There never was a truer, better friend. Through the whole journey of life and our circumstances change and our life situation change, we change. and to know that God is with us all the days, even to the consummation of the age, to know that we're going to make it safely home because of our Good Shepherd. That gives us great joy, and that gives us great peace, even in the hard times. And one of the ways, you know, that connection with God is displayed also in connection with other people. and to see God's people from other places in the world, as well as here, it's a great encouragement. Friends from Africa, and also, I was greeting these folk this morning that I didn't quite recognize, and so I thought maybe they're visiting for the first time, and lo and behold, it's Todd and Sarah Hudson, on furlough from Austria, so they're back here, and I know they're not the only ones visiting with us, but think about the family of God, whether it's Europe or Africa, America, wherever we go, we have a connection. That's a beautiful thing. God has given us a love for Him for each other. I draw your attention this morning to Psalm 40. Psalm 40, we're breaking from our first Corinthian series and just focusing on a psalm of praise. So we're gonna read this psalm and then make some observations in general about it and then move on to learning from it what God would have for us. To the choir master, a psalm of David. 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, 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 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 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 from 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. And 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, oh my God. This psalm is punctuated with the psalmist's determination to make God's goodness known. I want to point that out so we will structure our study this morning. In verses 1 through 3, he declares, I sing praise to God. Again, God has done great things. I'm going to make it known through song. In verses 4 and 5, I will proclaim God's wondrous deeds. Verses 6 through 8, I will gladly obey God. In verses 9 through 10, I have told the good news of God's deliverance. And in verses 11 through 17, I will joyfully pray for rescue. Now, of course, you would expect a psalm, an exaltation in God, to call for us to praise God this way. And with Thanksgiving coming up this week, you're not surprised to hear extra emphasis on thanking and praising God. That said, depending on what you're going through or what heartaches that you've endured, an emphasis on making God's goodness known could seem as if we're sugarcoating reality for the sake of the season, but not so. Will you note how Psalm 40 begins and ends? In verse 1, I waited patiently for the Lord. That's really translated in a little more refined way than David said it. Literally, waiting, I waited. Or, I waited, waited for the Lord. The language the psalmist uses conveys this intense time of waiting that lasted a good while. In fact, if we go back to Psalms 38 and 39, they describe the desperation of the psalmist as he waits for the Lord's intervention. So one thing I love about the Psalms is they're just, and the Bible itself, it's just brutally frank about the way life is. And there are these seasons where it seems like God is like sitting on his hands, like there's these troubles and we're overwhelmed by them and we want deliverance now and we have to wait. And then as you make your way toward the end of the psalm, the psalmist describes his current crisis. Evils surround him. His own iniquities overwhelm him. He is poor and needy. And so he cries out to the Lord not to delay rescuing him. But as he ends the psalm, he's waiting once again. So the repeated call to make God's goodness known is not divorced from the harsh realities of life. In fact, in such an emphasis is critical to our surviving the harsh realities. And so, you know, on any given day, like, it's really difficult, I find it difficult, even as the Lord's Day rolls around, you say, okay, time to praise God. And so you flip on the praise button, right? The difficulty is that what's coming out your mouth often isn't coming from your heart. You don't feel like praising. Maybe you feel like sleeping, maybe you feel like crying, but to praise God doesn't always just come so easily. And the Psalms reflect that, and this Psalm reflects that. You have this determination to make God's goodness known in the face of really difficult circumstances. The memory of God's rescue in the past, the expectation that He will do it again in the future, are rooted in who He is. He is really, really good. And His actions show it. Will you note also that this psalm is inscribed to the choir master, the psalm of David. If you know anything about David's life, you know that his praise to God arose from among many deadly challenges and personal failures, not just stunning victories. And that he sent this to the choir master tells you that what David experienced was not unique to him. Rather, it reflects the experience of God's people. What David has written is suitable praise to be sung by other believers, too. not just heroes