Psalm chapter 40. Let's look
at this psalm together, and I want to go through the verses together
with you. I gave you an introduction last
time, how that the one who wrote this psalm was David. David was
the king in Israel. God had anointed him as the king
of Israel. And so he was not only the anointed
of God, but king, anointed to be king. And also he was given
the spirit of God to speak by God, God's own mouth, the things
of the Lord. And he was the sweet psalmist
of Israel. Now he was the father of the Lord Jesus Christ after
the flesh. So Christ was the son of David. And so what David wrote, he was
writing as a prophet, and he spoke of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This psalm is evidently, as it's revealed in Hebrews chapter 10,
undeniably a psalm of the Lord Jesus Christ. We may wonder about
many other psalms, but we shouldn't have any hesitation to attributing
everything in this psalm to the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, we
should not attribute it to David, because David was never given
in sacrifice, as it says in verses six through eight. So that's
the first thing we note about this psalm, is that it's a psalm
of David about David's son and David's Lord, as Jesus revealed
throughout scripture. And then we saw in verse one
of this psalm how that the Lord Jesus Christ in the first two
verses is telling about how He was delivered. It says in verse
one and two, I waited patiently for the Lord. Right away we see
the trust that the Lord Jesus Christ had in His God and Father. The Lord here is the triune God. In particular, it's God the Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, in our nature
as Christ, in His role as mediator and surety for His people, standing
in our place, standing before God, bearing all that we that
we were obligated to God to bear for our sins and to obedience,
he bore that. And he waited patiently in what
he's about to describe. He said, I waited patiently for
the Lord. And it was under this situation. He inclined to me,
he heard my cry, he brought me up also out of an horrible pit,
out of the miry clay, and he set my feet upon a rock, and
he established my goings." So here we see the great, Trouble
that the Lord Jesus Christ was in and and his cry here is a
great cry And so one of the things I noticed here and I kind of
picked up on it when it says later on in this psalm in verses
Let's see verse I thought it was in verse nine, but oh yeah,
in verse nine. In verse 10 it says, I mean,
it says, I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart. I have declared
thy faithfulness and thy salvation. I have not concealed thy loving
kindness and thy truth from the great congregation. So looking
at those words, the great congregation, it triggered my thoughts as I
was reading this psalm, how that the psalmist here, the Lord Jesus
Christ, in prophecy, it was speaking of him, He is singing of God's
greatness. And so we see all in this psalm
is about something great. So it was a great pit. It was a horrible pit. It was
a pit that was miry clay, greatly slimy and horrible. And he's describing what it was
like to bear the sins of his people according to the will
of God, and to drink that bitter cup that he asked his father. If it were possible, it could
be taken from him. But it was not possible, because
whatever God determines, that's what must be done. It pleased
God. that he should be the captain
of our salvation through sufferings, as it says in Hebrews chapter
2 in verse 9 and 10. And because it pleased God, it
was necessary. And because it was necessary
to God, it was necessary for the Lord Jesus Christ. His will
was one with his Father's will, and he wanted to do this because
it was his Father's will. And even though it meant for
him this miry clay and this horrible pit, because it was his father's
will and his own heart's desire, he did this. So he subjected
himself to this. And so he sings here of God's
greatness, and it's seen in the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ
as our Savior. It tells about his great work
that God assigned to him in this psalm, and it tells of the great
work the Lord Jesus Christ undertook when he undertook to do the will
of God. It tells here in verse six through eight of the great
sacrifice the Lord Jesus Christ made and the great stoop that
he stooped down to come under the burden of our sins and to
come under the obligations of God's law in himself as a man. And not only as a man, but as
a man who was obligated to keep the law, but obligated also to
pay the penalty of the law because he bore the sins of his people.
