Psalm 40
The LORD puts a new song in our hearts
1 I waited patiently for the LORD; and he leaned down to me, and heard my cry. 2 He brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet on a rock, and established my goings. 3 And he has put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God: many will see it, and fear, and will trust in the LORD. 4 Blessed is that man that makes the LORD his trust, and does not respect the proud, or those who turn aside to lies.
His thoughts toward us are more than can be numbered
5 Many, O LORD my God, are your wonderful works that you have done, and your thoughts toward us: they cannot be counted in order to you: I will declare and speak; they are more than can be numbered. 6 You did not desire sacrifice and offering; you have opened my ears: burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.
- God is pleased when we listen rather than when we make sacrifices.
- Sacrifices are about us, how good we are, how much WE are willing to give up etc.…that’s pride and there is no place for it in God’s plan.
7 Then said I, Behold, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, 8 I delight to do your will, O my God: yes, your law is within my heart. 9 I have preached righteousness in the great congregation: behold I have not restrained my lips, O LORD, you know.
- Genesis 3:15 was the first promise of a Savior …of the seed of the woman.
- Verses 7-9 while being about King David, also foreshadow this. God would become man to save us.
- Every prophecy about Christ’s first coming was fulfilled in minute detail.
- There are five times more prophecies about His second coming—to rule earth for a thousand years and then the new heavens and earth forever.
- “The child of God is not conscious of the will of God because he is the will of God. When there has been the slightest deviation from the will of God, we begin to ask—What is your will.” (Oswald Chambers)
- Righteousness is to bow to our Creator, to thank Him for life, to obey Him. The first and great righteousness is to love Him with all our hearts (Matthew 22:37).
- Psalm 2:7‘ You are my Son this day have I begotten you.’ The eternal entered time.
- John 4:32 But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know of. 33 Therefore the disciples said one to another, Has any man brought him something to eat? 34 Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.
10 I have not hid your righteousness within my heart; I have declared your faithfulness and your salvation: I have not concealed your love and your truth from the great congregation. 11 Do not withhold your tender mercies from me, O LORD: let your love and your truth preserve me continually. 12 For innumerable evils have surrounded me: my iniquities have taken hold of me, so that I am not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of my head: therefore my heart fails me. 13 Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me: O LORD, hurry to help me. 14 Let the ones seeking to destroy my soul be ashamed and humbled together; let them be turned back and dishonored who delight in my trouble. 15 Let them be desolate for a reward of their shame that say to me, Aha, aha. 16 Let all those that seek you rejoice and be glad in you: let those that love your salvation say continually, The LORD be magnified. 17 But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinks upon me: you are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God.
- Deuteronomy 32:4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
Psalm 41
The Lord has many blessings for those who consider the poor
1 Blessed is he who acts wisely toward the poor: the LORD will deliver him in time of trouble. 2 The LORD will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he will be blessed on the earth: and you will not deliver him to the will of his enemies. 3 The LORD will strengthen him on the bed of sickness: you will make all his bed in his sickness. 4 I said, LORD, be merciful to me: heal my soul; for I have sinned against you.
- I John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
- Psalm 103:1-4 Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. 2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits: 3 Who forgives all your iniquities; who heals all your diseases; 4 Who redeems your life from destruction; who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies;
5 My enemies speak evil of me, When will he die, and his name perish? 6 And if he comes to see me, he speaks vanity: his heart gathers iniquity to itself; when he goes abroad, he tells it. 7 All that hate me whisper together against me: against me they plot to hurt me. 8 They say, An evil disease/thing of Belial clings to him: and he lies down and will not rise up again. 9 Yes, my own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.
- This speaks of a betrayal of David. But more importantly it speaks of Jesus’ betrayal by Judas Iscariot 1000 years before it happened.
- John 13:18 I do not speak of all of you: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me.
He holds us up and sets us before His face forever
10 But you, O LORD, be merciful to me and raise me up, that I may repay them. 11 By this I know that you favor me, because my enemy does not triumph over me. 12 And as for me, you uphold me in my integrity, and set me before your face forever. 13 Blessed is the LORD God of Israel from everlasting, and to everlasting. Amen, and Amen.
- Revelation 3:21 To him that overcomes I will grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.
- Revelation 21:7 He that overcomes will inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he will be my son.
Psalm 42
0 To the chief Musician, Maschil, for the sons of Korah. 1 As the deer pants after the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God: when will I come and appear before God?
- “It belongs to the self-existent being to be always full and communicative and to the created to be ever empty and craving.” John Howe
- John 6:35 And Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life: he that comes to me will never hunger; and he that believes on me shall never thirst.
3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually say to me, Where is your God? 4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday. 5 Why are you bowed down, O my soul? Why are you disquieted in me? Hope in God: for I will still praise him for the help of his countenance.
- ‘Help of His countenance’ is also ‘His presence is salvation.”
- Psalm 16:11 You will show me the path of life: in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore I will remember you from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar. 7 Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterspouts: all your waves and your billows are gone over me.
