The One Who Rescues Me Text: Psalm 40:1-5
Introduction: The Universal Mire
Every man knows what it is to be stuck. You can be stuck in a dead-end job, stuck in a failing relationship, stuck in a pattern of sin, or stuck in a deep, dark depression. The modern world offers a thousand solutions for getting unstuck, most of which are variations on the theme of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. You are told to think positively, to manifest your destiny, to dig deeper, to try harder. But this is like telling a man sinking in quicksand to jump more energetically. The problem is not a lack of effort; the problem is the mire itself. The very ground beneath you is treacherous and giving way.
The world's solutions fail because they misdiagnose the fundamental problem. They see the mire as an external inconvenience, not as the native soil of the fallen human heart. The Bible, with its unflinching realism, tells us that we are not just in the mire; we are born into it. We are, by nature, in a pit of destruction, a place of ruin and desolation. We cannot rescue ourselves because our every effort to escape only sinks us deeper into the muck of our own self-righteousness and rebellion.
This psalm is a testimony from a man who learned this lesson the hard way. David, a man of great victories and catastrophic failures, understood his own helplessness. But this is not a psalm of despair. It is a triumphant anthem of deliverance. It is a detailed, step-by-step account of what God does for those who stop trying to save themselves and instead cry out to the only one who can reach into the pit. This psalm maps the journey from the depths of the pit to the stability of the rock, from the cry of desperation to the new song of praise. It is the biography of every saved sinner.
The Text
I hoped earnestly for Yahweh;
And He inclined to me and heard my cry for help.
He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay,
And He set my feet upon a high rock, He established my steps.
He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God;
Many will see and fear
And will trust in Yahweh.
How blessed is the man who has made Yahweh his trust,
And has not turned to the proud, nor to those who stray into falsehood.
Many, O Yahweh my God, are the wondrous deeds You have done,
And Your thoughts toward us;
There is none to compare with You.
I would declare and speak of them,
But they are too numerous to recount.
(Psalm 40:1-5 LSB)
The Waiting and the Leaning (v. 1)
The testimony begins not with action, but with a particular kind of inaction.
"I hoped earnestly for Yahweh; And He inclined to me and heard my cry for help." (Psalm 40:1)
The Hebrew here for "hoped earnestly" is literally "waiting, I waited." This is not the passive, listless waiting of someone in a doctor's office. This is the taut, expectant waiting of a soldier in a trench, listening for the sound of reinforcements. It is a waiting that is full of hope, a hope directed at a specific person: Yahweh. This is the essence of faith. Faith is not a blind leap into the dark; it is a confident reliance on the character of the covenant-keeping God. David has given up on his own schemes and has fixed his entire expectation on God alone.
And what is God's response to this expectant waiting? "He inclined to me." This is a beautiful picture of divine condescension. The infinite, transcendent God of the universe leaned down. He bent over to listen. He stooped to hear the cry from the pit. Our God is not a distant, aloof deity who must be coaxed or appeased. He is a Father who leans in to catch the faintest whisper from His child. The cry for help is not what earns the rescue, but it is the occasion for it. God responds to the cry of faith, a cry that acknowledges total helplessness and total dependence on Him.
The Divine Extraction (v. 2)
Once God hears, He acts. And His action is decisive and comprehensive.
"He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a high rock, He established my steps." (Psalm 40:2)
Notice the pronouns. "He brought me up... He set my feet... He established my steps." Salvation is a monologue of divine action. There is no "we" here. David did not meet God halfway. He did not climb part of the way out and have God pull him the rest. He was in a "pit of destruction," a place of roaring chaos, and a "miry clay," where there is no footing, no leverage, no hope of self-extraction. This is the biblical diagnosis of our condition in sin. We are dead in our trespasses, sinking in the mire of our own corruption.
The rescue is a complete reversal. God does not just pull him out of the pit; He places him in a position of absolute security. "He set my feet upon a high rock." From the instability of the mire to the immovability of the rock. This is justification. It is a change of standing, a change of legal position. We are taken out of Adam and placed in Christ, our Rock. Our feet are on solid ground, not because of our own strength, but because of where God has placed us.
