Singing a New Song!
With the advent of my church doing a “Summer of Psalms” series, I felt a compulsion to speak on Psalm 40. As many know, I am a bit of a fan of a small band called U2. (Those that really know me are saying, a fan is a bit of an understatement.) On U2’s third album, War, they close out the album with a song called “40”. If you don’t know it, the song is called 40 because it is literally, word-for-word, out of Psalm 40. Being such a huge fan of U2, and of that song, there was no way I was going to let this series go by without exploring Psalm 40 further.
Let’s start with a bit of context for this Psalm. It is established that 40 is a Psalm of King David. Scholars believe that King David wrote this Psalm during a time of his reign where he was facing particular opposition and conflict. We don’t know exactly what type of opposition he was facing, but it would seem that the opposition was quite intense, and might have included a brush with death. The Psalms that immediately precede Psalm 40 talk about his friends and family essentially abandoning him. He speaks in Psalm 38 of being despaired over the opposition he was facing, and being “ready to fall”. He talks about pain being “ever before me”. He talks of his foes being mighty and hating him wrongfully. He talks about people thinking him evil, when he is actually following after good. However, in Psalm 40, David speaks of being delivered by God from fairly dire circumstances. David expresses confidence and thanksgiving to God for his faithfulness to him. It is a thanksgiving for God’s faithfulness to the covenant that God made with David. A covenant that a descendant of David would reign on the throne over the people of God.
Have you ever felt that despair? Have you ever felt that EVERYONE was against you? Have you felt that your friends had abandoned you? Have you felt abandoned even though, or maybe even BECAUSE you were trying to do the good? Have you ever felt like you could do nothing right?
I have been there.
I had a bit of a rough go in my early high school years. I grew up going to Community Presbyterian Church in Danville, CA, and I spent my elementary and junior high years going to the small, private, Christian school attached to the church. So when I went into the big, public high school my freshman year, I floundered around a bit. Most of my good friends from growing up went off to private high schools, and I was a bit on my own to make some new connections. Ultimately, I became friends with another guy who had just moved to the area from Ohio, and we nerded our way through freshman year, collecting baseball cards, and playing video games. It was Mike and I hanging out like that until mid-sophomore year. We didn’t have many other friends, but that was fine for me. Toward the middle of sophomore year, Mike was starting to become friends with another group of guys. I would tag along as well, and I tried to integrate myself with that crowd. However, I didn’t really connect too well with that group. Still, I was happy enough just to have some people and a group I could be a part of. I tried hard (probably too hard) to be a good friend to the dudes in that group, but it seemed that as Mike and those guy’s popularity was rising, I was a bit of dork that they were ready to be done with. There was one particular guy who emerged as the group ringleader, and Vince did not like me at all. In about March of 1989, a dynamic had been set up where my buddy Mike was kind of on my side (or so I thought), but I was pitted against that ringleader, Vince. On a spring Friday night, my friend Mike had set up a scenario where a few of us would go TP Vince’s house. Little did I know, but Mike and the entire group of guys had conspired to get me over to Vince’s house, and they had a plan devised where everyone in the group would surround me and pummel me with eggs. The gist of the plan was to completely humiliate me, and make it known that I was not wanted as part of their group. Well, one of the guys had a bright spotlight, and he turned it on too quickly. Seeing the bright light, I was alerted to the setup and I was able to run out of there and drive off before they could exact their scheme on me. However, they did a really good job of egging my car on the way out of there. They later had fun pretty well destroying the exterior paint of our house with hundreds of eggs. Over the next several days, I learned more and more about the plan that had been devised. It was a plan intended to essentially destroy me (or at least to render me a joke); a plan to show me once and for all that I had no friends. I was devastated; I was in the miry clay. I felt utterly alone, and I was crying out to the Lord for help to get out of the pit. I definitely wasn’t patient though, because I so desperately wanted some group of people to latch onto, I immediately latched on to a group of burnouts that smoked their way through breaks and lunch. I had zero affinity or connection to any of them, but I would stand there with them and smoke Marlboro reds so that I had someone I could at least look like I was connected to. And I continued to cry out to God for His direction, for a group of friends that would accept me, a group that would genuinely care for me. After the school year, in the summer of 1989, even though I had walked away from church for that first part of high school, God prompted me to give the church youth group a try. It was there that some guys that I had gone to Sunday school with for my elementary years, would reconnect with me, and would take this totally uncool dude under their wing. This incredible group of guys would ultimately become life-long friends, and I will remain connected to them forever. Finding these loyal and unwavering group of friends was nothing short of the Lord lifting me out of that pit, and Him setting my feet on solid ground. The Lord had a good and faithful plan for me.
