One of my favorite songs is based on Psalm 130, “I Will Wait for You.” The first few verses go like this:
Out of the depths I cry to you
In the darkest places I will call
Incline your ear to me anew
And hear my cry for mercy Lord
Were you to count my sinful ways
How could I come before your throne?
Yet full forgiveness meets my gaze
I stand redeemed by grace alone
So put your hope in God alone
Take courage in his power to save
Completely and forever won
By Christ emerging from the grave.1
Like in so many psalms, the psalmist is in distress and the cries out to the LORD. We are not told explicitly why the psalmist is in distress. This purposeful ambiguity allow us to overlay our distress on the psalm and take up the psalmist’s words as our own. Additionally, we are not told that the Lord delivered him from his distress but he knows the Lord will deliver him, if not in this world, then the next. The psalmist on the bases of whom he knows God to be waits for and hopes in the Lord, because he knows the Lord will not treat him according to what he deserves but rather will be gracious to him.
Psalm 130 is one of a group of 15 psalms titled, Song of Ascents. While we can’t be sure, the Song of Ascents were most likely pilgrim psalms that were sung as people made their way up to Jerusalem in the second temple period for the annual festivals.2 Jesus would have sung these psalms as he approached Jerusalem. This group of psalms moves us from despair to hope to blessing in God’s presence.
In the history of the Christian Church, Psalm 130 came to be one of the 7 Penitential Psalms because of its emphasis on the forgiveness of sin.3 The Lord has used this psalm powerfully in many lives. On the day of his conversion at the lowest point of his life, John Wesley had been listening to the choir at Saint Paul’s Cathedral sing Psalm 130, where the psalmist cries to God out of the depths and the possibility of forgiveness and redemption are held out to the despairing.4 Later that day he reluctantly attended a Moravian meeting, where he was converted while listening to the preface of Luther’s commentary on Romans being read.
About that event, Wesley wrote:
I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.5
Out of the depths, Wesley experienced redemption that changed everything.
The psalm easily divides into 4 sections of 2 verses each: the psalmist cries out in distress to the Lord (1-2), has confidence in the gracious nature of the Lord (3-4), waits for the Lord and hopes in his word (5-6), and testifies to the redeeming faithfulness of the Lord.
Through this psalm, I want us to see how faith ascends to God in the disappointments and distresses with which we are bombarded in this world.
In a world of distress:
Distress comes to every human. It’s not a matter of if but when we will experience what the psalmist refers to as the depths. Our present distress directs us to hope in God. When I was a kid, we would sing, Where could I go seeking a refuge for my soul? Where could I go but to the LORD?
Although we don’t know the particulars of his trouble, his situation was dire. Depths is a metaphor for deep waters or death and separation from God. Perhaps, the psalmist felt abandoned, isolated, and alone in his trouble. The verb tenses indicate his cry was repeated. His situation was as dire as Jonah in the belly of fish in the depth of the sea (Jonah 2:2,5). Jonah’s experience led to his confession, Salvation belongs to the Lord (2:9). Jonah was saved from certain death the only way any one can be: The LORD spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land (2:10).
Although the psalmist perhaps felt alone in distress, the reasoning of faith knows that God is merciful. He cries to the Lord to be attentive to the voice of his pleas for mercy.6 The psalmist, as he does in the next two sections, moves from using the divine name LORD to Lord, YHWH to Adonai. The first basing his pleas in the covenant faithfulness of God, and the second in sovereign power of God. What the psalmist pleads for is mercy. His is a plea for the Lord to show grace not based on what he deserves but based on the gracious nature of the LORD and his unlimited power to effect change.7
Perhaps, you are living in the middle of distress at this moment. This desire you have for relief is a good and right desire. No one says, I’m in destress, and I love it. We all find suffering and death objectionable.