of the faith like David, because it's consistent with the characteristic way that God acts on behalf of his people. They worship him for good reason. He really is good. He's proven it over and over again, not just in David's life, but in ours. And therefore, it's good for us to give praise to God. So, verses one through three, We see that the psalmist determines that he's singing praise to God. I waited patiently, I waited, waited for the Lord, and he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, 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. So we know even from the psalm that God's servants endure seasons of long waiting. Our perseverance in waiting for the Lord to intervene reflects our faith that He will not fail us. So there's actually value in those times of waiting. if God was just like instantly relieving us of our suffering and our difficulty, there would be no faith necessary. But our waiting Our waiting shows how we view God. It's like if you have a friend that you believe in, if that friend is late or if that friend hasn't come through yet on something they promised, if you really trust that friend, if you really believe in the goodness of that friend, you're not freaked out that he's late. You're not worried that she's not gonna come through because you know this person. And you have confidence that they'll make good on their promises. And that's the way it is with God. And you know, David saw this. I mean, David was probably about 15. So think about it, a freshman in high school, that age, he's about 15 when Samuel anoints him to be king. He was 30 when he finally became king. And in the intervening 15 years, he was on the run for his life. David knew what it was like to wait and wait and wait. He was twice as old when he finally made it to being king as he was when he was anointed. He had to wait a long time. But Yahweh inclined, he bent down to David's cry and heard it. God's not deaf to our prayers for help, nor is he so exalted that he will not stoop to come to our aid. You know, God is great, but it doesn't mean he's oblivious to us. He stoops to us. He knows us. He intervenes on our behalf. And David describes God's rescue of him as lifting him up from a pit of destruction, from the mud, literally the mud of slime. David could not extricate himself from either. So it was God who set his feet securely on solid ground, on a rock. He knew what it was like to be marked for death and hunted like an animal. He knew the blood and gore of the battlefield. He knew betrayal and intrigue common in the courts of kings and the halls of government. And he knew well his own sins and failings. These rescues from God inspired his praise to God in song. You know, singing to God, had been his pattern ever since childhood. He was the sweet singer of Israel, even though he's a warrior. And when he guarded sheep and fought off predators as a young boy, he was already singing songs to God. You know, every fresh deliverance can inspire a new song to God. Our praise to him need not merely be reruns of interventions long ago, but also the ongoing story of his continued faithfulness to us to this very day. I mean, we do rehearse the stories of long ago, but God hasn't quit being God and God hasn't quit being faithful. God hasn't quit being good. And when somebody who's good does good toward us, it lifts our spirits. It makes us want to sing. We sing about what inspires us and gives us joy. And that's why God's people have always been a singing people, Old Testament and New, throughout church history. And they always will be. When we sing about the ways God has rescued us, our doing so, according to the text, causes others to perceive, to see how great and good He is. to see the reality about who God is and what He's like. And then that insight, once that's unveiled to people, it creates a reverence and awe for God, a fear of the Lord. And when people come to hold God in such high esteem, now that's a shift of disposition from our natural bent to ignore God and run from God. They now see God as the Savior, as the Rescuer, as the Great One, as the Good One. Then that naturally follows that they begin to trust Him. And so what you really have here is a summary of what sharing the gospel is all about. We share firsthand accounts of what God has said and done so that others might fear and honor God the way he deserves and thus come to trust and rely on him to save them as well. And so really our songs are really another way of evangelizing. It encourages the saints, but it evangelizes the lost because it tells the good news of a God who's good and who rescues. And if you look at the way the world thinks, they don't think of God that way. They think of God as a cosmic bully. They think of God as interfering with what they want to do with their lives. They try to write them out of existence because they want to maintain their control. The things they can't explain about God, they assume are bad things. So let's think about what David has presented so far. Why do you think waiting and waiting for God to take action on your behalf is actually worth it? Because I know all of you have had to do this. If you're a believer, you've had to wait on