Let's read the first three verses, kind of refresh our mind as to what we're doing, and then I'm gonna jump over to verse six through eight. I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined to me, and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction and out of the miry clay, and he set my feet upon a rock, making my footsteps firm. And he put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see it and fear and will trust in the Lord. And then verse six, sacrifice and meal offerings thou hast not desired. My ears thou hast opened, burn offering and sin offering thou hast not required. Then I said, behold, I come, and the scroll of the book, it is written of me. I delight to do thy will, O my God. Thy law is written within my heart. We have been looking at the psalm. The reason that I looked at it, as I mentioned to you before, was because Alan sent it out in an email. And that week, some very dramatic things happened that had to do with my wife and some prescriptions that were not being fulfilled and not taken care of by my insurance company. And so it was a real matter of prayer because this is a drug that my wife has to have and has to have it daily. And so we've run into this problem once before, and it took us almost a month to get it. And it really was a real problem. And yet we went to the Lord to pray about it. And then Alan sent this email, and I read this psalm. and it really, really ministered to me. It helped me understand how to walk through this again, to keep my eyes focused upon God. And we've looked at the first five verses, and we've gone through those, and then we begin to look at verse six, seven, and eight as well. And in the first three verses, you get the gist of what's really going on and what we looked at before. What we find is that you and I are going through, on a consistent basis, miry bogs or pits of destruction, things that come into our lives that are very, very difficult to handle. And some of them seem to be very small, like what I was just mentioning, or something that could be very, very large that has to do with, like Mike, having a scare. And I'm sure his wife was definitely put into some kind of situation where you feel as though it's a mire bog. You feel as though you can't make it through it. It's very, very difficult, and it's very, very hard. And it could be very short, or it could be very long. And how is it a person is supposed to walk with God through this? What are some of the things that God gives to us to help us understand it? And the first thing it was explaining to us in Psalm 40, just as a review, is that you and I have to learn how to wait while we're going through this situation. The situation is not eradicated usually overnight. In other words, you're gonna deal with it day after day after day after day. And so that is the waiting period. The waiting period has to do with time. That's what really has to do. So when we are walking with God and a circumstance comes into our lives, we are emotionally disturbed, we feel very inadequate to move through it, and we find ourselves really looking at a kind of destruction of the very system and the things that are around us. Things are being pulled out from under us, okay, as we try to handle that. And God comes along and he tells you to wait patiently for him. He explains to you that there will be a time where he will answer this prayer and bring you out of that pit and set your feet upon rock and set your feet upon a path that will move forward. But that waiting period is the time that you find that is testing. It is a test. really, of what it is that you have in your life in terms of your faith and your love and your trust for God. We consistently say in our heart that we trust him. We consistently say in our heart that we love him. But God, throughout our lives, I believe, does test this. We get this out of James chapter 1. We have it all sorts of different places in the Bible where God says he will allow events to come into your life and he will test the core of who you are in your relationship with him. And what he's doing is demonstrating positive things to you. In other words, how far have you grown? What is really chiefly, deeply a part of your life that holds you? I mean, what scriptures do you go to? Where do you find the heart of God in the middle of these things? How do you understand what he is, really, truly, to you? Without those, you really have, it's just words that are coming out of your mouth, and you really don't even know. how far this is gonna go, okay, in terms of those things and those characteristics and that fellowship with God. This comes into your life and it becomes a place that needs salvation. That's exactly what it says. It is a need of salvation. And you don't have the power to say. And so you have to lean upon him, you have to understand him, you have to check and see if there's any real trust in you at all. Now, most of us, find a lot of inadequacies in these situations. And particularly people like me, who when I was a young person at 18 years old, had a tremendous doubt situation about the existence of God and all sorts of kinds of things. And it really became the Achilles heel of my life. And so here I am, a teacher of the word, and I've been teaching it for 30 years, almost every single Sunday. yet