Alright, if you'll take your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Psalms. We're taking our normal first of the month break from our morning book and we're covering a Psalm this morning. We'll be in Psalm 40. So turn with me to Psalm 40. Let's read 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. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud and to those who go astray after a lie. You have multiplied, O Lord my God, Your wondrous deeds and Your thoughts toward us. None can compare with You. I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than I can be told. In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, Behold, I have come, and in the scroll of the book it is written of me, I delight to do your will, O my God. Your law is within my heart. I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation. Behold, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O Lord. I have not hidden Your deliverance within my heart. I have spoken of Your faithfulness and Your salvation. I have not concealed Your steadfast love and Your faithfulness from the great congregation. As for You, O Lord, You will not restrain Your mercy from me. Your steadfast love and Your faithfulness will ever preserve me. For evils have encompassed me beyond number. My iniquities have overtaken me and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head. My heart fails me. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me. O Lord, make haste to help me. Let those be put to shame and disappointed altogether who seek to snatch away my life. Let those be turned back and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt. Let those be appalled because of their shame who say to me, Aha! Aha! But may all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You. May those who love Your salvation say continually, Great is the Lord. As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer. Do not delay, O my God. So this psalm, as we see just from the opening title, states to the choir master, a psalm of David. Very easy to see that it was written by David, the author David. We don't know when it was written. There's nothing to really indicate the time in which this was written or what specifically was going on with David when it was written or why he wrote this. But it is part of four psalms, beginning in Psalm 38 through Psalm 41, which really give praise to God for His deliverance. There are quite a few lessons within these psalms aside from that, but that is the primary focus within these four psalms. The theme of this specific psalm, apart from that primary deliverance, it's really two-fold. One main focus is patience. Patience as David waits on the Lord. And then the second is the guaranteed deliverance or salvation of God. Now, patience is something that we all struggle with, right? I think I can speak for all of us when I say that. I imagine that most of you are like me, we have a similar relationship with patience, and we have a kindred spirit with a guy who was told he needed to learn more about patience, and he responded by saying, patience, never heard of her. Patience is not a common human trait, but it is certainly more, or excuse me, less common in the day in which we live in, in this fast-paced society where the world is at our fingertips. But it is necessary. Patience is something that we need. We need to learn. We need to have, especially as we approach our prayer life and as we consider God's work in our lives. Here in verse 1, David, while in stress or in trouble, he cried out to the Lord, but he did so with patience here. He did so having gone through a struggle, having waited patiently on the Lord. He knew that God heard him as he went to him in prayer. He brought this trouble to the Lord. He knew God heard him. He knew God was able to deliver him. He had faith, he had confidence that God would answer his prayer in his time, and therefore it would be in the right time. We can assume then that if David waited patiently, he probably prayed patiently as well, right? It wasn't just one prayer and he was done. I mean, this seemed like it was something that took a while for God to finally answer, and you have to assume that David is like the rest of us. He continued to pray about a situation that was causing so much trouble in his life, and so he prayed patiently, and he prayed persistently. Quoting Willem van Gieren, Answer to prayer may not be immediate, but perseverance in prayer expresses itself in humble submission to God's sovereignty and the longing for a new expression of God's covenantal faithfulness. Meaning that when we pray to God seeking an answer or a resolution to something that we are going through, but God sees fit to answer that prayer later on down the road, not quickly, we must continue to pray with humble hearts, willing to wait and trust in God that He will answer us in the right time according to His will. In doing that, we are rightly submitting ourselves to the will, the perfect, sovereign will of God, right? When God does see fit to answer us, then we should then see, as David does here, God is showing us His covenantal faithfulness, and we should rejoice, as David does here in this psalm. Spurgeon states this, Charles Spurgeon, he states, we will never wait on the Lord in vain. I'm sure Spurgeon's not the only one or wasn't the first one to have stated something along those lines. That's just who I pulled that from. But that is true. We will never wait on the Lord in vain. Now David has written a psalm before, which has spoken of his prayer, something he's going through, some struggle, and he's written in a way in which God had not answered him yet. Here, God has answered him already, but he's written before about something going on in which God had not yet answered him, and he seems to have written before