Put Your Hope in Him: Psalms 130-131

As Carl mentioned at the beginning of this series, the set of Psalms that we are looking at are called songs of ascent because it is thought that they were sung by the people of Israel during their pilgrimages to Jerusalem three times a year. Because the city was on a hill, the journey was referred to as “going up” to Jerusalem. There was a sense of going up, all the way to the top of the temple mount to meet with God. As someone who grew up in the mountains of Nepal, I seem to have an innate desire to “go up.” Is this a universal instinct? I wonder. Little kids seem to want to climb almost as soon as they can crawl. Ian still loves to climb trees. For me, when I see a mountain, I automatically want to get to the top. I want to go up. I want to be able to see what’s on the other side.

During my mom’s last term in Nepal before she retired, she lived in a fairly remote, rural area – a hydropower construction project in the western part of the country. She was what amounted to the team leader of the group of missionary engineers who were working on a tight schedule to get a dam and powerhouse built and more than a kilometer of tunnels dug. The pressures were considerable, and relationships were sometimes strained. On Saturdays, my mom used to like to escape for a few hours. Where did she choose to go? Up a mountain. The staff housing was right at the bottom of the valley, so she would climb up about 3,000 feet to a pine forest on the very top of the mountain across the valley. It was a place of solitude and prayer and refreshment. If village kids wanted to accompany her, she would tell them that she was going to meet with God. That was very effective at dissuading them.

What does an ascent mean to you spiritually? Does it mean that you are getting closer to God? Does it mean that you are experiencing greater freedom, leaving sin behind, broadening your vision? We may speak of someone descending into depression, so does ascending connote acquiring greater hope and joy and confidence? But these psalms are not all about spiritual success, at least at a superficial level. Many of them start out at least with calls of distress. And Psalm 123, for example, ends with a plea for the Lord’s mercy, “for we have endured no end of contempt.” That doesn’t sound much like a mountain-top experience.

How many of you have read Eugene Peterson’s book about these songs of ascent? It’s called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. I remember reading it about 20 years ago, but I don’t have it anymore, so I had to look it up online. The premise of the book is that the Christian life is a long journey that requires faithful perseverance to reach its destination. It is reminiscent of the regular journeying of the Jews to the temple in Jerusalem, a walk of several days for some of them. If you have ever walked for more than a day (the longest trek I ever did was 4 weeks, when I was 18) you will know about the type of perseverance that is required. You have to keep putting one foot in front of the other – even when your feet are sore or it’s raining or your pack feels heavy or the top of the next hill seems impossibly far off.

God calls us to a long obedience in the same direction. We are following him – that sets our direction. And it is a lifetime commitment, despite roadblocks, mishaps, and failures. “This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints,” as it says in Revelation 13. The patience part can be a challenge sometimes. The subtitle of Peterson’s book is Discipleship in an Instant Society. In America, we are used to things happening ASAP. In the 20 years since this book was first published, our society has become even more “instant.” It’s not just instant coffee anymore; it’s Instagram. The internet allows us to connect with a keystroke to practically anywhere in the world. I find myself pulling out my phone and asking it questions, expecting instant answers. It’s remarkable how much information is at our fingertips. But we can’t address God that way. There is no fast or slow with him. One day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. We hear from him according to his schedule, not ours. We need to be willing to wait sometimes, and that can be difficult to do. We would like our suffering to disappear, our problems to be solved, and all our questions answered. The temptation is to always take matters into our own hands, to try to speed up the process or protect ourselves from the pain. Peterson captures this attitude really well in his book:

“A common but futile strategy for achieving joy is trying to eliminate things that hurt: get rid of pain by numbing the nerve ends, get rid of insecurity by eliminating risks, get rid of disappointments by depersonalizing your relationships. And then try to lighten the boredom of such a life by buying joy in the form of vacations and entertainment.”

We will see in the psalms for today that the key to joy and peace is instead to wait and to rest in the Lord. Our attitude and position are what matter, not our circumstances. God is our only hope. Psalm 130:

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;
²     Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
    to my cry for mercy.
³ If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
    Lord, who could stand?
⁴ But with you there is forgiveness,
    so that we can, with reverence, serve you.
⁵ I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
    and in his word I put my hope.
⁶ I wait for the Lord
    more than watchmen wait for the morning,
    more than watchmen wait for the morning.
⁷ Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
    for with the Lord is unfailing love
    and with him is full redemption.
⁸ He himself will redeem Israel
    from all their sins.

Out of the depths. I picture being at the bottom of a deep well, looking up. All you can see is a little circle of sky. The dark walls seem to press in on you, and there is no hope of climbing the smooth, vertical surface. All you can do is call upwards, “Help!” It is a place of vulnerability and desperation. Have you ever felt like that?

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;
²     Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
    to my cry for mercy.