those things have to be tested by fire. They have to be made sure as to what they are because what is inside of you is a failure, okay, and it is God sanctifying you through the process of that fire and he's really letting you see where he's taken you and how much you've really given to him and that's really what's going on, okay. Normally what you'll find is you are antsy, you're struggling in the period of waiting. That time process is very, very difficult to handle, okay? Because you're wanting the salvation the next day, if not that minute. And so that is the test. It is bringing forth from you an issue that you must face. Either you have progressed a great deal and God is ratifying that, or you will find that you have not progressed near as much as you thought you needed and you need to fall on your knees and find a way to cause God to trust you and you to trust him in the midst of this situation, okay? Now, David has gone through this. We're on the other side of the pit. David is writing this psalm on the other side of the pit. He's gone through it. He's already gone through it. And he knows the principles that he has learned And he's expressing those principles to you and to me. He says, you must learn to wait patiently for God to deliver you out of something that you cannot deliver yourself. In the midst of this waiting, there will be fears and there'll be things that will cause you to not understand what he's doing. He already knows what he's gonna do. The timing is already set. And that's what we've learned when we studied lately. In other words, when you fall into the pit and you begin to pray for deliverance, you don't know when that deliverance is gonna come, but God has already set the deliverance. It's already done. He already knows what he's gonna do. And in Isaiah 30, it says, he waits on high for those to wait for him. He waits on high. He's waiting for you to wait properly. Because he already knows what he's going to do. And the time has already been set for the deliverance. So during that process, you have to understand that. That is one of the steps of faith. The steps of faith. He knows the exact moment when this should be over. Now that's a very, very hard principle to get a hold of. Because every single prayer that you pray is essentially a deliverance of this particular situation now. That is exactly what you pray. Now, my wife and I have been going through a long struggle since her cancer, and she's been freed from that, but the cancer treatment actually destroyed her body. And there isn't anything we can do to fix the body. So we're walking through this. We keep asking for wisdom about where to go, and how to handle it as best we can do. But we can ask for deliverance, in other words, a miraculous healing of our body, and we do. But I've learned through the time that I've been walking, almost eight years in this situation, that I move away from the prayer of deliverance now to a prayer of understanding what is going on here and letting Him decide on the deliverances. to see the purpose of what is going on in the waiting. Because we don't want to wait, we want the waiting period gone, so the deliverance is here. And so that's essentially what you find, that David has learned, and what we see in the Word of God. So that's what we looked at when we looked at verses 1 through 5. It's just a beautiful passage in verse 5, he says, I have learned the thoughts of God towards me during this time of the pit. I have learned the thoughts of God towards me. And I have understood that all that he's done in the past is what I stand on for the present pit. Everything that he's done in the past, Every deliverance that he's given, all the salvations that he's brought into my life, all the beauty of his personhood. That is what I stand on in the midst of the pit. And from that, I have now gotten out of this pit. And now my song is a new song. It has been increased in my ability to understand what he's already done in the past, and now this is the past. Okay. And I tell you that I cannot relate to you. That's what he says. I cannot relate to you. I can't even bring into remembrance all the deliverances God has given that are wondrous to me. That is my new song. And I have something new to tell you that just happened two weeks ago. Okay. That God has delivered me again. So that's an enormously beautiful description of how a man should get through the pit, and what he should stand on, and what he has, okay? Then at the very end, in verse six, seven, and eight, we find in our last study last week, and that's the sheet that you have in front of us, right now, okay? We found that David has interjected new concept in relationship, because it's not found in the rest of the Word. He enters, what should I do, okay, besides sing my song and recount the wondrous acts of God to me? What should I do? What does God require of me from this deliverance? What does he require of me? Okay, and then David goes hunting through his brain And what he does is, in verse 6, he says, sacrifice and meal offerings thou hast not desired. My ears thou hast opened. I have learned this. You have opened my ears to the understanding that you do not want these things, sacrifices and sin offerings and meal offerings. That's not what you really want. Those are things that