We don’t know where the pit is until we find ourselves in it, and then if we are looking at all the surrounding circumstances we find ourselves wandering aimlessly in the bottom of it!
Our Lord Jesus Christ did HIS due diligence to warn not only His disciples but us to expect trials in life they would be the trials of our faith. They would come at us from all directions and circumstances.
⦁ Acts 14:22 “Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.”
⦁ I Thessalonians 3:3-4 “That no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we are appointed there unto. 4) For verily, when we were with you, we told you before that we should suffer tribulation; even as it came to pass, and ye know.”
⦁ II Timothy 3:12 “Yea and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. (trails)”
Can you imagine dear ones how devastated the disciples were when they witnessed their best friend and Savior tormented with pain and then dying on the cross. NO STOP – don’t blow this off with “I know the story!” DO you? That the instructions after his death were to go on and live your life for your crucified and risen Savior? (Jesus uses commands such as go, teach, baptize, forgive and make disciples.)
The truth is many that profess to know Christ stumble and fall away when they get hit with these trials in spite of these words and many other similar Scriptures. If we’re going to persevere with Christ, we must know in advance that we will face times when we are in the pit, and we must know what to do when we’re there. Rather than wandering aimlessly in the bottom of the pit not looking up where there is always help to get out! Sadly often we focus on the circumstances of what seems like a hopeless prison of walls---but---with GOD, all things are possible!
Psalm 40 is a Psalm about the pits. Perhaps that is where we get the phrase, “life is the pits!” This is the part where you read Psalm 40.
It falls into two sections.
⦁ In the first half (40:1-10), David tells how God got him out of one pit and he sings God’s praise for doing so.
⦁ But like life so often is, with in the same Psalm David is back in another pit, crying out to the Lord to deliver him from this one. (40:11-17).
⦁ David waited intently on the Lord to rescue him from the first pit he knew how to wait on the Lord to get him out of the second pit as well. So it’s a psalm about what to do when you’re in the pits.
I suppose right here it is wise we ask the question “what’s the pit?”
A. The Pit can be any trial of our faith that takes us down.
David does not specify exactly what the trials of the first pit entailed.
The second pit clearly involved the consequences of David’s sins (40:12) and many enemies that were trying to destroy him (40:14-15). But he doesn’t exactly say what the first pit was, except to describe it as a “pit of destruction” and “the miry clay” (40:2).
We know a shock of a family crisis can cause us to lose our grip on our faith, making the walls of the pit slippery as miry clay we just can’t seem to get a grip on anything. If you fell into a pit whose walls and bottom were mud, you would be in big trouble! That’s where David was. He was trapped and unable to free himself.
⦁ Then there’s the Pit of hell! If you have not yet cried out to God to save you from judgment and eternal punishment for your sins, then you are in a deep pit with no human way out. You may not feel like you’re in that pit. You may feel as if life is going reasonably well. But Paul describes your future this way
II Thessalonians 1:7b-9, “when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.”
It’s the worst of all pits to be in! The pit of hell!
⦁ Your pit could be circumstances: Your pit could be poor health, the loss of your job, loss of a loved one, the shocking news of crisis involving loved ones, former friends that turned against you, an unfaithful mate, rebellious children, or any other overwhelming problem.
⦁ Do I need to accept responsibility! You may be responsible for being in your pit, or you may be a victim of the sins of others or life’s unpredictable trials that are common to the human race. David’s situation in the second pit seems to have been a combination of both. He acknowledges his many sins, (a good clue) which have overtaken him like a fog, so that he can’t see his way clear (40:12). I think that he is not referring to sins that he was currentlycommitting, but rather to the consequences of past sins that were now coming home to roost. But, also, the consequences involved wicked people who were wrongly intent on destroying David (40:14).
B. WHEN YOU’RE IN THE PIT, YOU’LL BE TEMPTED TOWARD PRIDE OR FALSE-HOOD TO GET OUT OF THE PIT.
This warns us to love light rather than darkness! In verse 4, David writes, “Blessed is that man that maketh the LORD his trust, and respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.”
