1) Who was the guy who wrote the 23^{rd Psalm as a shepherd boy sitting out under the stars with his father's sheep and goats? David}

2) Who was the guy who with a sling and only one stone felled a 9" tall Philistine warrior and became the hero of Israel? David

3) Who was the guy who became King Saul's greatest commander and won battle after battle for God and country?

4) Who was the guy who was chased by King Saul into the wilderness where he was hunted down by the very army he had one time commanded

5) Who was the guy who built a magnificent temple full of gold and jewels for the Israelite people to worship in? No…That was actually Solomon David's son…

There are more chapters in the Bible written about David, or by David, than any other person in history… including our Lord Jesus.

And because…as he went through some of the early difficult times in his life…he was, at the same time writing the Psalms… if we can line up a psalm with what is happening in 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles…we can actually get inside of David's brain and know what he was thinking…

He goes from shepherd boy…king anointing ... to giant killer… to army commander…to renegade outlaw … to hiding out in a cold dark cave…fearing for his life…all in the space of a few months…

It doesn't take long for David's boyhood innocence to fall away. All the acclaim that came with killing Goliath faded… All big headed fame that came with being promoted from leading dirty sheep… to leading armies into battle…gone…

David's depended so completely on God in those early years… up through his victory over Goliath… Maybe, then, there grew in him a sense that he was bigger than his britches…. It interested us, on Wednesday evening, that David didn't write any Psalms….. from right after he killed Goliath…. until he found himself at the bottom of an emotional and a very real pit in the cave of Adullam….and then his pen finds ink and paper again..

Look how dark the emotional hole got for him…. He'd come a long way down from; "The Lord is my shepherd… I shall not want, he makes me lie down in green pastures"

That's an emotional black hole right there… I've been there… you probably have too…

It didn't take David too many days to correct his "black-hole" thinking…to re-focus his attention on his beloved God… who not only, still, loved him…but who had every moment of the rest of his life planned for his ultimate good…and God was still arraigning for his life to have maximum impact. (The same is true for you and me…do we believe that?) God has every moment of the rest of his life planned for our ultimate good…and God was still arraigning for our lives to have maximum impact.

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Let me take you to just one Psalm for the rest of this message…It is a 'cave" psalm. It is literally "the confessions of a cave man". Probably not the cave of Adullam but one of the many caves David had to hide in over the next ________ years… This would have been written after the events of David's life had started to make more sense. This is David's prayer "out of" his cave years…There are lessons in it for us as we "pray out of the pits" of our own lives.

There so much good advice in these two verses if only we will learn it.

David starts out this psalm with a review… When you go to the next grade in school, you spend the first 6 weeks reviewing what you learned the year before…why?... Because, reviewing fixes last year's truths into our minds!

How often do you stop and think back through all the times you cried out to God in desperation, in the past…he heard your cry…he guided you through the caves of your life.

How many answered prayers has God already given us, in the past… that get completely lost in our worries about the present?

David gets this one right:

A) David reviewed God's work in his life…

1) I waited, 2) He turned to me 3) He heard my cry 4) He lifted me out 5) He set my feet 6) He gave me a firm place to stand

Most of us could go back in our memories and pull up a whole series of impossible times when: 1) We waited, 2) He turned to me 3) He heard my cry 4) He lifted me out 5) He set my feet 6) He gave me a firm place to stand

When was David's "ole muck and mire" time?

Well, obviously, when Saul is chasing him trying to kill him…when he acts mad and slobbers in his beard to get away from the king of Gath… Yes…but I'm not so sure that's all that is David's mind.

It's hard to imagine David's shepherd years as a "slimy pit of mud and mire" They were lonesome years by not slimy… David developed an intense dependence on God in those years….but those months/years as a commander in Saul's army???

There is a cone of silence about what was going on in David's personal life while he was everybody's hero. How many times have we seen people who, once fame arrived, lost focus on the more important things in their lives.