God. Why is that good for you? Think about why it's good for you. Because it is good for you. It's good for me. It doesn't always feel good, but it is good for us to develop that perseverance and faith. And what would these verses lead you to believe about God's attentiveness to you as one of his people? I mean, David describes him as bending down and lifting him up, very personal engagement with David and his life. And God has the same kind of personal engagement with all of his people. And what about God and his activity in your life? Let's bring it down to now. not a thousand years before Christ. Let's bring it down to now. What about God's activity in your life would make you want to sing? Part of what that means is you remember what he's done. and you're rehearsing what He's done, and you're warming your heart with rehearsing, giving thanks to God for what He's done, and do others come to perceive what God is like through the way you sing and rejoice in Him? Have you noticed how some people when you interact with them, they have this joyful spirit about how good God is. They see their life in terms of God's interaction. And when you ask them how things are going, or even some kind of difficulty comes along, they just naturally weave in what God is doing through the difficulty. And there's a light to their countenance. And you go away encouraged. I mean, I'm looking at some of you, and you're just like this. You know, there are others that I'm not looking at any of you right now. But you know how some people, they're just whiners. They just whine all the time. Everything's about what's wrong with life, but there are others. And it's not like they're ignoring reality, but it's like they're facing the reality of how good God is even in a difficult world. They look at the difficult things in light of the goodness of God. And people like that really do cause us to grow in our estimation of God and our love for Him, our desire to sing to Him, our desire to trust Him. David goes on in verses 4 and 5 to say, "'None can compare with you. "'I will proclaim and tell of them, "'yet they are more than can be told.'" Of course, that word blessed, we see it often right at the beginning of Psalms. The idea is happiness. You're living a life that is the best life there is, the security and joy of a covenant relationship with God. We lost it in the garden. Through Jesus, we regain it. We have fellowship with God, and we live in that happy state. The opposite of that is not trusting Yahweh, and instead joining those who are proud and who are fooled by lies. Think about it. Go back right to the very beginning of man turning away from God. What did they do? They listened to Satan's lie. Basically, his lies were twofold. One is God is not truthful. When he says you shall surely die, you're not gonna die. And secondly, God is not good. The only reason he's holding you back is because he doesn't want any challenges to who he is. He doesn't want you to be like him. They were both lies, and Adam and Eve bought into it, and that lie continues to this day. God is not faithful. I know what the Bible says, but. And he's not truthful, and he's not good. And this lie is the opposite of what it is to actually trust the Lord. The problem with thinking that way is that it's disconnected from reality. That's what a lie is. A lie doesn't match up with reality. They are believing a lie in view of themselves, they are believing a lie in their view of the things that happen in their lives, and they are believing a lie in their view of God's greatness and goodness. They are living by lies, rather than trusting God, who has given us multiplied reasons to trust Him. There's not a day that goes by that does not testify to God's greatness and goodness. David summarizes it this way. He says, your wondrous deeds. In other words, deeds that cause wonder and amazement because of how miraculous they are. And then, your thoughts toward us. So in one sense, you've got his greatness here, his goodness, your thoughts toward us. Why would an infinite being like God care about us at all? But he does. and he's demonstrated it all the way from the beginning. In fact, the Psalm 8 will recount the creation mandate and blessing where God makes us in his image and gives us the responsibility of managing the earth. And the psalmist says, when I look at the heavens and the stars and the moon, the planets, when I look at all of this and see your greatness, what is man that you're mindful of him? Why do you even think about human beings? We're so small by comparison. But God does think about us. I mean, and here's the thing that generates our praise, the greatness of God and the goodness of God, the immensity of God and the fact that he knows us each by name, and that he takes thought for you, that he actually cares. You don't know any other human being that cares about you the way God cares about you. You know, even your spouse can't care for you in the way that God cares for you. God knows you better than anybody else knows you. And he loves you more than anybody else loves you. And so this great God is truly good. And so David vows to proclaim both his wondrous deeds and his thoughts, and he's never