are kind of precursor to what you really want. Okay? And David says then, verse 7, then I said, and he's saying it directly to God, behold I come. I've gone through the pit. You've delivered me. and I have understood that this is not what you want. Behold, I come, and in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do thy will, O my God. Thy law is written within my heart." This is what God wants from us as we understand the value and the meaning of the pit in our lot. When we come out of the pit, and even when we are now going into the next pit, Okay, God is trying to bring you to a position to where you say, behold, I come. It is written in the volume of the book, okay, that I desire to do your will. And your heart is written upon my heart. That's what he wants. So this is the chief thing he desires from David, from you, and from all men. I desire to do thy will. And I do it from a heart that is united to your heart. And when I go through the pit the next time, I long to go through the pit right. I long to go through it doing your will. In terms of my heart's response, in terms of my trust, in terms of my uniting with you, and in terms of willingly, purposefully going through the pit. Okay? Now, this is to be, this is so strong, That it is picked out of the Old Testament and dropped in Hebrews chapter 10 as the defining concept in the mind of Jesus as fully man and as perfect man. This is the only place this is picked up in the rest of the world. This is prophetic. what I just read you. It is prophetic about a man who will come. Behold, I come. In the volume of the book, it is written of me. I have come to do one thing. to do thy will in this given circumstance, in any given circumstance, in all circumstances, in all moral decisions, in all acts, in all thought processes, I come to do thy will. And there's only been one perfect man who has made that happen. David longed for it, but he didn't do it. He did it in the power of God at times within his life, but he failed utterly at other times. So he didn't bring this off, but he desired to have it. And that is to be the desire of our own hearts. And when we fail, and we will fail, we will not trust God in the pit. We will not necessarily go through this well. There is a forgiveness. There is a movement towards perfection and utter sanctification and full sitting with the Lamb of God next to the throne. Now that's what Hebrews 10 gives to us. It basically says you want these things, you want these things, you want these things, but you can't get them. There was only one man who got them. That is Jesus Christ. And through his giving of his body for us, he essentially forgave us of the failures in the pit. And then he lifted us out of that and perfected us forever. And so when you fail, when you fail and you will fail. I mean, when I went through this, my first thought was fear. Okay, what am I gonna do? And it was the first thought, okay? And fortunately for me, in this particular circumstances, I read the Psalm and it quieted my soul. And it caused me to respond and trust to God. And within 24 hours, he delivered me out of the pit. Okay, now I've been in a pit for eight years. And our prayer is consistently moving towards what is the purpose here? What is the meaning here? We ask you take us out of the pit. But at the same time within the pit, there is the waiting. And within the waiting there's the trust and the finding out of doing the will of God right within the pit. Because that's what you desire. So that's what David learned. Now how did he learn this? He learned this from looking at the life of Saul, who did it absolutely wrong. And so this is an actual quote describing the life of Saul. Verse six is a quote about Saul. It doesn't say it. It doesn't say it, okay? But when you look back into the scriptures, you'll find that the commentaries will lead you back to the life of Saul when he made two basic decisions that caused him to lose everything in terms of his relationship with God. And so that the sin of Saul was not able, he was not able to handle the pit, plus he was not able to handle the victory out of the pit, which is very interesting. Because not only do you, when you walk out of this pit and you thank God and you're there, right there in the deliverance and you're free of the pit and all the things that are there, all of a sudden you go into a completely different temptation to basically not really praise God. You praise him for about 10 seconds and then you go on with your life. And you don't even remember the song that God has created. Nor do you tell others so they can fear God." Because that's a part of this passage. David is consistently bringing out, this is what God has done for me. Let me tell you about it. And so what we find is, is that Saul comes out of the second, the one that's the second one here that we haven't looked at, he comes out of this and he comes out of with a self-sufficiency and a desire for people to see that he won the victory. He gives praise to God, but in his heart, he also wants praise for himself. It's an issue of pride. I don't want to tell people that I needed God's help. In America, I don't want to say I was trapped in an area I couldn't take. You ask people, how are you doing? I'm doing fine. That's about a lie as you can get. The only reason