God is FAITHFUL
In all these years of reading this Psalm and listening to U2’s song reciting Psalm 40, I have always focused on the “waited patiently” part. Yes, that is important, and there is a great message there about having a spirit of patience, but this Psalm is about so much more than us having patience. I would argue that it is God’s unwavering faithfulness that is primarily on display in the Psalm. The fact that David uses that phrase “I waited patiently” is actually very interesting to me.
I waited patiently for the Lord;
he inclined to me and heard my cry.
2 He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
out of the miry bog,
Psalm 40:1-2
When I think of waiting patiently, I have this vision of serenely sitting there, quietly waiting. However, when we look at the situation David recounts here, it’s him being stuck at the bottom of a pit and him crying HELP ME, PLEASE HELP ME! That doesn’t scream out patience to me, but it clearly did to David. When I run into scriptures that I cannot completely make sense of, I like to go back to the original language and see if there are any clues there. What is interesting here is that the original Hebrew basically uses the same word, kavoh, twice. It goes qaw-wōh qiw-wî-ṯî Yah-weh. That word qiw-wî-ṯî is really just another form of that same word qaw-wōh. So, you might also translate this as…In waiting, I waited, on God
That sounds a bit circular, doesn’t it. Maybe a better way to say it is something like… waiting with expectation. That seems to make a bit more sense. If I am waiting on God, on Yahweh, I know inherently, and David certainly knew, that God will answer in his good and perfect will. Patiently is a perfectly fine way of saying this too, but this idea of expectantly waiting seems apt. It would seem to me to go along more with the idea of crying out to God for help from the pit, and having a trusting expectation that he will hear our cry and be faithful in lifting us from that pit. Though, waiting with expectation does not mean that we sit there calm and quiet.
I have never had a baby, and it is dangerous for me to make examples like this where I clearly lack knowledge on the subject. That said, they say when you are pregnant, you are expecting. You are expecting a beautiful, awesome outcome. You are expecting one of the biggest joys in life. In that expectation though, it doesn’t mean there are not cries of tremendous pain to get there. Those screams in the process of expecting, are expected. In that same way, I think God expects that we will cry out to him to lift us out of the pit, out of despair.
I would make the argument that not waiting expectantly, is actually untrusting of God’s faithfulness. God expects us to be real with him, to cry out to him, but to cry out expecting Him to lift us out of the pit with His perfect and faithful plan.
We expect that God will bring about a new heaven and new earth. We expect that we will dwell with God and he with us. We expect that He will wipe every tear from our eyes. We expect that there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, because that old order of things has passed away. But… while we wait expectantly, with joy for that, there is crying, and there is pain, and our God, our Father, hears our cries and wants to hold in his arms.
To be clear, I want to say something about being in the pit. Being in the pit is agonizing. Suffering and loss and injustice are heartbreaking. I know I have this tendency of wanting to get myself out of that pit of despair. I tend to want to try to save myself, instead of crying out to my true Savior for help.
Scottish theologian Thomas Boston wrote, “men get the best view of the stars from the bottom of a deep pit.” The deeper the mud and mire, the more brilliant the rescue. In great darkness is suited for seeing great light.”
I don’t think that God is putting us in mud and mire to show us how great of a rescuer He is, but I do think Boston is on to something. I don’t know about you, but I have felt the greatest presence of the Lord in those times of deepest suffering, and I have heard that time and time again from others.
