again … seminars, trying to write and prepare for his comps before the dissertation … when he was diagnosed with advanced stomach cancer.

Chicago has a lot of really excellent cancer hospitals, not least Lutheran General. They wouldn’t touch him. They said it was so advanced there wasn’t anything they could do. The mission agreed to send him up to the Mayo Clinic. They took out 90 percent of his stomach and put him on rather experimental drugs used primarily for colon cancer. Lo and behold, they stopped it.

He came out (all 6-foot-4 of him) already thin, now skinny as a bean pole, needing to eat a little something every two or three hours because he didn’t have any stomach to store things. He came back to seminary, finished his comps, and started on his dissertation. Then his wife’s cancer returned, and she died. He was surrounded by godly people. They both came from godly families. The Trinity community helped every way they could. In due course, he came back, and he finished his dissertation.

The last time I saw him was three or four years ago. He came back to our home church in Illinois, which is one of his supporting churches, to speak there just before going back with his daughter, now 9 or 10, to Bolivia as a missionary. For half an hour, all he spoke about, using Scripture, was the goodness of God. I want to tell you, that is merely normal Christianity. That’s all it is. It’s not heroic. It’s merely seeing things in an eternal perspective.

He spoke of all the manifestations of goodness and all the people who had helped and showered time, energy, and gifts on him. He spoke of the love that he and his wife had shared, of their wonderful daughter. The Lord had preserved at least one of the parents to bring up this little girl. He spoke of the privilege of service, of telling people, more urgently than ever, how we are all destined to die, and after that the judgment.

At the end of the day, death may be the last enemy, but it does not have the last word, for we know someone who broke the bounds of death. Therefore, he could not live his life in fear. Death is outrageous, but it’s not final. And he spoke of the goodness of God. Brothers and sisters in Christ, when you finally do come out the other side of your miry bog, don’t slink into an endless pity party. Give thanks to God in the assembly, and teach a new generation the goodness of God.

2. Now we will cover the second division of the psalm, but it is important to understand how it works. Here, in verses 11–17, there is renewed anticipation of the God who helps. Verse 11 can be understood either as a petition or as a statement.

In the ESV, as a statement: “As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from me; your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve me!” Or in the NIV, as a petition: “Do not withhold your mercy from me, O Lord; may your love and your truth always protect me.” It can be understood either way.

What strikes you about this is (granted he has just come through a miry bog) why is David going on to talk about ongoing protection? Because, of course, just because you have lost a child does not necessarily mean that you will escape cancer. Just because you have been through a really, really difficult ecclesiastical situation does not necessarily mean that you won’t face bereavement. This is still a damned world.

There are wonderful things here, signs of God’s grace in so many ways; yet, this is still a death-dealing world. David is astute enough to understand that just because God has taken him out of one miry bog doesn’t mean there won’t be any more miry bogs down the road. Don’t we sing this? “O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.” David reminds himself that God must still be his helper, and then he runs through the domains where he still needs help, where he will always need help.

1. God helps in the arena of personal sin.

Verse 12: “For troubles without number 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.” You must help me with my sins, O God, for they make me drown!

2. God helps in the arena of bitter enemies.

Verses 13–15. They do not have the right to take advantage of David’s fall. So although his own sin discourages him, the smug attacks of his enemies arouse him, nevertheless, with a sense of injustice. He is outraged by it. Only God can finally save here.

3. God helps all who seek God’s glory.

Verse 16. Did you see how he argues? It is a wonderful passage. “But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation always say, ‘The Lord be exalted!’ ” Some versions have, “Great is the Lord.” In Hebrew, it’s just two words: yigdal Yahweh. The next time R.C. Sproul is here and wants to quote Latin, I want you to quote Hebrew. Put it on your fridge door. Memorize it. Yigdal Yahweh. Say it. Yigdal Yahweh. Now you know some Hebrew. Yigdal Yahweh.

When you are full of praise, when you see a glorious sunset, you will say, “Yigdal Yahweh.” When you are just come out of a funeral parlor where your closest friend has died, you will say, “Yigdal Yahweh.” When you come to church, the organ swells, and you see something of the majesty of God in the preached word, you will say, “Yigdal Yahweh.”

When you are hungry, tired, and distressed, yet you know that God has sustained you even in the midst of tears, you will say, “Yigdal Yahweh.” May the Lord be exalted. May the Lord be exalted. May the Lord be exalted. Do you see? God is not our helper like some genie who comes along and gives a little bit of assistance. The help he gives is always within the framework in which God is God. We respond by saying, “Your will be done. Yigdal Yahweh. May the Lord be exalted.” Which brings us to the final lines.

4. God helps even me.

Verse 17: “Yet I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; O my God, do not delay.” Brothers and sisters in Christ, religion broadly, demands that we do certain things in order to get blessings from God. Certainly, ancient paganism was like that. If you wanted to make a sea voyage, then you offered a sacrifice to Neptune, the god of the sea, in the hope that the god of the sea would smile on you and give you a safe sea voyage.

If you wanted to make a speech, then you offered a sacrifice to the god of communication, Mercury in the Roman world or Hermes in the Greek world. You offered something in a kind of tit-for-tat relationship. That’s the way religion worked: you do nice things to god and then god does nice things to you. You scratch my back; I scratch your back.

Supposing you’re dealing with a God to whom you really can give nothing, who already owns it all, a God with whom you cannot possibly barter. Then what does religion look like? That’s why the religion of the Bible is not religion in any standard sense at all. It is a disclosure of the living God in grace who comes along to help us.

We, his creatures, first of all acknowledge our creatureliness then our guilt. We bow before him and accept his sovereignty and his forgiveness. There is no other proper relationship with this living God. Finally, we bow before him on bended knee in contrition and brokenness because we know that we don’t have anything to trade with him.

Nothing in my hands I bring,

Only to thy cross I cling.

Naked, come to thee for dress,

Helpless, look to thee for rest.

Foul, I to the fountain fly;

Wash me, Savior, or I die.

So we come to the cross and to the God who sent his Son. We find him always a help in time of need, to those who cry, “I am poor and needy, O Lord. Yigdal Yahweh. May the Lord be exalted.” Let us pray.

Forgive the swiftness, O Lord God, with which we turn again to arrogance, one-upmanship, and ridiculous independence when, in fact, your sovereign grace is so sweeping that every breath we draw is by your decree. Every beat of the heart is by your sanction. If you take away our breath, it is gone. Not a sparrow falls from the heaven except by your sanction. We live and move and have our being simply because Christ reigns with all of the mediatorial authority that comes from your throne.

We thank you, Lord God, that we are dependent creatures. We thank you, Lord God, that we who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good are forgiven, dependent creatures, already with the gift of the Spirit as the down payment of the promised inheritance. We bow before you in thanksgiving, and we acknowledge afresh that you alone are God. May the Lord be exalted. For Christ’s sake, amen.