So that was a great burden he stooped under, and it meant for
him a great humility in coming into the world and a great humiliation
in his life, in his sufferings, and in his death. It was all
laid on him. And so this is the great thing
that this psalm is talking about here, and in verses 1 and 2,
he speaks of this great and horrible pit, this great and miry clay
that he was delivered from, and how God set him upon a rock and
established his goings. The goings of the Lord Jesus
Christ, they are prosperous. In Isaiah 53, it says that God
would prosper him. He would give him the, he would
spoil his enemies and he would give him everything. And this
is what he did because he fulfilled the will of God. He laid his
life down for his people. He gave himself in sacrifice
to God and that's what this is speaking of. Under the burden
that God laid on him to accomplish his will, him taking it by himself
willingly, all by himself willingly, without any helper. He's speaking
here of utter dependence upon his God and his Father, and how
in that dependence he cries, he makes his cry, and here's
the most blessed words, he was heard. God inclined to this man. God heard, he hearkened to a
man. and he delivered him from this
horrible pit. That's what he says here. He
brought me up also out of a horrible pit. If God didn't bring up the
Lord Jesus Christ out of this pit, we would be lost. There
would be no hope for any sinner. Since every person on earth is
a sinner, there would be no hope for all the world. There would
be no one in all the world who could come to God, who could
know God, who could live, they would all be damned. But the
Lord Jesus Christ was delivered from this pit and this is our
salvation. Then he goes on in verse three. He says, he has
put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God. Now this is
a new song, he calls it a new song, but it's really a song
with eternal origins. It's a song that was not new
in its words. because it's really a song of
the victory of Christ in doing the will of God, in accomplishing
that work, in obtaining our eternal salvation, and giving that glad
song to his people. So the song was written from
eternity, and it will endure to everlasting ages. But it was
new in the sense that it was newly accomplished in time by
the Lord Jesus Christ. The covenant was actually put
into force, the everlasting covenant, though it was made from everlasting,
and all of it will be brought into the promises given in that
covenant will all be fulfilled through everlasting ages. Yet
there was a time when the Lord Jesus Christ shed his blood and
broke his body and that put the covenant conditions, fulfilled
the covenant conditions and put the covenant blessings into force.
That's what he's talking about here. He has put a new song in
my heart. This new song is old. It's from
everlasting and it's eternal. It's too everlasting. And yet
it was fulfilled in time and it was fulfilled at the time
when the Lord Jesus Christ cried from the cross, it is finished.
And then it was newly revealed when he brought it to his disciples
and explained it to them so that he declared the gospel to them
and gave them that gospel so that we also can sing this song
as if, to us, it's new. When we understand and believe
the gospel, this song becomes ours. and it becomes for us a
new song. And it will always be new. It's
an old, old story as we sing in the hymn, but it's ever new
because God makes it fresh every morning. In Psalm 110 it says,
thou hast the dew of thy youth. Christ's youthfulness is always
fresh, always new. He told us in John chapter 7
that whoever believes on me out of his belly shall flow rivers
of living water because the Spirit of God given to every believer
is always bringing up. as a spring, the work of Christ,
the person of Christ, and revealing God in his person and in his
work, and causing us by that revelation to our hearts, to
have this new song bubbling up within us. And this is grace
we need from God. We can't produce this. We are
so prone to just fall into the cares of the world, or into the
blahs of the world, or whatever you want to call it, where we
just live our lives doing that day-to-day routine and mindlessly
not thinking about the things of eternity. But when God brings
it to us through the preaching of the gospel, often mixed with
the troubles of life, then he brings it to us and it becomes,
again for us, a new song. So he says this here, he has
put a new song in my mouth. He put it in the mouth of the
Lord Jesus Christ first. God wrote this song. He put this
song in his mouth, even praise to our God. And there's no one
worthy of praise but our God. Because He's the one who did
only good. Only He is good. And His work
is good. All that God did in creation,
He looked at it and He said, very good. All the work Christ
did in salvation, God looked at it and He says, very good. And that stamp of his very good
is spoken when the Lord Jesus was baptized, when he came out
of the water. And God the Father said, this
is my beloved son. And then he also said in Matthew
17 verse 5 on the Mount of Transfiguration, this is my beloved son in whom
I'm well pleased. hear him." So that's God's stamp
of his approval on the Lord Jesus Christ, and this is the praise