you really say I'm doing fine is because you just don't want to spend time talking about all the things you're going through. Okay? And so what God is saying to Saul, you have combined your pride and your own ability with my complete total victory. And you united yourself with my victory and you caused it to shine on you, not on me. Okay? And that's what you find his real sin is. as Saul does the second act so if you'll turn we won't get to the Hebrews 10 we will do Hebrews 10 next week but I've incorporated it here for you to understand the final message what is it that David says God really wants and he's told us and then you go to Hebrews 10 and you can go study that if you want to it says Hebrews 10 1 through 18 And in this is a quote from Psalm 4 that we just talked about. But let's look at the sin of Saul. We've already looked at his first sin. Now we want to look at his second sin, his second event within his life where he failed miserably. He failed the first one and he failed the second one. And God steps in and said, you failed. You did not handle this right. You didn't handle it right at all. And then he comes up with another one and he didn't handle that one right either. He made it even worse. Okay, so let's take a look at that. So turn to second, or excuse me, 1 Samuel chapter 15. We've already looked at his first problem where God called him a person who was foolish. And that was in 1 Samuel 13, which is there on your sheet. So that's the number A. And in it, Samuel was, excuse me, Saul was in a definite situation that you and I find ourselves all the time. It would be truly the pit of destruction. He had an army that was gathering from the Philistines, and this army was a large army. And he was just a new king, and a lot of people hadn't responded to him very much. And the people were beginning to leave, right and left. They were afraid. And by the time he turned around, he had 600 men. That's all he had left. And he was afraid he was going to lose them all. So what he did was, on his own volition, he did something he knew that God did not want him to do, to act as a priest. So what he did was to try to hold the people together. He moved outside the will of God and he became a priest and he sacrificed for a blessing for God so he could rally the troops and then go out to war and fight. He was driven, okay, in the period of waiting because he was waiting for Samuel to come along and do the priest thing. And God didn't allow Samuel, he showed up on the day that he said he would show up, the very last day, like in the afternoon. So Saul got up in the morning and looked around, Samuel still wasn't there. So he says, that's it, I've had it, I'm gonna take this into my own hands. Why? Because I'm afraid, and God isn't moving. Now, I want you to know, That is perhaps the most often problem that we face in the pit. I am afraid, and God isn't moving. Now, you just look at the times that you've had troubles, and that is one of the major, major issues. I am afraid, and God is not taking care of me. He's not moving. And God says, I am going to move in my own time frame, and you must wait, and you must trust, and find the purpose of the pit. Okay? And so this is, he fundamentally lost it. And that's what you find. God comes along and says to him, you did this wrong. And he says to him, you are not a man after my own heart. So that's the summary of the first problem that he had. And it's a fundamental problem. Okay, and if you wanna, you ask the question, because that's my favorite verse, that's my life verse, 1 Samuel 13, 14. 1 Samuel 13, 14, did I say that right? Okay. I wanna be a man after God's own heart. I want him to be able to say to me at the end of my life, I was a man after God's own heart. And you'd have to ask, what is that? And you're getting a fundamental answer here because God comes along and says, you must be in the midst of the pit a man who trusts me, who waits for me, who loves me, and knows that I love him. You have to be that. and that you will not take this into your hands and try to accomplish it beyond what I want you to do. So that's the fundamental issue. And then David comes along and he says, in the second act of Saul, I saw that he did it all wrong again. And I'm king, and I do not want to be a man that has said, I'm not after his own heart. So what have I learned? I've learned these are the sins of Paul and this is the solution. You do wait. You wait for him to deliver you and this salvation. You trust him. You trust his love. You wait for his timing. But the main thing he wants is a heart that says, I come to you, God, in the volume of the book it is written of me to do thy will in this situation and in all situations. Now you cannot believe how when I stand in front of my senior classes and teach them, Within my soul, the thing that struggles with me inside as I look at them is these kids, as most Christian people do, they live their lives without that phrase attached to their lives at all. They are people who are saved by God, but they do not intend okay, to walk and do the will of God in any given situation. They intend to make that decision themselves. And you ask them any decision that they're going to make, and what you hear is a kind of cursory prayer to God, and then this is how I'm going to handle