with a lack of patience. Psalm 13 is one that comes to mind. It opens this way, How long, O Lord, Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? That's David's opening words in that psalm, in that prayer really. In that song, we have an opening that shows us the humanity of David, right? He doesn't know when God will answer. He knows he's struggling. He knows he's going through a difficult situation. And he seems to be ready to be done with it. And he wants the Lord to answer him. And he wants to know, how long, Lord? How long will it take before You come to my aid? Before You deliver me? David probably was looking at things a little improperly in that moment. And we follow David in that example probably more often than what we'd like, right? We get impatient. We struggle about things we're going through and we want God to answer us now. Why are you hiding your face from us? Of course, by the end of that psalm, there in Psalm 13, David did choose. He had chosen to trust in the steadfast love of God. He did eventually end in the right place. He knew God was faithful and His love was steadfast and He would answer. Here, though, David has rightly chosen to wait on the Lord and trust in His timing and not in his own. And how much better would we be if we did this? If we followed this example? If we found contentment, really, in every situation, because we were confident that God is working all things out for our good according to His time. According to verses 2-3, when God listened to David and answered his prayer, He did three things for David. David states three things here, and each one really is a progression, if you will, a progression of blessings. we see that David was in a bad place here. He's in a bad place to begin with. Now, he's already out of this situation, but he's going back to where he was at. He was in a really bad place. He states he was in a pit of destruction, a miry bog. Again, we don't know what this situation was. We actually don't know if it was due to David's own sin which put him there, caused this situation, or if it was sins that someone else had... had inflicted upon David, that someone else had done something to inflict this situation on David. Either way though, David was in a bad place. And so first, when God began to bring David out of this place, out of this Mare Bog, this pit of destruction, David recognized that it was God that lifted him out of the pit, right? God brought him out. The pit here is a reference to a pit of death. This Meiri Bog is most likely something similar to the place that the prophet Jeremiah was thrown into according to Jeremiah 38. If you are familiar with that passage, if you were here with us on Wednesday nights a couple of years ago, we went through that. But in Jeremiah 38, the prophet there, he referred to this place as a cistern in which he was thrown into. And to just get a mental picture of what that was, Jeremiah wrote that he was cast into the cistern of Malchi. by being let down by ropes. As he was let down into this place, there was no water in this cistern, but there was mud, only mud. And Jeremiah states that as he's lowered into this bog, this cistern, he sank into the mud, and he stayed there. Eventually, There were 30 men sent to get Jeremiah out of that pit, out of that bog. To do so, they tied rags together and clothes and ropes and they lowered these down together and had Jeremiah put them under his armpit so that they could drag him out. That's really the middle picture that David is trying to give us here. David's not really in this pit, but that's where he has come from, basically. That's the state in which his life was at that time when he was going through these issues. That's how he felt at that time. Now, after being in a pit, or a Maori bog, or to put it in Alabama small country town language, after being in a mud pit like this, just think of it as a mud pit, to be lifted out of that and set onto steady ground would be a blessing, right? I mean, imagine yourself, and I'm picturing Again, small country town in Alabama riding around in a truck and getting stuck in a big mud pit and having to be drug out of that. But your literal body in that instead of a truck just being drug out of this pit, I mean, that would be a blessing in and of itself, right? To come out of that situation. But David states that God did more than that. He didn't just bring him out of this pit and just set him on the ground and then leave. He put David on a rock. Something more sturdy and sure than just the normal ground. God gave David footing that was sure, and in doing so, David states, it made his steps sure. It gave him confidence to walk forward, to continue his path. So we see God took David out of the pit, and then He put him on a sturdy rock, and then third, David states that God put a new song in his mouth. Do you see the progression here? Do you see how each step seems to be a greater blessing? David went from the pit of destruction, from the pit of death, to a strong, sturdy rock, and then to a place where he had a song and praise in his mouth. This new song in his heart was meant to give testimony to God's greatness in deliverance and what He's done for David. Because God did this for David, He declares that many will see it and fear here. So apparently whatever David was going through, whatever situation he was facing, it was something that was visible. It was something that was well known to many or even all who knew David. They knew what was going on. And it must have been a truly dire situation in order for David to feel confident that others would see that God had delivered him from this situation and even blessed him out of it, and that that would cause them to fear God. Now it's possible that those whom would fear here, that David is speaking of, this group whom would fear the