The Lutheran Hour
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"Out of the Depths"
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Text: Psalm 130
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Sometimes … there are no words.
There is a moment at the end of William Soroyan’s short story, “The Pomegranate Trees,” where the narrator says, “We got into the car and drove back to town. We didn’t say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.” The moment is a strange one. It is sad, happy, and beautiful all at the same time. Life is like that. Sometimes there really are no words to express what you are feeling. This is one of the things that I love about art, about painting, music, story, poetry—it gives expression to things that words alone cannot sum up.
For the life of the believer, the need to find ways to express the seemingly inexpressible is particularly needed. Because we’re a strange type of creature. We have been captured by a story and we live in the midst of it with one eye on the end, one eye on the beginning, and another on the middle. And somehow we have to make sense of all of that while we live our life in the here and now. How do you express any of that in words?
And so naturally there are moments when we are overcome by extreme joy, exaltation, guilt, sorrow, fear, even doubt—to say nothing of the moments that combine these emotions: moments where we look inside and find there are no words.
For moments like this we are given the Psalms. The book of psalms is the prayer book of the Bible. It invites us in these extreme moments (and all the moments in-between) to join the psalmist on his journey, to find words as we turn to our Heavenly Father in prayer.
Our text for the day is no different. Psalm 130 is a prayer for the person who has seen their sin. That’s not a popular word today: sin. I’ve met a lot of people who say the church is too focused on sin. They say that people are basically good, and that Christians are just trying to make people feel bad.
Psalm 130 isn’t going to address any of that.
This Psalm wasn’t written for the person wanting an academic argument about the nature of humanity and whether or not people are inherently good. There are plenty of places in Scripture for that sort of discussion. No, this Psalm was written for the person, the individual, the man or the woman, who has looked into the mirror and seen who they are. Forget whether people are generally good. What happens when you look in the mirror and see that you are not? This psalm was written for you. It gives you the words to cry out when there are no words. It is a prayer to the One who created you.
The psalmist leads us in prayer: “Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If You, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with You there is forgiveness, that You may be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His Word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with Him is plentiful redemption. And He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.”
This is the Word of the Lord.
You see, this is not a prayer from someone who needs to be convinced of their sin; this is someone who has already seen it. They are calling out from the depths. They aren’t looking around and comparing themselves to others and saying, “Well, at least I’m not as bad as they are.” No, when you pray this psalm you are forced to look around and see nothing but you and the walls around you. And so you cry out, “Let Your ears be attentive! Hear my pleas for mercy!”
And therein lies the problem. Because when we see our sin at that level, when we have had the opportunity to stop and look at ourselves in the mirror, the overwhelming temptation is to not cry out. We live in a world that encourages us to never admit guilt. Fault must always be shifted off ourselves to someone else. At worst, it must be mitigated: “I only did it because ….” “What you have to understand is ….”
When apologies are given they are often worded to imply no guilt. “I’m sorry you feel that way.” “I’m sorry your experience did not live up to your expectations.”
Our whole way of life is designed to push guilt off of ourselves, to bring no blame to ourselves. When we seek to bring comfort, what are the words that so often escape our lips first—no matter the circumstance: “It’s not your fault.”
In such a world as this, is it any wonder that we run away from this psalm, we run away from the need to cry out. To cry out for mercy is to admit guilt. To stand bare before our accuser with no excuses, no deflections, with nothing but guilt.
But even then, with all of our deflections, all our desires to hide, it’s never enough, is it? In our heart of hearts we know the truth. We may tell others it’s not our fault, but at two in the morning when you’re staring at the ceiling, the deep quiet voice in the center of our being knows the truth. And it calls out to us: “Guilty.”
This is where the psalmist finds us. In the depths of woe, crying out for mercy. And this is where the Lord meets us. You see, the world has us wrong. We Christians aren’t about sin and guilt. Christians aren’t trying to make the world feel guilty. We’re about mercy, forgiveness, hope, and redemption. Sometimes we have to cut through all the deflection and hiding, but it is only to acknowledge the guilt that is already there, not create it. And it is only so we can hear the voice of our Lord inviting us to come to Him, calling us to Him.