that's given in this song to God. God gave the song, it's
praise to him, and this praise is given when he spoke of the
Lord Jesus Christ. He praises His work, and we see
God praised in that. He says in verse three, many
shall see it and fear and shall trust in the Lord. Notice the
result of Christ declaring the gospel in this new song. We see
it like a blind man. Bartimaeus said, Jesus asked
Bartimaeus, what do you want me to do for you? He said, Lord,
that I might receive my sight. So we see it, we fear, that means
what God says becomes all important to us. Not what we say, not what
man says, not what we see with our physical eyes or experience
with our senses. It's what God says. We have a
respect for God. We have a reverential awe for
him and his goodness. There's forgiveness with thee
that thou mayest be feared. We have been forgiven much and
we have this awe, we're struck with awe that God could be so
good when we're nothing but sin. And he says, and we shall trust
in the Lord. You see how faith in Christ is
combined with these other things? We see, we have this reverential
awe for God, we worship God in spirit and truth, and we trust
in the Lord. It all goes together. Then in
verse four he says, blessed is the man that maketh the Lord
his trust, and respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn aside
to lies. The man who does make the Lord
his trust preeminently is the Lord Jesus Christ, isn't it?
It says in Galatians 2 verse 16, it says, knowing that a man
is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith
of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ that
we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the
works of the law. Okay, so it's clear from that
verse and other places in scripture that the faith of Christ is what
justifies us. Our own faith is just leaning
upon His faith. Our own faith is leaning upon
His obedience because He trusted God and He yielded Himself in
submission to the will of God in all things in life and death.
So, blessed is that man that makes the Lord his trust. That
would be our Savior, wouldn't it? We're not embarrassed about
this. We're not reluctant to withhold
praise from our Savior, to acclaim that He alone and He premierly
trusted in God, although we are given faith by God's grace. And it's God's work in us to
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ is given freely by God to us
out of his grace. But that's not what accomplishes
our salvation. Faith didn't die for us. Faith
didn't obey God's holy law. If faith could be used as a substitute
for obedience to God's law, or as a payment for our sin, then
God would never have sent his son. Christ had to do those things. Faith acknowledges that with
a wholehearted trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. So we ascribe to
the Lord Jesus this faith that saves us. But at the same time,
we do trust, blessed is the man that that man that trust, that
maketh the Lord his trust. We do trust him because he's
our master and we are conformed to his image. So we are going
to believe on him. But he goes on, and that respecteth
not the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies. Now, pride, human
pride, is a damnable thing. The thing about pride is it's
always lying. Pride seeks recognition for me,
for I, for self, right? And that's a lie. There's no
basis for recognition, no basis for praise to me or mine, or
anything that could be called mine. No basis whatsoever, but
we have this natural tendency to claim some dignity before
men and before God. And so unbelief and pride says
this, not Christ, but I. But faith says, not I, but Christ. You see the difference? John
the Baptist said, he must increase, but I must decrease. So that's what faith says. And
so he says here, blessed is that man that makes the Lord his trust
and does not respect the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.
God is not going to respect the proud. and neither do we respect
our sinful pride. When the Lord calls us to faith
in Christ, we abandon all confidence in the flesh, don't we? We no
longer want to tell the lie to our conscience and being self-deceived
or to others that we have something that God has to recognize, that
God has to acknowledge is worth something, entering into life
or salvation or heaven or anything. No rewards are due to us because
of anything about us. Everything is by grace alone
from first to last. And so, blessed is that man that
trusts the Lord. That's what faith in Christ produces
in us. That's what the Lord Jesus had
in his own heart. He wasn't going to Well, let
me just go on, verse five. It says in verse five, many,
O Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and
thy thoughts which are to usward. They cannot be reckoned up in
order unto thee. If I would declare and speak
of them, they are more than can be numbered. So here we have
right in the middle of this psalm that is extolling and revealing
the work God gave his son to do, that great work of redemption.
that great sacrifice that he was to offer of himself and the
great consequences of it, the salvation of his people and their
great praise in the great congregation. Here he says, there's so many
thoughts of God towards us, towards himself, towards his people.
