How to Cry Out to God - Ps. 130

Introduction:

Martin Lloyd-Jones referred to Spiritual Depression as “God’s gymnasium.” In fact, there is a whole chapter devoted to this idea. In that chapter, Dr. Jones explains that depression, sorrow, suffering, whatever you want to call it, works like a gymnasium, but in order for God’s gymnasium to work for our good, we must do some things while we are there.

In many ways, it is like going to the gym. Though we use that phrase to denote exercise, imagine with me if we simply went to the gym, just standing there and watching others work out. I would not get stronger, or faster, at all. The reality of working in the gym is that, in order for it to have benefit, I must actually do some work there, and in fact if I am to get the most benefit from that experience, I must actually push myself pretty hard to see results.

Ps. 130 is a time when the Psalmist finds Himself in God’s gymnasium. He is in the throes of sorrow and hardship, and is seeking to find a way out. Ultimately, he is going to discover that he can’t actually get himself out, but that there is one thing he can do: cry out to God. The Psalms teach us in many ways how to cry out to God as a means of moving towards hope. And that is what I hope we see in this passage today. When we cry out to God, there are some active spiritual steps we can take that will help us to move towards hope. I want us to examine four steps to crying out to God when we are in the depths that move us towards hope. Let’s look at step one:

Step 1 - Tell God Where You Are (1-2)

Psalm 130:1–2 ESV

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!

“The Depths:” The Psalmist is crying out of the depths. This is an apt description for what we have been examining over the last 7 weeks now. There are many different ways that the Bible describes those feelings, but “the depths” is one that truly captures what it feels like. These may be:

emotional depths - depression, anxiety, sorrow

physical depths: pain, exhaustion, grief

spiritual depths: ongoing sin struggles, agonizing silence, painful ministry

Each one gives us a similar picture: feeling alienated from God and distant from the love of God. The Psalmist describes first where he is, or at least where he feels like he is, in order to be able to get his feet underneath him as he cries out to God.

Ps. 69:1-2 gives us one of the most poignant descriptions of what it feels like to be in the depths. It reads.

Psalm 69:1–2 ESV

Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.

The waters have come up to my neck. What a picture. standing on your tiptoes in a locked room, while the waters rise and rise and continue to fill the room, and all you can do is hold your head upward. Helplessness. No matter how hard you try, you are helpless.

So, you then not only feel like the waters around you are rising, you feel at the same time like you are sinking. In deep mud, or quicksand, and the harder you fight, the faster you sink and, as the psalmist says next “there is no foothold.” Ultimately, the water is deeper than you can get out of, and you are swept over until, like the Psalmist says in Ps. 42, all God’s waves and breakers sweep over you.

In other words, in the midst of a culture that cries out for us to either pursue self-help solutions, or succumb to the false gospel of victimhood, we recognize that there is no self-help that can truly provide what I am looking for, and simply resigning myself to victimhood, to the perpetual belief that I just can’t get out or change, results in being drowned by the sorrow that threatens to consume us. It is in the midst of this that the Psalmist cries out to God, making two great cries here:

Hear my voice!

Have mercy!

When we cry out to God, we must not forget to do so honestly, truly confessing to God how we feel and where we are.

Step 2 - Tell Yourself the Truth of God’s forgiveness (3-4)

Psalm 130:3–4 ESV

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.

The only way to truly combat the lies of our enemies is with the truth of God’s promises. And the forgiveness that we receive when we confess our sins and trust in Christ is one of the primary promises that we must trust and believe. For us as the children of God, He has forgiven our sin. This was the next step towards hope for the Psalmist here.

“If you should mark iniquities” - The psalmist seems to know, or at least to think he knows, about some sins in his life that exist, and while they may not have been the reason that he plunged into the depths, they certainly didn’t help him get out of the depths. The depths that the Psalmist are referring to here can provide temptation for all sorts of sin. The truth that I have wrestled with for some times now is that while I do not believe that my own sin caused my depression, I can certainly identify sinful patterns that did not help things along. I’m not alone in this. There are any number of sins that dwell in the depths that we can fall into:

Self-pity

Sinful anger

Sinful responses to fear

Self-deprecation

Arrogance

There are any number of ways we can sin in our depths. If we know Christ, this is where right perspective matters so much. We often let these things compound guilt, which leads us away from Christ. We can think that our sinfulness is too great to approach God, or that we are simply too far gone for God to help. But these things are simply lies, and will only compound our sorrow, not help it. To trust lies like these is like drinking salt water while dying of thirst. The Psalmist recognizes this! There may certainly be iniquities and sinful behaviors that have contributed to the Psalmist feeling such sorrow, but he refuses to allow these things to prevent him from running towards hope. In these two verses, he reminds himself of three truths:

No one is clean and sinless before God - “Who could stand?” As perfect and put together and shiny and happy as people may look, we have to be careful to use God’s ruler, God’s standards, and God’s measurements, not our own. And God’s measurement of men? Romans 3:23 - “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” If God only kept records of wrongs for all of mankind, no one could possibly stand before Him!

- Friends, this is how we can be confident and open even as we talk about sin. Every person sins until they are made perfect in glory. If perfection is the requirement in order for us to stand before God, no one is standing before God; we will all be broken under the burden of our own sin. So, we remember that every person who runs to God does so wearing the filthy rags of their own attempts at righteousness! No one is as put together as they would like you to think they are!

- So, even in such a sensitive topic as depression, we talk of the sin that lives in our own darkened emotional state. But understand the reason for doing so: not so that we would feel shame, but so that we may grow more thankful for grace! So that we might defang the enemy, by being quick to recognize our own sin, and then being quicker to truly trust in the mercy and grace of God, which is the next think the Psalmist reminds himself of in these two verses.

2. God is merciful and forgiving - there is a reason we recite 1 Jn. 1:9 after every communion; we need to remember it! The Psalmist says “we all deserve wrath and brokenness. We all deserve to be rejected by God.” Then, what is perhaps one of the best words in the whole Bible happens: “But.” With God there is forgiveness. What good news for us: God delights in forgiving His children.

Any awareness of sinfulness in our own lives is God’s grace to us. When we see sin, it is so we can confess it, trusting the forgiveness of the Father and resting in the finished work of the Son! God is merciful and forgiving! But that forgiveness serves a purpose, one that I hadn’t really thought about as much as I should have until I really examined this passage:

3. The purpose of forgiveness is fear! - “that you may be feared.” The psalmist is moving towards hope, and this step, reassuring himself of the fear of God, is critical! I am convinced that we simply don’t think as much about the fear of the Lord as we ought. Why? Because according to this passage, the purpose of forgiveness is the fear of the Lord, and the fear of the Lord is the doorway to hope.

When we think of what it means to truly fear God, we think of three words that help us understand what it is: reverence, awe, and submission. How does this produce hope? How does fearing God help us to get out of the depths? That may very well be a whole different sermon, but let me give you six quick ideas about how this is the case:

It reminds us that we are a created thing - fearing the Lord reminds us that we are not Him. It puts us under His rule, which helps us to recognize that this world is not bound to our rule.

It reminds us that God is always doing more than we see - because I am a speck, a mist who is here today and gone tomorrow, I recognize that God is at work in 10,000 ways I don’t see. I can be in awe that He is doing anything for my good, much less working this out for my good.

It points us to humility and patience - and these things humble me. Life hasn’t gone the way I wanted it to go. But I am not my own. I must humble myself before God, so that He will exalt me at the proper time. And this humility will create patience in me that will wait for God as He works.

It tunes my heart to hear God’s voice - the alternative to fearing God is fearing man. We are built for fear. And whatever we fear, we listen to. Every person listens to his fear. If I fear God, I listen to his voice. If I fear others, I hear their voices over God’s. If I say I don’t fear anything, I probably simply don’t understand very much about myself, or about how people are put together.

It is the purpose for which man was created - like we just said, we were built to fear. All the “do not be afraid” commandments in the Bible are truly statements from God to fear Him more than we fear people or circumstances. We were made to live in holy reverence to the God of heaven and earth, and we cannot fulfill our purpose if we do not fear God.

It enables us to live life God’s way (wisdom) - we were built for fear, because we were built for wisdom. But the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We simply cannot live life God’s way if we do not fear Him.

But to fear God, we must be forgiven by Him! So, we turn from sin, and trust in God, and remind ourselves that this is the pathway to hope! And this helps us towards step 3.

Step 3: Wait on God by hoping in His Word (5-6)

Psalm 130:5–6 ESV

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.

