Getting Where You Need to Be
Psalm 40:1-5
Christian Assembly
September 23, 2007
Larry Craig
1. Where are you going with your life? Where do you want to go? Do you know how to get there?
2. The difference between your life and that of an insect is that deep down inside you want meaning in your life. You want a life of value. That means also you want your life to be valued, by others as well as yourself. Hopefully too, you want your life to be valued by God.
3. The big question, of course, is where God fits into all this. Sometimes people talk like these ideas of self-fulfillment are modern psychological concepts unknown through the rest of history. Actually they have been there all along, but the names were different, and we paid the price for ignoring them.
4. The basic struggle in life is to be happy, and we need to know if God is on our side or not. This sounds crude, but why do we do the things we do? We do some things because they are right, even though they are unpleasant. But not doing what is right would cause us more distress than the sacrifice that we made. All the sins and vices that we have are our feeble attempts to bring us pleasure in a world that is indifferent to our joys.
5. You can go back to the Garden of Eden. We say that the first sin was Adam and Eve eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But why did they eat? Eve thought that God was withholding from her something that was good. And people have been struggling with that question ever since.
6. Campus Crusade has probably done more to bring people to God than any other human organization in the world. In their early days, they were most known for their booklet, The Four Spiritual Laws. It noted how that just as there are physical laws that govern the natural universe, there are spiritual laws that govern our relationship with God. The first law is that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
7. The question, of course, is how does God’s plan for my life fit with my plan?
We have all heard of people who have 5 year goals, 1 year goals, and 6 month goals. Are we supposed to ask God to help us meet these goals? Is it wrong to have these goals?
Are we supposed to totally subordinate our plans for God’s (Not my will but thine be done.) Are God’s plans at odds with our plans, or are His plans what we would freely have decided for ourselves if we knew as much as He did?
8. There is a poem I remember from years ago. I only remember bits and pieces, but the line I like best I do remember. I got nothing I asked for, everything I wanted, my prayers were answered.
Psalm 40:1-5 describes where God wants to take us and how to get there. It describes a bit of this process, the stages of finding a life that is truly worth living. I am going to teach this passage backwards. There is no point in telling you how to get somewhere if you don’t want to go there in the first place.
40:1 I waited intently for the LORD, and He stretched out to me and heard my cry. (Surely I waited, I indeed waited, Del.
40:2 He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. 40:3 He put a new song in my mouth, praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and trust in the LORD. 40:4 Blessed is the man who has made the LORD his trust, who has not turned to the proud and to those who go astray after falsehood. 40:5 Many are the wondrous deeds You have done, Lord my God, and your thoughts (plans, purposes) toward us; there is none to compare with You. If I proclaim and tell (of them), they are too numerous to count.
I. The last three verses tell us the goal of this process. What does a life look like that God has had His way with? Or, if you really follow God, what would your life look like?
I call it the goal of the process rather than the goals, because they are like the flowers of one bouquet rather than 5 individual flowers.
The first is a new song. Not everybody likes to sing. I think a lot of people who come to church think of singing as either a little corny or too much like scouts around a campfire.
But music has a way of moving us. The right song can send most people to either humming, foot tapping, or actual singing.
When it says that God has put a new song in our mouth, it means that there is something inside of us that wants to get out. A critic may say that that may not necessarily be a good thing, but in this case we will see that it is.
When Jesus came into Jerusalem
When you understand and see God rightly, your enthusiasm should at least equal that of a Bears game. The fact that we can see the Bears and not God may require a little extra effort on our part to focus our attention on God.
But our enthusiasm for God is a good indicator of how rightly we are seeing God. If God does not fill us with awe, wonder, and excitement, then our view of God is clouded or distorted. Don’t say I am not the religious type. Pray that God would open your eyes to see Him as He really is.
This new song that we naturally want to sing is praise to God. In church we sing these songs whether you feel like it or not. That’s not a bad thing. Again, it’s a good indicator of the health of your soul, or your relationship with God. If you don’t care to sing God’s praise, I don’t think this necessarily means you are in a bad place. And we will see why later, but it certainly means that this is not a place you should stay in. And that God wants to bring you out the other side.
Whatever else you want to do with your life, God wants it to be an influence on others. Actually you already are. However you live your life, you are either contributing to building the Kingdom of God
Verse 4 says Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust. This is not a statement like “If you trust in God and do all these things, God will give you a great reward in heaven.” This is the observation of someone who is seeing what is going on close at hand and noting that the person who trusts in God is really better off. They see the difference that trust in God makes in a person’s life. This word blessed also carries the idea of fortunate or happy. This person has it good, because God is real in their lives and comes to their aid.
The proud and those who turn to false gods here are those who one might be tempted to turn to for help in a time of trouble, people who seem successful in life apart from God. They seem to have some answers to life, but in the long run they will not be able to give the help you need.
In fact, when you walk with God, you may want to take notes. You will be surprised at how much He actually has done in your life and how often you have heard Him speak to you. I have been in such a situation recently, and a friend told me to write down and send her all the things God had been teaching me. I started doing that, but I regretted I didn’t start sooner or even now that I don’t write more about it. Like the Psalmist here, if I were to start talking about it, I would lose track of all these things.
So this is a picture of where God would like to bring you, the life of a person who knows and walks with God. But now we go back to see how we got there.
At first glance this can seem downright depressing. David said that before he had this new song in his mouth praising God, he was in a pit and miry clay. From this and other psalms, we learn that David’s primary problems came from his enemies, people who sought his hurt and death. Many times, because of this, he almost despaired of his life.
