Audio Transcript
There’s a feeling of being stuck in life, absolutely stuck — not just sad for a day but trapped chest-deep in a muddy pit, like quicksand is holding you down. And you wait and you just wait. And you send up your cry to God for help. But no answer comes — not immediately. And you find yourself wondering if God has just . . . forgotten you.
Today, we look at Psalm 40. We read it yesterday in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan (if you joined us this year), looking at this difficult waiting period, which David called being in the pit. And it’s on the mind of James in Waltham, Massachusetts, who does not tell us what his pit is right now, but he’s clearly in one.
“Dear Pastor John, thank you for taking my question. As I read Psalm 40 again, I notice the psalmist describes himself being lifted out of the pit and set on a solid rock, with a new song put in his mouth (verses 2–3). How can I understand this image as God’s deliberate action in my own life, as something I would perceive when it happens? In what ways might my current struggles and waiting be shaping my trust in God, as the psalm begins with patient waiting and God’s attentive response (verse 1)? Could my difficulties be preparing me for a future testimony that encourages others to trust him, like David’s resolve to proclaim God’s faithfulness (verses 9–10)? How should I interpret the psalm’s repeated calls for mercy and acknowledgment of God’s care amid ongoing troubles (verses 11–17)? How can I find purpose, hope, or a ‘new song’ in the tension between waiting, suffering, and trusting God? How do I see purpose in what feels pointless?”
Seasons of Discouragement
Well, almost 46 years ago now, this psalm, Psalm 40, especially the first three verses, had a huge impact on the way I understood and managed my own seasons of discouragement — and there were many in those early days of being a young pastor.
I believe this psalm — especially those first three verses — is in the Bible precisely to show us how to navigate the troubled waters of discouragement. So, let me read them, because not everybody has them in his head.
I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
and put their trust in the Lord. (Psalm 40:1–3)
That’s just amazing, that sequence of thought. There’s a pattern of life here, a pattern of dealing with discouragement. It’s very realistic, it’s very sober-minded, and it’s very hopeful. I see six stages that are here in this pattern:
- David is in a muddy pit. That’s where our friend seems to be, and where all of us are from time to time.
- He cries to God for help.
- He waits for the Lord, and it doesn’t say how long. I’m glad it doesn’t say how long he waited.
- God draws him out of the pit to security.
- God gives David a new song.
- Many others come to trust God when they see how David has come through this.
King David’s Pit
I think it would be fair to infer from what James says in sending us this question that he is in some kind of pit with King David. (That’s what I like to call this psalm: “In the Pits with a King.”) James doesn’t tell us what it is. Neither did David, but that’s okay.
If that’s right, if James is in the pit with David, then let me say to James with assurance that these verses are designed by God — indeed, this experience that James is walking through is designed by God — in order to bring about at least three new things in his life. God is always doing ten thousand things when he’s doing anything, and 99 percent of them we don’t know. We don’t know the purposes of the individual things he’s doing, but he may grant us to see two or three, and that’s what we see here. That’s what David is offering us. Of the thousands of things that God is doing through this experience of the pit, David is going to show us and show James three purposes of God in it.
“God is always doing ten thousand things when he’s doing anything, and 99 percent of them we don’t know.”
So, looking back, David interprets what God was doing in that season of his discouragement, and he says that he was bringing David into these three new experiences. And these are three new things that God intends to bring about in James’s life — that’s my prayer anyway. I believe that’s what God intends to do in this APJ session right here. David says that God gave him (1) a new security, (2) a new song, and (3) a new significance. That’s what God was doing with David’s discouragement.
New Security, Song, Significance
Now, since God is sovereign, there’s nothing random in the Christian life. James 4:15 says, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” The phrase this or that is intended to cover all the details of the Christian life. “If the Lord wills, we will . . . do this or that.” So, when I say that God has a good design and a loving purpose in the discouragements that come to his children, I’m not making that up. And I feel strongly about this because I just saw something online where somebody just flat-out denied that God has any hand in the discouraging things of our lives, which I think is absolutely unbiblical.
So, when David says that God brought him through the pit of destruction and the miry bog for these three new experiences, we can learn something of what God’s purpose is for our seasons of discouragement.
James, while you can’t know everything that God is doing in your suffering that you’re going through right now, evidently you can know this. He intends to bring you through and give you a new sense of security in his care. He intends for you to sing a song of praise with new intensity. And he intends for other people to see what you’ve been through, or are going through, such that they fear their own unbelief and realize they’re in a bad situation and they then put their trust in the Lord.
And I encourage you by prayer and faith to join God in the expectation that that’s what he’s doing here in this psalm for you and in this moment right now as we do this APJ together. So, let’s read it again:
- “[He put] my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure”: That’s your new security.
- “He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God”: That’s your new song.
- “Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord”: That’s your new significance.
Waiting Patiently for God’s Timing
Now, here’s the key: David said that while he was in the pit of discouragement, he waited for the Lord. He waited intently, or patiently, humbly, hopefully. He wanted God to show up with manifestations of his security and his song and his significance, and God was delaying. That’s why David was waiting: God was delaying. The cry that he had sent up to God was not answered immediately. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had to wait.
This is the great challenge of the Christian life: God’s delays, God’s timing. God’s timing is almost never our timing. Therein lies the great test of our faith for all of us, isn’t it? How long, O Lord? How long? Fifteen times in the Psalms, we hear the cry “How long, O Lord?” because God is God and we’re not.
God’s ways and God’s timing are not our ways and not our timing. “A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past” (Psalm 90:4). So, David says, “I waited patiently for the Lord.” It’s the waiting in the pit of discouragement when God is hiding his smiling face that prepares us for the new security, the new song, and the new significance.
One of the many paradoxical things we read is in Ecclesiastes 7:3, where it says, “Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.” Now, what on earth does that mean? “By sadness of face the heart is made glad.” And I think it means (at least) that there are seasons of loss and discouragement and grief and suffering without which we could never have known certain depths of gladness.
And is it not also true that while we wait in the pit of destruction and the miry bog, that God is preparing a new sense of security for us, a new intensity of song for us, and a new Christ-exalting significance?