I heard an interview in which Hannah Montana said that the most important thing in her life was her faith in God. I remember Mariah Carey saying that (writing it in the cover of one of her earliest CD's) ….when she was a young new star… you don't hear that from her any more…

Not only does David not write any Psalms during his commander days but he never refers back to those days in his later life. I'm just speculating…but I wonder if David's success made him willing to step over some lines that he wouldn't have dreamed of as a shepherd boy…. I wonder if he may have dropped some habits…like daily meditation in God's Word…and maybe picked up a few less God centered habits (he did later with Bathsheba) … until Saul chases him into the wilderness and he finds himself all alone with God again…

Psalm 40:2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and the mire

Perhaps in David's life…certainly in our lives…

How many of us can look…not too far back…and remember sinful behavior and sinful attitudes that are just not part of our present lives. Sermons are often directed to the sins we are still struggling with…but I am encouraging you, today, if you've been truly walking with God any length of time… to look back at who you used to be… and pause to thank God for lifting you up from the slimy pit…from the mud and the mire….

Also:

Most, of us, in this room, are going through a slimy pit, to one degree or another, in our life circumstances. In some families the pit is very dark and very deep.

David is warning us against looking downward toward the bottom of the pit!

That's what we do, you know… We get down on our knees inspecting every square inch of the pit floor…where should we be looking? Up!

1) I waited, 2) He turned to me 3) He heard my cry 4) He lifted me out 5) He set my feet 6) He gave me a firm place to stand

When David looked upward… there was God. If God fills the universe and fills our hearts…when we are down in a 20' pit he is no further from us than before we descended there. The only way to miss him is if we are staring at the bottom of the pit…

David's song writing had started up again…not after he was raised to kingship and great success…but after he raised his eyes up out of the pit and locked them on his ever-present loving God! And he, somehow, knew that his life lessons would someday bless others/us.

So…

A) David reviewed God's work in his life… and B) David reaffirmed his trust in God

After David gets his eyes pointed upward instead of downward… the blinders bagin to fall off and he see reality…

Psalm 40:4 Oh, the joys of those who trust the Lord, who have no confidence in the proud or in those who worship idols.  5 O Lord my God, you have performed many wonders for us. Your plans for us are too numerous to list. You have no equal. If I tried to recite all your wonderful deeds, I would never come to the end of them. (NLT)

…and the same is true for us… if you tries to recite all the things God has already done for you… you would never come to an end of them…but I encourage you to try! This week instead of reciting to God a long list of everything that is going wrong in your life… try reciting to him the unending list of every impossible situation that he has already worked out for you!

Can you remember a time two or three years ago when you were caught up in a situation that you saw no possible solution to?… you cried out to God and he didn't seem to move as fast as you thought he should… and yet here you are now… that trial is, perhaps, behind you…he did work it all out.

Often, instead of being overwhelmed by the awesomeness of our God's deliverance…we are, already, overwhelmed by the next difficult life circumstance facing us.

Watch what David says…it is very enlightening…

Psalm 40:6 You take no delight in sacrifices or offerings. Now that you have made me listen, I finally understand you don’t require burnt offerings or sin offerings.

Now obviously God did require burnt offerings and sin offerings of the Israelites… but it was never supposed to be about the action of offering the sacrifice. What God was looking for from the beginning was a heart attitude. God's delight was never in a burning piece of meat…it was in a heart attitude.

Sometimes our ritualistic coming to God, now, is no more delightful to God, than a burning piece of meat was then. He's looking for something to take place inside of us…

The middle part of that statement is the answer:

Now that you have made me listen, I finally understand 

Literally…it says:

The word is used in the Old Testament to refer to digging out a well or digging a tunnel..

God… you have gone into my life and removed all the debris that will keep the well from filling up with pure, fresh water. You have bored out the walls of my spiritual tunnel and removed the big boulders to allow the water of your Spirit and presence to flow unhindered into my life.

The difficult circumstances and the well digging process…are the same! Without the well digging process…there is way to much debris…for God to dwell unhindered… in us.

David's response:

Psalm 40:7 Then I said, "Here I am, I have come…8 I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart." (NIV)

I will tell everyone I meet that you are just and righteous…what you do is always the right thing….always! You are faithful…you are loving… you are salvation… I will tell that to everyone I see out here in the wilderness…and when I get out of this cave and get back to civilization I will fill the great assembly with my songs of praise.

I will tell them that you were righteous… acting rightly… even in the most difficult times of my life.