Lord, were people who had wished David harm. They were perhaps enemies of David, and maybe ones who had inflicted this problem on David in the first place. They would see though that God was with David as God brought him out of this situation, and as God is with David, these people would have been against David, and therefore they would have been against God. And if God would have delivered him, and could have delivered him from such an affliction, it would cause them to fear, right? I mean, as God has delivered David from such a great situation, then how could they stand against someone like that? How could they stand against a God like that? But this fear is really spoken of here as more along the lines of a reverential fear. a healthy fear, really, that children of God are supposed to have for our Heavenly Father. So it is more likely that this group that David is speaking of that would fear were other Israelites, were other children of professing believers, children of God. They saw David's great affliction. They still saw whatever was going on. But then they saw Yahweh's great deliverance of David, and it struck them with a reverential fear in their hearts as they saw this greatness. Now, that's not to say that enemies of David or future enemies of God's children would not and cannot witness the greatness of God and His deliverance of children of God, whatever they're going through, and be struck with a reverential fear in their hearts and really be saved from that. I mean, we can look to Paul and the Philippian jailer as a great example of this, right? But within the context of this passage, I believe David is really referring to those who already knew what it meant to have a reverential fear of God, but this deliverance of David was a needed reminder for them of what it meant to see and be part of the greatness of God and to have that greatness around in their lives. This fear, David states, would do something amazing. He says it would lead these others to putting their trust in the Lord. And if we could draw a parallel today, If we were to find a member in our congregation struggling with a major sin, maybe something along the lines of drug addiction or pornography, and then we saw God deliver them from that sin, we would give great praise to God, rightfully so, for bringing that person out of such a great sin, out of such a bad problem. I would hope that we would see the power of God to give such great deliverance. If David's Maori bog here though was due to being afflicted by an enemy, then this salvation here would have been similar to Peter being delivered from prison in Acts 12. In that passage, after having chains just fall off, Peter then follows an angel out past the guards and through the iron gates, and he goes to the house of Mary. And those at that house, as he gets there, they're astonished. They were so astonished that they believed He was an angel. So they had to have such an awe as they saw this happen, right? As they saw Peter just miraculously come out of prison. And this would have surely struck a reverential fear in their hearts, in both Peter and their hearts, as they saw what transpired that evening and how things were worked out by God. So here in our passage, David's great afflictions, whether it be through something that had been afflicted on him, or his own sins which had afflicted him, as he was delivered from this, it led many to trust in the Lord, to be reminded of they could trust, they could have faith in the Lord. And David rejoiced over this here. Even in his own problems, he rejoiced to know that others would have faith in the Lord through what God had done through him. The acts of God inspire the people of God with a sense of awe for God, and this often produces a new song. We see examples of that over and over. To just name a couple. In Exodus, after the Israelites had been in bondage in Egypt, they were pursued. God brought them out of Egypt, right? And they were pursued. by the Egyptians to the Red Sea. Now, as you well know, God miraculously parted that sea and they walked across on dry land. Then, as the Egyptians tried to pursue, God crashed that water back down on them, rescuing the Israelites entirely from the hands of the Egyptians. Immediately following that event, in chapter 15 of Exodus, we're told that Moses and the people of Israel, they sang a new song of praise to the Lord because of that deliverance. If you fast forward all the way to Revelation, the book of Revelation 5, after the Lamb has taken the scroll as the only one worthy to take the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders at the throne of God, they fell down before the Lamb, and they worshipped the Lamb, and they sang a new song to Him. Interestingly, if you read through both of those songs, and I won't for the lack of time, but if you read through both of those songs, There is a focus in those songs on the greatness of God, on the salvation or the deliverance of God for God's people by His mighty hand, and third, there's a focus on His eternal reign as God forever. Listening to Brother Jeff Short about this psalm and about a new song, he explained that this word or phrase for new song is constantly connected to the coming Kingdom of God. Ultimately, the new song is sung in expectation of God's reign as King here on earth. And with that will obviously come God's deliverance for His covenant people. That's exactly what we saw in the two examples there in Exodus and in Revelation. And again, you can go read those on your own time. But that's really what David has in mind here. He will continually to speak about and praise God for His deliverance according to His covenantal promises, which ultimately will lead to His coming Kingdom. In verse 4, David continues his praise and declares that the one who trusts in the Lord is