Michael Wilcock
Reading: Psalm 130
WE are familiar with what occurred to John Wesley in Aldersgate Street one May evening as he listened to a reading of Luther's Preface to the Romans, but we may not be aware that this was a sequel to his presence that same afternoon in St. Paul's Cathedral where he listened to the singing of Psalm 130. Surely this was all part of the experience that day when his heart was [93/94] 'strangely warmed'. It was there in Aldersgate Street that Wesley's real experience with Christ began, but the way had been prepared already as God had spoken to him in the afternoon by this psalm.
None of us are starting on the experience of the Christian life as Wesley was, but it may well be that with us there is a desire to renew a divine relationship and we can do so by using this psalm as a background and listening to the cry found in it.
1. A Cry out of a Great Need
Lord hear my voice; let thine ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications". (verses 1 & 2)
Three things strike me about the great need out of which the psalmist cries.
i. The need is primary
The psalms have two methods of approach. There is that which begins with human need and goes on to the divine response, and the other begins with the supply in God as it reaches down to meet the deep need of man. Here we have a supreme example of when the need is primary, for it starts from where man is and cries to God out of man's depths. It articulates human predicament and man's heart need and gives us the tremendous advantage of not only being inspired by the need of the human heart but also inspired by the Spirit of God. The psalm does two things at once, it provides a cry which God Himself has inspired the human heart to make. So it is God's Word to us also.
ii. The cry is timeless
Learned commentators may tell us that the psalm was written long after the time of David because of a later Hebrew word. I do not know; in any case it seems immaterial to me for, whether it was spoken by David or in the time of David or whether it was spoken by some other psalmist is neither here nor there, since it speaks of a present need at all times. There is much in Scripture which is timeless in this way. While relevance is important as is also the contemporary context, there are fundamental spiritual factors which are timeless. It follows, then, that while the cry of Psalm 130 may be applied to a particular situation in which the psalmist spoke it, it is applicable to any age, having to do with no particular time, referring to a need which may be as great to us today as ever it was to the psalmist when he wrote of it.
iii. The need is undefined
This is very important; the need is not defined. Some believe that it refers quite clearly to guilt which needed to be forgiven; that the psalmist had a conscience that was bad and he needed to have his sins forgiven. I wonder if that is necessarily all the truth or whether this is one of those instances in which the silence of Scripture is meant to teach us a lesson. The Scriptures teach us by their silence. There is much that is not told us about the life of Jesus, but we must believe that God's purpose in His Word is wise in telling us all that we need to know, then we do not speculate concerning matters which are not told us. The silences of God are quite deliberate.
We can apply this same principle to Paul's 'thorn in the flesh' (2 Corinthians 12:7). This thorn was a great trial but the Lord refused to remove it so that His servant could learn in a new way the sufficiency of divine grace. When we read that passage we naturally ask what exactly was this thorn. Paul, for reasons best known to himself, does not tell us, with the result that all down the ages men have wondered whether it was not their own particular trial. Was this the thing which is causing them so much distress? It might well be.
This is the sort of thing we have here. A cry out of a great need, but we are not told what that need was. Can this perhaps be because this is a deliberate withholding on the part of God who caused the psalm to be written in this way so that the circumstance should not be pinned down to some special need which is not mine but left undefined, so that I can think that perhaps it refers to my own particular need. I may feel the need for forgiveness of sins or a rescue from failure; I may find myself in misery as I am faced with opposition, up against danger or in the depths of weariness. I may be weighed down with sorrow or perhaps in the kind of depths of which the psalmist speaks elsewhere, "I sink in deep mire where there is no foothold" (69:2). We think of the plea of a man who finds himself literally out of his depths. In these two first verses, then, we are directed to a great cry which could be ours and we can take it on our own lips. [94/95]
2. A Cry to a Great God
But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared. " (verses 3 & 4)
The psalmist's cry arises from the human heart but it flies straight home to heaven. But who is the God to whom he makes this cry? Is it the God of hope (Romans 15:13)? Is it to the God of peace mentioned also in Romans 15 as well as in many other places? Or is it even more appropriately to the God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3)? Remarkably it is not made to that kind of God but to a God of wrath and forgiveness. The cry is made to a God who is described here in moral terms. Might that perhaps seem to be a heartless kind of cry? In the Pilgrim's Progress it was Mr. Worldly Wiseman who sent the pilgrim laden with his burden of sin to the city of Morality, and he almost destroyed him in the process. Surely that is not the way to deal with a heart that is in the depths of need.