All suffering and death find their origin sin. Thus we live in a world that languishes under the reign of sin and death. However, their reign is not a rogue reign but a reign over which God meticulously rules to create hope in us and a cry for mercy. The alternative to this severe mercy would be suffering and perishing without hope.
While I can’t satisfactorily answer the whys of suffering, our only hope in a world where sin and death reign is in God. The good and kind work of suffering directs us to cry out to Him for mercy. Spurgeon said, I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of Ages.8 Sometimes the Lord miraculously delivers. Other times he doesn’t. But I know that he will deliver us, if not in this life, in the life to come. Our present distress directs us to rightly cry out for mercy.
Some would argue that because the psalmist brings up sin and forgiveness, he is identifying the cause of his distress. No doubt, sin does cause distress. Yet, the psalmist does not directly confess his sin. He rather brings up sin and forgiveness to drive his point home that the LORD does not give us what we deserve because of his mercy. Additionally, the act of divine mercy in the gospel opens to us all the blessings of redemption.
There are a few mistakes we are prone to make in seasons of distress. Sometimes we are in the depths and know exactly why. We brought it on ourselves. Therefore, we think, I’m getting what I deserve, so I can’t plead for mercy. Sometimes we are in the depths and have no idea why. Then we think, I’m not getting what I deserve. This is unfair. I call a foul. These two approaches are the opposite extremes of the same problem, a denial of the possibility of and our need for mercy. A third mistake we make is in our thinking about how God is related to our distress. For some he keeps meticulous score and delights in punishing them. For others God has nothing to do with our pain and suffering.
Not so the psalmist. He wants to live, so he cries to the covenant LORD who delights in mercy and has the power to deliver his people and argues that God does not give us what we deserve.
The psalmist asks a rhetorical question to drive this point home: If iniquities, O Yah, you should mark, O Lord, who could stand (3)? If God kept a meticulous record of your sin for the purpose of punishing you, you would not have a leg to stand on. You could not survive divine scrutiny.
Contrary to that, with the Lord there is forgiveness (4). That is the LORD removes our sin from us. He keeps no record of it. He does not hold it against us. We look at that truth as if it is not a reality. Perhaps, you feel today that God is punishing you for your sin. True, the Lord does discipline his children for unrepentant sin, the sin they hang on to and won’t let go, but also He disciplines us for other reasons that are not sin but are necessary for growth and maturity. We can illustrate this most simply with parenting. We punish our children for outright wrongdoing, but most of our discipline is not for wrongs done but to keep them from harm. Often what they want is denied. They can’t go hear or do that. They may ask, Why are you being mean to me?
God does not dredge up past sins and punish us for them. His forgiveness is not a flimsy looking the other way either. Forgiveness is rooted in sacrifice. The word used here is repeated in Leviticus 4 and 5 for the sin offerings. Those sacrifices foreshadowed the ultimate and final sacrifice for sin that Jesus made on the cross for sinners, so that all who place their faith in him know forgiveness. On the basis of Christ finished work alone, God forgives sin. He does not gives us what we deserve.
If God does not give us what we deserve, and he forgives our sins, what is to keep us from sinning? The psalmist notes that God not marking iniquities and then forgiving sinners is not a picture of a God who is soft on sin but rather one of incomprehensible greatness. He does not forgive to make you sin but to make you fear (4b).
The purpose of forgiveness is the opposite of what we might have expected. Fearing God is not the ground of forgiveness, but rather God forgiving is the ground of fear.9 The logic of forgiveness is not an enticement to sin more. This is the same logic Paul uses in Romans 6:1-14. We don’t sin that grace may abound, but rather because the power of it is broken. Forgiveness creates a gratitude that leads us to an obedient reverence. Forgiveness properly orients our fear, perhaps, for the first time, which is central to living a transformed life in relationship with him.10
God does not give us what we deserve. The psalmist reasons from the greater to the lesser. If he doesn’t hold my sin against me, perhaps he will heal me or relieve my distress. This is how the reality of forgiveness teaches us to see God’s mercies are underserved, and we should dare to ask mercy of him. In the gospel of Christ, are rooted all the blessings of God to his people. How does that make you think of God and want to live?