blessed. Now, David has seen and experienced the fruits of waiting and trusting in the Lord here, right? He's seen what that means. He's seen the fruits of that. He's seen how Yahweh is faithful to His promises and how His covenant of love is sure. And so, David confidently declares here that if you are one who trusts in Yahweh, then you are blessed. This exclamation of blessedness is another way of just saying, oh, happy is the man who trusts in the Lord. That's basically what David is saying. If you trust in the Lord, oh, happy are you. Quoting Spurgeon again, he says, "...a man may be as poor as Lazarus, or as hated as Mordecai, or as sick as Hezekiah, as lonely as Elijah, but while his hand of faint can keep hold of God, None of his outward afflictions can prevent his being numbered among the blessed. Basically, nothing that we go through, no matter how terrible it is, if our hand is holding to the hand of God in faith, there's nothing that can outnumber the blessings that come from that. There's nothing that can outweigh the blessings of that. Spurgeon goes on, but the wealthiest and the most prosperous man who has no faith is accursed. Be He who He may. We kind of talked about that a little bit this morning in Sunday School, right? I mean, all this goes away. It doesn't matter what we do here on this earth. We can build up all the riches in the world. We can gain all the fame in the world. But if we have no faith in Christ, it's nothing. It all goes away. But those who trust in the Lord, we have everything. We have all the blessings. How happy are we? David just doesn't make this broad, general statement, though, about trust in the Lord. It's not just some broad, sweeping statement. David is really drawing a distinction here in this verse between trusting in the Lord instead of trusting in proud, arrogant men. Now, we could say that it is always best to trust in God over man, right? I mean, it is. That's just a general true statement. We don't need to take more comfort or protection from a person than we do from the protection and comfort that God will give us. That's what we need to rely on. But it is not wrong to go to someone for advice, and to trust and take comfort in that advice, as long as it's a godly person that we're getting godly advice from. It is wrong though to seek the advice and comfort of men over the instruction and comfort of God. Especially if that person you are getting advice from is someone living in open and outward sin. That's really the group that David is speaking of here. Someone who is proud and haughty. Someone who is not ashamed of themselves or their sins. Now, why would David draw attention to that group here? Why would he draw the distinction between getting advice or trusting in the Lord and trusting in this group of people? Well, partly because those who are proud and arrogant are people who exude the most confidence, unfortunately, a lot of times, right? I mean, humans are drawn to confidence, and many times the most arrogant, proud people, they exude this confidence. Whether they actually have it or not, they exude it, and we're drawn to that often. If someone acts confident, then we want their advice. They seem to have it figured out. Let's go see what they know that I don't know. If someone is proud and arrogant, though, then I can assure you that they don't have the advice you need. That attitude is the opposite of the attitude that Jesus had while He walked the earth. And if anything is the opposite of the attitude or the way in which Jesus lived His life, it's wrong. And we don't need that in our lives. We don't need to mimic that. We certainly don't need the advice of people that mimic that. But secondly, pride and arrogance and outward sin, they often go hand in hand with another major issue. David makes the statement here that these men, they go astray after a lie. This group. This lie is the lie of idolatry. These proud men, they put their own trust in idolatry, in idols. And this makes perfect sense, doesn't it? I mean, at the end of the day, idols are nothing more than man-made gods. Something that we've created or fashioned for ourselves. It would follow then that these proud men, these proud people would worship gods that they have made. In their arrogance, they think that they can fashion a god better than the one and only true God. Ultimately though, they're just worshipping themselves. It's what they're doing. And you know, again, proud, arrogant people, they want to worship themselves because they think they're great. In verse 5, David continues on and he seems to compare those in verse 4, these proud, arrogant idol worshippers, to God. They will go astray. These men will go astray, but God will not. God doesn't just Act as if He has things figured out, right? I mean, it's not just some pretense. God has declared the end from the beginning. And so, as all-wise Creator, God has given us an abundance of wondrous deeds and thoughts. So many that we could never proclaim them all, as David states here. I mean, we have showers of blessings, as the song goes. Therefore, none can compare to Him. Don't be fooled by the proud then. Don't be fooled by these idol worshippers. No matter what they claim, no matter the arrogance that they seem to put forth and the confidence they seem to exude, don't be fooled by them. Don't fall for that lie like they fell for. Don't think that you know better than God, or that they know better than God, or there's something better to be trusted than God. As people of God, we are blessed by putting our trust in Yahweh. Because we are putting ourselves under His protection. And there are so many examples of God's incredible acts of redemption in our lives and in the lives of saints throughout history. So many, as David says here, we can never mention them all. We can never even begin