With that in mind, I find the question…If God is omnipotent and good, how can he allow such evil and suffering, to an interesting question. Some of this gets into the mystery of our all-knowing creator, and the fact that we are living in the already, but not yet. Already, we have reconciliation through Jesus…but we are not with God yet. Already, we have the forgiveness of our sins, but we not free of sin yet. We already love Jesus, but we haven’t seen him face-to-face yet. We are already citizens of heaven, but definitely still down here on a terrestrial Earth where things are far from perfect.
It is interesting that I have, by-and-large, heard that question from folks that generally leave God out of their lives. However, when they run into an inevitable instance of suffering, the immediate response is to view God as the source of the suffering, instead of expecting Him to be faithful in His love for us and to carry us through that suffering.
I don’t want to give some false impression that if God is an active part of your life, that these difficult questions about His faithfulness and goodness are not a thing. I want to tell you, and I believe many of you would concur, that when we are in the midst of terrible suffering, God’s faithfulness can be most evident.
CH Spurgeon said “To trust God in the light is nothing, but to trust Him in the dark – that is faith.” I can tell you from experience that trusting Him in the darkest times has consistently sustained me, and it has been through those worst of sufferings that His faithfulness has been so evident.
It is hard because I want to think that I alone can fix things. I can make it through. I am strong. I can get my own self out of jam. However, I am incapable of lifting myself up to heaven; he must do the lifting with his immeasurable grace
God LOVES us and wants to KNOW us actively
Re-reading the Psalm and focusing in a bit:
I waited patiently for the LORD;
he INCLINED to me and heard my cry.
I want to focus a bit on that word, INCLINED. Some definitions of the Hebrew word there are: to stretch out, spread out, extend, incline, bend
David realizes that his lament is met by God coming to his lower level; like a parent to a child. God engages with us in a willful diminution. He extends way down to us; He stretches out to us. You might think of it like God is the Sun and we are like a single candle, or a raindrop to the ocean, or the universe to this room. However, those are not even good comparisons. God is beyond all of that, and yet he actively engages with us.
It is truly mind-boggling to think about. The God of the universe wants to know us. He wants to hear from us. He cares about us, and wants to hear our cries. He cares so deeply for us, that He came to us. He came to dwell with us where we are at.
I think about it like this, but this really does not even scratch the surface of His “inclining” to hear our cry. Those of us with kids might relate in this way. I am sure that you might have experienced a situation where your kids host performances. A performance where they have come up with some on-the-fly show that probably seems fairly ridiculous. Maybe they play a bit of make-believe. and they might hold tea parties with little cups. They might have the stuffed animals there, and the make-believe tea, and it is of high serious importance. These tea parties, or performances, are seemingly of monumental importance, like the Oscar or a Grammy is definitely at stake. Inevitably, they will want you to come to the tea party or be an audience for the performance masterpiece. If you are like me, I am sure you probably try to oblige as much as possible. As tough as it is to admit, maybe there is a bit of a sense of “oh boy, I’m not sure I really have time for this right now.” Then sometimes, maybe you are in the midst of some major deadline, or some big stress of needing to get something done. You might say something like, “I can’t be at the tea party right now, maybe a little bit later.” However, later would never come, and sometimes maybe what it boils down to is just needing a bit of break. If you can relate with me, maybe you are not always willing to take a lumbering 6’1” body, with less than fantastic knees, down to the little chairs and tables to have the conversation about the goings on of the dolls, or the politics between the stuffed kitty and Barbie mermaid, or hear the hastily written song that is sure to be a top 40 hit. While to the kids, these events are of supreme importance. For us adults, maybe with all the “big” stuff that NEEDS to get done, maybe there is just no time to be troubled with what might seem to be too trivial compared to the responsibilities I have to deal with.
But you see our God, our Daddy, inclines to us without fail. He bends down to that tiny little tea party table. He sits there with wrapped attention as we butcher that Adele song. He listens, and inclines to hear our cry, our anguish, and what must seem to God to sometimes be (not always, but sometimes) trivial perceived needs.