gonna run out of examples. He says, they number more than can be told. Now that's true. You know, should we actually make it through a day without having just cause to tell of God's goodness? You know, if I can make it through a day, then I'm just not really paying attention to what's actually going on. And I need to pay attention to what's actually going on and not get stuck in this kind of pit of despair, of unbelief, but rather to look at what God has done. So why do pride and believing falsehood undermine trust in God? And basically it's this, they're not facing reality. I'm choosing to live in an altered state of reality rather than giving God the credit that he deserves. And then what deeds of God and what thoughts of God toward us, and remember that he's put so many of these thoughts into his words, it's written down for us, have brought happiness to your life. Increase your joy by sharing them with others. Like, don't hold that inside. Share it with somebody else. Anything that you enjoy, you enjoy better if you can share it with another person. Haven't you found this to be so? I mean, if you experience something amazing, it's like you're dying to tell somebody. Well, God does amazing things all the time. Tell somebody. just as David has done. And then he moves on to more of a heart issue. I will gladly obey God, verses six through eight, and sacrifice an offering you've 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, oh my God. Your law is within my heart. Kind of anticipating what God will do with the new covenant. There's a big difference between the ceremonies of worship, despite all the work that might go into them, and I'm including when I say ceremony, I mean the stuff that we do, okay? There's a big difference between that and the true worship that gladly bows to the will of God. Ever thought about the fact that unbelievers can sing Amazing Grace, they can sing How Great Thou Art, they can sing words that are magnificent and that are true and right and yet have hearts that are far from God? They don't even believe in Him. They just like the pretty music and they like the pretty words. Samuel said as much to King Saul, who tried to smooth over his direct disobedience to God with offerings of animals that he should have never taken in the first place. It was supposed to all be devoted to God to begin with. In 1 Samuel 15, Samuel said, "'Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams, for rebellion is as the sin of divination and presumption as iniquity and idolatry. Why would rebellion be like the sin of divination? Well, basically, you're following the will of Satan. You're engaged in a sort of witchcraft where you're rebelling against God. You want the power, but your heart's not in line with God. You're really responding the way Adam and Eve responded when they listened to Satan's lie. And iniquity, twistedness, idolatry, putting something else in place of God, that's what rebellion is. I mean, if God is God, You know, if God is sovereign, then why wouldn't I obey Him? If I believe He's actually in charge, then I should be glad to obey Him. You can't find a better master anywhere. And so, we want to obey the Lord, and Samuel goes on to say, because you have rejected the word of the Lord, He has also rejected you from being king. Of course, David became the king in Saul's place eventually. But years later, David himself, in his repentance from adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, declares in Psalm 51 these words, for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You will not be pleased with the burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise. Those sacrifices, though they were sacrifices God had commanded in the Old Covenant, were actually worthless. They were a charade apart from a heart that was actually broken before God. One who obeys is truly listened to what God has to say. And so the psalmist says, you have given me an open ear. Literally, you have dug for me ears. Now some see a reference to the slave who declares his lifelong obedience to his master, allegiance to him, by having his ear pierced with an awl. You see that in Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 15. But the Hebrew doesn't use singular ear here. We have singular in English, but the Hebrew has plural ears. You have dug for me ears. The idea is that God has unplugged one's ears so that he actually hears and listens to God's commands. And so this is something God does for us. Are you paying attention to God's directives or are your ears stopped up? Have you ever noticed how somebody who doesn't want to hear usually doesn't hear that well? You wives have noticed this with your husbands. If you ask him to do something that he doesn't particularly want to do, you know, and I know, I know that if I'm asked to do something I don't really want to do, of all the things that I might forget, that will be one of them. Okay? And the same with God, you know, when we're not really willing to obey God, we're not really bowing our hearts to him, we don't hear so well. We're kind of oblivious to it. Well, the psalmist, In contrast, the light to do God's will, and it was written that he would. Remember