to name them all. And all of those, all of those acts of redemption, all of those ways in which Christ has provided protection for His people, they all cluster around the cross. And all of them explode from there, making their marks in the lives of saints in history past, all the way to future history waiting to be made. That is the ultimate act of deliverance, right? And everything comes from that, but we have so many examples of God providing that for us. So don't trust in anything else, whether it's faith, or any man-made idea of deliverance, or what somebody who's worshipping themselves, really, would provide as advice. In verses 6-8, David goes on, and he really gives us a statement of proper praise here. He says, "...in sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, Behold, I have come in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will. O my God, your law is within my heart." David draws a line here between legalism and true worship, really. He's drawing a distinction. The Jews were required to follow the law. No question. They could not disobey the law and be found right with the Lord. But God never intended them to just blindly and ritualistically follow the law. Ever. That was never the purpose. That was never what they were supposed to do. Obviously, they could never fully follow the law. No one can. But David puts what they should, their proper worship, here in perspective. He states that God didn't delight or require burnt offering and sin offering. And that seems contrary to the law because that's what the law required. The law did require these type offerings. It was the heart of the Hebrew which God truly desired. It was the heart in worship which truly mattered. If the Jew made a burnt offering and just went through the motions, then God rejected it. It was not good. Unfortunately, that was what the Israelites had done through the majority of their history. While there was always a remnant whose hearts were properly set on doing the will of God and loving the Word of God, saw the law as a set of rules to follow so that they could then gain favor from God. And so they have just ceremoniously, even to today, gone through the motions. It's not true worship. Even after the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70 and temple sacrifices were made impossible at that point, the rabbis continued to instruct their followers that to have favor with God, they would just need to shift their focus to faithful prayer and fasting and deeds of kindness instead of these sacrifices. That would gain them favor with God, since the sacrifices were now no longer available. I mean, all of those things are good. They needed to be done, need to be done, but at the end of the day, they are works. And our works by themselves can never gain favor with God. David states that instead of offerings, which here the offerings include all of the offerings under the law, David delighted in doing the will of God. And he states that God's law was in his heart. So again, this goes back to what I just said. David knew God wanted his heart. By delighting and doing the will of God, David committed himself to doing the will of God. He had the heart of Isaiah, really. Here I am, God. Send me. I want to do Your will. I want to follow You. I desire You and Your Word. Now, the author of Hebrews quotes this passage in reference to Jesus as well. Verses 6-8. In chapter 10 of Hebrews, the author is again speaking of, or quoting this, and he's speaking and showing how the Old Testament sacrifices, they were meant to point to Jesus. But how, now that Jesus had come and He had fulfilled them, those were obsolete, right? There's no reason, there's no need for those Old Testament sacrifices. But the Old Testament sacrifices in and of themselves, they were not what pleased God. The blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin, and therefore they could never satisfy God's wrath towards sinners. God's pleasure in the Old Testament sacrifices were in the fact that they pointed and pictured the One who could take away sin. Whose sacrifice would absorb the wrath of God for sinners. Why was Jesus' sacrifice able to do that? Well, because He alone perfectly did the will of the Father always, right? He alone always took pleasure in doing the will of the Father. So Jesus' life embodied what God desired for every Jew in following the law, even unto death on the cross. The Jew was to follow the law because they desired to do the will of God, and because they took pleasure in doing the will of God. The law or the Word of God was to be in their hearts and not just something they knew intellectually. Can we pull something from that ourselves? It's great, we need the knowledge of God's Word, we should be studying, we should be as the Bereans and constantly in God's Word, but if all we have is an intellectual desire, it means nothing. Look, this is a major theme in Scripture. From the Old Testament all the way through the New Testament. I mean, the prophet Micah, for example, told the Jews what he required of them. God didn't require that they bow down before Him, or they offer burnt offerings of a young calf, or even a thousand rams. Basically, that's not what would please God. Not even going and giving their own firstborn. would please God. Not that God ever demanded or accepted child sacrifice. The point is just that giving your firstborn will be an ultimate sacrifice, right? But Micah tells them, no, even that alone is not pleasing to God. No, what God required was for them to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with Him. All of those things can only be done when a heart is set on loving God and His Word, though. Not just ritualistically going through these motions. Jesus told the Jews in Matthew 9, go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I