All of God's thoughts are innumerable. There's so many. We couldn't
reckon them up. We can't number them. Now, God
does, it says in Psalm 33, 11, God does all of his thoughts. In Isaiah 14 and 24, he says
the same thing. Everything that pleases the Lord,
he does. And he thinks that he's going
to do it. And so he says here, his thoughts
are innumerable towards us. And this is grace. God abundantly
lavishes, pours out grace upon grace upon grace. It will take
the ages of eternity, it says in Ephesians 2 verse 7. God is
going to, in the ages to come, He's going to make known the
riches of His grace in His loving kindness towards us in Christ
Jesus. That's what he's talking about
here. God's thoughts are innumerable. And in what area are they most
innumerable but in what follows here? Notice, he says, Sacrifice
an offering thou didst not desire, mine ears hast thou opened. Burnt offering and sin offering
thou hast, thou has, I'm sorry, hast thou not required. So God
did not desire and he did not require burnt offerings, sacrifices
of animals. Now this brings us back to think
about the law. What is the law when we say the
law? Well, we're talking about God's holy law. And it was holy,
and it is holy. God's law is holy, but there's
a problem with the law. That problem is that it depends
on sinful man. Now, man is sinful, therefore
when God gives the law, man doesn't keep it because he's sinful,
and that sinful heart of man is hostile to God. He is not
subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be, Romans 8, verse
7. So what we find here is that
Man is opposed to God's law, even though his law is holy,
and God's law makes life conditioned upon man and his obedience to
it. Therefore, because man sins,
God's law also requires a sacrifice, a sacrifice so that man can be,
man's sin can be dealt with, that God can accept his people,
even though they are sinners. And so God's law is revealing
you are sinners, even in the sacrifice. But the sacrifices
were never meant to direct men to the sacrifices, but to the
one who would come and sacrifice himself. In other words, the
sacrifices of the law, like all of the law, pointed away from
the law to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's where we get into
trouble. We get confused because God, in his law, tells us what
you must do to live and what will happen to you if you fail
to do it. if you put any other god before
him in any part of your heart, or your words, or your actions,
in any part of your life. you're doomed and damned. And
so God's law, we start out on the wrong side and there's only
one way to fix it and that's what the law says about the sacrifice.
But the sacrifices were never intended to draw attention to
the sacrifice of the animals or the men who offered those
animals because the animals couldn't take away sin and the men were
sinful and they were temporal. They always passed on, the next
priest had to come. But what the law did do is it
pointed to the inadequacy of man's obedience, the utter sinfulness
of it, and also the inadequacy of all sacrifices, because they
were meant to point to the Lord Jesus Christ. They were just
a shadow of things to come. And so that's why it said here,
sacrifice an offering thou didst not desire, mine ears hast thou
opened. He's saying here, not the sacrifices
of the Levitical priesthood, But my ears, my ears hast thou
opened. Burnt offering and sin offering
hast thou not required. Then said I, in response to the
opening of his ear, he heard what God required of him, said
this. Then said I, Lo, I come, in the
volume of the book it is written of me. I delight to do thy will,
O God, yea, thy law is within my heart. You can't say that
with any integrity that that's true of David, not David as a
man. But the Lord Jesus Christ, the
son of David, spoke these words, which of course are revealed
in Hebrews chapter 10 as referring to the Lord Jesus Christ. He
himself, when he came into the world, When God prepared a body
for him, he said these words, he spoke these words, and you
can read it in Hebrews chapter 10. And in that context, he's
showing, he's proving that the law itself was done away because
it was fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ's offering and sacrifice
of himself for our sins. It was done away. It was put
to an end. It was brought to its end. It had no further use
for the believer. The believer died to the law
by the body of Christ, and we are under grace. We are no longer
under the law, because the law was fulfilled in our covenant
head, the Lord Jesus Christ. So in the sacrifice, in the offering,
the Lord Jesus Christ actually fulfilled the law. He fulfilled
the requirements of God's justice because he offered himself. He
fulfilled the requirements of God's obedience because he offered
himself in love, and love is the fulfilling of the law. So
that in Philippians chapter two, verses six through eight, it
concludes with this, that he was obedient unto death even
the death of the cross. And in 2 Corinthians 5.21, he
says, God has made him to be sin for us who do no sin, that
we might be made, notice, the righteousness of God in him. So He made Him to be sin for
us who knew no sin, in order that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. Christ was burdened, our sins
were laid upon Him, He bore them, He answered for them, and in
that obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ, He made His people the
righteousness of God in Him. That's what it says. And so when
the Lord Jesus Christ obeyed his father in all things, he
cried from the cross, it is finished. In John 4, 34, he said when his
disciples came back and he had been talking to the woman at
the well, the woman of Samaria, he said, my meat is to do the
will of him that sent me and to finish his work. And that
work that he finished, of course, was the whole work of the atonement.
