26 Verses for 2026
June. Remember God’s Faithfulness:
#4 Psalm 40:10 – Declare God’s faithfulness to others.
Psalm 40 starts out with a description by David, in general terms, of how God has answered his prayers in the past and delivered him from troubles that he could not extricate himself from, and then reestablished him in a place of confidence and security.
Psalm 40 isn’t so much a prayer as it is a prayer report. David is testifying how when he was having a hard time, he prayed to his God, Yahweh, and now David is sharing what God did in response to his prayers.
When God does something good for us today, do we testify about it afterwards? Our testimony might help someone else struggling with their faith or a similar problem. Testifying about God’s grace in our lives can even strengthen our own faith and our own sense of God’s goodness.
The good that God does isn’t always exactly what we might have asked for, but that is not a reason to not testify about it. In fact, it becomes an essential element–showing how God is not like a ‘genie in a bottle’ that we bring out whenever we need to make a wish. He is the Sovereign God, Lord and Creator of the Universe, with His own agenda for the World and for where He wants to fit us into it.
Our theme verse this week, Psalm 40:10, is actually the continuation of a point started in verse 9.
The Hebrew word translated here as ‘great assembly,’ was translated in the Septuagint as ‘ecclesia,’ which is the word used in the New Testament for ‘church.’ From the context, the ‘righteousness’ that David is proclaiming is God’s righteousness.
So we get the picture here that David is not just sharing about what God did for him with individuals, that he is not just sharing with small groups of friends, but that he was testifying to everyone when the Jews got together in one of their great assemblies three times a year. As the king, David spoke to the great assembly. As a ‘man after God’s own heart,’ his testimony was that he did not neglect to proclaim how God had answered his prayers for help since the last assembling. He even called God to be a witness by saying in effect, “As You Yourself know.”
David’s use of the negative to state a positive is an interesting way of making his point. He also uses the Hebrew method of parallelism in these two verses where the same point is made using different statements. Here is a list of the 5 things that David “did not neglect to do.”
A. Proclaim God’s righteousness,
B. Speak of God’s faithfulness,
C. (Speak of God’s) salvation,
D. Reveal God’s acts of love,
E. (Reveal God’s) faithfulness to His covenant.
Psalm 40:9-10 can also be looked at as a model of how to give a testimony, both in church and individually to others. Check out part B of the blog for some ideas along those lines. It is the real meat of my study this week.
Until then, don’t forget to proclaim God’s faithfulness!
Bill's Bible Blog 