No, it is not heartless because whatever the depths out of which the needy may cry, it remains true that the first necessity of the believer is that he should be right with God. Here in these two verses we have both sides of the God of morality. He is a great God and yet He is a God of wrath: "If thou shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord who shall stand?" Just imagine if there were no way for our sin to be dealt with, everyone of us would stand condemned before God. Each one of us stands in need of forgiveness. Whatever our apparent need may be, the basic need is that sin should be dealt with. We tend to stress the need of our emotions and to minimise the matter of our sin. There is always the problem of making sure that we are right with God.
It is possible that we think back even over one day and may be tempted to say or just to think that even if there had been no cross, even if Christ had not gone to Calvary, even if God did mark iniquity, reckoning it up and marking it in His book to be brought out on the day of judgment, well today at any rate things would not be too bad for us. It is as though we felt that perhaps we might just get by, even if there were no such thing as redemption. This is the frightful complacency that threatens every believer, ministers and workers more than most. Professionalism in the things of God is a dreadful possibility. Those who succumb to it find it very easy to see the faults of others and even to blame them when things go wrong and find reasons for troubles in their shortcomings.
I must ask myself if there might possibly be something wrong between me and the Lord. It might be that my troubles arise not from what is being done to me by others; the fault may be in myself. So when I come to God I must remember that He is a God of wrath and tremble before Him. Then I can also find as we have here in this psalm that we are given an equally blinding vision of the fact that He is also a God of forgiveness. Mercy and pity are at the heart of the nature of our God, so that when we have admitted our own sinfulness we find that the God of wrath is also the God of forgiveness too. It has been said that none fear the Lord like those who have experienced His forgiving love. For this reason, confession is the healthy starting point for the person who comes to God with a great need. The need for forgiveness actually constitutes his claim upon God and indeed it is precisely because he recognises that he is a sinner and has that particular need first and foremost that he finds liberty to come at all. From that he may bring whatever other needs he has to this great God.
3. A Cry with a Great Desire
My soul waiteth for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning,
yea more than watchmen for the morning." (verses 5 & 6)
The greatness of the desire is shown by the doubling of the last phrase. Twice over the psalmist describes how he hopes in the Lord and does so in order to emphasise the importance of what he is saying. It is an amplification of his first declaration: "I wait (or hope) ...". It is an intensely personal matter as he explains by continuing. "My soul waits ...". My soul is the real ME; this desire springs from the depths of my own heart. Once again this warns us who minister of the great danger of professionalism. As we go on, and the years of ministry go by, the very exercise of that ministry can tend to make us over-confident because we are able to go through the motions, to lead meetings and to counsel, assured that we know just what to say in any given circumstances. It is then that our declaration [95/96] as to waiting on the Lord can simply become a form of words.
The psalmist challenges us, as if asking us if our routine prayers do really express deep consciousness of heart need; is it in this way that we cry to the Lord? I suggest that we need to cultivate what I call realism, that is a ministry which considers realistically what each situation truly is. We are speaking, but who are listening? They are real people with real spiritual needs, brought within sound of our message by God Himself. They are people with real needs who want to listen to a real speaker, one to whom God Himself has first spoken. They need more than words, more even than just Bible words, but the living message from the living God.
It is an amazing fact that the Lord can take hold of a man, his brains and his lips, and speak through him to meet the deep needs of his hearers. It is by this gracious miracle that God Himself can speak to people through us, but we must not ignore the fact that there can be real hindrances, things that can go on not only in the minds of the hearers but also in the mind of the speaker, all designed to prevent the working of God's Spirit. How careful we need to be! It is all so real, and means that we may face up to it and seek the Lord in ernest prayer. This is true not only in preaching the Word, but in all the service of Christ. It must never be "I wait for the Lord" just as a form of words, but a soul cry to Him that we may extricate ourselves from the awful professionalism that can creep over us, and have very personal dealings with the Lord.