it. Okay? God bless me, sprinkle fairy dust on this, and this is the way I'm going to handle it. Okay? So it's not finding the soul of God. It is not even understanding the waiting on God. It's not even bringing God into the circumstance. He's just kind of up here floating. Okay? And that's, and it has to be a, when you say, I want to do thy will, no matter what, we are not even close to that statement. Because the minute something else comes in, or a hurt comes in, we are crying and screaming, get me out of here. And you sit there and go, I want to do thy will. And then a circumstance comes right in on top of you, and God says, that's my will, or I wouldn't have sent the circumstance. And you don't trust me. Okay. And you don't believe really the trust is now the negation of the love that God loves you. Okay. I mean, you can't hear whenever you hear people talking about how struggle they are in the midst of the waiting, what you're hearing is, I don't believe that God really loves me. And then all of a sudden there's an anger that starts building up. That is anger against the circumstance, but actually it's an anger against God. Now I know this intimately. And so that's what you need to see that's being said here by David. It is an enormously difficult thing to say, I will do your will through the pit. And so when David comes out of that, he says, that's what he wants. Now, in 2 Samuel, First Samuel 15, let me read this circumstance, the pit. Then Samuel said to Saul, the Lord has sent me to anoint you as king over his people, over Israel. Now therefore Israel is to do the words of God. Thus says the Lord of Hosts, I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, and how he set himself against them on the way while he was coming out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him, but put to death both man and woman, child, infant, ox, sheep, camel, donkey, everything. put it to death. Now, we don't need to talk about the struggle about, you know, these are verses that people really turn to in the Old Testament and go, God's not a God I love at all. You know, how could he say something that we're not going to get on that issue? You can ask me to talk about that some other time, okay? But what has been given to him is a task, okay? Now, if I was given a task to go out as an army and strike another army and literally obliterate them, Okay, there would be inside of me perhaps a sense of excitement, but I cannot, there isn't any man who faces another army with a sword, not with a gun, with a sword, okay, where you have to beat them with the strength of your arm, okay, not with a bullet that you pull the trigger, okay, that doesn't go, am I up to this? Can I do this? Fear is a part of any endeavor where you look at something and it is daunting. When I look at the process of us going through the next 10 years with my wife, it's daunting. And it immediately brings that up. So Saul has to trust God to go out to do this. He does seem to trust God because he wins, because God gives it to him, and he has an enormous victory. But the minute he gets the victory, he finds himself off the other side of the pit, and all of a sudden we begin to see the sin of Saul. So you have to be careful, I have to be careful. When God gives you a victory, It is easy to praise his name, but you attach to it things that you should not attach, like your pride, because you got through the victory. The strength, because you had the strength to make it. No praise. It's really no new song. It's really a tacit acceptance and praise to God and not a true giving of utter surrender to God himself for what he did because you couldn't do anything. And so that's what you find with Saul. The first hint of this is in verse 12. And Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul, and it was told Samuel to Samuel, saying, Saul has gone to Carmel, and behold, he has set up a monument for himself. Then turned and proceeded to go to Gilgal. He has bypassed the praise of God. On his way back, he goes to Carmel. He is supposed to go to Gilgal. That's where he's going to meet Samuel. This is where they will sacrifice to God and present to him praises for the victory. And what does Saul do? He stops and goes to a very prominent mountain that everybody knows about and builds himself a monument for this victory. And then, because Samuel was going to meet him in Gilgal. And he says, I'm on my way to Gilgal. Where's Samuel? I mean, Saul. Well, he's up on top of the mountain building himself a monument for this great victory he just had. He'll be here in a minute. And so that's what we find. So it's the first indication And this is David looking back, see, when he quoted verse six in Psalm 40, he's looking back, and this is the exact sin that he sees in Saul, that he says, I don't want to do this, okay? I want to present myself holy and completely a sacrifice to God that will do his will, and that it's written in the book about me. Now, Saul shows up and he excuses his sin. He says, we won. Thank God we won. And then the first thing Samuel says, well, what about the sheep's bleeding in the background? Wasn't the commandment? Actually, Saul says, I have done the will of God. I did it. And that's when Samuel says, really? What's all those sheep in the back? I thought there was supposed to