When we’re in a pit, it’s very easy, even if you profess to trust in the Lord at other times, to grab onto any seeming as a way of escape (boo’s, drugs, credit card, lust, gambling sin has no limits) instead of trusting in God alone. The proud are those that boast in their own abilities. (God forbid that we should do this!) They don’t recognize or admit any personal weakness, or ownership. Rather, by their own ingenuity and effort, they will get out of their crisis on their own. Or, if you’re in a jam and it looks like a little “white” lie will get you out of the jam. (Again God forbid that we would do this!)
If you find you are in a pit of your own making don’t justify why you’re there; humble yourself and HE will lift you up! NEVER trust in your own lies, that is costly and you will pay hugely for it and for not putting your trust in the Lord. My kindly advice is regardless of consequences or how much you yourself might be humiliated suffering humiliation; forgiveness is cleansing and puts you back into the favor of God and man!
It has been said, the definition of insanity is: Doing the same things and expecting a different outcome. Or Having Expectations and expecting a different outcome.
King Asa was a classic example of a good man who fell into this trap. He was a good king who instituted many reforms in Judah. When a million-man Ethiopian army invaded Judah, Asa called out to God and affirmed his trust in God alone to deliver them (II Chron. 14:2-12). But many years later, after a long reign that God had blessed, when the king of Israel came up against him, Asa sent tribute to the king of Syria and enlisted his help against the enemy. Interestingly, his ploy worked. The king of Israel had to abandon his invasion of Judah to defend his northern flank.
But, a prophet rebuked Asa for relying on the king of Syria instead of relying on the Lord (II Chron. 16:7-9). Asa’s final days were plagued with painful gout. II Chronicles16:12 reports, “yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians.” It’s not that it’s wrong to go to doctors, or rely on natural remedies but it is wrong to trust in doctors or remedies if your primary trust is not in the Lord. The lesson is, it is always wrong to trust in anything or anyone other than the Lord to get out of your pit, even if it works. (Include God in everything).
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David says, Psalm 40:1 “I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me and heard my cry.” Waiting on the Lord is a common theme in Scripture. For example:
Psalm 37:7 “Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him; fret not because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.”
⦁ Again, ⦁ Psalm 37:9 “For evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD, they will inherit the land.”
⦁ And again, ⦁ Psalm 37:34: “Wait for the Lord and keep His way, and He shall exalt thee to inherit the land; when the wicked are cut off, thou shall see it.”
But, what does it mean to “wait” on the Lord? Our psalm gives us at least seven clues:
1. WAITING ON THE LORD IS INTENTLY ACTIVE, NOT PASSIVE (40:1).
The Hebrew of verse 1 is an intensified form of the verb, literally, “Waiting, I waited.” The New English Bible translates it, “I waited, waited for the Lord.” It’s not a passive, ho-hum kind of waiting, like you do at the doctor’s office when you thumb through a bunch of magazines to pass the time. Rather, it is an intently active time when your situation in the pit tunes your heart to the Lord in ways that you would not normally experience. It means to wait expectantly as you hope for God’s promises to be fulfilled on your behalf. The more intense your situation, the more intently you wait upon the Lord to fulfill His promises.
2. WAITING ON THE LORD MEANS TO CRY OUT TO HIM FOR DELIVERANCE (40:1, 13, 17).
God’s timing often does not coincide with our timing. We want it done instantly, but God has other purposes. But when you’re in a pit, there is a sense of urgency. In verse 1, David mentions his cry, which may have been as simple as, “Help, Lord!”
In verse 13, he directly cries out, “Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me; O LORD make haste, to help me.”
In verse 17, he repeats, “But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: thou art my heap and my deliverer; make no tarrying, O my God.”
One reason we often do not cry out to God for deliverance is that we do not see ourselves as afflicted and needy. This is especially true in the case of those who do not see their own need for salvation from God’s judgment.
Because our tendency, even after salvation, is to think that we can do it ourselves, the Lord graciously keeps putting us in one pit after another, so that we cry out to Him.
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3. WAITING ON THE LORD MEANS TRUSTING HIM ALONE (40:3, 4, 11).
In verse 3, David expresses his hope that because of his testimony of waiting on the Lord, others will also come to trust in Him. In verse 4, as we’ve seen, he mentions how blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust. Waiting on the Lord means, “Lord, You’re my only hope for deliverance.” So waiting on the Lord is not just a passive biding your time. It is an active crying out to the Lord, trusting Him to answer because of His love and compassion.
