Psalm 40- Out of the Pit

 Psalm 40- Out of the Pit

Psalms 40:1-17 (NKJV) 

1 To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. I waited patiently for the LORD; And He inclined to me, And heard my cry. 2 He also brought me up out ofa horrible pit, Out of the miry clay, And set my feet upon a rock, [And] established my steps. 

3He has put a new song in my mouth--Praise to our God; Many will see [it] and fear, And will trust in the LORD. 4 Blessed [is] that man who makes the LORD his trust, And does not respect the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies. 5 Many, O LORD my God, [are] Your wonderful works [Which] You have done; And Your thoughts toward us Cannot be recounted to You in order; [If] I would declare and speak [of them,] They are more than can be numbered. 

6Sacrifice and offering You did not desire; My ears You have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering You did not require. 7 Then I said, “Behold, I come; In the scroll of the book [it is] written of me. 8 I delight to do Your will, O my God, And Your law [is] within my heart.” 9 I have proclaimed the good news of righteousness In the great assembly; Indeed, I do not restrain my lips, O LORD, You Yourself know. 10 I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart; I have declared Your faithfulness and Your salvation; I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth From the great assembly. 

11Do not withhold Your tender mercies from me, O LORD; Let Your lovingkindness and Your truth continually preserve me. 12 For innumerable evils have surrounded me; My iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up; They are more than the hairs of my head; Therefore my heart fails me. 13 Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me; O LORD, make haste to help me! 14 Let them be ashamed and brought to mutual confusion Who seek to destroy my life; Let them be driven backward and brought to dishonor Who wish me evil. 15 Let them be confounded because of their shame, Who say to me, “Aha, aha!” 

16 Let all those who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; Let such as love Your salvation say continually, “The LORD be magnified!” 17 But I [am] poor and needy; [Yet] the LORD thinks upon me. You [are] my help and my deliverer; Do not delay, O my God.

Psalm 40 is one of my favorites since it tells my story. I can identify with being in the pit, bogged down by miry clay. As a young man growing up in the farm in Illinois, I was very familiar with miry clay. We raised hogs, and if you know anything about swine, they love to root in the dirt and wallow in the mud puddles. It is their nature to dig a pit and lie in it. If your fence isn’t  strong enough they will even dig under that and escape from the pig pen. 

This reminds me of the story of the prodigal son. (Luke 15:11-32) the son that left home was reveling in the worldly life until he wasted all of his money and literally ended up in the pig pen. He was mired in the mud with the hogs and no longer enjoyed the filth, but was so hungry that he longed to eat the inedible hog food. What a pit to be caught in! Pigs will eat most anything, so I can’t imagine how bad their food was that he couldn’t eat it.

When the prodigal son repented and returned to the father, he was reborn, in a sense, and was welcomed back into his father’s house. That was like being set on a rock, as the psalmist writes. Looking back to my experiences in the pig pen, there were few rocks in Illinois and thus no firm place to stand. You could put out some straw and corn cobs for bedding which would give you a little footing but it still didn’t make your footsteps firm. It takes the Lord’s rescuing you to firmly establish you on the rock and establish your steps.

Once you are rescued from the pit of miry clay you want to sing a new song. This implies a new nature. Have you ever heard a pig sing? (Or fly for that matter!) No, it is birds that sing, and birds don’t  like to wallow in the mud. They will wash them selves in a puddle if it is clean enough but they would prefer a bird bath with clean water. The difference; pigs and birds have a different nature.

This brings up the whole issuer of repentance, rebirth and baptism. An interesting fact about the Greek word for baptism is it was used in secular society to describe the method to dye cloth and make pickles. It means “to dip” or “to immerse”, but it implies that the subject of the baptism is immersed in the baptismal substance until its nature is irreversibly changed. It was no longer white cloth or a cucumber, but it is scarlet cloth or a pickle and can never return to its previous nature. That is what baptism is for us. We are immersed in water and in the Holy Spirit until out very nature is changed; we are reborn into the Kingdom. 

Back to psalm 40. We sing a new song because it is our new nature to sing. Many will hear and put their trust in the Lord because it is our new nature to worship and preach the gospel. Blessed is such a man who no longer wallows in the mud with the swine, but sings a new song of praise to the Lord. When thus reborn and transformed, why would you want to return to the pit? The prodigal son tried that and found our how disastrous that could be!

Instead, we should be like the psalmist who goes on to write “I delight to do thy will”.  Jesus said it like this:

John 4:34

Jesus *said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.

And also:

John 5:30

“I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.

It was not only Jesus’ delight to do the Father’s will, it was his very food and the only thing that he would do. 

We need to be like Jesus, doing the Lord’s Will with a song in our heart. We need to be like the psalmist and proclaim with him:

Psalm40:16 Let all those who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; Let such as love Your salvation say continually, “The LORD be magnified!” 17 But I [am] poor and needy; [Yet] the LORD thinks upon me. You [are] my help and my deliverer; Do not delay, O my God.