Yes, it is I who wait, but also true that I must wait for the Lord , and that I do this by hoping in His Word. The real ME is waiting for the real Lord, and the real Lord is the speaking Lord. If I really want to meet God then it must be that my hope is in the speaking Lord who does and will speak personally to me. So when I come to Him to wait upon Him, it is to wait for His Word. I lay hold of His promises, counting on Him to implement what He has said. I want the real thing. Maybe the deeper the conscious need, the greater will be the desire.
This brings us to that double phrase, "more than watchers for the morning watch for the morning." It is a lovely picture. I wonder just what it means. Is it the watcher, standing sentinel on the town walls, keeping watch until the day dawns? Or it may be somebody watching by a sick bed, finding that the night seems long and waiting for it to end. It is a beautiful picture, but I wondered why the psalmist chose this rather than another and scoured the commentators without finding anything that could satisfy me until I read what Derek Kidner had to say in the Tyndale Commentary. With his usual gift of crystallising the real point, he suggests that the hope with which the watchers watch for the morning is "the hope that will not fail. The night may seem endless, but morning is absolutely certain; it is time-determined." The one who cries to God with a great desire is also the one that cries with a great hope.
4. A Cry with a Great Effect
and with him is plenteous redemption.
And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities." (verses 7 & 8)
This cry is so effective in that it brings together more than simply God and me, for it is not just an individualistic sort of prayer. In the first place it speaks not only of God but also of His grace and His redemption: "With the Lord there is steadfast love." In his commentary on this psalm, Alec Motyer gives it the lovely title of "The Lord's Three Companions". He is referring to, "there is forgiveness with thee" (v.4) and, "with the Lord there is steadfast love and plenteous redemption" (v.7). These, then, are God's three companions, Forgiveness, Grace and Redemption.
I found this a very fruitful comment, and the more I considered it, the more I thought that I could add something to it. I looked at the Redemption which stands beside the Lord and read the word 'plenteous', which commentators tell me signifies that which is multiplied. Rather, as in the previous verse the watchmen were doubled, so here redemption is multiplied. So, as the psalmist comes into the presence of the Lord, he has in mind His three companions. There is forgiveness, who opens the door into the divine presence; there stands grace with outstretched arms to draw the sinner into that haven; and then there is redemption and redemption and redemption. There is rescue, rescue, rescue and rescue every time that the sinner needs it. [96/97]
This, then, is the Old Testament picture. "Out of the depths" the needy soul cries, and finds that with the Lord there is rescue, rescue, rescue, rescue. There is total redemption. Beside this Old Testament picture stands the New Testament testimony in promises such as that God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). These are the wonderful gifts which the Lord has; these are His companions, bringing multiple redemption in answer to a cry of need.
He sendeth more strength when the labours increase.
To added affliction He addeth more mercy;
To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.
So much for God and me. On the other side, though, it is not only I, but all Israel. "O Israel, hope in the Lord." The psalmist wants all God's people to join him as he comes to God out of the depths and seeks the divine blessing. It is not only the speaker but his audience too. And it is not only each one of us individually but all of us corporately who may have the blessings. Moreover others will get the blessing through us as we have new dealings with God. And so it is that our heartfelt cry can be a cry with great effect because it does more than bring together just God and me, but God with His grace and forgiveness and redemption not only to me but to all His people.
So, as we cry to the Lord for rescue and renewal, coming to Him and in Him finding what we cry for, we remember the words with which the psalmist closes: "And He will redeem Israel." Others may be blessed through our experience. There was another John who lived a century before John Wesley, John Owen, one of the greatest of God's people in this country in the 17th Century. He has a commentary on this psalm which has a very interesting personal history to it, for it seems that this particular psalm was a means of tremendous blessing to him and may even be what brought him into a real heart experience of God for the first time. However that may be, he wrote a lengthy commentary on Psalm 130 which in fact ran to 324 pages in his Collected Works. The verse which struck him most of all was verse 4; on that one verse he has no less than 227 pages. I was about to suggest that I would tell you what he says, but realise that all I can do here is to quote one line of what he says. Speaking of those who have been lifted out of the depths, he writes: "They who out of depths have by faith and waiting obtained mercy, they are fitted, and only they are fitted, to preach grace and mercy unto others."
So brother or sister, if you cry to God out of the depths, this is God's goodness to you, for it means that He is giving you an experience which will be a blessing to someone else. As He answers your cry and lifts you up, He is giving you a message of grace and of gospel which may be a blessing to many others in time to come.
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