Out of the Depths
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Intro to Series
A Song of Ascents.
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
2 O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
4 But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.
5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.
7 O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.
8 And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.
Start at the Bottom
Start at the Bottom
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
“That escalated quickly” This is what we say or think when something gets serious a little quicker than we are comfortable with. But The Psalmist isn’t worried with taking it slow. He starts at the bottom of His pain and sorrow.
Though the author of the Psalm isn’t specifically stated, some believe it to be a man named Hezekiah who was the one of the Kings of Judah. ,or possibly David himself though unlikely due to his name being given credit in other psalms that he wrote.
It would make sense if it was Hezekiah. He had experienced problems:
Sickness
9 A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness:
Within his family
Had a hard time having a child
Son Manasseh rebelled against God and undid everything his father had done for Jesus when
of Battlefields
between the Assyrians, the Ninevites, and the Babylonians He was constantly in a battle. He never really had the opportunity to enjoy any peace.
of Behavior
He fell between two kings (His father and His son) who had created a culture of Idolatry and Apostasy.
Idolatry - Worshipping things of the World
Apostasy - Abandonment of God
In this season of Depression, the Author cries out to God from the deepest part of Himself and begs the Lord to HEAR HIS VOICE!!
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
2 O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
We like to start the conversation with our walls still up. We don’t want to let any one, not even God, completely into those places. We’ve been hurt before when we’ve let people in, and we’re not doing that again!!
We have to being willing to Let the Lord in. He can already see into those places, but He wants you to open the door and ask for His help with the BIGGEST AND MOST DIFFICULT areas that you are struggling with, not just the shallow stuff.
So he calls us to:
Jump in head first
Jump in head first
The Lord is defined in a lot of different ways in the Bible. The great physician, the Great I AM, God with us. And here we see that He is the one in whom no one has the ability to fool. We can’t tell Jesus that “we’re fine... “ We can’t tell Jesus that “everything is okay.” Vs. 3 says:
3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
He closely watches each of our lives, waiting for us to come to him. So can you imagine how he feels when we don’t trust Him enough to jump from the cliff that we’re standing on into His arms for safety?
I know this is a big commitment. Especially for someone with trust issues.
You probably wouldn’t be in this position if someone hadn’t claimed to be a safe place and let you down.
You may even believe that at some point God has “let you down” when in fact it wasn’t God at all, but the lies and brokenness of the world that we live in. Death, Addiction, Dishonesty, anger, greed, hatred, Jealousy all of which Galatians 5 :19-21 call the Fruits of the Flesh which are not from God at all.
You have been let down, but it wasn’t by God. It was by mankind.
Once we Jump, We then:
Wait with Expectations
Wait with Expectations
I remember as a teenager, waiting for the Dial up internet to connect. It would sometimes take 5 minutes to connect, but i would sit there watching the bar load like i was watching the end of a sporting event! I was so excited that the internet would soon be at my fingertips! How do we respond today, if our phones don’t immediately load the video we’re trying to watch?
5 I wait for the Lord; I wait and put my hope in his word.
6 I wait for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning— more than watchmen for the morning.
When we jump head first, we have to be prepared that there will be some air between us and Jesus catching us. It’s not that he’s not there, it’s that there was space between us, and we are traversing that space on the way into His arms!
9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
Jesus works on a different, and much better, clock than we run on.
When we surrender our lives, depression, and anxiety to Him, we also surrender to His methods, to His processes, to the people and ways that He will get us through this season.
Like the anticipation that i used to feel toward the reward that i would receive once the dial up internet connected, so we are to Wait with the Expectation and confidence that the Lord is going to get us through these issues!
and if we will do these things: Start at the Botton, Jump in Head First, and Wait with Expectations, We get a front row seat to:
Watch Jesus Rebuild your Life
Watch Jesus Rebuild your Life
Hezekiah was so confident in how the Lord would get Him through that he wanted everyone to Know! Here he is speaking to his people, but today we hear his words as God’s people.
7 O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.
8 And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.
With the Hope that only the Lord can give,
we get to experience the Love that we always wanted but never had.
The Brokenness, the Fear, the Depression, the Anxiety can all be overcome.
Matthew 6 says
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin,
29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.
33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
We are the only creatures in existence that experience this type of sickness, and it’s because of the Knowledge we were cursed with when Adam and Eve committed the original Sin by eating of the Tree of Knowledge. God wanted to save us from this disease, but we chose to infect ourselves.
So tonight, the first step that we must take in order to overcome Anxiety and Depression is fall on our knees before a Holy God and be vulnerable. Admitting the way we feel, and asking Him to help us get through it!
Then over the next few weeks we will learn more ways that the Lord helps us overcome this very real condition.
Will you surrender your depression and anxiety to the Lord this evening?
Will you surrender your depression and anxiety to the Lord this evening?