I love the psalms; I think I have always loved them. Some of my earliest memories are sitting on the end of a pipe organ bench as my mom practiced or wandering through the choir during rehearsals. My mom was the organist and choir director for our church, so we practically lived in the choir loft. We were up there so much that it sometimes felt weird when we sat down below with the rest of the congregation.
As I got older and started studying music myself. I used to try to imagine what the psalms would have sounded like back when they were first played. I never did figure it out, but in the end, I didn’t care because even without the music, the words were so powerful. I say the words were powerful, rather than beautiful, because it was the power of the songs that impressed me. I knew I would never know how they originally sounded, but even stripped of their music and translated into English, the power of those words somehow survived, and that impressed me.
Since then, life has taken me to many places, but the psalms have always been with me. I have experienced so many things that only the psalms seem to understand. Pain, disappointment, confusion, and even anger all found expression in the psalms somewhere. Especially pain.
Today’s psalm comes from a place of deep, deep pain – pain that led to a healthy desperation. Let’s look at the first stanza together:
Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
The first four words of this psalm set the stage and the tone for the rest of the song.
Out of the depths.
This psalmist was in a deep hole and in desperation cried out to the only one who could help. God. He wanted God to hear him – to answer him. He was not crying out for justice; he was crying out for mercy. Because he knew, all too well, that he could never expect God to answer him out of justice, for he was a guilty man, if God acknowledged him at all, it would be an act of pure mercy. But although the author was desperate, he had not given up. He was desperately hopeful. He knew something about God that drew him to God, even though he knew he was a sinful man.
Let’s read the next stanza to learn what he knew that gave him the courage to ask – and the faith to hope for an answer.
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.
Whoever this psalmist was he was keenly aware of the universal problem of sin. He knew that under every problem lies the deeper problem of our sin and separation from God. But this did not lead him to despair because this songwriter knew something about God that gave him hope. He knew – God is a forgiving God. He is powerful and holy, but he is also loving and forgiving, and He is merciful to those who call upon him.
Ironically, it was the mercy of God that led him to fear God. God’s justice and power are awesome and not one of us has any hope – if not for the completely undeserved mercy of God.
The author has complete faith in the goodness and mercy of God so he determines to wait for his answer. Let’s read on:
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.
The psalmist is determined to wait for God and God alone. He will wait anxiously and excitedly, like a watchman waits for the morning. If you have ever worked nights, you know this feeling. When I was younger, I was a prison guard for six and a half years, and for three of those years I worked nights. I watched, often in the dark, all night, and believe me, nothing is sweeter than seeing the sky slowly brighten in the morning. Because I knew that the long night was nearly finished. The writer of this psalm knew that feeling too, but his desire to hear from God was far deeper than the relief I found at the end of a long night shift.
The psalmist repeats this line twice, he is leaning into his longing for God, he is desperate for the light of God to dawn on him. He can hardly wait to hear God’s voice. All of his hope rests in God and His word. He knew that no matter how bad things were, they would be far, far worse without the mercy of God.
It’s also interesting to notice that the psalmist is placing his hope in God’s word. Have you ever wondered what word of God he is trusting at this time? Much of the Bible as we know it had not been written yet. This songwriter probably lived between 800 and 500 BC. Depending on the exact date of writing, it’s likely that a significant portion of the Old Testament had not yet been written or assembled, and he almost certainly did not have a personal copy of it. So, was he talking about the books of Moses? Was he referring to moments of direct revelation from God or words delivered through prophets and seers? In our age, we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the word of God, especially in the Christian West. We have multiple translations of the entire Bible, and easy access to 2000 years of Christian writings from scholars and heroes of our faith to guide and inspire us. But this psalmist likely had only a fraction of the revealed word of God to hope in. But such as he had, he clung to, as both his strength and his source of hope.
O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities.
The psalmist’s hope in God was far bigger than the crisis that originally drove him to write this song. This last stanza speaks of his faith in God’s love, who will someday redeem us from our iniquities. For a song that begins in crisis, it is a bit odd that it does not end in the resolution of that initial problem, but instead, ends in a statement of faith in God to resolve our ultimate crisis – our sin and separation from God. Sin is the source of every crisis.
