Out of the Slimy Pit

Psalm 40

Welcome! Today is the last Sunday of the month, so we will have a shorter message followed by a time of remembering the Lord with the bread and the cup and then a sharing time, in which anyone can share what the Lord has been teaching them. Throughout this year, we have been reflecting on various psalms in preparation for our communion times, and today we will look at Psalm 40. This psalm is one of the many psalms written by David, who was inspired by the Holy Spirit to use the exact words and ideas that he wrote.

I think this particular psalm also fits in beautifully with the series we have been going through and are still in the midst of, Law and Grace, which began by giving a 30,000-feet-in-the-air view of the Old Testament Law as revealed in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and which in the last few weeks has been contrasting this to the grace of Christ that is found in Galatians. And so as we go through Psalm 40, I will point out the parallel threads that run there and here. 

Here is how this psalm begins:

I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry. 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.
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.  – Psalm 40:1-3

One of the amazing things about Scripture is how it can speak simultaneously on many different levels. As we go through this psalm, I hope to show you multiple ways in which it speaks powerful truth. With these first three verses, let’s start on the level that this is a description of the personal experience of the author, David.

There is actually a sequence of six events here in these verses. What are these events? First, that the psalmist became stuck. This is figurative language, but it is very vivid. Have you ever been actually stuck in mud? I have never been actually trapped in mud, but I have fallen in pretty deep mud and made quite a mess of myself. Our South Carolina clay, if it gets wet enough, can be quite slimy. Imagine yourself in a deep pit, with vertical sides, and those sides are nothing but that slimy clay. You are stuck. And the bottom of this pit isn’t dry, either; it is more mud and mire, and you are a muddy mess, and soaked with mud.

Our psalmist, inspired by the Holy Spirit, uses this picture to describe what? He doesn’t tell us – giving us freedom to apply it to ourselves. It could be a job situation, a problem with debt, a problem with some authority; it could be anything like this. But for every single one of us, I think it also describes our problem with the highest authority, the Author and Creator of the universe. We have all of us turned to our own ways against Him. The Bible makes it clear that we are all separated from Him because of our sin; it is a part of His nature that He is holy, and His very nature separates us from Him. And we know the consequences of this – apart from a miraculous rescue, we are to be eternally separated from Him, stuck in the slimy pit.

The second event is that he cries to God, telling Him of his trouble. “Lord, I am in a pit, separated from you, stuck! I can do nothing to get out! Please help me! Please deliver me! Please save me!”

Interestingly, the third event is that he waits. He waits patiently. A more literal translation of the Hebrew word kavah is that he waits expectantly, hopefully, even more literally, bound with strength because of hope. A closely related word is kav, which is a rope, which has its strength because it consists of multiple threads twisted and bound together. That is, our psalmist waits with faith that he will be saved.

The fourth event is that he is saved; he is drawn out of the slimy pit, out of the mud, lifted up and set on a rock, on solid ground. And the fifth event is that he sings a song of praise to his deliverer, not an old song he knows or even a song that he composes, but more, a song that his deliverer gives to him.

And then the sixth event is that this deliverance has consequences around him. Not only is he saved, but others who see and hear what he has gone through come to trust in Him as their deliverer as well.

And so, on one level this is a personal experience of the psalmist, David, but on another, it should be our experience also. Our separation from God because of our sin; our calling out to Him; His deliverance, His saving of us as we come to faith in Him; His transformation of our hearts to where we are filled with love of Him (His new song in our hearts); and our speaking and showing what He has done for us leading to others coming to have similar experiences.

I want to point out that the psalmist here is not saved by following a bunch of laws, or through self-effort; indeed the only role he has is to cry out and to wait expectantly in faith. All of the work, and pardon the pun, all of the “heavy lifting” is done by God.

And so on one level David is recounting a personal experience where God has delivered him from a desperate situation; and on another, David is actually speaking prophetically of the common experience of every person who is saved by faith in these last days, the days after the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ on the cross for our sins.