Listen to the psalmist, even as he calls out from the depths, he turns to the Lord. And in coming to God, he knows he has no right to be there, other than the right that has already been given him. “If you should mark iniquities, who could stand?” he asks. “If You kept a record of wrongs, if You saw me as I truly am, I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t even lie down before You.”
But that’s not how the Creator of the universe, the Lord of all, sees us … anymore. In Christ, He sees us as His children. Paul explains it well in his second letter to the Corinthians. Maybe you’ve heard it before. “For our sake [God] made Him (meaning Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” When Jesus hung upon the cross He changed our fundamental relationship with God. He took upon Himself all of that guilt, all of that iniquity, all of that sin, and it was so complete that when God sees us, He now sees righteousness. So complete is this change that the New Testament frequently talks about how we are now adopted children of God. We were united into His death and His resurrection. We are something new; we get to call Him Father. In fact, we are commanded to call Him, Father. In Christ, we, like the Old Testament Israelites before us, are in a unique relationship with the Creator of the universe: the One who decided gravity was a good idea, that humpback whales should sing, this Almighty God is now our Heavenly Father.
And so when we turn to this Father from the depths, what we find is not wrath and anger, we find mercy, forgiveness, hope, and redemption. Listen to the psalm again, and listen for these gifts our Heavenly Father is just waiting to lavish upon us.
“Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! If You, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with You there is forgiveness, that You may be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His Word I hope; more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with Him is plentiful redemption. And He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.”
Did you hear it? Your Heavenly Father does not want to leave you in the depths of your woe. He wants to raise you up out of it to be with Him. And as we come to Him we find that with Him there is forgiveness; with Him there is hope; with Him there is steadfast love; and with Him there is plentiful redemption.
And in the midst of the blessings you join the psalmist, and your soul waits for the Lord. You live in His forgiveness and redemption, but you long for the day for the day when His Son will return and all of creation will be redeemed. And so your soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.
Picture it. Watchmen keeping guard through the night, knowing the morning will come. In the ancient world the night was broken up into the three shifts. The first two shifts waited for the next watchmen to come and take over. But the third? The third waited for morning. For the relief that comes from knowing that safety has been restored. Their hope was in the coming of the morning. And this was not some wishing. One doesn’t wish morning would come; you know it will come. There is certainty in that hope.
And when you know that because of Jesus you will find in God forgiveness, steadfast love, plentiful redemption. Then your soul cannot help but wait for the Lord’s return—more than watchman for the morning, more than watchman for the morning. This is what the Psalms do. They give us words when words fail us. They point us to God and fill our tongues with prayer.
In 2011 a close friend of mine died from cancer. We had been classmates at seminary and gone through a lot of formative experiences together. In the week before he died, I spent a few days with him and his wife and children at his home in the suburbs of Chicago. During that time, he was so weak that he couldn’t talk much and, to be honest, I really didn’t know what to say. You see, “there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.” So, we turned to the Psalms. We read and prayed and let them give us words. I still have the Bible I used that day. If you flip through the Psalms, you will see any number of notes. But you also see dates: dates from late October and early November of 2011; dates with little notes inscribed: “prayed with Matt.”
I learned to pray the Psalms that week. We prayed together. We prayed from the depths of our woe and as we did, we found forgiveness, steadfast love, plentiful redemption, and hope. And our souls waited for the Lord: more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.
There are times in your life when you look in the mirror and see your sin. It can be tempting to turn and hide from it. This Psalm invites you to cry out to your Heavenly Father, the One who gave His Son for you, and there you will find His love is already there for you—and you will find hope.
O people of God, hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. For with Jesus there is steadfast love, and with Him is plentiful redemption. And He has redeemed us from all our inquiries. Amen.
Reflections for June 6, 2021
Title: Out of the Depths
Mark Eischer: You’re listening to The Lutheran Hour. For FREE online resources, archived audio, our mobile app, and more, go to lutheranhour.org. And joining us now with a look ahead to upcoming programs, here is Lutheran Hour Speaker Dr. Michael Zeigler.
