OUT OF THE DEPTHS

Transcript

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Hello everyone. This is Pastor Dean Thompson with the word of hope. Out of the depth Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord hear my voice, let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plentious redemption. Psalm one hundred and thirty verses one and two and verse seven. Psalm one hundred and thirty is one of the fifteen songs of ascent. The songs pilgrims sang as they climbed up to Jerusalem. But this one begins not on the road, but at the bottom. The Hebrew Mahama Kin Depth is the same word used of the deep waters of the Red Sea, of Jonah's ocean grave, of the bottomless pits where Jeremiah lay. From the deepest place, the psalmist looks up and prays. Martin Luther loved this psalm. He called it, I quote, a right master and doctor of scripture. And he placed it among his five Pauline Pauline psalms, the ones he believed contained the heart of the gospel. He set it to the music of the Reformation. Why did Luther love it? Because first three names the deepest fear of the troubled conscience. If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? The verb mark shamar means to keep, to retain, to file away. If God were the kind of God who archives our sins, no one would survive judgment. But verse four, there is forgiveness with thee. The Hebrew Selica is a uniquely divine forgiveness, the kind only God can give. CH Spursion noted that this verse strikes a master stroke of grace. The fear of God is not abolished by his mercy, it is established by it. That thou mayest be feared. Verse 4 means precisely because you forgive, we know you are God, and we revere you. Verse 5 introduces the discipline of waiting. I wait for the Lord. My soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. Three times in two verses, the psalmist describes the soul watching for the morning. The phrase is repeated for emphasis more than the that watch for the morning, more than thee that watch for the morning. Anyone who has spent a night, a sleepless night in a hospital ward, beside a sick child in a grief that will not lift knows that watching. The long hours from three AM to six AM when the eastern sky finally hints at grey. Pure gospel with him is mercy, and with him is plentious redemption. Plentius harbi means abundant, multiplied, more than enough. There is no scarcity on the throne of grace. If you are at the bottom today, that is exactly where this song belongs. The deeper the depth, the louder the prayer can be. He hears, he forgives, he redeems, and he does it plenteously. O God, out of the depths, O Lord, we cry to you. Please be merciful. Please forgive plenteously. Redeem us fully because we are waiting for you. Amen. God bless you, brothers and sisters.