Today, we live in a world of crisis. Everywhere we look we see suffering and impending doom. Economies collapsing, war, violence on the streets, corrupt politics, broken families, technological threats of all kinds, even threats to our health, wherever we look we seem to be staring disaster in the face. To make matters worse, each of these issues are reported to us by a media that profits from hysteria, pouring gasoline on the fire of every one of these problems.
In a world like this, where do we go for help? Where do we find peace? This song shows us the way.
God is the only possible source of help because mankind is universally corrupted by sin. Humanity at its very best is limited, and everything we do is tainted by the selfishness of sin. This is not new. The psalmist knew this. He knew that he had no right to even approach a holy and righteous God. He knew that humanity stands guilty before God and has no right to ask for anything.
And yet, the psalmist also knew that God’s love for us moves Him to mercy, and so he asked God to forgive him once again. He asked God to hear him and answer him. In the Church today, we have been repeating confessions and hearing of God’s mercy for so long that we sometimes forget what a miracle God’s mercy is. The psalmist, on the other hand, knew God only through sacrifice and the temple. In his world, you could not approach God or His temple without first dealing with sin. And that meant sacrifice, and sacrifice meant the shed blood of a perfect animal.
Ancient believers were much more in touch with what it means to say that the wages of sin is death. In their worship, forgiveness of sin involved the literal death of animals. However, they knew that killing an animal would never erase or restore what their sin has destroyed. They believed that their faithful obedience to God’s word would open the gates for God’s mercy. They knew that God’s mercy was their only hope in the long run.
So let’s review the path of the psalmist through this song:
He was in pain → he took his pain to God → he confessed his sin and the sin of his people → He waited on God → he found hope for the future.
What should we take away from the psalm today?
Have you ever noticed that the best stories come from the worst days? The best stories are always told after the fact, when all the real danger is past and there is nothing left now but a good story. Take the story of Israel at the Red Sea. We all love to hear about how God opened the waters so that they could walk through, and we love to hear about how God used the same sea that they thought would be their death to save them by drowning their enemies in it. After the fact, thousands of years later, we teach our kids a version of the Song of Moses. A song that was originally composed to celebrate how they felt as they watched God destroy their enemies before their eyes. But today’s psalm is not a song of triumph after the fact. Today’s song is the kind of song you would write before the sea was split. This song is a song of faith; faith in a good God, a merciful and forgiving God, who will redeem and save.
Our lives are filled with problems, some of which we can solve, while others are entirely beyond our control. I think this is by design. We like to ask why at times like these, at least, I do. But God, I believe, purposely gives us problems that are beyond us because He wants to go through them with us. He wants us to invite Him into our lives and into our problems. He wants to show us His power, His grace, His kindness, His love, and at times, he wants to show us His pain. We often don’t think about God’s pain because we are too absorbed with our own pain. But the ultimate redemption that the psalmist was praying for came at the expense of God himself. The pain of Jesus is God’s pain. And that pain was caused by our sin and rebellion against Him. It was our refusal to trust Him and to trust in His goodness that set all of creation onto the path it is currently on. We often cry out, “Why!?” to God, but the reason is our sin. Not just our individual sin, but the collective sin of humanity. The psalmist recognized both his individual sin and the collective sin of the world. It was this recognition that caused him to both love and fear God because, unless God redeemed and forgave us, none of us could ever stand.
Today, we stand on the other side of the Red Sea, so to speak. God has redeemed us; that is a historical fact and a present reality. But it is also a future hope. This world is still deeply damaged by the sin of humanity. We all suffer because of it. But there is a hope beyond the present sin-damaged world. We have been given new life in Christ now as a down payment of the world to come. All of Creation is going to be made new one day, and all that remains of this sin-damaged world will be gone. There is a day coming when the redemption the psalmist foresaw and the redemption that began at the cross will be made complete in a new creation, a new heavens and earth. A creation untouched by the sin and rebellion that damaged this present world.
Can we, along with the psalmist, trust God for his full redemption? Can we wait for God to speak and to comfort us in our present pain? Will we encourage others to trust in the goodness of God while we wait? Psalm 130 walks us through whatever challenges we may face this week and reminds us of the hope we have for the future because of the goodness and mercy of God.
Let’s walk this path together this week!
Amen.
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