Out of the Depths A song of ascents.
“Out of the depths I cry to You, O LORD! O LORD, hear my voice; let Your ears be attentive to my plea for mercy.
If You, O LORD, kept track of iniquities, then who, O Lord, could stand? But with You there is forgiveness, so that You may be feared.
I wait for the LORD; my soul does wait, and in His word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning—more than watchmen wait for the morning.
O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is loving devotion, and with Him is redemption in abundance. And He will redeem Israel from all iniquity.”
“Out of the depths I cry to You, O LORD! O LORD, hear my voice; let Your ears be attentive to my plea for mercy.” Talk about total despair, this writer knows it! We don’t know what the writer is facing; however, he is evidently caught in what St. John of God referred to as “the dark night of the soul.” We all know that feeling-you can’t go forward, you can’t go backward, and you see no way out of your predicament. All you can do is to scream to God for help.
“If You, O LORD, kept track of iniquities, then who, O Lord, could stand? But with You there is forgiveness, so that You may be feared.” One of the hallmarks of a dark night of the soul is that all your sins and shortcomings come back to haunt you. Suddenly you realize the truth of all those old hymns that refer to men and women as worms, those hymns you used to make fun of, for that’s what you feel like. You feel like a small earthworm squirming under the incredibly bright light of God’s holiness. You realize that if God doesn’t forgive you, you will cease to exist. If God refuses to forgive you, you will evaporate into nothingness. That’s when you realize the power of the word “but.” “But with You there is forgiveness, so that You may be feared.” Praise God, He does forgive so that we may regard Him with the awe due Him. After all, what good are shriveled or vaporized earth worms?
“I wait for the LORD; my soul does wait, and in His word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning—more than watchmen wait for the morning.” The glorious news is that God DOES forgive and that He DOES give us hope. Nobody can more earnestly desire the coming of the dawn than a watchman who has spent the night being vigilant to detect enemies. Years ago, my husband worked for a security company that had a contract to watch municipal garbage trucks in the most dangerous part of downtown Memphis, Tennessee. The neighborhood was a bad one, and my husband had to make regular rounds, throwing switches at several different sentinel posts so the company could be certain that he was actually doing his job and not merely sitting in one place. Many times, my husband could hear gunfire outside the compound, followed by the sound of sirens as police and ambulances reported to the scene. Nobody was more relieved to see the dawn than my husband at the end of his shift!
“O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is loving devotion, and with Him is redemption in abundance. And He will redeem Israel from all iniquity.” God is truly a Redeemer, someone who takes all our sins that we confess to Him, forgives them, and turns those experiences into something that can glorify Him. In doing all this, God proves worthy of our hope. God is more than capable of redeeming all the inequities of a nation, if that nation will only confess its sins to God.
APPLICATION: The college choir I sang in once performed a setting of this psalm written by Knut Nystedt, a Danish composer. But the music was unlike anything we had ever seen before. While ONE section after another would sing a melody line, the rest of us were encouraged to each pick our own tone, resulting in what the composer called “white noise.” The import of this was to emphasize the words and the confusion under which the psalmist was laboring when he wrote this psalm.( Somehow it worked, and you can check it out on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkMPSjuOiM.)
Psalm 130 begins with the psalmist in despair and ends with hope, an enormous improvement. The term “Gospel” literally means “good news,” and this psalm brings the very best news. No matter how terrible our sins have been, we can still bring them to the Lord, confess them, and receive forgiveness. Nothing is too difficult for God as long as we hare soft repentant hearts.
Are you facing a “dark night of the soul?” Remember the prayer attributed to St. John of God: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Don’t underestimate this prayer! One man writing in Guideposts told of how he once had to do piece work in a factory line and how he began praying this prayer with every piece he handled. Before that job ended, he found himself interceding for all those around him and for those who would use the devices he was helping to create. God used that simple prayer to transform that man’s life; He can do the same for you.
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and for caring for us. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on all of us sinners. Help us to remember that there is no night so dark that the light of Your love cannot pierce the darkness. We beg you to pierce the darkness for all who read this prayer, for them, their families, everybody they know, everybody in their towns, everybody in their tribes, for salvation and baptism in the Holy Spirit, for peace in their area, and for revival. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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