what God said of David before he even revealed his name? In 1 Samuel 13, Samuel says to King Saul, now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart. and the Lord has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you." This is an obedience issue. David was that man after God's own heart, but even David was imperfect in his obedience. And Psalm 40 anticipates David's descendant, Jesus the Messiah, who would render perfect obedience to God. And His perfect obedience made His sacrifice on the cross acceptable payment for our sins, so that we could be forgiven. And so the psalmist, in seeking God to open a heart of obedience in the face of, later he's going to talk about his iniquities, hearts that don't want to obey, really anticipates the Savior who will change us at the heart level. Hebrews 10, five through seven quotes from the psalm. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, sacrifices and offerings you've not desired, but a body you have prepared for me, and burnt offerings and sin offerings you've taken no pleasure. Then I said, behold, I have come to do your will, oh my God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. Jesus did exactly what the Father wanted every single time His entire life and marked Himself as the true Son of God. So, it's good for us to think about this. Why does God care less about our outward expressions of worship than about our obedient heart toward God? Let's just say you know some other people well enough to know how they actually live, and you see them just really getting into the song service praising God, but you know that during the week they don't live anything like what they're singing. How does that make you feel about that person? Does that bring glory to God? It produces cynicism. It actually is very off-putting. Okay, now we're talking about the God who knows everything about you. He sees into the depths of who each of us actually is. And this is perhaps one of the challenging things for us as we worship because we're gonna be like David who says that my iniquities overtake me. I'm just, there more than can be numbered. And it's hard for us to praise God because we know our hearts are often so out of sorts with God. So we need God to work in our hearts, to unplug our ears and write His law on our hearts so that obedience is our joy every bit as much as giving praise to God. In fact, when we're obedient, the praise takes on a meaning that it didn't have before. It's not just hypocrisy. And why would a high view of God lead to glad obedience that truly honors Him? something that dawned on me a few years ago, that God's law is not just a moral law regarding right and wrong, but everything that's right is beneficial, and everything that's wrong is harmful. And so, when you and I choose to do wrong, we choose harm. We harm ourselves, we harm others. And so, You know, God gives the commands because God is good to us. And what he's doing is he's saying, look, this is the path to walk. You go a different path, you're gonna get in trouble. Go the path that's the good path. And when we believe that about God, then it's much easier for us to obey him. And then why is the perfect obedience of Christ so important to our salvation? Of course, you know the theological answer to that, right? That if he had his own sins, he would have to pay for them, but he had no sins, so he could pay for ours. And you wanna talk about the goodness of God? God so loved the world that he gave his only son. to die on the cross for us. The goodness of God is so great that He takes sinners who rebel against Him and He rescues them and changes them at a heart level through Jesus. That's how good He actually is. And so the psalmist goes on to say, David goes on to say, number four, I have told the good news of God's deliverance. I have told the glad news, verse 9, of deliverance in the great congregation. So he's sharing this beyond Just a small group to all the worshipers there. 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. So the great congregation of God's people need to hear the glad news of deliverance. What God has done in our lives should not be hidden from others. We can't be silent about it. We can't conceal God's faithfulness to save because God is marked by steadfast love and faithfulness, and we all need to hear that fact affirmed over and over and over again. We need this. Because we easily lose heart in the waiting, waiting times. We lose heart and we need to hear. That's why testimonies of God's work in our lives is so important to our times together. That's why we include them, by the way, in our Sunday evening gatherings. We said, this has gotta be a regular part where we hear what God is doing. We don't wanna just say, hey, we're always talking about what God can do. We wanna hear about what God has done. We want to affirm the faith of people saying, look, look at how God has intervened and it's important to share these things. It's important for parents to share this with your children. Tell them the story of what God has done in your lives. Don't just tell them about David and Goliath, tell them about you and what God has done. Tell them about David and Goliath, yes. Don't