He will command His love in the daytime
8 Yet the LORD will command his love in the daytime, and in the night his song will be with me, and my prayer to the God of my life. 9 I will say to God my rock, Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
- Isaiah 49:15 Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, they may forget, but I will not forget you.
10 As with a sword in my bones, my enemies reproach me; while they say daily to me, Where is your God? 11 Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God: for I will still praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
- Our God is a personal God. He belongs to us.
- 2Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Psalm 43
1 Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man. 2 For you are the God of my strength: why do you cast me off? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? 3 O send out your light and your truth: let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill, and to your tabernacles.
- 1Corinthians 4:4 I know nothing by myself yet am I not justified by this: but he that judges me is the Lord.
- Isaiah 51:22…God that pleads the cause of his people,
God is our exceeding joy
4 Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy: yes, on the harp I will praise you, O God my God. 5 Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God: for I will still praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
- His altar showed His love poured out for us.
- He is the health of our attitude and appearance.
- The fact that the eternal Creator belongs to us is astounding.
- Psalm 16:11You will show me the path of life: in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
Psalm 44
0 To the chief Musician for the sons of Korah, Maschil. 1 We have heard with our ears, O God. Our fathers have told us what work you did in their days, in the times of old. 2 How you drove out the heathen with your hand, and planted them; how you afflicted the people, and cast them out. 3 For they did not get the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them: but your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your face, because you had favor on them. 4 You are my King, O God: command deliverances for Jacob.
- Ezekiel 20:6 In the day that I lifted up mine hand to them, to bring them forth of the land of Egypt into a land that I had saw for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands:
- Psalm 5:12 For you, LORD, will bless the righteous; with favor will you surround him as with a shield.
- Daniel 2:21 And he changes the times and the seasons: he removes kings, and sets up kings: he gives wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding:
He puts to shame those that hate us
5 Through you will we push down our enemies: through you we will tread them under that rise up against us. 6 For I will not trust in my bow, neither will my sword save me. 7 But you have saved us from our enemies, and have put to shame those that hated us. 8 In God we boast all the day long, and praise your name forever. Selah. 9 But you have cast off, and put us to shame; and do not go out with our armies. 10 You make us to turn back from the enemy: and they that hate us plunder for themselves. 11 You have given us like sheep to be eaten; and have scattered us among the heathen. 12 You sell your people for nothing, and do not increase your wealth by their price. 13 You make us a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and a derision to those that are round about us. 14 You make us a byword among the heathen, a shaking of the head among the people. 15 My confusion is continually before me, and the shame of my face has covered me, 16 for the voice of him that reproaches and blasphemes; by reason of the enemy and avenger. 17 All this has come upon us; yet have we not forgotten you, neither have we dealt falsely in your covenant. 18 Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from your way; 19 though you have broken us sorely in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death.
- Job also had done nothing wrong when God allowed suffering in his life.
- God said that Job was the most righteous man on earth—Job ‘feared God and shunned evil’.
- But Job didn’t see God.
- At the fall man lost his view of God as the source and center of all things.
- Self became bigger than God and blocked man’s view of God.
- The suffering God allows gives us back a true perspective of ourselves in relation to our Creator.
- Romans 11:36 For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory forever. Amen.
He knows the secrets of our hearts
20 If we have forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out our hands to a strange god, 21 will not God search this out? For he knows the secrets of the heart. 22 Yes, for your sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. 23 Awake, why do you sleep, O Lord? Rise up, do not cast us off for ever. 24 Why do you hide your face, and forget our affliction and our oppression?
- We feel forsaken when suffering comes.
- But God is still with us, carrying us.
- Isaiah 63:9 In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.
- Hebrews 13:5…I will never leave you or forsake you.
25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust: our belly clings to the earth. 26 Arise for our help, and redeem us for your mercies’ sake.
- Redeem means to buy back. His blood is the greatest price ever paid for anything—the blood of God.
- 1Peter 1:18 For you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain behavior received by tradition from your fathers; 19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:
- Psalm 57:10 For your mercy is great to the heavens, and your truth to the clouds.
Psalm 45
0 To the chief Musician on Shoshannim. A Maschil for the sons of Korah, a song of loves. 1 My heart bubbles up with a good matter: I will recite a lovely poem to the king: my tongue is the pen of a rapid writer.
The Lord is more beautiful that all the sons of men
2 You are more beautiful than the children of men: grace is poured into your lips: therefore God has blessed you forever. 3 Gird your sword upon your thigh, O most mighty, with your glory and your majesty.
He is coming to rule earth rightly forever
4 And in your majesty prosper, ride because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and your right hand will teach you awesome things. 5 Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies; by which the people fall under you.
- Revelation 19:11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. 13 And he was clothed with a garment dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies that were in heaven followed him on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 And out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, to strike the nations: and he will rule them with a rod of iron: and he treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. 16 And he has on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.