And then I think, that the God of the universe LOVES me, He KNOWS all, is in control of all, and He must feel like Jesus did in that boat in the storm where the disciples were certain they would die in the storm, and Jesus responds with “why are you afraid, oh you of little faith?”
And…I believe the scriptures where it says in Jeremiah,
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
So, God KNOWS the plans he has for me, and He works all things according to the counsel of his will. HIS GOOD AND PERFECT WILL. And yet, He inclines and hears my cry. He comes down from His level, where HE knows the end of the story, He knows the plans.
You know, we often see something like this (show pic 1)… and it’s black, and looks bleak, and all we see is the dark.
Or, we might sometimes see this, (show pic 2) there is some more detail, and we can see there is more there. But, it is still cold, and dark, and gray.
But He sees the WHOLE picture, the real picture (show pic 3). And it is beautiful, and there is light and there is color, and there is hope
He sees that whole picture, and He loves us, and He comes to us where we are when we only see that smallest part of the entire frame. And He wants to know us there, in that dark place, in that pit. He wants to know us in that darkness that He knows the light shines through, and that darkness has NOT overcome the light. He knows the good and perfect ending, but He still weeps with us as we know Jesus wept with his friends.
He is our daddy, who comes to our tea party. He desires to come down to our tiny little table, to talk with us about all the things. He is 700 steps ahead of us, but he wants to meet us at step 1. He has read the whole book dozens of times and knows the ending by heart, but He is delighted to read the first sentence of the book with us again.
Scripture says, God loved you before the foundation of the world. He chose to be your Daddy before there was anything. He chose you before there was land, or oceans, or stars. He knew your story and the outcome before there was anything.
Does that hit? I think it hit David, and I hope it will for us too.
God has given us A NEW SONG and we are built to sing it
What kind of songs do we sing?
There are some good songs, some positive songs, some songs of praise. There are a lot of songs about the “not yet” world we live in. There are political protest songs, songs about greed, songs about causing others pain, songs longing for justice, and about seeking revenge. I think about the song that starts out that U2 album I referred to at the beginning of this essay, the first song on the War album is a song called Sunday Bloody Sunday. It is a song of anger and lament about the troubles in Northern Ireland, and about an incident there when British troops shot and killed multiple unarmed civil rights protesters back in the 70’s. Larry Mullen Jr., U2’s drummer, had said this about the track…
“that time when 13 Catholics were shot by British soldiers'; that's not what the song is about. That's an incident, the most famous incident in Northern Ireland and it's the strongest way of saying, 'How long? How long do we have to put up with this?' I don't care who's who – Catholics, Protestants, whatever. You know people are dying every single day through bitterness and hate, and we're saying why?“
What Larry is saying there, is, this is a larger question…Why? How long do we have to sing this song? This song of sorrow, this song of evil, this song of suffering. How long to cry out from the pit? How long to sing this song?
Psalm 40 answers that question in sense. Psalm 40 verse 3 says:
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.
Many scholars believe, and I absolutely believe, that the new song in David’s mouth is, in fact, Messianic. That the “New song” is a song of salvation through Jesus Christ. That the new song is God’s fulfillment to David of the covenant He made with him that his descendant would reign over the people of God. The new song is the already, it is what it says in Isaiah 43:19:
Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
We are certainly at times, and definitely right now, in the wilderness, but He is making a way.
Notice the scripture doesn’t say I will do a new thing, but that He is DOING a new thing. Presently. So God must know something we don’t yet fully grasp, because a lot of times it feels like that new thing is far off, but it’s not. He promises He IS doing it.
Scripture also says in Revelation 21:5
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
That is the new song, the grace we receive presently, through Jesus Christ, is the new song. The new song is God making ALL things new. Not a few things, or some things, but ALL things new. All of the pain, all of the heartbreak, all of the evil, He is making all things new. Do you believe Him? Is he faithful to His word as He is faithful to lift David and us out of the pit?