Michael Zeigler: Thank you, Mark. So how about that message from Dr. Jason Broge today? I especially like how he said the Psalms give us words when we have no words. I need to be reminded of that. I forget how much of a treasure the Psalms are. What he said reminded me that not only am I adopted as a son of God, a child of God through Jesus. But also through Jesus, God has given me, He’s given all of us, the gift of these Psalms. And you stop and think about how astonishing that is—that these ancient prayers, prayers that have been around for 3,000 years, words that have proved more durable than empires, more lasting than stone monuments, words that Jesus Himself used as His own prayers—these are the words that Jesus gives you and me the gift of these words that we can use to call on God, even when we don’t know what to say. So Mark, what was something that Jason said that you appreciated or something that you needed to hear again?
Mark Eischer: It was when he was telling the story of praying the Psalms, and how that was something that he learned to do as he sat with his friend up in Chicago and prayed those Psalms together with him—that it was something new for him, something that he learned to do, in that moment.
Michael Zeigler: Yeah. I know the friend he mentioned, and I’m grateful that Jason was able to be there for him at that time. So looking at our calendar, we’ve almost completed our 90th year of broadcasting. We started this season, if you remember, we interviewed Dr. Dale Meyer, a former Speaker. Now, did you hear this? He recently was given the official title of Emeritus Speaker of The Lutheran Hour.
Mark Eischer: Very good. Congratulations, Dr. Meyer.
Michael Zeigler: Congratulations. So, Dr. Meyer, at that time, he encouraged us as we were starting a series on the book of Daniel. We were remembering how Daniel and his friends were taken from their homes. They were carried off to live in a strange land, but even then he said that they kept their eyes focused on God and His promises.
Mark Eischer: Something else he said was that this theme of being strangers in a foreign land is something that runs throughout the Bible. Dr. Meyer said he felt encouraged by that when he looks at our present situation, the situation of the church in North America, in particular. That it’s helping us to learn again, or maybe even for the first time, what faith is: that it’s setting our eyes on Jesus and following Him no matter what the culture around us happens to be or happens to be saying.
Michael Zeigler: And that’s very clarifying. Sometimes we can get discouraged when we see that maybe the culture in some ways is against us, but how he said, just keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, no matter what the culture is doing.
Mark Eischer: Well, so far this season, we’ve listened to the book of Daniel, the Gospel according to Mark, the story of the reluctant prophet Jonah; we’ve heard the wisdom of the Proverbs, and now today, a prayer from the Psalms. So what can our listeners be looking forward to hearing in upcoming programs?
Michael Zeigler: Yeah. Looking back, it’s been a great season. So first before I answer that, I just want to say that if you’ve missed any of those series, that Mark mentioned, go back, check them out. You can find past episodes on The Lutheran Hour app. You can find us by searching Lutheran Hour on your podcast app for your smartphone. You can go to find past episodes at our website: lutheranhour.org.
So like Mark said, we’ve listened to a lot of Scripture this season, and now what’s next? You could think of it like taking a long hike through a forest, maybe up to the top of a mountain. And during the hike, you spend a lot of time putting one foot in front of the other. You notice and appreciate the details of everything around you in the moment. But every once in a while, especially when you come into say, a clearing, it’s good to step back and look around and see where you’ve come from, to see the forest that you’ve been walking through. So that’s a way of explaining what we’re doing next.
Mark Eischer: We’re going to be stepping back and getting a clearer view of the bigger picture of the Bible.
Michael Zeigler: Exactly. Sometimes walking through that forest can get confusing. Sometimes you need to stop and clear away the confusion and get your bearings, so you can keep going. And so, we’re calling this next series of messages: “Clearly, Christian.” There’s a helpful book of the same title, Clearly Christian. It’s written by a man named Trevor Sutton. He’s a writer and a pastor from Michigan. We’re going to be talking with him and about how we sometimes can get lost in a fog of opinions mixed in with the truth, and how even long-time Christians can get confused about who they are or what they’ve been taught about Jesus and His mission.
Mark Eischer: And so in an age of counterfeits and fakes, we need clear Christianity.
Michael Zeigler: Yes. You said it. We need the real love and real forgiveness of a God who is the Savior of real sinners. We need the God who sent His Son Jesus.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“Out of the Depths” by Carl Schalk. From Christ Be Our Seed: the Choral Tradition of Carl F. Schalk by the American Repertory Singers (© 2000 Concordia Publishing House)
“Rise! To Arms! With Prayer Employ You” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House)