came, not to call the righteous, but sinners. The same lesson Micah was teaching. See, God has set out instructions for us to do. He has. He's given us things that we need to know about Him that we need to do in our lives to properly follow Him, and we're expected to do them. We are expected to follow those instructions. But if we don't have a desire to do that out of our love for God, and because we know and trust that following God will bring about what is best in our lives, well, we've just missed the mark entirely. And this ties back into what David has just experienced. This is what he's singing a praise about. He's already experienced the goodness of trusting in God, waiting patiently in God, delighting in God's promises instead of delighting in the promises of proud men and relying on idolatry. So David could confidently declare back in verse 2 that God had put him in a place where his steps were secure because of this. His path was on a rock and not on shifting sand. David experienced the truth taught in Proverbs 3, verse 6. We're told, in all your ways, acknowledge Him, acknowledge God, and He will make your path straight. David had acknowledged God by waiting patiently on Him and trusting in His deliverance, and God had delivered him to a straight and sure path. Then in verses 9-10, having experienced deliverance and delighted on internal commitment to the Word of God, David proclaims, It is good news of His salvation. And He proclaims this to the assembly, to the congregation. In verse 9, He states that He has told the good news, the gospel of His deliverance. And He's not just told it to one or two people, but to the congregation. He states this as though He just couldn't wait to tell it. I mean, this is just bursting from His mouth, the deliverance of God. He wasn't hesitant to sing praises to God for His deliverance. He wasn't too proud to give credit to God for His deliverance. He didn't try to take credit for Himself. The word here in verse 10 for steadfast love is that great word, chesed. Now we've brought attention to that word before, brought light to it a number of times, but just as a reminder, that word encompasses a lot. The main idea though, and that word is said, is that God's love is steadfast because of His covenantal love for us. It is connected to His promise to be faithful to us and to our good. If God has promised it, it will happen, right? So we can take David finds that language important here as it is dear to his heart. It is why he has confidence in his deliverance, and why he wanted to sing songs of praises, and why he wanted to tell others of his deliverance. He refused to hide it in his heart. Man, isn't that our challenge sometimes? Don't we struggle with hiding God's goodness and His deliverance for us in our hearts at times? We have experienced a great deliverance if we stand here as professing believers. As David goes on to describe, we have experienced this great salvation and faithfulness to God. We have known what it means to serve a God of steadfast love and faithfulness. But sometimes we keep all that in instead of singing His praises. Almost as if we're ashamed of it. Or maybe we're afraid that if we tell people about it, it's going to go away. We won't have it anymore. Somehow God's going to stop giving us His goodness. That should not be our attitude though, right? We should not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord. Everyone who acknowledges Jesus before men, He promises He will acknowledge us before His Heavenly Father. We should follow David's lead here. We should be bursting at the seams to sing and tell of the deliverance, the salvation of God, the good news of Christ. This psalm would have been sung in the setting of a congregation, in congregational worship, really. And in that, we could also follow His lead, and follow the lead of the Israelites. When we sing songs which declare the love and faithfulness and salvation of our God, then our hearts, again, should be full. And our voice is clear as we sing that. we should want to sing God's praises for those things. Our song service should not just be something that we do to get to the sermon. While we acknowledge that the preaching of God's Word is the focus of the service, we need to also recognize that our song service is very important as well. And I hope we have acknowledged that, and that is a major part of our worship here. Among other things though, our song service should help prepare our hearts and our minds to receive God's Word during the sermon. Because we've spent time vigorously singing God's praises for what He's done and what He will do for us. In verse 11, David turns to God's actions really here. David would sing praises, but David knew that God would not restrain His mercy, His steadfast love, or His faithfulness to David. Not because David sang his praises. That's not what David's point is. It's not because he sang praises he knows God and in turn is going to give His steadfast love to him. Now, David desired to sing God's praises because he knew God's mercy, His steadfast love, and His faithfulness were given freely and in spite of David's own heart and actions. How do we know that? How do we know that's where David's at and why he's saying this? Well, because in verse 12, David acknowledges how wretched he was. He said that evils had encompassed him beyond number. Now it could be speaking again of external evils, things that people had brought on him, but he doesn't stop there. He says he couldn't even count his own sins. They were so many. He felt as if they were so great that they had overtaken him to the point that he couldn't even see. They were greater than even the amount of hairs that he had on his head. They were so great that he felt as if his very heart would give out on him. David was a man who