Word Live: Hope In The Darkness
The psalms encourage us to be transparent before God, to pour out what is in our minds and hearts. Why not do that now?
Bible passage
Psalm 130
A song of ascents.
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;
2 Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.
3 If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
Lord, who could stand?
4 But with you there is forgiveness,
so that we can, with reverence, serve you.
5 I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
6 I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
7 Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
for with the Lord is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
8 He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.
New International Version - UK (NIVUK) Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission.
Explore
Reading this psalm with Matthew 5 fresh in my mind, I notice how the attitude of the psalmist mirrors Jesus’ description of the person in the beatitudes. The psalmist mourns (vs 1,2) because he is acutely aware of his sin and spiritual poverty (v 3). He thirsts for forgiveness, to be right with God (v 4). He hungers, not for food, but for the Lord (v 5) and his Word.
We sense the psalmist’s desperate longing for God in his ‘dark night of the soul’ (v 6). The analogy of the watchman, weary from the effort of remaining alert to imminent danger, desperately longing for the first glimmer of morning, is an apt picture for the effort and internal struggle involved in our service for Christ as we battle temptations and struggle to keep going. Don’t we too sometimes long for our watching and waiting to be over, for Christ to return?
As the watchman knows morning will surely come, we know that God keeps his Word (vs 5,7). Our hope is no vague wish but a steady certainty about the future God has promised. And what a future it is: unfailing love and full redemption from all our sins (vs 7,8)!
Author
Penny Boshoff
Respond
Why not learn verses 7 and 8 by heart so that this great hope can sustain you when the waiting is hard?
Deeper Bible study
The movement in this psalm is from the depths of despair to the joy of forgiveness.
Martin Luther loved the book of Psalms and this testimony, which begins in ‘the depths’ (v 1) and climaxes in the declaration that with the Lord there is ‘full redemption’ (v 7) was among his favourites. The language used in verse 1 suggests the experience of drowning, calling to mind the story of Jonah who fell ‘into the very heart of the seas’ where ‘all your waves and breakers swept over me’.1 Anyone who has ever been in danger of drowning will know how terrifying this can be, bringing a sense of separation from the world and from life. Here this language is used metaphorically to describe the isolation and abandonment resulting from sin and guilt. Language of this kind is rarely heard in contemporary Western culture, yet there are people who, like the psalmist, are deeply aware of the depths of their failure and wickedness and despair of ever recovering hope and freedom.
The despair with which the poem commences is wonderfully matched by the celebration which follows the assurance that ‘with you there is forgiveness’ (v 4). What had seemed an utterly hopeless situation is transformed by the knowledge that God – and God alone – can deliver the sinner from the depths. As Artur Weiser says, ‘Without God man is lost, and only God can throw across the gulf the bridge which man has broken off by his own guilt’.2
So great is this deliverance that the psalm ends with testimony: all Israel must be told that with the Lord there is ‘unfailing love’ and ‘full redemption’ (v 7). No one is beyond the reach of divine grace. No matter how deep the depths of sin and despair may have been, those who wait on the Lord will discover that he redeems the lost ‘from all their sins’ (v 8).
Reread this beautiful psalm and allow the radiant hope it expresses to speak to your heart and strengthen your hope.
1 Jonah 2:3 2 Artur Weiser, The Psalms, Old Testament Library, Fortress Press, 1962, p773
Author
David Smith