which he accomplished throughout his life and sufferings and death. He accomplished it. He bore the
sins of his people. That's why when he healed the
sick, it says he himself took our sicknesses and bore them,
our iniquities and our sins. Okay, so now, I direct your attention
to these verses because this is the heart of this psalm here.
His sacrifice of himself with our sins in answer to God. Christ stood where his people
were to stand. He took their place. But he didn't
substitute himself so that they were not with him. They were
with him in it. So they didn't experience the
death, but they were with him in his death. They didn't experience
the burial, but they were buried with him. They didn't experience
the resurrection, but they were raised with him. They were so
united to him that he not only bore their sins as their substitute,
but they were joined to him so that all that he did, they did
in him. And this is the incomprehensibly
good news of the gospel that God justifies His people for
what He sees and receives from the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore,
since He justifies them for what Christ did, they did it. They
did it in Him. Remember in Hebrews chapter 7
and verse 9, I think it is, it says that when Abraham gave tithes
to Melchizedek, Levi, paid tithes in Abraham. It doesn't say it
was as if he paid tithes. It says he paid tithes. And so
this is the truth of our union with the Lord Jesus Christ. So
in his sacrifice, in his offering of himself, he was offering himself
to God, and we were there. We died, we suffered, we died,
we were buried, we rose again, and we were risen and ascended
and seated with him in heaven. because we were in the Lord Jesus
Christ. All right, let's go on. Verse
9, he says, now this would be after his resurrection and during
his life, but predominantly after his resurrection, he says, I
have preached righteousness in the great congregation. Lo, I
have not refrained my lips, O Lord, thou knowest. Notice now, whose
righteousness? I have not, verse 10, I have
not hid thy righteousness within my heart. I have declared thy
faithfulness and thy salvation. I have not concealed thy lovingkindness
and thy truth from the great congregation." And where are
these things preached? What was the message he's preaching
here from? He's preaching from his own self.
He's the master, right? The master tells us what God
requires. But because he is the master,
he doesn't just speak what needs to be done. He himself fulfills
his word. As the master, he did everything
he told us God required. So that when he says, if someone
asks for your coat, give him your cloak also. Or if your enemy
speaks wrong against you, then forgive him 70 times 7 or whatever.