leave that out, but let them know that God didn't die when the New Testament was finished. Let them know the goodness. Be praising God. You know, it's not just unbelievers that need this testimony of the glad news, it's also believers. Believers need to hear the gospel affirmed and God's goodness testified to. Our strength and our courage fail, our gratitude weakens, and our hopes grow dim when we don't rehearse God's saving goodness. We need this. This is kind of like the pep talk And it's not based in wishful thinking. We're just reminding ourselves, okay, yes, God did that, God did that, God did that. So yes, I have reason to believe that God will keep doing good things because He is good. When you or I withdraw from time with God's people, when we're not present to hear their testimonies of God's interventions, when we're not in the great congregation, it's easy for any one of us to grow disillusioned and deviate from the path of serving God with joy. This happens to all of us. You can be a pastor who makes his living talking about God, but if you are sidelined from being with God's people and hearing what God is doing, then you tend to go downward. You tend to get more depressed. You tend to be less believing that God will do according to his goodness. Others need the encouragement that God is still at work among us. So, you know, I want you to think about, you know, keeping in mind what God has done in your life. and making a note to yourself, and whether you do it on your, you know, cell phone or whether you write it on your hand or whatever, to make sure you don't stop talking about the things God has done, and encouraging others with this. So, in what ways are the truths of the gospel crucial for believers as they seek to serve God? I'll just give you one example. Like, you know, at most of the funerals that we have, we have a smattering of lost people, but most of the time it's mainly people that already are trusting in the Lord. Why would I need to hear about the faithfulness of God at a funeral? Because I need to be reminded that this is not the end. that the best really is coming, that God is faithful to His promises, and I'm always saying goodbye to my friends and my family at funerals. And I need the encouragement, no, there's more. God is good, and even death cannot cut us off from him. So, you know, that's gospel. As believers, I need to hear the gospel of God's free forgiveness for me, because I need to be forgiving people that have wronged me. There's all kinds of ways the gospel is so important for us. And then, what encouraging deliverances from God should you be sharing with others this week? Okay, this is Thanksgiving week. Why don't we do this? Let's just do this. Since it's Thanksgiving week, and you're gonna have to come up with something you're thankful for anyway, right? Why don't you get going on the list? And keep it, keep a running list. Meditate on these things. Because there are those times of waiting. There are those times of crisis. There are those times when you desperately need God to deliver you, but don't let that drown out praise to God for all the things He's already done. Like, I know it's gonna come through. because he's good. And then finally, we see the psalm ends that way. I will joyfully pray for rescue. Spends quite a bit of time on this in 11 through 17. As for you, oh 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. There are more than the hairs on my head. My heart fails me." So the psalmist is not saying, it's just all these bad people around me, and saying, I'm one of the bad people. In fact, this is the most discouraging thing, I think, to a believer, is the evil of one's own heart, not just what other people do. 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. And by the way, there are plenty of places on earth where people are still trying to literally kill Christians. So this is, he's not being a hypochondriac here, and this is still the way, and if they can't kill him, they'll at least show that they despise them. Let those be appalled because of their shame who say to me, aha, aha, in other words, gotcha, gotcha. 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. I don't have the resources. I don't have the strength. But the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer. Do not delay, oh my God." How can he have that kind of confidence? It goes back to the very character of God. Look how he summarizes it. He talks about, you've not restrained your mercy from me. That's God's compassion, like the compassion of a mother for a child in her womb. It's an unrestrained compassion for us. Your steadfast love, your loving loyalty that's rooted in relationship with us and that produces all kinds of kind deeds. It's not just a loyalty that's lip service only. and then your faithfulness, you're completely reliable. God makes so many promises and he's completely reliable. And it's these character qualities of God that are the basis of our preservation, our survival in a dangerous world when our own hearts are twisted, not just the people around us. Evils, calamities surround the psalmist on the outside. His own twistedness overtakes him. He's practically drowning in his own