God Sustains His Servant.
For the choir director. A Psalm of David.
40 I waited [a]patiently for the Lord;
And He inclined to me and heard my cry.
2 He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the [b]miry clay,
And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.
3 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 How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust,
And has not [c]turned to the proud, nor to those who lapse into falsehood.
5 Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders which You have done,
And Your thoughts toward us;
There is none to compare with You.
If I would declare and speak of them,
They would be too numerous to count.6 [d]Sacrifice and meal offering You have not desired;
My ears You have [e]opened;
Burnt offering and sin offering You have not required.
7 Then I said, “Behold, I come;
In the scroll of the book it is [f]written of me.
8 I delight to do Your will, O my God;
Your Law is within my heart.”
The first couple passages here are pretty amazing, and astounding to think about. Especially verse 5, when the psalmist considers all the wonders God has ever done for mankind, and the thoughts he has toward them. None of us can remember or quantify all the things we know he has done in our lives, let alone the countless things of which we are unaware.
It’s easy enough to pass on by the more obvious things, like His provision for a need before we even knew it would be a thing. Yet, think of how your life might have been different, but for a single “circumstance” or “coinicidence”. How many times has God intervened on your behalf, and you were none the wiser?
We’ll probably never know all the things that “conspired” to put us on the path we tread currently, but then the psalmist switches gears in vv. 6-8. He begins to talk of the path we choose going forward. It is reminiscent of Samuel’s words to King Saul, “obedience is better than sacrifice…”
The psalmist says he delights to do God’s will, and weren’t the sacrifices what God told them to do? Wasn’t that an essential part of the “law”? Well, yes and no… Now, there were certain sacrifices and offerings that were part of a festival or celebration. But many of the sacrifices would not have been necessary without sin, which is literally disobedience.
So the psalmist (and Samuel) rightly conclude that God doesn’t want our sacrifices. Rather than mere ritual actions and words, He wants our hearts, because then we will willingly follow and obey Him. Then we will desire to know who God is, to find His plan for our lives. His will becomes then a delight for us, not a tedious ritual, but something alive and burning in our very souls. God’s “law” is not a meaningless list of “do’s” and “don’ts”, but the path to find true (and everlasting) life and fulfillment in Him.