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 planned for us no one can recount to You; were I to speak and tell of them, they would be too many to declare. – Psalm 40:3-5

In these verses I am struck with how similar this sounds to things we have been reading in Galatians. Paul wrote to the Galatians because they were turning away from the gospel they had heard and were listening to “righteous” men who were telling them to follow again the law, keeping feasts and holidays and other outward observances. But as David writes here, “blessed,” that is, happy, content, satisfied is the man who trusts in the Lord and does not look to others who promise systems and methods and programs for achieving righteousness. Such people are invariably proud and what they offer, ultimately, is false gods, as setting ones hope on anything other than Christ is a false god.

The verb tense here is also similar to Galatians in that people who have been lifted from the slimy pit (in the past) are blessed if they continue to put their hope and trust in Him (in the present and future). How about you? It is easy to get trapped into thinking that salvation is the work of God, but sanctification, that is the process of becoming more and more good, more and more without sin, is our work to do, that we have new laws to follow that will make us righteous. I don’t want to get ahead of where we are in Galatians, but let me just say that this is not how it works. We have a role in sanctification, but our role starts with continued faith in Christ, with a continued ever-deepening relationship with Him. To put it another way, if we only give lip service to our relationship with Christ, anything else we do is not only doomed to failure, it is like a false god, and is actually offensive to God. There is no “Plan B” for sanctification.

My daughter Sarah asked me this week if Jesus was “my best friend.” I think my answer was something like “I think so, I hope so.” She went on to say that she had been thinking about what it meant for Jesus to really be her best friend, how thinking in terms of friendship had really made her think about Christ differently. She is on the right track. In our modern age in America I am afraid that we are losing the ability to even have a deep friendship with another person; let me just say that reading someone’s broadcast Facebook page does not make you a friend. A real friend is one you really open up to, someone you let see the real you, warts and all, and who you allow to help you, to say things you don’t want to hear, to help you grow in love and godliness.

The psalmist then goes on to praise God for the wonders He has done. I think perhaps David was referring to the securing of the borders of the land of Israel, a land in which the children of Abraham can find peace and security and the opportunity to live for God. But how much more does it apply to us, the children of the promise, the children of Christ Himself, who are promised eternal life with Him, an eternal future of freedom from sin, freedom from the wars against our bodies both from within and from outside us, and an intimacy with our creator, the source of all goodness, the one whose very name is Love, a future we truly cannot properly begin to imagine, a future we truly cannot “recount.”

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.” – Psalm 40:6-8

The notes for this verse say that the phrase “my ears you have pierced” in other manuscripts says “a body you have prepared for me.” In Hebrew, the two phrases are very close, and I believe the latter phrase is correct, because it is quoted in the book of Hebrews in reference to Christ. I want to read a chunk of Hebrews 10 so that you see the context.

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. If it could, 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, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. – Hebrews 10:1-4

Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said: “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.’” – Hebrews 10:5-7

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). 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. – Hebrews 10:8-10

Now, on one level, David said this, as a desire to serve the Lord, out of gratefulness of what He had done, to deliver him, and we too can quote the psalmist (and should do so) and say, “Here I am; send me!” and “I am your servant.” But like the psalmist, we cannot obey this perfectly; like the psalmist we will have successes and failures, fighting the desire to be our own masters. Only in Christ were these verses fulfilled perfectly. Only Christ was the perfect, sinless servant, serving even to become the once-for-all sacrifice, foreshadowed by the almost-sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis, hinted at through the sacrificial system enacted at the time of Moses, but only fulfilled by the only one who could ever actually take away the sin of the world – Jesus, fully God and fully man, without sin and yet becoming the curse of God.

By the way, “sacrifice” and “offering” and “burnt offerings” and “sin offerings” are 4 different words in Hebrew. The first is the “thank offering,” the second is the “grain offering,” the third is the “whole burnt offering,” and the fourth is what is called the “sin offering.” We talked about each of these back in the message on Leviticus; in fact, we talked about how there were 5 kinds of offerings. There is one offering missing here – and I will tell you what it is at the end of this message.