iniquities. There are more in number than the hairs of his head. And but for the goodness of God, he would have no hope at all. You know, as you look at David's life, you see that a lot of his troubles were connected to his sins. A lot of your troubles and mine are connected to our sins. Are they not? And David is praying for deliverance from those. Look, if God won't deliver people from the troubles connected to their sins, then there is no gospel at all. Because all the troubles that humanity endures in the present hour can be traced back to our sin against God when we believe a lie. All of it. God is so good that He rescues people like that, and He changes them. It is only that God is pleased to deliver him that David has any hope at all, else his enemies would gloat over his downfall. They have plenty of flaws to ridicule and for, that's why they say, aha, aha, see? That proves it. They find pleasure in his hurt, the exact opposite of God's heart toward him. God finds pleasure in delivering and in saving. David prays that God will shame these enemies by delivering him. The world hasn't changed. There are many who hate God's people, pointing out every flaw they can find, mocking them, rejoicing over their downfall as proof of their hypocrisy or of God's nonexistence. So beware if you find yourself ever delighting in the sins and failings of those who profess to belong to God. Watch your heart if you find yourself desiring others to be shamed for their flaws. You are displaying not the heart of God, but the heart of the adversary, Satan, who loves to slander God's people. When a brother or sister fails, it is a cause for grief, not jubilation. When they sin, it is time for seeking to restore them, not to belittle them before a watching world. We want to support one another in our trials. We want to faithfully pray for one another. We want to show forbearance toward one another in our sins and failings so that we can freely confess our sins one to another, that God might be exalted for what he's doing in our lives. Those who delight in seeking the Lord and His salvation find great joy in the deliverance He grants those who are in deep trouble, both from the outside and the inside. And we confess with David that we are poor and needy. We pray for God's help and deliverance without further delay. We have days when we're on cloud nine. We have days of great celebration when we're really on top of it. But it seems like there's a lot more days in between that can be just the opposite. And we desperately need to be rehearsing for ourselves how good God is. Are your reactions to the sins and failings of professing Christians more like that of God's enemies or of God's beloved family? And in what ways are you keeping yourself aware of the dangers you face, not just from the outside, but from the inside, your own iniquities? It's really striking how sensitive David is to his own sins, not just the sins of other people. And think about it, why is humble confession so foundational to divine deliverance? Think about the way salvation works. Only the people that want it get it. And if you think you don't need it, you don't want it. And so it's important for us to know how weak and needy we actually are, and in what ways do you find yourself this morning poor and needy? I mean, let's just face it, where are you? Where are we this morning? And therefore greatly desiring God's deliverance. Will you cry out with the Psalms, don't delay God, deliver me. James Montgomery Boyce and his treatment of this Psalm sums it up this way. Troubles, yes, pessimism, no. because of a good God. Let whatever troubles you face today move you to seek rescue from God. Let His proven character of compassion and steadfast love and faithfulness give you great hope and great joy in trusting Him to intervene on your behalf. Praise Him for His goodness. In so doing, you will find strength and joy even in the deep trials. Make His goodness known. Sing praise to God. Proclaim God's wondrous deeds. Gladly obey Him. He wants the best for you. And tell the good news of His deliverance. And joyfully pray for rescue. God is good, and we want to declare it this day. Let's pray. Thank you for your kindness to us. And Lord, we confess that there are times in our lives when we're confused by both what you do and what you don't do. There are times of waiting. There are times when we feel surrounded by calamities. And we look to our own hearts, and we don't find encouragement there. We find iniquity there. We find a constant straying from you there. And Lord, it casts us down. We realize how desperately in need we are for You to rescue us, for You to unplug our ears, for You to write Your law in our hearts, for You to change us and transform us so that we can actually praise You with full heart and honesty. God, I pray that you would teach us to make your goodness known. And Lord, may it not be just in Thanksgiving season, although there's plenty of reasons at harvest time to thank you. But Lord, may the gratitude we have for you, the praise we have for you, really fill our days, because your wondrous deeds and your thoughts to us are more than can be told. We pray these things in Christ's name.