The psalmist moves from talking to God in verses 1-4 to talking about God in verses 5-8. Having called on the LORD for mercy and affirmed God’s nature to give mercy to the undeserving, the psalmist resolves to wait for the LORD and hope in his word in confident expectation. We simply do not know what a sovereign God may do, what mercies he has purposed for us in this world, so we must wait and hope with expectation because his nature is mercy.
If the crying out for mercy is ongoing, so is the waiting and hoping. The tension is between hoping and possessing. The psalmist has full confidence that YHWH will act. His expectation is grounded firmly in the God’s word.
He likens his waiting to the watchmen waiting for the morning. He repeats that line to show the intensity and sure expectation of hoping and waiting. The characteristic of watchmen is that they are alert and absolutely certain the morning is coming. No conversation among watchmen ever went like this, Do you think the daylight will come? I don’t know; we’ll have to wait and see. That’s not it at all. The watchmen know the morning is coming.
The psalmist knows God will deliver him. He is sure of it. He simply doesn’t know if the LORD will deliver him in this life or the next, but he knows redemption is sure. This is the hope we have, and it is hope enough and reason enough to call out to God for mercy.
Some of you have been in the depths and left with only a cry for mercy. Many of you have experienced the mercy of God in the present so much so that he has restored not only what was lost but gave you a better life than before. Some of you have had to walk day by day, learning to wait on the LORD and trust his word. You, perhaps, have come to know him and love in deeper ways than you otherwise would have. Some of you have simply experienced searing loss and you are fighting for faith and right thinking about God. All of us have the expectation that if not now, in the world to come, God will deliver us. It is ours in this world to wait on the Lord and hope is his word like a watchmen is sure the day is coming.
In verses 7 and 8, the psalmist exhorts us to take the same stance he has taken. Occasionally, a psalm will arrive at this point with YHWH having acted, but here the psalmist offers that it is enough to know that he will act.
Because the LORD has put away our sin, the psalmist exhorts us to hope in the LORD. He offers two reasons to hope: with the LORD there is steadfast love and plentiful redemption. Steadfast love is God’s saving, forgiving covenant love that binds us in relationship to him. Growing out of steadfast love is plentiful redemption.
Redemption is a comprehensive term. It involves not only the purchase price to free the slave, it also includes the totality of the new life of freedom. When God redeemed Israel from Egypt, he also took them to the Promised Land. That God has set his redeeming love on us means more than simply our sins are forgiven. It also means a new life in Christ and even the redemption of our bodies, the restoration of all that was lost in the fall.
This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 8 when writes of our present suffering in this in this corrupt world as compared with future glory. He says, We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. (Rom. 8:23-24).
This redemption the psalmist call plentiful, surpassing the exodus and the return from Babylon. So we wait for and are destined to the completion of redemption, but in the meantime because redemption is plentiful, we pray and ask for previews of the fullness of it in the present time. The forgiveness of sin is but a preview of final full redemption. That initial act of redemption opens to us all the blessings of full redemption.
The psalmist directs us to the future. The LORD will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. This is not simply the forgiveness of sin, but all the damage and loss that sin has brought to our lives. This is the fullness of the gospel message. We cannot overstate the blessing that comes to us in the gospel of God’s dear Son. There is life and freedom, a clear conscience and hope in this world. There is a world to come that is ours and free of sin, death, and decay where we will never have another sorrow and all is joy and peace, productivity without failure and fatigue and gain without loss.
If that is the fullness of redemption that is coming, don’t you see how we are brought to hope and a readiness to cry out for mercy? The redemption we have experienced to this point is a preview of final, full redemption.
Our present distress teaches us to hope in God who does not treat us according to what we deserve, but has lavished us with mercy which moves us to call on him for greater and fuller experiences of his grace.