Today’s meditation is on Psalm 130, so please first read the full chapter.

This psalm was typically sung by a God-fearing pilgrim travelling uphill from their hometown to worship God at the temple in Jerusalem, a city on a high hill. The pilgrim is travelling towards God, and expectant to meet God. Psalms 120 to 134 are all songs of ascent, and the focus of Psalm 130 is on repentance. The pilgrim is repenting, to be ready to meet God.

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!

The psalmist is in "the depths". These depths are not specified, but there is deep suffering, pain, or difficulty of some kind – or they may be in anguish over their own sin. As we ourselves have sufferings, we can relate to the psalmist's journey.

Even amid such difficulties, the psalmist maintains confidence that God cares for him and will hear him. When we encounter difficulties or despair there are two paths, one good, one bad. Psalm 130 is a call to God's people to not take the bad path of succumbing to despair, but instead to take the good path of trusting and hoping in God, who can get us through any difficulty and depths.

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.

God's eye sees everything and would discover even in the best person a multitude of iniquities and sins that would completely condemn them, without hope.

Therefore we should be in awe of God's patience and forbearance towards us. The only reason we can expect God to hear our prayers and our pleas, is because God is brimming over with grace and forgiveness through the cross of Jesus Christ. If this was not the case, nobody could stand before God.

However, God has promised to forgive the sins of those that do repent. God is more forgiving than all the people around us! More forgiving than our wife or husband, children, parents, friends, co-workers. God is the God of great forgiveness – if only we would truly repent.

Because God does forgive our sins, and forgive them greatly, we are humbled before Him, we are grateful, we are spurred on to live lives full of reverence for God, we are changed. We then have an appropriate fear of displeasing the one who has forgiven us so much. Forgiveness is who God is! This psalm is about the very character of God, whose goodness hasn't changed, even though we walk through the depths, the abyss.

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.

Notice that the waiting is for the Lord, not for anything else. After crying out to God, the psalmist waits upon God, but not in a passive manner, but in an active manner of consuming God's word, and using it as fuel for more hope.

The morning is a good thing to hope for, because we know it will come, and that we will not have to wait too long. We wait for the Lord with more eagerness than those that have been up all-night wait for the morning! That's how we wait for the Lord. He is faithful and good, he will answer, he will help.

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.

The psalmist has dealt with himself, now he has something to offer to God's people. He can now exhort others to find forgiveness and hope in God. Notice that the focus of the hope is not on the good things God gives, but on God himself. All the good things are with Him, ultimately with the Lord Jesus who provided the means by which God forgives sins and reconciles us to Himself.

The endgame is that God will redeem us personally and corporately, washing away all our sins through the blood of Jesus shed for us at the cross. Praise the Father for sending his Son and redeeming us! And for sending his Spirit so that we can live lifestyles of repentance and obedience, knowing God daily.

"Perhaps the sweet singer would never have found that precious thing had he not been cast into the depths. 'Pearls lie deep'." (Charles Spurgeon)