4. WAITING ON THE LORD MEANS RECOUNTING HIS MANY WONDERS AND HIS CONTINUAL PROTECTION OVER YOU CARE (40:5).
Waiting on the Lord gives you time to think. But you’ve got to direct your mind to think about the right things. If you think, “Oh no, God has abandoned me! I’m doomed!” you will either panic or turn to the world for help. But if you think about God’s many wonders and how He has worked in the past to deliver His people, you will wait with expectant hope in Him.
As David waits on the Lord, he thinks about who God is and what He has done. He says (v. 5), “Many, O Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: They cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee; if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.”
Maybe David was thinking about the wonders of creation (Psalm104). God established the earth so that it is hospitable for us to live here. He placed the earth at the proper distance from the sun, so that we do not burn up or freeze. He waters the earth, providing crops for our food. He preserves us from many catastrophes that we don’t even know about. I heard recently that a meteorite came uncomfortably close to earth. If it had hit, it would have wreaked major damage. And yet I never heard any newsman giving thanks to God for preserving us from destruction!
David also was probably thinking about God’s many wonderful acts of delivering His people from trouble.
⦁ He brought them out of Egypt in the Exodus.
⦁ He preserved them in the wilderness.
⦁ Food, water, clothes, shoes, shelter – all their basic needs.
⦁ He enabled them to conquer the powerful Canaanite nations and occupy the Promised Land.
⦁ He saved them time and again from powerful foes that threatened to destroy them.
⦁ On the personal level, David had seen God deliver him from the bear and the lion, not to mention from Goliath and from Saul’s repeated attempts to kill him.
If you have known the Lord for any length of time, you can think back to many times when you were brought low and the Lord delivered you and lifted you up. So as you/we/I wait on Him now in whatever pit we may be in, recount His many wonders and His kind thoughts toward us. Truly, there is none to compare with Him!
(5). WAITING ON THE LORD MEANS OBEYING HIM (40:6-8).
“Sacrifice and meal offering You have not desired; my ears You have opened; burnt offering and sin offering You have not required. Then I said, ‘Behold, I come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your Law is within my heart.’”
HE really desires an obedient heart that delights to do HIS will.
In other words, David is affirming what Samuel told the disobedient King Saul
1 Sam. 15:22 “Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.”
The author of Hebrews applies these verses to Jesus (Heb. 10:5-7). The idea here is that God opened the ears of His servant so that he would be obedient to His Word, which was in David’s heart. Applied to Jesus, that obedience was unto the cross ( Isa. 50:5-7).
The application for us is that when we’re in a pit, we must focus on continuing to obey the Lord, even if He does not deliver us quickly. The devil will tempt us to give up trusting in the Lord and to seek fulfillment in other ways. He will whisper, “God isn’t meeting your needs. If you want to get a mate, why keep waiting on the Lord? Look at all these nice, available non-Christians who could meet your needs!” The sad realization of this is “be careful what you want HE may just give it to you! Keep obeying God’s Word as you wait. Obedience first then the blessing!
(6). WAITING ON THE LORD MEANS SEEKING HIM (40:16).
“Let all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; let those who love Your salvation say continually, ‘The Lord be magnified!’” In this context, seeking the Lord is a synonym for crying out to Him in expectant prayer. If you’re seeking the Lord and not just deliverance from your pit, you won’t forget about God after He delivers you. Sadly, many (foolishly try to) “use” God like Aladdin’s Genie and put Him back on the shelf when they get what they want. But here, the reason that David waits on the Lord and seeks Him is so that He will be magnified, or glorified. If David turned to some human scheme for deliverance, then David and his ingenuity would get the credit. By seeking the Lord alone, when the Lord answers, GOD gets ALL the credit.
(7). WAITING ON THE LORD MEANS REJOICING IN HIM (40:16).
No doubt, David was rejoicing and glad about his deliverance when it came, but he makes the point here to rejoice and be glad in You (“in the Lord”). The joy is not just in the deliverance, but in the Lord who delivers. It means finding God as our eternal treasure, so that we rejoice in all that He is, as well as in all that He does for us.
So when you’re in the pit, wait intently on the Lord. Don’t turn to the world for answers. Turn to the Lord.
Waiting on Him means crying out to Him;
⦁ trusting Him;
⦁ recounting His many wonders;
⦁ obeying Him; seeking Him; and
⦁ rejoicing in Him. Then,
2) When the Lord rescues you from the pit, proclaim His goodness. David hammers this theme throughout this psalm.