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; I speak of Your faithfulness and salvation. I do not conceal Your love and Your truth from the great assembly. – Psalm 40:9-10

Again we can look at this in multiple levels, multiple layers. This was apparently true of David; he did teach the people and lead them to follow after God; although he also had moments of spectacular failure, he did speak to the people of God. And this was certainly true of Christ, who went through the countryside, putting up with physical challenges, crowds of people who didn’t really want to know Him but just wanted His miracles, and with many other teachers and leaders who hated Him and wanted Him to die. Yet in all this He taught His disciples and taught the crowds about the kingdom of God and about salvation. And similarly it should be true of us; we are all called to be witnesses, maybe not in the “great assembly,” but certainly one person at a time, becoming God’s servant through sharing the great news of the salvation found in Jesus Christ.

Do not withhold Your mercy from me, O Lord; may Your love and Your truth always protect me. 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. – Psalm 40:11-12

Some have suggested that this is meant to be another psalm, separate from Psalm 40. I do not think so; I think this is a classic chiasm, a parallel structure found often in ancient Hebrew poetry and found countless times in the Bible. We are back to our psalmist in trouble.

But does this not also describe us? We may be saved, but we have no promise of a life free of future crises. As one of my very favorite verses says, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world.” – John 16:33

Be pleased, O Lord, to save me; O Lord, come quickly to help me. 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. But may all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; may those who love Your salvation always say, “The Lord be exalted!” – Psalm 40:13-16

If you are a Christian sharing your faith, people will be watching you. And there will always be some who, whether privately or even in your face, will mock you when you do have struggles and trials and fall. Our modern instant news media world seems ever more eager to find examples of Christian failure and broadcast it to the world. Our response to this should not be to keep quiet, but to turn to God ever hungrier for Him in our lives. And may we never lose our joy in Him; we should be known for our inexplicable joy in Christ. And we should also be those who are quick to praise God, publically and privately, and it should not be forced but spring up out of the joy in our hearts.

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. – Psalm 40:17

This is the Christian life. It is not easy, in that we battle the world, the devil, and even our own flesh. If we try to do it on our own we will certainly fail. But if we do it on our knees, continually seeking after God, remembering how He has helped us in the past and continually seeking Him, asking Him, to do it again, we will find that His yoke is easy, His burden is light.

And so what was the missing sacrifice or offering in verse 6 of this psalm? It is the fellowship offering. To quote from my message on Leviticus: “The fellowship offering was an animal offering, but unlike the consecration offering, some of the meat was cooked as food, not burnt up completely. The fellowship offering was to restore one’s fellowship with God. The idea, symbolically, was that the one making the offering and God would ‘share’ in the food. There was a deep understanding, a tradition, a cultural belief, in many ancient cultures that sharing a meal with someone linked the two of you together. Physically, this was true in a sense, because you both had part of the same meal in you after you ate, and as they say, ‘you are what you eat.’”

The fellowship offering, like all the other offerings, has been fulfilled in Christ, but in a way, this is the one offering that we continue to observe; it is in a symbolic sense that this offering is what we do when we take communion, when we share the bread and the cup. Jesus freaked out a lot of people when He said,

I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is real food and My blood is real drink. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me, and I in him. – John 6:53b-56

When we take the bread and the cup of communion, we use symbols of this greater reality. And we do this because He told us to do it, “in remembrance of” Him. Later, Paul wrote,

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way, after supper He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. – I Cor. 10:23-26

And when He comes, we will be with Him, and we will no longer use symbols but will experience in full the greater reality, the greatest reality, of being in Him and of Him; the true meaning of the fellowship offering will become apparent as we experience the unimaginable joys of true, complete fellowship with our Savior and Creator.

And so, for now, we remember Him with the bread and the cup. Spend some time reconnecting with your best Friend, opening yourself up to Him, confessing sin, worshiping Him, and when you are ready, come up and take the bread and cup back to your seat. And again, when you are ready, partake of the bread and cup, proclaiming His death, His sacrifice for you and for me, rescuing us from the eternal slimy pit. The Lord be exalted!