Whatever the Lord says to his disciples, he himself preeminently
did, and he can say these things so that he's preaching himself. He preached these things, so
he preached himself. He preached himself, his person,
his office as Christ, as shepherd, as ransom, as redeemer, as the
propitiation for our sins, as the remission for our sins, as
the reconciliation for our sins. He preached all these things,
and in so preaching, he preached God's righteousness. God's faithfulness,
God's salvation, God's loving kindness, God's truth to the
great congregation. Meaning not just Jews, not just
a few 12 disciples, but the entire church of the living God, the
elective God chosen in Christ before the foundation of the
world. He's preaching himself through the gospel of his sacrifice
of himself to God for our sins. And this is so essential. The
only way that you and I can worship God is by faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ. He told a woman at the well when
she asked, you know, are we to worship here in Jerusalem, as
the Jews say, or in Samaria? He says, woman, neither in Jerusalem
nor in Samaria. But God the Father seeks such
to worship Him in spirit and in truth. And now the spirit
of God teaches us of Christ and Him crucified. And the truth
is the truth written on our heart, the truth of the gospel. And
he goes on, he says, you don't know what you worship, but we
know what we worship. Salvation is of the Jews. So the whole matter here is God
is worshiped in the context of salvation. Remember the woman
who was owed a huge debt and the Lord forgave her and what
she do, she comes up behind, she pours the precious ointment
on his feet. washes his feet with her tears
and dries them with her hair. She's worshiping him because
she had been forgiven much. That's what Psalm 130 verse four
says. There is forgiveness with thee
that thou mayest be feared, that God might be worshiped. It's
out of the context of salvation. He says, call upon me in the
day of trouble. I will deliver you and thou shalt
glorify me. Will be glory to his grace, but
we will also acknowledge that we were saved by grace and so
worship God and declare it too. And that's what the Lord Jesus
Christ is doing. God delivered Christ. God delivered His people
in Him. Now He declares God's righteousness
in doing that. This is phenomenal. All throughout
scripture, in the book of Daniel, chapter 9, in Psalm 51, verse
14, this concept of God forgiving us out of his righteousness is
spoken, and it boggles our minds. How could this be? How could
God possibly, in righteousness, forgive sins? That's called being
just and the justifier of the ungodly. Here he says, Having
accomplished our salvation in offering himself, he goes now
and he preaches the gospel. And what's revealed in the gospel?
According to Romans chapter 1 and verse 17, the righteousness of
God is revealed in the gospel. And that's what he's talking
about here. God's righteousness seen in the obedience of Christ
unto death. That's the righteousness of God.
Daniel 9, 24 says he would establish an everlasting righteousness. That's the reason we're given
everlasting life, is because life is always given to the righteous.
All right, let's go on. Verse 11, he says, Withhold not
thou thy tender mercies from me, O Lord. Let thy loving kindness
and thy truth continually preserve me. Don't withhold your tender
mercies from me, O Lord. Let your loving kindness and
your truth continually preserve me. What a blessing that is. That's what we pray, right, as
sinners. Don't withhold your tender mercies
from me, and let your loving kindness and your truth preserve
me. That's a, what a blessed thing. It teaches us really how
to pray. The Lord Jesus Christ took our place, and when He was
standing in our place, He put Himself entirely into the hands
of His God and Father, and He became entirely dependent then
upon Him, upon God's mercy, and this was so because He took our
place and bore our sins. He was in need of God's mercy. He had great sin laid upon Him.
He had great need and He cried out of that great distress of
His great need that we just read in verses 1 and 2. And in that
distress He had Himself, He put Himself in the hands of God and
the Lord would decide when and how long and how much whatever
came upon him and he submitted himself to it. Whatever cup he
had to drink, he drank it trusting his God. Not just trusting, but
loving, loving his God, loving his will, loving his law. and
proclaiming his righteousness in it. He depended on his truth
to preserve him. He obeyed God by submitting to
his will and all that he did. And he obeyed in trusting in
all of this. And his faith is seen in that,
doesn't it? All that is seen is what follows
in the next verse. Verse 12, he says, for innumerable
evils have compassed me about. Mine iniquities have taken hold
upon me so that I'm not able to look up. They are more than
the hairs of my head, therefore my heart faileth." You get the
sense that it's like a man with a grip around another man's throat. He says, my iniquities have taken
hold upon me. My iniquities, the Lord Jesus
Christ. And you know what commentators,
if you read the commentators on Psalm 40, most of them historically
will attribute this Psalm to David because of this verse.