was honest with himself, wasn't he? He knew how great a sinner he was, and he wasn't afraid to acknowledge that. Now listen, this is a man who was a man after God's own heart, right? We can look at David's life, and we see a lot of problems, and it's easy to point out, but I guarantee you if we had a book written about our lives, we wouldn't want that. So since David was such a great sinner, If God still chose to give him mercy, still chose to give him love, still chose to give him faithful deliverance, then it was all of God, right? It wasn't of David. David didn't do that. God was to get all the credit, and God was to be worshipped for it, and David knew that, and he wanted that. Verses 13-15, David kind of seems to shift here to really a prayer He shifts from his own sin to those around him who wanted to bring him down. These were, no doubt, external forces, external enemies who had brought problems on David. And this might seem an odd transition for him, but I think it lines up with David's praise of God for his deliverance. I mean, David knew that God loved him. He knew that God was faithful to him, even despite his own wickedness. So if God was for him, Woe to anyone who is against Him." David pled for quick deliverance from his enemies. If they stood against him, then the truth is they stood against God, right? They stood against the God of David, and that is Yahweh. Any dishonor on David was dishonor toward God and toward David. David's prayer here really is similar to how we're instructed to pray by Christ Himself. Let me explain. When we pray for God's kingdom to come, which we're instructed to pray for, while God puts off His coming, enemies of God will continue to harass and persecute the joint heirs of that coming kingdom, right? The believers in Christ. Well, what will happen when Christ returns to set up His kingdom? He's going to come and He's going to put His enemies to shame by destroying them and He's going to vindicate His children. So we are really praying in the sense the same thing David is praying here is we pray for God's kingdom to come. In verse 16, conversely, he talks about this group in which had stood against him, and he asked God to put them to shame. Then in verse 16, he goes to really an opposite group. Those who stood and sought the Lord. Those who put their trust in the Lord. David's prayer was that they rejoiced in God. That they were glad in Him. That they loved God's salvation, and they declared the greatness of God continually. David wants them to join him in rejoicing. By saying, rejoice and be glad here, David is really doubly emphasizing how emphatically happy those that seek the Lord should be. David knew he was not alone in receiving God's salvation. He knew he was not alone in receiving God's love. He knew that there were many others who were part of that great blessing and he wanted them to have the same heart he had of thankfulness and praise for Yahweh. Here again, we have even more emphasis on the benefits of congregational singing and worship. I mean, while David did not attend for his heart of thankfulness to be only during a worship service, by writing this psalm and having it sung in the congregation, David knew that the congregation would benefit from singing these praises together, right? Singing praises to God for His deliverance and His salvation. So should we. There are benefits in our song service, our congregational worship, our congregational song service. Then in verse 17, David ends with a personal declaration. He states, David states that he was poor and needy. Now, David probably at this time, we don't know 100% because I don't know when this was written for sure, but he probably was king of Israel at this time. So, if that was the case, he was certainly far from poor and needy from a human perspective, right? One of the richest men on earth at this time probably. But David was not talking materially. He was not talking about his own riches and wealth. David knew by his own declaration how weak he could be spiritually, by what he'd just gone through. He knew how feeble he was as a man, and so David declares rightfully so, I am poor and needy. But here's the great thing. Despite that, David states, the Lord thought of him. I love how David puts that. Despite how wretched and lowly David was, David knew God thought of him. What an amazing attitude by David, and what an amazing thought really, right? Because David is not alone in that. Despite how wretched and lowly we are, God thinks of us. He not only thinks of us, but He loves us. He loves us with an eternal covenant love which can never go away because He sent His only unique Son Jesus to pay for our wretchedness and ratify the new covenant. Look, this psalm should bring to our minds the greatness of God in our lives. It really should. We know that God is great and wonderful and beyond our comprehension, but do we take the time to really reflect on how great He is in our lives? Chiefly, do we take most of all into account the fact that if we are professing believers, He has delivered us from death, hell, and the grave forever. We can draw really a parallel to what David said about his own deliverance in the beginning of this psalm. We were in the pit of death, but God pulled us up from that pit of death, and He set us on a rock. the solid rock, Christ. And He gave us that firm foundation to walk through this life. And then ultimately, He's put a new song in our hearts. A song that is a song with the expectation of the coming kingdom and the praising of God for His future reign, where we will see the fullness of our salvation from sin and the greatness of our God in eternity. I hope we draw those parallels and those thoughts as we read through this psalm. I hope we've gotten that this morning going through this psalm. If you'll stand with me.