Calmed and Quieted
I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. Psalm 130:5
Psalms 130:1-131:3 – Psalms
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost – October 11, 2020 (am)
There are times in life when we feel like the weight of the world is on our shoulders. You know what that’s like, right? So often it results from causes that seem like they’re out of your hands. Whether it’s tension in your marriage, an unsettling situation at work, a struggle with one of your kids, or the emptiness of a life that lacks any of these things, the truth of the matter is that the hard circumstances in our lives often join forces to generate the weight of the world. And our own spirits just enter into this conspiracy, always ready for some new drama to complain about.
Other times it’s not a conspiracy at all. We’re just living in troubled times, like now, and the trouble is heavy upon us.
But even heavier are those burdens that rise up in our lives with no outside help at all. They’re rooted in our personal shortcomings—those hidden sins and stubborn addictions that we’d never complain about openly because we don’t want anyone else to know about them. In fact, part of their heaviness is the concern, the fear, that they might show, that others might see them—that something we say or do, or the way we act, will give us away and our secret will be out, our cover will be blown!
Psas.130 and 131 are a sweet couple of moments in the Psalter, part of the Songs of Ascents (Psa.120-134) that we believe were sung as the nation [ascended] to Jerusalem three times a year for the convocational feasts.
As Psa.130 opens, the psalmist (likely David due to its clear resonance with Psa.131 that bears his name) is feeling the weight of the world, and worse, because the depths (1) of his burden resulted from his own sin and stumbling. But he also shows us the way out! He reminds us of our Lord’s great deliverance! Let’s identify three blessings in this passage.
We’re Saved Out Of the Depths – 130:1-6
The depths is such a powerful image. It’s used in a number of ways in the Psalms—as a hiding place (68:22), or as place of judgment (63:9), but also as a mother’s womb where each little one is intricately woven together according to the purpose and plan of God (139:15). We’re reassured in Psa.95:4 that the depths of the earth are still in the hand [of God]. But it’s Psa.69 that best helps us understand this image in our opening verse here.
Psa.69:1 Save me, O God! / For the waters have come up to my neck. / 2 I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; / I have come into deep waters, / and the flood sweeps over me. / 3 I am weary with my crying out; / my throat is parched. / My eyes grow dim / with waiting for my God. / … 14 Deliver me / from sinking in the mire; / let me be delivered from my enemies / and from the deep waters. / 15 Let not the flood sweep over me, / or the deep swallow me up, / or the pit close its mouth over me. / 16 Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good; / according to your abundant mercy, turn to me. That’s the same request we see here (130). The psalmist is swimming in trouble (1). The weight of the world on his shoulders. But he’s [crying] out to the Lord for mercy (1, 2).
I’ve told you before that if the tallest mountain on earth (Everest, 29,029 feet) were placed on the ocean floor at its deepest point (Mariana Trench near Guam, at least 36,037 feet), the peak would be more than a mile below the surface! There’s the depths! The water pressure down there is figured to be roughly 15,750 pounds per square inch! That’s the image the psalmist is generating for us!
Have you ever been in the depths, [crying] out to the Lord for mercy? Many are doing that in this election season. Many are doing it in this pandemic. Many are doing it in response to the painful racial strife that’s coming to a head in the midst of these other hardships. And we at GCD just add these to the list of unprecedented trials that have touched more of our households during this same window than I can name.
So, what do we read here that addresses such hardships? What do we encounter that can lift us out of these depths?
We encounter a King (Lord [2, 3b, 6]) Who offers forgiveness (4). We engage with a God (Lord [1, 3a, 5, 7]) Who provides a plentiful redemption (7). He can remove the guilt of our sin and deliver us from its clutches. Do you hear that? Charles Wesley wrote: He breaks the power of canceled sin, / He sets the prisoner free! He doesn’t just declare us, not guilty, before the court of heaven—which is amazing!—He also frees us from ensnarement to our sin! His “redemption” is so great that he can… forgive [us for] all [our] “sins” and free [us] from whatever adversities [we] suffer as a result of [our] sins (VanGemeren 923).
It surely appears that it was the psalmist’s personal sin that had him in the depths. On the heels of his pleas for mercy (2) came an pointed reminder to himself, a brief sermon to his own soul, a one-sentence exhortation in which He addressed the Lord as both the covenant-making God and as the King of all creation: 3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, / O Lord, who could stand? He’s not excusing himself. He’s reminding himself that he’s not alone in his need for God’s mercy!
4 But with you there is forgiveness, / that you may be feared. That can sound strange, can’t it? You’d think if God didn’t offer forgiveness He’d be feared. But that’s not so. If He didn’t offer forgiveness He’d be hated and marginalized. He’d be irrelevant, pushed to the periphery of life in the real world just as many do with Him today, probably because they don’t truly understand—they don’t believe—that with [Him] there really is forgiveness!
