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1/19/2020
Getting Real: Wisdom Waits
Psalm 40
1. Deliverance by God, Past and Future: For those who suffer from claustrophobia, there is no worse feeling than being confined, restrained, trapped in a tight space with no room to breathe and no room to escape. We all can relate, to varying degrees. Why else would the psalmist highlight in God’s deliverance how, “He brought me out into a broad [spacious, wide open] place” (Psa. 18:19)? What claustrophobic language did David use to describe his calamities in Psalm 40:2? Have you ever felt that your life was spinning out of control? That you were being enveloped in sinking sand?
2. Response to Deliverance, Public Praise of God: Psalm 40 presents a clear formula: [ Salvation from God >> Public praise of God ]. According to 40:16, “those who love your salvation say continually, ‘Great is the Lord!’” But is this a mere private confession? To whom has David told his glad news of deliverance in 40:9-10 and why is his audience repeated twice? What ways do we as a church body and you as an individual believer share with one another the ‘glad news of deliverance’?
3. The Purpose of Praise: The primary purpose of this public praise, of course, is to bring glory to God. This is why we were made (Isa. 43:6-7), and this is what we will delight in doing for all eternity (Rev. 5:9-10). But this praise has another function as well. According to Psa. 40:3, what will David’s ‘new song’ (an actual, literal song, he will actually literally sing out loud before others!) accomplish in the lives of his hearers? How does this verse inform our understanding of what it means to ‘evangelize’ or to have ‘spiritual conversations’?
4. God’s Thoughts toward Us: God is omniscient (1 John 3:20; Job 37:16; Isa. 46:9-10), but His knowledge is not a static knowledge, it is an active knowledge. What does this mean? It means that God not only knows all things, but that He is presently thinking about all things and all peoples. Read Psalm 40:5 and 40:17. What do they have in common? Look for the word ‘thought’. Have you ever thought about God’s thoughts? God thinks about your thoughts. Flip forward in your Bible to Psalm 139 and read verse 17-18. Together with 40:5, how many thoughts do these psalms teach God thinks about you? Are you encouraged yet?!