The fact is that it is when we go through hard times and problems that we need answers to prayers, and it is when we see God work in these times that we come to know and understand God better.
The mistake that we often make is that we think God wants to keep us in difficult times to test us, and there seems to be no end in sight. Job is often used as an example. But we forget that before Job’s problems started, he was blessed by God. His trials lasted a definite period of time, and then he was again blessed mightily of God.
The fact is that we do need to grow and to learn about God. We would like to live our lives in a comfort zone, a life of predictability and routine. No surprises, no crises, and enough money to pay the bills and buy some toys.
In the sermon last week, I used this passage as an illustration of depression. The pit and mire as pictures of feeling trapped and stuck. I have certainly been there. The hard part when we are there is believing that God really wants to pull us out.
We might ask the question: why would He? Or we can feel like it depends too much on us, and we don’t have what it takes to succeed.
This brings us to verse 1. I waited for the Lord, and He heard me. The key here is the word ‘wait.’ First the Hebrew construction intensifies the action, so this is some serious intentional waiting. Secondly, the word itself is not some passive waiting like you are sitting in a doctor’s office. This is more like the prodigal son’s father who was out on the road waiting for his son to come home. He was looking for the smallest sign that his son is coming.
1996 might have been the worst year of my life, and that was before I found out I had cancer. I am not sure we know enough to rank the years of our lives, but I felt like I was dying inside. Guess what? I was.
When I found out I had cancer, it was actually the turning point. The next four months were some of the most fruitful in my life in terms of hearing from God.
I did hear a few things from God in the months prior to this, but it seems that God was anticipating the time when I would be waiting on Him. I already believed in healing, but I didn’t really care if I lived or died, and that does make a difference. And there were other issues I had to learn about.
So I had to wait on God. Spend a lot of time with God. Doing a lot of talking to Him. And I heard a lot of things from God. I should say that it is really important to know the Bible. Knowing the Bible is like having a lot of tools in your workshop. You never know what you are going to need, but you are ready for anything.
When your life is in a comfort zone, learn and study all you can in the Bible. Learn the stories. But take the time. Because the time will come when you are pushed out of your comfort zone. It could be a long unemployment. A divorce. A sickness. A death. And you are going to have to try to make sense out of all of it. You are going to have to find maybe a new direction for your life. You are going to need to hear from God, and the Bible tells you what to expect from God, because you will have all these examples of what God did in the past.
There are four key passages that talk about waiting on God that I would like us to look at, the first being this first verse of Psalm 40. God delivered David from the miry clay and from the pit, but David had to wait on God. That isn’t talking so much about the fact that this deliverance wasn’t immediate, but that David was actively engaged in seeking help from God.
If you want to get to know God, if you have problems which make you feel like you are drowning, know that God wants to deliver you. But know also it may take some time and effort on your part, because it is only then when you have gained something that will really last.
The second passage is Psalm 27:14 hè"Uaqºw÷ !ÕeBil jØ"mA)áyºw qázAxø hÛfwñhºy-le) hè"Uaq 27.14
;h×fwhºy-le)Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. This is almost the same expression that was used by Moses and Joshua to the Israelites when they were about to enter the Promised Land to possess it. The first inclination was to be afraid, because their enemies were giants. But knowing that God wanted to give them the victory, they were told to be strong and courageous.
;h×fwhºy-le)Wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. This is almost the same expression that was used by Moses and Joshua to the Israelites when they were about to enter the Promised Land to possess it. The first inclination was to be afraid, because their enemies were giants. But knowing that God wanted to give them the victory, they were told to be strong and courageous.
The next passage is Psalm 37:9,34 Those who wait for the Lord will possess the Land. The English translations usually say inherit the earth, which sounds like this is in heaven or the millennium, but the expression is found over 50 times in the Old Testament for possessing the Land. The word land and earth are the same words in both Hebrew and Greek, and the word inherit can also mean to gain possession of..
This waiting on God (I would even liken it to when Jacob wrestled with God) is what we need to take possession of all that God wants to give us. I think far too often we pray for things and when they don’t come very soon, we assume that God just didn’t want to give them to us. But we need to wait on God.
This waiting may or can refine our requests and can lead us in different directions, but let’s not think that this in any way is meant to discourage our original requests. Usually our eyes just need to be opened to a few other things.
The last passage I want to mention in this context is Isaiah 40:31: those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings like eagles. They shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and faint not.
In this waiting on God, you will find yourself in a constant exchange with God. You will be asking questions, and you will be receiving answers. For a time, you may think you are speaking out of your own head, but after a while it will sink in. God is at work here. I want more of this.
Let’s summarize where we have been today.
In Psalm 40, David describes a person in whom God has done a mighty work. This person was in a pit (the pits) and miry clay and God brought him out. He has given him a new song. This person wants to, has to, sing, and it is praise to God. Other people notice and say that God indeed has been at work here. I want some of that too.
The way there is not an easy path, but you wouldn’t have it any other way. Don’t make the mistake of accepting the particular problems as a permanent part of your life. David was delivered out of the pit and the miry clay. He didn’t just live in them.
Getting out of our comfort zone doesn’t require some catastrophe to happen to us. It can be when God puts a big work on our heart, and we step out to do it.
Waiting on God is an essential part of our relationship with God. Don’t despise it when it happens. Embrace it, and pursue God. It will be the richest time of your life.
I. The goal 40:3-5
A. A New Song
B. Praise
C. A real effect on others
D. A blessed life v. 4
E. A prosperous life v. 5
II. The gain 40:2
III.The groundwork 40:1
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