Psalm 40:11-17 Withhold not you your tender mercies from me, O LORD: let your loving kindness and your truth continually preserve me.… Though the sufferer has been delivered from one great distress, he is still encompassed by great sufferings and dangers, from which he prays to be rescued. Suggests - I. THAT THE WORK OF OUR DISCIPLINE AND SALVATION IS A LIFELONG WORK. No one act of deliverance is sufficient; no one deliverance can cover the whole of our experience. 1. Fresh sin brings a renewed consciousness of suffering. (Ver. 12.) The psalmist suffered so in this respect that his eyes became dim from exhaustion; he felt his sins to be more than the hairs of his head, so that his heart failed in strength. Sense and soul both gave way. 2. Men in high station are in constant danger from enemies. (Vers. 14, 15.) However righteous in conduct and blameless in character. Bad men have selfish ends to attain, and they try to get good men out of their way by slander and persecution. 3. As life advances, the sense of our poverty and need deepens. (Ver. 17.) If we are growing wiser and better, we get a deeper insight into what we ought to be and might become, and so nourish a Divine discontent with our poverty and weakness. II. LIFELONG NEED WILL BEGET LIFELONG PRAYER. 1. Gratitude for the past will inspire us to prayer. This was the case with the psalmist (vers. 1-10). 2. We are encouraged to pray by the thought of the goodness of God. (Ver. 11.) He appeals to "the tender mercies," "the loving-kindness," and "the truth," or the faithfulness, of God to those who trust in him.. He knows that "God thinketh upon him." 3. He appeals also to the retributive justice of God. (Vers. 14, 15.) He is sure that God will deal righteously with his enemies. 4. He is emboldened to seek for speedy deliverance. (Ver. 17.) In the first verse he says he waited patiently for the Lord; here he becomes impatient for the Divine interference. The patience means persevering prayer; the impatience means urgent prayer; and both are right and acceptable and necessary to the believer in earnest about salvation. - S Parallel Verses KJV: Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O LORD: let thy lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me. |
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