But that’s why we wait for [Him], like the psalmist mentions here (5-6). It’s not just forgiveness of sin that he’s [waiting] for but deliverance from ensnarement to whatever it was that needed to be [forgiven], whatever it was that dragged him into the depths (1). We know that feeling! You know it! What’s the struggle that you hope others don’t find out about? Where is it that you need the forgiveness of a [merciful] God so frequently that the weight of the world can remain on your shoulders even though you know that our God [forgives]? The psalmist is [waiting] (6) in hope (5) of that deliverance, like night watchmen wait for the [first light of dawn]! He’s so hungry for it he can taste it! And as surely as the sun rises, it will come!
Ultimately, we’re still longing for that day, even on this side of the cross. Expressions of it break into this fallen world—manifestations our finished redemption—just like forgiveness has broken in, even while we continue to sin.
The psalmist is [waiting] before the Lord for that deliverance even as we all still do. It’s surely a part of His plentiful redemption. And we wait for it, we long for it, looking ultimately for the first sunrise in the new creation.
We’re Satisfied in Soul – 131:1-2
When we’re trusting in a God like this—One Whose mercy, forgiveness, and redemption are available to all who cry out to [Him] in their need and wait for [Him] in faith-generated hope—our souls can be calmed and quieted in settled, satisfied relationship with Him. This is the God Who frees us not only from the guilt and penalty of our sin but from the yearnings of our fallen flesh to find our satisfaction anywhere else.
1 O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; / my eyes are not raised too high; / I do not occupy myself with things / too great and too marvelous for me. It would be easy to make this verse an excuse to avoid the challenges of life. But the sin rejected in 1a is pride…, while the sin of 1b is presumption. By the first of these, one undervalues other people…; by the second, one [overvalues self] (Kidner 483).
So, my friends, this God not only [forgives] our sin and strengthens our weaknesses, He satisfies our desires in contented relationship with Himself. This is our God!
This weaned child image here (2) pictures contentment. And there is no contentment like that of just being together with the one you love, in the silence of satisfied intimacy, trust, and peace. A weaned child isn’t receiving the comfort of his nursing mother. He’s just settled in her presence, perhaps cuddling on her lap (2b). We are that child. And God is our mother here—He is the Provider for our needs.
The psalmist’s testimony is: I don’t need more out of this life than I was made by God to achieve or attain. My satisfaction doesn’t come from pursuing those things. I don’t need more from God than the pure satisfaction of relationship with Him. That love will make me more diligent and productive that my own self-serving desires could have made me in any case.
Milk is good. And a nursing child is particularly content at his mother’s breast. But a weaned child does not need something more from his mother than the pleasure of her presence. He doesn’t need something from her that, until he receives it, he’s agitated and fussy.
A nursing child can be content with whatever his mother provides. But a weaned child is content with his mother alone whatever else she may provide.
Yet, this is also an image of having grown to this place, having matured to this stage of the relationship. It’s needful for a child to nurse; it’s through his nursing that he bonds to his mother. And that’s the foundation for his contentment with her once he is weaned. It’s not with just any woman that this child is content, not even just any mother. It’s his mother, the one who nursed him, on whose lap he’s truly content once he’s weaned.
We’re Shown that This Is Real – 130:7-8, 131:3
The psalmist is saying: This God Who has nursed us on the milk of His mercy and forgiveness, Who frees us from the snares of our souls, is the covenant-making God Who has offered us His steadfast love and plentiful redemption! (130:7) He is for us! 130:3 And he will redeem Israel / from all his iniquities. He will cover the cost of deliverance for all His covenant people! He is your salvation! So, put your trust in Him! 131:3 O Israel, hope in the Lord / from this time forth and forevermore.
What is happening here is that the psalmist, who opened Psa.130 in the depths of despair, with the weight of the world on His shoulders because of the burden of his own sin, finishes this same psalm by calling Israel to fix their hope on this God, whatever their need, whatever their burden, and never to divert their trust to anyone or anything else!
When they’re in relationship with this God they can be calmed and quiet to the very depths of their soul, like a weaned child with its mother (131:2). They can be so satisfied in Him that they need not look anywhere else for significance or sufficiency or satisfaction (131:1). They will find everything they’ve longed for in relationship with Him! The psalmist found all this to be true—so true that He’s calling everyone else to enter into it. This is real!
Conclusion
So, just think of that: a calmed, quieted soul in the midst of all this turmoil—a [calm] and [quiet] that is rooted in relationship with a Being of such immense power and such [redeeming] love that nothing which concerns you can pose any genuine threat to you any longer! That’s what we read in Psas.130-131! That can lift us out of the depths of any struggle!
Next Sunday: Guest Speaker