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Past Ponderings

Monday, July 19, 2021

Is Your Proclamation Bold & Joyful? (Psalm 40:9-10)

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Is Your Proclamation Bold & Joyful? (Psalm 40:9-10)

GIST: Our lives should boldly and joyfully proclaim His deliverance, salvation, love, and faithfulness.


Last week, we took a brief break from our Summer in Psalms to hear from my dad. Today, we’re picking back up in what is now part three of our discussion of Psalm 40.

This is a psalm that focuses in on deliverance. We’ve looked at the nature of that deliverance: how He rescues us and changes our hearts leading us to praise Him and proclaim His salvation to the world. Then, we looked at why we can even have that deliverance in the first place and saw that it was because Jesus came taking on ultimate suffering, so we can experience this ultimate hope. Today, we’re following the psalmist’s heart as he zeroes now even more into his desire to proclaim, or share the goodness and faithfulness of this God who has delivered him. Specifically, I want to camp out in verses 9-10 and see how he proclaimed and what he proclaimed. 


“9 I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; behold, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O LORD. 10 I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart; I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.”


Here’s our gist: Our lives should boldly and joyfully proclaim His deliverance, salvation, love, and faithfulness.


I. How He Proclaimed (9-10a)

Let’s start by looking at the first bit here. “9 I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; behold, I have not restrained my lips, as You know, O LORD. 10 I have not hidden Your deliverance within my heart….”

Unrestrained Proclamation of Deliverance. We’ll get to the deliverance side of this more when we look at what he was proclaiming in the next point. For now, I want to focus on this lack of restraint. There are at least two aspects of this. First, he didn’t hold back. He says God knows he didn’t restrain his tongue or keep His deliverance hidden in his heart. We talk about hiding God’s Word in our hearts as a positive thing, as does the Bible, but only when we mean feeding on it so deeply that it’s so engraved upon our hearts nothing can take it away. However, we are meant to both know God and make Him known. We can’t really do one without the other. This is convicting to me, but as I type these notes I realize really knowing God means knowing His heart, and knowing His heart and not sharing His love with others, sit in contradiction. 

For example, and this is a loose example at best, but I hope it connects for someone ☺️. I can’t do sweets. For whatever reason, they mess with my belly, and if I eat even a little, I’ll be paying the price! Now, Melissa knows me better than anyone else in this world right now. She knows this. But what if she knew that and kept buying me candy for all my birthday presents and anniversary gifts anyway. It’d be like she missed the whole point. If you know Jesus, you’ll want to share Him boldly and openly because that’s what He wants and that’s who He is. He came to bring hope to the world, and the love He poured out for you is the same love He poured out for those around you.

Don’t tiptoe around Jesus or throw out generically spiritual terms and consider that evangelism. Talk specifically and openly about Jesus. Don’t be ashamed or embarrassed. Because, guys, if we are embarrassed, what does that say about our faith? What does that say about our relationship with Jesus? I’m not ashamed of the ones I love.

The second observation feeds on this. Not only was he unrestrained in his proclamation, but he also told the good news to a lot of people. He didn’t keep it to himself, but kept telling people. Why he did this is explained in part by our next point, which really could have been in either of our big sections today because this is both the message he was carrying and how he carried it. See, he was excited to tell people because he had a…

Joyful Message. He was bringing the good news, and he was glad to do it! It changed his life and he wanted it to change everyone else’s! Last time, we talked about how this passage was connected to Jesus in the New Testament. He perfectly exemplified this unrestrained joy. We should want to follow that example. Don’t hold back. Don’t be ashamed. Instead, let your joy overflow as you boldly and openly share hope!

So that’s the how. Let’s look at…


II. What He Proclaimed (10)

Look back at verse 10. “10 I have not hidden Your deliverance within my heart. I have spoken of Your faithfulness and Your salvation; I have not concealed Your steadfast love and Your faithfulness from the great congregation.” 

As usual, that first point was a bit longer, so I will try to be a little quicker here. Essentially, we have four parts of the gospel he shares with joy and boldness. First, he proclaims→ 

Deliverance. This refers to his rescue, but depending on your translation, you might actually see the world righteousness there instead. The word can be translated righteousness or righteous acts. In the context, David is clearly praising God for both. Because God is righteous, He alone can rescue us from sin, and He alone did! When we share Jesus, we can’t forget to share what He’s done for us. I mentioned this a few weeks ago. You have a story to tell. You have a testimony to share. The life you’re living is on purpose. What He’s brought you through—the trials and the triumphs—are meant to be an encouragement to others. Point to His rescue, because people need His→  

Salvation. This is gospel hope. I remember very distinctly being afraid to share the gospel with people because I didn’t know how to put it into words. I never want you to feel like that, so we address the gospel nearly every Sunday here...because it’s found all throughout Scripture! God is holy and loving, but we’re not. We’re sinners who have failed to live up not only to our own standards but His. Because we have sinned against the eternal God, we deserve eternal punishment: Hell. BUT, Jesus loves us so much He came and took on Hell in our place and rose again victorious over sin. If we put our trust in Him, if we believe He is who He says He is and surrender control of our hearts to Him, letting Him direct our paths, trusting in Him to rescue us, He will. That’s salvation. That’s hope! That’s→ 

Steadfast Love. And His steadfast love is unconditional, never ending, pursuing grace. Three days ago, we were in Branson with my parents and grandma, and we went to see Jesus performed at the Sight & Sound theater. It was incredible! One of my favorite lines came when Jesus had just calmed the sea. His disciples were blown away (but not literally, because He calmed the sea ☺️), and they started praising Him as God. And He said something like this: “You’ve seen me work miracles all around Galilee, but I didn’t just come for them.” He didn’t come as a local miracle worker. He came to save the world. He came to rescue you. He came because His love never ends. And that hits the last part of this proclamation. Proclaim His rescue. Proclaim His salvation. Proclaim His love. And proclaim His→ 

Faithfulness. There are actually two words translated faithfulness in our English text. One carries the idea of truth and the other refers to steadiness or continuity. This is huge because we want to proclaim both! Jesus is the truth. His Word isn’t outdated or old-fashioned. His message isn’t “for another time”. He is truth, and His message is for us today as much as it has ever been! And we should also proclaim His continued work. He’s not done yet and won’t be until He returns. He’s doing things all around us every day. Pray that your eyes are open to see that, and talk about it. 

 

TAKEAWAYS

  1. Talk to people about Jesus and be willing to go deep.

    1. Deliverance (Righteous Rescue)

    2. Salvation (Gospel Hope)

    3. Steadfast Love (Unconditional, Never Ending, Pursuing Grace) 

    4. Faithfulness (Truth & Continued Work)

  2. Pray to be filled with joy. So much wants to rob us of that, but our lives have been changed by good news!



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