You’re not even sure that God hears you. Lord, hear my voice.  Does God even care? Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. Maybe we feel like we deserve to be in the depths, so our only hope is for mercy. We have messed up in some way. We have done something that we now regret. Or we neglected something that we should have done or done better. Regrets make the well seem deeper and darker. All we can do is call out for God’s mercy.

³ If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
    Lord, who could stand?
⁴ But with you there is forgiveness,
    so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

God’s forgiveness is so amazing. His forgiveness erases that record. He doesn’t go back and look up what we did in the past. We couldn’t stand it if he reminded us of all our sins. But we need to receive his forgiveness with reverence. The NIV used to have that last line as, “therefore you are feared.” The Old Testament has much to say about the fear of the Lord. It implies an attitude of submission and respect and humility – and worship. But it is more than just an internal attitude. It externally motivates and controls our actions. This is captured in the new NIV rendering, “we can, with reverence, serve you.” The fear of the Lord is what allows us to be used by him, for his purposes. If we don’t receive his forgiveness, then we will be handicapped in whatever we try to do for him. As Jesus said, “He who has been forgiven much, loves much.” We have all been forgiven much. But it is only as that realization sinks deeply into us that it wells up as passionate love and commitment to God. That’s what “Livin’ Forgiven” is really about.

But these verses are apparently parenthetical in this psalm. The writer is reminding himself of the truth of God’s forgiveness, but he is still at the bottom of the well.

⁵ I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
    and in his word I put my hope.
⁶ I wait for the Lord
    more than watchmen wait for the morning,
    more than watchmen wait for the morning.

He is encouraging himself by remembering God’s faithfulness, but there is some disconnect with his present circumstances. He needs to wait. He can’t climb out of the depths by himself. He is looking up at the little circle of bright sky above him, but he knows it is useless to claw at the walls. He needs to wait for the Lord. That may mean doing nothing! Just waiting.

Being a night watchman must be one of the most boring jobs in the world: darkness, quiet, just sitting, or pacing around. But as a watchman I need to stay alert. There is always the niggling fear in the back of my mind that something could happen. What was that noise? Is there something out of the ordinary going on here? My heart starts beating a little faster. But no, it’s nothing. I can go back to sitting quietly – and waiting for the morning. Longing for it, not so much out of boredom, but out of this intense desire to be reassured that everything is going to be okay. When daylight comes, we will be safe.

Come on, morning. Come on, morning. My whole being waits. There might be a big part of me that wants to “just do something,” but I need to be content to just wait. I am completely focused on God. And in his word I put my hope. Waiting might seem static, but it is not a waste of time. It’s a time for us to grow in our faith. We can learn to trust God without the instant answers that we desire. We put our hope in his word: his promises, his declarations of who he is and what his intentions for us are. The Bible is a precious resource during times of waiting. There, in black and white, we have the record of God’s faithfulness down through history. We get a glimpse of his time scales, which sometimes seem so different from what we might expect or desire.

There is hope in God’s word. Without his perspective, we would despair about our own circumstances or solutions. When we are “in the depths” we need to do more than just “dig deeper” within ourselves to find the answers. I react every time I see a kids’ movie that says, “Just believe in yourself, and you can do anything.” That is the best that the world has to offer. But it falls woefully short. When we are in the depths, we realize that the answers are not within us; they are within the word of God – where he promises to reach down and lift us up.

In the last two verses of this psalm, the writer finally stops looking just at himself and his predicament. He addresses the rest of his people:

⁷ Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
    for with the Lord is unfailing love
    and with him is full redemption.
⁸ He himself will redeem Israel
    from all their sins.

The people can put their hope in the Lord because of his unfailing love. The unfailing nature of God’s love is such a reassurance in times of trouble or when facing sin, as seems to be the case here. Not only is his love never ending, it is never deficient or insufficient. This is in such contrast to human love, which so often depends on emotion and circumstance. And we know that God’s love is more than a warm, fuzzy feeling. His love is a longing for relationship – amazing as it seems, God wants us to be close to him. And he provides a way for all the barriers to that intimate communion to be removed. With him is full redemption. He can “save to the uttermost,” to use an archaic expression. In that sense, this passage looks forward, prophetically, to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The psalmist recognizes that full redemption needs to come from God himself. “He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.” This statement only makes sense in light of what Jesus came to do. Redemption would not come from strict observance of the law – all the sacrifices and offerings. Redemption is what God does, a gift of his unfailing love.

So that is Psalm 130, a journey from the depths of despair (or close to it) to a hopeful promise of Jesus and his full and complete redemption. That seems like an ascent of sorts, doesn’t it? Now, as we turn to Psalm 131, you’ll notice a similar structure and theme. The main difference is a focus on resting in the Lord instead of waiting on the Lord.