How could the Lord Jesus Christ claim that iniquities, his iniquities
had taken hold upon him and he's not able to look up because there
are more than the hairs on my head. That doesn't fit, they
say. But it's precisely what we would
expect Because He did take our iniquities. He did bear our sins. God laid them upon Him. He made
His soul an offering for sin. He has made Him to be sin for
us who knew no sin. He bore our sins in His own body
up to the tree, as it says in 1 Peter 2, verse 24. This is exactly what you would
expect given the revelation of the New Testament when the Lord
Jesus Christ said that the Son of Man did not come to be served,
but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. For the redemption of our souls,
a price could not be paid, but he paid with his own blood according
to the eternal will of God. This is what's revealed in 1
Peter 1, verses 18 through 20. He's crying out here as one who
was laid in with our sins and he's asking God, he says, for
innumerable evils, don't withhold your tender mercies, verse 11,
don't let your loving kindness and your truth be withheld, but
preserve me because or for innumerable evils have compassed me about,
mine iniquities have taken hold upon me so that I'm not able
to look up. There are more than the hairs of my head, therefore
my heart faileth me. You see how much our, it was
our sins. It was our sins, wasn't it? That's
what laid him down. That's what caused him this heavy
sorrow he was agonizing under in Matthew 26, verses 37-44.
It was our sins. The cup, the bitter cup, he drank it up. And so he goes on in verse 13.
Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me. O Lord, make haste to help
me. Notice, he's urgent. He needs
help now. Don't wait. I need it. I need
your help. Desperately in need of God's
mercy, and I need it urgently. He says in verse 14, let them
be ashamed and confounded together that seek after my soul to destroy
it. Let them be driven backward and put to shame that wish me
evil. Let them be desolate for a reward of their shame that
say unto me, aha, aha. Now he's speaking here of all
those who would oppose his saving work. And that's what we did
naturally. Didn't we? We had no interest
in God. We were dead in sins, in trespasses
and sins. We were ignorant and foolish,
even as others. But after that, the kindness
and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of
righteousness, which we have done, not by some intellect that
we had, but by nothing that you could attribute to us. In fact,
in spite of us, God saved us. He delivered us from the pit
of destruction. We were in the horrible pit of our sin. Christ
stepped into that pit, bore our sins, and rose up after He sacrificed
Himself by the will of God to deliver us from our sins. And
so he says, be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me, make haste to
help me, and let them be ashamed and confounded together that
seek after my soul. This expression, aha, aha, expresses
the foolish and vain thoughts of Christ's murderers. They thought
they had their will fulfilled when they hung him on the cross.
They were wrong. Like Haman in the book of Esther,
thought that Mordecai was doomed when he built that gallows, however
tall it was, 50 cubits or whatever it was. But it was the very gallows
that he built for Mordecai that were his own death. And they hung him on it and all
of his sons too. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
here is praying against his enemies. And this should cause us a great
level of soberness. Christ either prays for us or
he prays against us. And what does that make you do,
a child of God? It makes you run. for refuge
to the Lord Jesus Christ and say, Lord, plead your cause,
answer for me. I have sinned against heaven
and before you, deliver me from my sins. Don't you find those
kinds of prayers warming up within you whenever you see what comes
out of the heart of man? When he cries this way, let them
be desolate for a reward of their shame that say to me, aha, aha. And so may the Lord be pleased
to number you and me among his people that we might not be among
those who rub their hands together as it were relishing his sufferings
and shame, but we would rather fall in the dust in our hearts
and with Thomas cry, my Lord and my God. Isn't that what you
want? Alright, that's what we're going
to see in the next verse. He says in verse 16, Now, only
God can do this. Only God can make us love His
salvation. And I can say in truth, I love
God's salvation. I love the salvation of the Lord
Jesus Christ. But I also have to say, as soon
as I utter those words in truth, I don't love it nearly as I ought
to love it. But here's something else we
ought to love too here, is that the giver is always infinitely
greater than the gift. We've been saved with a great
salvation. What does that make our God and
