The song learned in tribulation.
"He hath put a new song," etc. Trouble impoverishes the children of this world, but enriches the children of God. As St. Paul says, if our hope in Christ were an illusion, Christians would be of all men most pitiable; just as one who has been left heir to an immense fortune, and then by discovery of a later will loses all, is far poorer than he was before. But, as our hope is no illusion, but "a living hope," resting on a living Saviour, and the word of the living God, this life is immensely the richer for it. The "new song" of which the text speaks is one to learn which the heart must be tutored in the school of trouble.
I. A SONG OF DELIVERANCE. An ungodly heart, emerging from trouble, has the sense of relief, escape, not deliverance. Like a shipwrecked man, swimming for his life, heaved by a high wave on shore; not like sinking Peter, caught in the hand of Jesus, treading the waves at his Saviour's side. The difference is immense. Was it worth while for the mariner to be shipwrecked, half-drowned, and lose his all, for the pleasure of standing again on dry ground? Certainly not. He has lost much, gained nothing. But was it worth while for Peter to go through that terrible experience? Had the night been twice as dark, the storm twice as fierce, had he sunk to the very bottom, it would have been a small price to pay for the joy of feeling himself grasped and lifted up in the Saviour's hand; the triumph of walking on the raging waters at his side (see Psalms 34:4-6, Psalms 34:17).
II. A SONG OF FORGIVENESS. The deliverance celebrated was not from mere calamity, but from guilt and its terrible consequences (see Psalms 40:12). This is taking the psalm as uttering David's own experience. But the contrast is so startling, even violent, between the tranquil thankfulness, sense of rectitude, and spiritual insight of Psalms 40:4-10, and the awful sense of sin in Psalms 40:12, that it seems very hard to reconcile, except by understanding that the Spirit of prophecy here made David the mouthpiece of an obedience, excelling and superseding sacrifice, only realized in Christ; and of that appalling, overwhelming view and sense of the terrific nature and amount of human guilt, which only he could have who "knew no sin," but "was made sin for us."
III. A SONG OF PRAISE. Deliverance is sweetest, most joyful, in the exercise of God's love, power, care; the answer to prayer; the fulfilment of promise. Forgiveness of sin is, of all God's good gifts, that which most reveals his love in compassion for the unworthy and disobedient, and in the provision of atonement. "Herein is love" (1 John 4:9, 1 John 4:10; Romans 5:8).
IV. A SONG OF DEEPENED EXPERIENCE; enriched spiritual life; wiser, stronger,' humbler faith. When tribulation has wrought patience (Romans 5:3, Romans 5:4); when "our extremity has been God's opportunity," and his presence has grown more real, his promises more precious and full of comfort; when we have learned to pray as never before, and prayer has been answered; when we have been made to feel our own utter weakness, and our Saviour's strength has been perfected in us;—then the very trial which threatened to confound and uproot our faith becomes the school in which we learn to trust God and know him, and therefore to praise him, as never before (1 Peter 1:7). So we gain some foretaste of the "new song" sung before the throne (Revelation 5:9, Revelation 5:10).
HOMILIES BY C. CLEMANCE