¹ My heart is not proud, Lord,
    my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
    or things too wonderful for me.
² But I have calmed and quieted myself,
    I am like a weaned child with its mother;
    like a weaned child I am content.
³ Israel, put your hope in the Lord
    both now and forevermore.

Instead of desperately wondering if and when God would do something (as in the previous psalm), here the writer is apparently confused or bewildered by something. It is attributed to David, but we can only guess at the context. It could have been that David was just considering how incredibly complex and wonderful God is, but I think it is more likely that something inexplicable had come up, David had struggled to understand it – and finally had to let it go, admitting that it was beyond him – but that that was okay, because of who God is and who he was in God.

This is the way that these verses ministered to Lisa at a low point during graduate school. She had spent a whole summer on research that had essentially gone nowhere. She was under pressure to produce results, and all of her experiments had been horrible, miserable failures – not even where she could learn something useful. She had no idea why things hadn’t worked, and it felt like a complete waste of time. She had planned a vacation to Nova Scotia, where she had spent some of her growing-up years, and she decided to stop at Acadia National Park on the way to spend a couple of days alone with God – to have it out with him, as it were, to try to answer all her questions about what to do and where to go. At the Atlantic coast, she was able to hike along a cliff with her Bible to a beautiful spot overlooking the ocean, where whales were visible – magnificent creatures in God’s spectacular creation.

She read this psalm, and God spoke right into her situation. She needed to be like this child, just resting, not having any high and lofty thoughts. Her mind had been whirling a mile a minute, and she needed to stop – stop trying to achieve big things and just be. Nestled up against a rock, she could be like that weaned child with its mother, not frantic to eat and get nourishment, but just be with God. It was just what she needed, she said, not at all what she expected or wanted – or thought she wanted, at the time. She was able to rest in God and find his peace instead of the answers that she thought she needed so desperately.

I think it’s wonderful that this is a psalm of David. He was one of the most powerful people in the world at that time, leader of the nation, renowned warrior, a man after God’s own heart. Other people, at least, were proud of his accomplishments.  But he realized that with God, he had no right to be proud. And that despite his wisdom and power, there were great matters too wonderful for him to comprehend. Before God, all he could do was be quiet and rest, like this weaned child with its mother. You’ve probably seen what a nursing child is like. As soon as his mom picks him up he starts rooting around with just one goal in mind: feed me! The weaned child goes to mom for comfort and security – just to be with her. What a wonderful picture of how we should be with God. Yes, we go to him for sustenance, to have our needs met or to intercede on behalf of others. But what a blessing we miss out on if we are not going sometimes just to be with him, to rest in his presence, to experience his peace. For it’s as we do that, that the “great matters” that we are normally consumed with take their rightful place, and we are able to see them from God’s perspective – or even to let go of our need to understand and make sense of certain things.

In what way can our eyes be haughty? I think it means that we look down on other people. One of the amazing things about David is that he did not think of himself as being better than others. He was far from perfect, but he was willing to humble himself when he needed to. You probably recall the story of how he got in trouble with his wife for dancing with the ordinary people before the Lord, dressed only in a loincloth. When it came to his relationship with God, he did not put on airs. This is from 2 Samuel 6:

²⁰ When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, “How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, going around half-naked in full view of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!”

²¹ David said to Michal, “It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the Lord’s people Israel—I will celebrate before the Lord. ²² I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.”

We honor David, too, because of his willingness to humble himself before the Lord.

Are there any “great matters” that you are concerned with today? Do you feel that you are not getting the answers from God that you would like? God doesn’t usually answer our “why” questions. Instead, he calls us to rest in him, to just be. This time of resting is a faith-building experience, just like the waiting time in the previous psalm. I recall a time in my life as a young man when I passionately wanted a relationship to turn out a certain way. I prayed fervently about it; I did whatever I could to “make it work.” But God clearly closed the door. I remember writing in a letter at the time: To want something desperately and for God to say no and for that to be okay – that’s when the rubber hits the road in terms of our faith. Are we really willing to trust him? I needed to give up my struggle and just rest. I couldn’t figure it all out, and I didn’t need to. It was some time later, actually, that I could look back and see how God had something much better in store for me. Waiting for his best is never a waste of time.

David wrote another psalm that talks about this, Psalm 37:

³ Trust in the Lord and do good;
    dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
⁴ Take delight in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart.
⁵ Commit your way to the Lord;
    trust in him and he will do this:
⁶ He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
    your vindication like the noonday sun.
⁷ Be still before the Lord
    and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
    when they carry out their wicked schemes.
⁸ Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
    do not fret—it leads only to evil.
⁹ For those who are evil will be destroyed,
    but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.

I have asked Emma to come up and sing a song by Mendelssohn that combines some of these thoughts. As she sings, I would ask you to ponder the areas where you need to rest in the Lord and put your hope in him.