But it doesn't stop there. "He established my steps." This is sanctification. Once our standing is secure, God begins to direct our walk. He gives us a firm path to follow. He doesn't just save us from the pit; He saves us for a purpose, for a life of obedient walking with Him. The Christian life is a movement from the mire to the rock, and then from the rock to the road.
The Public Testimony (v. 3)
A private salvation is a contradiction in terms. A true work of God in the soul cannot be contained; it must come out.
"He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; Many will see and fear And will trust in Yahweh." (Psalm 40:3)
God is the songwriter. He does not just give us a reason to sing; He gives us the song itself. The "new song" is the song of the redeemed. The old songs were laments from the pit, dirges of despair, or perhaps the proud anthems of self-reliance. But the new song has a new theme: "praise to our God." It is a song about Him, for Him. It is thoroughly God-centered.
And this song is meant to be sung in public. It is a corporate reality, "praise to our God." This is why we gather for worship, to join our voices in this new song. And this public praise has an evangelistic effect. "Many will see and fear and will trust in Yahweh." Our testimony, our joyful praise for our deliverance, is one of God's primary means of drawing others to Himself. They see the radical change, from a life stuck in the mire to a life established on the rock. They see the joy. They hear the new song. This provokes a holy "fear," a sense of awe at the power of this God. And that awe leads to trust. Your personal story of salvation is not just for you; it is a weapon for the kingdom.
The Blessed Man's Choice (v. 4-5)
David then draws a general principle, a beatitude, from his personal experience.
"How blessed is the man who has made Yahweh his trust, And has not turned to the proud, nor to those who stray into falsehood." (Psalm 40:4)
The blessed life, the truly happy life, is a life of radical trust in God. But this trust is defined by what it rejects as much as by what it embraces. To trust in Yahweh means you cannot simultaneously trust in "the proud." The proud are the self-reliant, the powerful, the ones who believe they can build their own towers to heaven. They are the bootstrap-pullers. To trust in God is to reject their arrogant self-sufficiency.
Nor can we trust in "those who stray into falsehood." This refers to all the false gospels, the idols, the ideologies, and the philosophies that promise salvation apart from God. The world is full of these crooked paths. The blessed man is the one who refuses to turn aside into these lies, keeping his eyes fixed on the truth of God's Word. This requires discernment and courage.
This blessedness culminates in a state of overwhelmed wonder.
"Many, O Yahweh my God, are the wondrous deeds You have done, And Your thoughts toward us; There is none to compare with You. I would declare and speak of them, But they are too numerous to recount." (Psalm 40:5)
When you have been pulled from the pit, your perspective changes. You begin to see the hand of God everywhere. David looks back at God's "wondrous deeds," His mighty acts of salvation in history. And he looks up at God's "thoughts toward us," His eternal plan of love and grace. The sheer number, the sheer weight of God's goodness, becomes overwhelming. It is an arithmetic of grace that breaks the calculator. "They are too numerous to recount."
This is the proper end of all true theology. It does not end with a tidy system that we have mastered. It ends with us on our faces in doxology, stunned into silence by the immensity of a God who is beyond comparison. Our attempts to declare His greatness will always fall short, and that is as it should be. He is infinite, and our praise will be our joyful, eternal task.
The Rock Who Was in the Pit
This psalm finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who truly waited for Yahweh in the pit of death. On the cross, He entered the ultimate "pit of destruction," bearing the full weight of our sin and ruin. He sank into the "miry clay" of our rebellion, crying out to His Father.
And the Father heard His cry. He brought Him up from the grave, setting His feet on the unshakable rock of the resurrection. He has established His steps, seating Him at His own right hand, giving Him all authority in heaven and on earth.
And because of His resurrection, God has put a new song in our mouths. The song of our salvation is only possible because of His. He is the one who makes us blessed, because He took our curse. He is the one who enables us to trust, because He was faithful unto death. His wondrous deeds, culminating in the cross and empty tomb, are so numerous and glorious that we will spend all of eternity attempting, and failing, to recount them all.
If you are in the pit today, if you are stuck in the mire, stop trying to jump. Stop struggling. Look away from your own efforts and look to the one who entered the pit for you. Cry out to Him. He is the God who inclines His ear. He is the one who rescues. He will pull you out, set your feet on the Rock, and give you a new song to sing.