Isn’t it amazing how we can have the audacity to be impatient with God? And yet, somehow, we can totally get impatient as God orchestrates history according to His purposes. But waiting on the Lord isn’t a passive thing, and so it is a step towards hope in this Psalm. There are many references in God’s Word to waiting on the Lord, and so there have been many references in this series to waiting on the Lord. For me, my favorite passage about waiting on the Lord is Ps 40:1. When the Psalmist says he waited patiently on the Lord, it is helpful to know that the same word translated “patiently” could also be translated “intently.” There is an active expectation that God is doing something that helps us to move from the depths and into hope.

When I think about waiting intently, and what that looks like, my mind immediately goes to fishing. Imagine being at a part of the lake where you know there are hungry fish. You have seen them jump, you have watched others catch them, and every once in a while you catch the silhouette of a real whopper just underneath the surface. You bait your hook, and drop your line in the water, and then you wait. That feeling, of staring a hole in your line because you just know you will catch a fish? That’s what it means to wait on the Lord. We are waiting more to see what He is doing than we are waiting for Him to do something.

The Psalmist helps us out a great deal here by not just saying that he waits, but telling us how he waits! He waits by hoping in His Word!

How do we hope “In His Word.” What does this look like?

We wait in His Word: first, we wait in His Word. In suffering, in sorrow, in the depths of the pit, the single best thing for us to do is to saturate ourselves with God’s Word. It is no exaggeration for me to say that God’s Word is a lifeline for the sorrowful! But it isn’t a magic book; it’s a supernatural one. It isn’t a book of spells, it doesn’t work like a prescription. There is some effort involved. Waiting on His Word means

Studying His Word

Memorizing His Word

Reading His Word out loud

Discussing His Word

Praying His Word

Conforming our lives to His Word

And when we do these things, we are more equipped to see what He is up to! Which is another part of hoping in His Word:

2. We watch for Him to act according to His Word: it is never a question of “if” God will act according to His Word; it is a matter of “how.” Faith is trusting that God is always acting according to His Word, and that He is always working for His glory according to His Word. When we hope in God’s Word, we study His Word, then we wait to see how God is acting in any number of ways.

When we are in the depths, we are sometimes far less able to see what God is doing in our lives and by His Word. But even in those moments, there are things that we can be certain of:

We will be conformed to the image of Christ - this light and momentary affliction is producing the weight of glory. The times we, as children of God, are in the depths, are times where God is doing something. You may have heard the quote “hard times create good men” in relation to the eras and epochs that we live in. But there is a ring of truth to this. You show me a man who has never truly suffered, and I will show you one that is not yet fully equipped to lead at home, at church, or at work.

For some of us, at least a part of this suffering is being in the depths. And in that case, I would change this quote slightly from “hard times create good men” to “hard times create godly men.” When we hope in God’s Word, we can know that He is producing godliness in us in our suffering, and we can trust that what is being produced in us is even better than the suffering we experience.

We will see God glorify Himself in our lives - when we study God’s Word, we learn, and then know that God is glorifying Himself through our lives, and is doing that in our suffering. Hoping in His Word means that we can, and should say “this is bringing honor and glory to the Christ I love.” There is a song that I can’t remember if we have ever sung or not, but it’s been stuck in my head all week, that starts with the phrase “it will be worth it all, when we see Jesus.” Why? Because we will be totally consumed with God’s glory, and we will be conformed to the image of Jesus, and the glory we will see will so far outweigh the suffering we experience. And this is how we hope in His Word: we know this is true, and we rely on its truth.

We will be given supernatural strength to wait intently - we as His children, as the sheep of His pasture, will be led, carried, guided, and cared for by Him in all the seasons of our lives. It’s what we said when we discussed Gethsemane together: He was forsaken, to ensure that we are never forsaken. There will be a day when I can praise Him without the weight of sorry. There will be a day when I can worship unencumbered. It may not be in this world, but it will happen. How can I know that? God will always remain faithful to his Word. God will always remain faithful to His character.