Savior infinitely great? Because the creator is much greater
than the creature, than his creation. The gift that's placed on the
altar is sanctified by the altar. The Lord Jesus Christ is God's
gift. God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten son. Here in His love, not that we
love God, but that He loved us and gave His Son, sent His Son
to be the propitiation for our sins. That's the gift, Christ. And the giver, God, is greater
than the sacrifice. Christ gave Himself and He obtained
our salvation, but our salvation isn't as great as our Savior,
the one who saved us and gave Himself to save us. So let us
always remember that. That if we love God's salvation,
then we necessarily love the Savior. And if we love the Savior,
then it's because God first loved us. And if God first loved us
and we love Him, it's because He made Himself known to us,
like He said in that verse we just read, that they might see
it, fear, and trust in the Lord. God gives us this gift of faith
to trust in Christ. And it's out of his declaration
of his work in the gospel that we love him, that we love his
salvation. We love his salvation because
he thoroughly saved us. One offering, one sacrifice forever
obtained our redemption, our eternal redemption, perfected
us forever, sanctified us, made us holy before God. He did it. Nothing from us. Christ did it
by himself and sat down when it was done. And that was before
you and I were ever born. We go on to the next verse here
and close the psalm. He says, But I am poor and needy,
yet the Lord thinks upon me. Thou art my help and my deliverer.
Make no tarrying, O my God. The Lord Jesus Christ says in
the beginning, I waited patiently for the Lord. And yet in this
verse, it seems like he was in a hurry. Make no carrying, oh
my God. He wanted God to answer. He needed
God to answer. He needed to be delivered. So
do we, don't we? We need God's salvation. And we want God's salvation.
And we have to have it. And we pray for it. We want him
to give it to us right away. We don't want to wait. and yet
he waited patiently. So you see in this Christ asked
God to do something and he asked him to do it immediately, but
he's going to wait on the Lord to do it. What a lesson to us
of how we pray and wait. We want it now, but we're going
to leave the Lord, we're going to ask God to do it as it pleases
Him in it. And yet we urgently, out of necessity,
a deep and abiding necessity, I need to be delivered from my
sins. Oh, wretched man that I am. Don't you know it? And we know
it only in part. We only love in part because
we only know it in part. We only believe God's word in
a small measure to what we ought to believe. Yet the Lord Jesus
Christ perfectly, perfectly prayed, perfectly trusted, perfectly
obeyed, gave himself, not for himself, but for his people.
He suffered for them. He obeyed, not because he needed
a righteousness of his own, but because they did, and that's
what he did for us. This psalm is to teach us of
God's righteousness and faithfulness and salvation and loving kindness.
truth in the Lord Jesus Christ. He preaches all that God is. He himself is what he preaches. The fullness of the Godhead dwells
in him and we're complete in him. What a salvation. Don't
you love it? Don't you love this salvation
where Christ does everything and we get all that he did? Even
though we're the most despicable of all things before God, we're
the offscouring of the earth, and rightly so. And yet the Lord
has put us among his children. He's given us the very blessings
his son earned in his obedience. Oh, these, the ears that God
opened in his son when he went to the cross in Isaiah 50 and
verses four and following, he talks about how his ears were
opened and he therefore set his face like a flint. He gave his
back to the smiters and his cheeks to those that plug off the hair
because he, God had opened his ears and he loved his master,
he loved his wife, he loved his children and he wouldn't turn
back. What grace this is, let's pray. Father, we thank you that
all that you laid on the Lord Jesus Christ, he faithfully did.
He didn't leave anything undone. He perfected it. in every part. He finished the work. There was
nothing left to do. Nothing could be added to it.
And then he sat down on the right hand of God. There was no compromise. All things were accomplished.
Nothing left partially done for us to complete. And now we rest
in his finished work. And this is the work that God
looks upon and says, in my son, I am well pleased. Hear ye him. Help us, Lord, to hear him. Help
us to admire and adore and worship him by this great grace you've
given to us, this grace of your spirit, that we might live and
believe on him and love him in our heart. Help us to love your
salvation and to proclaim it, just as he proclaimed it to us.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.