be ox, sheep, cattle, donkeys, camels, everything is to be slaughtered and dead. Now he makes an excuse. He says, well, we brought the best to sacrifice to God. We bought the best to sacrifice to God. This is where David catches this in Psalm 46. This is where David says, sacrifice you don't want. What you want is a heart that will do your will in all circumstances. So that's where he's getting it. He's saying, Saul did it wrong. This is what you should do. So Saul comes up and says, we brought the best. And God has said that was to be destroyed. Then later on you find the real Saul, the real problem is he was pressurized by people to do it another way. He wasn't the one who really brought all the cattle in. He says the people wanted this and then we decided to give it to God. So that was another part of his sin. And the last list of sins is a very telling list that's given here in Samuel chapter 15. And Samuel said, has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying his voice? The whole to obey is better than sacrifice. For rebellion is as the sin of divination. And insubordination is an iniquity, an idolatry, because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king. He lists three sins, okay? The sin that he lists first has to do with rebellion. And I've written that for you on this sheet, rebellion. Choosing another path to gain knowledge of the future and instead of trusting God. To control the future, not trusting God that he holds the future for you. So what you find is that there was a rebellious attitude in Saul all of his life where he had an idea as to what he wanted to do and God wasn't doing it. Now, when you ask young people, what's your goals? And they begin to name things that are happening. And they're good things. See, these are sacrifice. These are good things. I want a good marriage. I want a godly husband. I want this. I want to find my life, you know, blessed by God. Do you know that as God begins to unfold this and does this, they begin to choose which one is what. They are really not given to God giving them the husband. They're given to their concept of the husband. And if God doesn't give them that husband, the minute they don't have what they think they should have had from God, they start thinking of divorce. Now you don't think that that is not common? It is absolutely paramount in today's society. I have a young man who is a student of mine, he's a teacher. And he's like 28, 29, 30. He just got married last fall. His wife was in his same class. They got married and she's a Christian young lady as well, but she lost her father. Okay. And they, they came together and five months later, she's thinking about divorce. Five months, they're in counseling. At least they're doing it right. And I've talked to him several times. And I asked, I told him, what's the foundation of your marriage? That foundation will be the thing that will keep you through this. I said, go home and ask your wife if this is the foundation she has built her marriage on. If it is, then you have hope, and you should stay. Well, you should stay anyway, no matter what. But that's the foundation. The foundation is, tell death do us part. The foundation is, I have listened to what God has said and I submit my heart to it. And then all of a sudden all this stuff comes up. And the first thing the girl is thinking about is jumping ship. Not him, not the young man. So this is the exact thing, see. It is a rebellion in her heart. God took her dad away and she is afraid to love him. She's in fear of her own marriage and she can't trust God. And she has got to come to a foundation that she will hold to, I will be with what God has given, I will love what God has known, I will submit to what God wants me to do, and I will give my heart to what needs to be done. If she does not do that, she will leave. She is in rebellion. As to what God would want her to be and do. And she dreamed up this dream that sounds very, very Christian and very, very right. And it's not. It's now been shown to be completely wrong in terms of the way she dreamed it up. Next one is insubordination. You obey yourself, which we've just talked about, and you reject what God has said. It's very similar to rebellion. It's a little bit different. You obey yourself. When the circumstance gets there, you obey yourself and what it is you want to do and what's your deep motivation. And the last one is idolatry. You worship something besides God. You have rejected his word, thus you find yourself being, he's your enemy. And essentially he has not come through with the blessings that you define as what the blessings should be. So you begin to create something else to worship. And most often that something has to do completely with your own selfishness and your own selfish desires. And so that's essentially what David saw about Saul. And he says, I will have none of it. I want to be a man after God's own heart. And the way God will want me to be a man after his own heart is I will do his will in every decision, every single thing that he wants me to do. Okay? It is written in the volume of the book. Now we're going to discuss that thoroughly next week as we look at Hebrews chapter 10, as we see the perfect example of what this means and what it means to us. Okay? All right. See you later.