6 Your throne, O God, is forever and ever: the scepter of your kingdom is a right scepter. 7 You love righteousness, and hate wickedness: therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows. 8 All your garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, by which they have made you glad.
- Because Jesus loves righteousness and hates wickedness God has anointed him to rule earth forever. His clothes smell wonderful.
- Isaiah 32:1 Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes will rule in judgment.
9 Kings’ daughters were among your honorable women: the queen stands at your right hand in gold of Ophir. 10 Listen, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear; forget your own people, and your father’s house; 11 So shall the king greatly desire your beauty: for he is your Lord; worship him.
- His queen is the church, that is, all those who believed in Him since the cross.
- Matthew 10:37 He that loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
- Hosea 2:19 And I will betroth you to me for ever; yes, I will betroth you unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies.
12 And the daughter of Tyre will be there with a gift; even the rich among the people will entreat your favor/face.
- Most seek the favor of the rich. Here it is the rich who will seek the favor of the Lord.
13 The king’s daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of woven gold. 14 She will be brought to the king in raiment of needlework: the virgins her companions that follow her will be brought to you. 15 With gladness and rejoicing they will be brought: they will enter into the king’s palace.
- Psalm 23:6 Certainly goodness and mercy will chase me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
16 Instead of your fathers will be your children, whom you may make princes in all the earth. 17 I will make your name to be remembered in all generations: therefore the people will praise you forever and ever.
Psalm 46
God is our very present help in time of need
0 To the chief Musician for the sons of Korah, A Song on Alamoth. 1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. 2 Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the heart of the sea; 3 Though its waters roar and are troubled, though the mountains shake with its swelling. Selah.
- God made all things.
- He is the One who has all the power and authority in all the universes.
- Because this One is our refuge and strength we can be fearless.
- Deuteronomy 31:8 And the LORD, he it is that goes before you; he will be with you, he will not fail you, neither forsake you: fear not, neither be dismayed.
4 There is a river, its streams make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. 5 God is in the midst of her; she will not be moved: God will help her, and that right early/when the morning appears. 6 The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. 7 The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is a high place for us. Selah.
- Jeremiah 2:13 For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and carved out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.
- John 4:10 Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give me to drink; you would have asked of him, and he would have given you living water.
He ends war forever
8 Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he has made in the earth. 9 He makes wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and cuts the spear in two; he burns the chariot in the fire. 10 Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen/nations, I will be exalted in the earth. 11 The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
- Military forces are necessary until Jesus is ruling as the king of earth.
- A weak military gives Satan the advantage of tyranny by violence.
- God often uses one nation against another nation to destroy evil that man has chosen instead of God’s good.
- Micah 4:3 And he will judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation will not lift up a sword against nation, neither will they learn war any more.
Psalm 47
The LORD is a great king over all the earth
0 To the chief Musician, A Psalm for the sons of Korah. 1 O clap your hands, all you people; shout to God with the voice of triumph. 2 For the LORD most high is awesome; he is a great King over all the earth. 3 He will subdue the people under us, and the nations under our feet.
- 2Corinthians 2:14 thanks be to God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ, and makes manifest the fragrance of his knowledge by us in every place.
- 1Corinthians 15:57 But thanks be to God, which gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
He will choose our inheritance for us
4 He will choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom he loved. Selah.
- Isaiah 61:7… they will rejoice in their portion: therefore in their land they will possess the double: everlasting joy will be to them.
5 God has gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet. 6 Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises to our King, sing praises. 7 For God is the King of all the earth: sing praises with understanding.
- ‘Sing praises with understanding.’ Not mindless chanting not knowing who you are singing about. Not stirring of the emotions without equal thoughts from the heart of adoration to God.
- Jeremiah 9:24 But let him that glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who exercises loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, says the LORD.
8 God reigns over the heathen: God sits on the throne of his holiness. 9 The princes of the people are gathered together, the people of the God of Abraham: 10 for the shields of the earth belong to God: he is greatly exalted.
- 1 Kings 22 has an example of God’s rulership over the heathen.
- The heathen are those who turn their backs on God.
- Ezekiel 1:26-28 describes God’s throne as sapphire and the Lord sitting on His thrones as the fiery amber form of a man flashing forth rainbows.
- 1Kings 22:19 I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left. 20 And the LORD said, Who will persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. 21 And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and said, I will persuade him. 22 And the LORD said to him, How? And he said, I will go out, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, You will persuade him, and also prevail: go forth, and do so. 23 Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets, and the LORD has spoken evil concerning you.
SUMMARY: Psalms 40-47
- The LORD puts a new song in our hearts
- His thoughts towards us are more than can be numbered
- He has many blessings for those who consider the poor
- He holds us up and sets us before His face forever
- He will command His love in the daytime
- He is our exceeding joy
- He puts to shame those who hate us
- He knows the secrets of our hearts
- The LORD is more beautiful than all the sons of men
- He is coming to rule earth rightly forever
- God is our very present help in trouble
- He ends war forever
- He is a great king over all the earth
- He will choose our inheritance for us
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