And if He is, and I believe expectantly that He is, then we are to SING THAT NEW SONG. David certainly sang that song. Looking back at Psalm 40 verse 5, David says:
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.
And that is okay that they are more than we can tell. We may not adequately, or feel like we can succinctly, or persuasively speak to God’s enormous saving grace in our lives, but our work is to tell of God’s wondrous deeds in our lives regardless.
Theologian J.l. Packer said, “the giving of the faith is God’s”
The pressure is off you. You are just to sing the song. You are to just tell others about how God has worked, and is working in your life. You are to tell how He has blessed you. You can tell how you have been transformed by grace. You can tell how you have been sustained in faith, hope, and love.
Yours isn’t to convince anyone of anything, yours is to sing the new song.
Some might say, why? I mean, if you believe that God has chosen His chosen before the foundation of the world, and that He has predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, why worry about singing the song proclaiming of His wondrous deeds? Will notGod will give the faith to those He chooses? Well…I find that question to be odd, and I really like what Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:10. He says:
10 For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. 11 Command and teach these things.
We toil and strive to sing the new song because it’s such a gift and blessing to us right now, in the present. We strive to sing the new song because we want our friends, our families, everyone…to know that incredible joy immediately! We sing the song because we want everyone to believe God’s grace now. We want them to understand that their sins are forgiven now. We do not sing the new song because we are afraid and feel like we have to somehow do the saving. We sing the new song because we are so grateful. We sing the new song because we are filled with joy of our salvation in Jesus Christ.
Will you sing it? Will you sing the new song?
I would like to tell you about a new song God put on my heart last week, and I have told a few people about this, and I asked the Goldsmith’s if they would be okay with me sharing this more widely. Some of you know that our amazing child of God, Maddie Goldsmith, was an organ donor. I am a stats guy, and so I was able to learn that just 3 in 1000 are taken in a way that would allow them to be an organ donor; 3 tenths of 1%. We learned on the Friday evening that there would be at least 6 people that would receive the gift of renewed organs from Maddie on the next morning. Well, on Saturday morning, I set out for a long run, and as I do, I had a random, Spotify smart playlist going. I was well down the Lake Wilderness trail running, listening to music in the background, and praying for the Goldsmith’s. At a certain point, I looked down at my phone to see how far I had gone, and what my pace was. I was at 4.1 miles at 9:02am, and at that moment I had this vision strike me. And over the years I would say that my relationship with God has been more cerebral than emotional, but there have been a handful of times that I have felt, no, I have known, that the Holy Spirit was speaking to me, almost audibly. This was one of those times. I was struck with this image of an operating room, with multiple doctors surrounding Maddie. They were very calmly and lovingly removing these life-giving pieces of her body, and the room was filled with light. It wasn’t the harsh operating room lights though, but it was a warm light. It was a light I have thought about more and more this past week. I would describe it as peace, and grace, and hope, and love. As I continued to run down the trail, I was sobbing. I was weeping with tears of sadness, but also tears of knowing there is hope in the Living God. I sobbed for several minutes, and I have no idea what song was playing in the background. However, as the song that had been playing faded out, the very, next song to play…the very, next song, was this Psalm. Out of hundreds of songs that could have played, Psalm 40 played at that moment.
I waited patiently for the Lord,
He inclined and heard my cry,
He lifted me out of the pit, out of the miry clay,
I will sing, sing a new song.
I will sing, sing a new song!
As I heard that I felt overwhelming joy, not happiness, but JOY. I felt the JOY of the Lord being my strength. And, I don’t know why I had decided to look at my watch and mark that time right then, but as I spoke to Todd and Laura and Katie this past Monday, I learned from Laura that it was right in that exact timeframe that the wonderful doctors were at work. My friends, you can question whether God is real, or whether He is really there, but I am here to proclaim that He is real, and He is tangible to me. My friends, God is not dead, HE IS ALIVE! He is risen. He is risen indeed! I will sing, sing a new song!
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