3) He says, “He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; many will see and fear and will trust in the Lord.”
4) David testifies to the blessing that is on the man who makes the Lord his trust.
5) He extols God for His many wonders and His thoughts towards us.
In verses 9 and 10, he again affirms, “I have proclaimed glad tidings of righteousness in the great congregation; behold, I will not restrain my lips, O Lord, You know. I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart; I have spoken of Your faithfulness and Your salvation; I have not concealed your loving kindness and Your truth from the great congregation.”
Why does David repeat himself so determinedly? It is because he knew that if he did not repeatedly make it plain that the Lord had done great things for him, others would chalk it up to David’s good luck or to his natural abilities. But David wants everyone to know that he was helpless in a pit of destruction, sinking into the slimy mud. He never could have rescued himself. All he did was cry out to God and wait expectedly for God to deliver him. And when God did rescue him, David made sure that God got all the praise.
Conclusion
A telescope takes what looks like a tiny object in the night sky and magnifies it so that we get some idea of how awesome it really is. Without a telescope, people either ignore the stars or maybe look up and think, “Twinkle, twinkle little star.” Little star? With a telescope, astronomers know that many of those stars are anything but little. They dwarf our own sun, making it look like a speck of dust by comparison!
Many in the world either ignore God or think of Him as small and distant with regard to their lives. As Christians, we have cried out to the Lord to save us from the pit of destruction. We were mired in our sins with no way out. He sent His Son to offer Himself obediently on the cross on our behalf.
Since He has delivered us, we are to be like telescopes. We are to magnify the Lord and His great salvation to a world that shrugs Him off, while they waste their lives watching inane TV shows or pursuing riches that will perish at their deaths. We should tell others about how the Lord rescued us from our trials, so that they will join us in saying continually, “The Lord be magnified!”
Psalm 40:1-2
Once again; what’s the pit?
⦁ It isn’t really a place as much as it is a state of being
⦁ a state that many find themselves in today.
⦁ a state of discouragement
⦁ a state of frustration
⦁ A state of loneliness
⦁ a state of despair
⦁ a state where you find yourself crying out and saying “what can I do to get out of this!?!?!”
There are too many people who have fallen and can’t get up. God didn’t design for us to live this way. God designed us to live lives of victory, not defeat. Lives of hope not despair; Lives on the Rock, not in the pit.
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We have an enemy. The devil’s schemes loves to get you down in a pit and then convince you that “if you were a good person you’d have gotten out by now. You must be really bad if you’re still stuck in here.”
⦁ The reason some people are struggling today is not because they are evil or lazy or undisciplined or lukewarm the devil schemes try to make you think so!
People can lose hope
⦁ When there’s seemingly no hope, the simplest thing becomes difficult and the lightest weight becomes burdensome. Nothing is easy when you’re in a pit and you lack hope.
What we need to get out of the pit:
1. Acknowledge it – nothing changes until you realize that you need to change. That is a fact of life. You’re in a pit. You’re not where you need to be. Your life is not on track. Your relationships are not on track. Your career is not on track. YOU’RE IN A PIT. Stop making excuses. Acknowledge it tell a trust friend and the two of you pray!
2. Admit it – something powerful happens when things move from thought to word. Admitting our problems to others, become real and there is a sense of accountability. Two are better than one, and there is power in our prayers for one another!
When we think about our situation often NOTHING happens. But when we speak it out that sense of accountability and realness admits our plight, “I’m in a pit. I am not where I need to be. I need help getting out.”
3. Address it (to God) – forgive me, cry out to God and ask God for help. Psalm 25 is a great psalm to pray when you’re in this situation. Let the words of the Psalmist go deep into your heart as he says:
“In you, LORD my God, I put my trust. I trust in you; do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me. No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame, but shame will come on those who are treacherous without cause.”
4. Attack it – come up with a game plan. Break your pit down into parts and attack it piece by piece.
Don’t think for one second that God has forgotten you or forsaken you. No matter how you got stuck, no matter how long you’ve been stuck, or no matter how much you think you deserve to be/get stuck, your Deliverer is waiting to lift you out of that pit and set your feet on a rock.
Shalom
Written By My Mom Doris Short Trainor
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