3. We watch with great eagerness and anticipation: “I wonder what God is up to here?” And so, because we have studied His Word, and we know that we can hope in His Word, we can now wait for the Lord as the Psalmist says “more than watchmen for the morning” What a picture. Imagine you are posted on the wall of the city, and you are keeping a lookout for enemies. But in reality, you aren’t just looking out for enemies; in reality, you are looking out for daylight, because with daylight comes a new day. The hope for every watchman is to make it through the night and see another day. And that is our hope as we navigate the depths - that we will make it through the dark night of the soul, so we look out, we cry out to God, we hope in His Word, and then we wait, knowing that God will again make the sunrise in our hearts.

And then, after we have made these three steps in our lives, we then move to step four, which takes us from our individual walk with the Lord to community!

Step 4 - Talk to the Church about God’s Goodness (7-8)

Psalm 130:7–8 ESV

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.

I am going to make an extreme, radical, and perhaps controversial statement here. You ready?

I don’t think it’s possible for a Christian to overcome spiritual depression without community. I don’t think you, or I for that matter, have it in us to pull ourselves out of the depths. Now, I say this because of what this author does in the Psalm. The first six verses are the writer preaching to Himself. But then he stops and begins addressing Israel at large to tell them one thing that they must do: “O Israel, hope in the Lord!” There is a call for us to be together, to remind ourselves together, to express together the goodness and lovingkindness of the Lord. And, to make things even more controversial, I don’t think that there is any way that you can get this from online church! This is what makes shut-in ministry so critical for me: we must go to others and tell them this same message: hope in the Lord!

These last two verses give us three distinct things that we are to reminder each other of:

Church, with the Lord there is Steadfast love! it never fails, never lets go. If you could lose your salvation, you would have lost it a nanosecond after you gained it. God’s love is totally steady. It is totally reliable. It is totally consistent! Friends, hear the good news of the steadfast love of God:

When we don’t feel lovable, He loves us.

When we feel our faith will fail, He holds us

What we sang today! This is why we sang this song today! And we sang it together, to remind ourselves of this truth! “When I feel my faith will fail, Christ will hold me fast. When the tempter would prevail, Christ will hold me fast. I could never keep my hold, on life’s fearful path. For my love is often cold, He must hold me fast...” This is precisely what the Psalmist is prescribing we do:

Church! Hope in the Lord!

2. Church, with the Lord there is plentiful redemption! We have more than we need at the table of grace. He has prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemies, and the child of God will not be denied this table of grace! There is more than enough redemption for you and I! This means

We can’t outsin God’s grace

We can’t outrun God’s presence (next week) - next week we will discuss Ps. 139, and we will see the Psalmist confess that wherever he goes, God is. Your feelings and mine that He is not with us are feelings, and they are lying to us. If you are His, He is with us.

God has killed the fattened calf, not made us simple slaves! Think of the prodigal son - he was ready to come home and just be a slave. But the Father kills the fattened calf. We are sons! We will judge angels according to Paul! Our feeble sense cannot comprehend what awaits us!

3. Church, He will redeem us from all our iniquities!Total forgiveness: He does not hold our sin against us

He knows that we are dust

He uses our weakness to display His strength

He is always good towards His children - my very favorite hymn is “God moves in a mysterious way” by William Cowper. It is my favorite not just because of what it says, but because of who wrote it. Cowper wrestled with debilitating depression his entire life. For years, he lived in a sanitarium. God in his mercy gave Cowper John Newton, an eternal optimist who became such a lifeline for him. But Cowper lived his whole life unable to shake the black dog of depression that crippled him. Multiple times, Cowper tried to end his own life, but couldn’t make it happen, after one of his last suicide attempts, which was thwarted by God’s providence towards Him. It was this experience that Led Cowper to write the hymn “God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” in which he wrote these words: “judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace. Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.”

That story, of Cowper, doesn’t come with a traditional happy ending. In 1800, the deeply depressed Cowper developed dropsy, and died in physical and emotional misery. His whole life was a struggle in the depths the Psalmist wrote about. But for all evidences, Cowper was converted, and his writing has been a give to the church for 250 years. And now, his faith is sight, and while his life here on earth was full of trouble, and he spent most of his life feeling up to his neck in the depths, Cowper has a peace that passes all understanding now, as his hope has been realized at the feet of the saviour.

Oh Church, hope in God, for He will redeem us from all our iniquities.

So what?

Wait on the Lord

Walk while you are waiting

Remind yourself of what is true

Gospel: with God there is plentiful redemption: you will not find this anywhere else.

Benediction: Romans 5:3-5 “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”