Psalms 40:11 - Meaning and Application

The psalmist has meditated on redemption and spoken of it as the Messiah. Now he turns to apply the truth of Christ’s mediation between God and us, and he speaks in his own voice. Since Christ has done his Father’s will, finished his work, and given orders for the gospel to be preached to every creature, we are encouraged to come boldly to the throne of grace for mercy and grace.

This should encourage us to pray for God’s mercy and to place ourselves under its protection. “Lord, you have not spared your Son, or withheld him from us. Do not withhold your tender mercies, which you have stored up for us in him, for will you not also, with him, freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). Let your loving-kindness and your truth always keep me safe. Even the best saints are always in danger and know they will be lost unless God keeps them by his grace. We must depend on God’s everlasting loving-kindness and truth to bring us safely to his heavenly kingdom (Psalm 61:7).

This also encourages us when we think about the guilt of sin, because Jesus Christ has done what sacrifices and offerings could not do to free us from it. The psalmist first shows the terrible view he had of sin (Psalm 40:12). That is what made the new sight of a Redeemer so welcome to him. He saw his sins as evils, the worst of evils. He saw them surrounding him. In every review of his life, and in every step he looked back on, he found something wrong. The results of his sin seemed to close in around him. No matter where he looked, he saw trouble waiting for him, trouble he knew he had earned by his sins.

He also saw his sins taking hold of him, as a bailiff seizes a debtor. He saw them as more than he could count, more than the hairs of his head. Awakened consciences fear the danger of sins that seem small, like hairs, yet are many and therefore dangerous. Who can understand his own faults? God counts our hairs (Matthew 10:30), though we cannot count them ourselves. In the same way, he keeps account of our sins, though we do not. The sight of sin weighed him down so much that he could not lift his head, and much less could he keep up his heart. The sight of our sins in their true colors would drive us to despair if we did not also see a Savior.

So he turned carefully to God under the sense of sin (Psalm 40:13). Seeing himself brought by his sins to the edge of ruin, even eternal ruin, he cries out with holy urgency, “Please, O Lord, deliver me. Save me from the coming wrath and from the present fear I feel because of it. I am lost, I die, I perish, unless you help me quickly.” In a matter like this, where an immortal soul is at stake, delay is dangerous. So he pleads, “O Lord, hurry to help me.”

This also encourages us to hope for victory over our spiritual enemies, who hunt after our souls to destroy them (Psalm 40:14). Satan is like a roaring lion, always going around looking for someone to devour. If Christ has triumphed over them, then we, through him, shall be more than conquerors. With humble confidence we may pray, “Let them be ashamed and confounded together, and driven back” (Psalm 40:14). “Let them be desolate” (Psalm 40:15). Both the conversion of a sinner and the glorification of a saint are great disappointments to Satan. He uses all his power and cunning to stop both, but our Lord Jesus has taken on the salvation of all his chosen people. So we may pray in faith that this great enemy will be confounded in both ways.

When a child of God is brought into that horrible pit and the miry clay, Satan shouts with delight, thinking he has won. But he will rage when he sees the brand pulled out of the fire, and he will be left desolate as a punishment for his shame. “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan.” The accuser of the brothers is cast out.

This should also encourage all who seek God and love his salvation to rejoice in him and praise him (Psalm 40:16). Good people seek God by the light of natural religion, meaning they desire his favor and turn to him in every need as people should turn to their God. By the light of revealed religion, they love his salvation, that great salvation the prophets searched into, and that the Redeemer came to work out when he said, “Look, I have come.” All who will be saved love this salvation, not only as rescue from hell, but as rescue from sin.

This prayer also secures great happiness for good people. Those who seek God will rejoice and be glad in him, and rightly so, because he will not only let them find him, but will also reward them richly. Those who love his salvation will be filled with the joy of his salvation and will keep saying, “The Lord be magnified.” In that way they have a taste of heaven on earth. Blessed are those who are always praising God like this.

Finally, this encourages the saints in trouble and suffering to trust God and comfort themselves in him (Psalm 40:17). David himself was among these. “I am poor and needy.” A king, perhaps even then on the throne, still calls himself poor and needy because, in his troubled spirit, he feels his need and distress, lost and undone without a Savior. Yet the Lord thinks about him, through the Mediator by whom we are accepted. People often forget the poor and needy, and rarely think of them, but God’s thoughts toward them, as already mentioned (Psalm 40:5), are their support and comfort.

They may be sure that God is their help in trouble and will, in due time, deliver them out of it. He will not wait forever. The promised vision is for an appointed time, so even if it seems slow, we may wait for it, because it will surely come.