“Out of the Depths!”

Meditation on Psalm 130

June 7, 2015
Here's the video link:

Pastor Karen Crawford June 7, 2015 https://vimeo.com/130044757 "Pastor Karen's sermon on Psalm 130."

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
   Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
   to the voice of my supplications! 

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
   Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with you,
   so that you may be revered.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
   and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
   more than those who watch for the morning,
   more than those who watch for the morning.
O Israel, hope in the Lord!
   For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
   and with him is great power to redeem.
It is he who will redeem Israel
   from all its iniquities.”

***

    “Don’t go into the water,” my mother warned, sounding very much like the tagline from the movie, Jaws. But she wasn’t making a joke.

     I was telling her how I am looking forward to my visit with them in Florida this week, and that I hoped on this visit, I would be able to see the ocean. On my last visit in April, my dad had fallen 2 days before I arrived and was in too much pain to walk. We weren’t able to do many of the things we had planned to do. Surprisingly this time, Mom was less than enthusiastic about the beach. She discouraged me from doing one of my favorite things--walking along the shoreline, with my feet in the water.

     Mom said there had been shark attacks. I laughed. In spite of the movie Jaws inspiring universal fear about sharks, shark sightings, let alone attacks, are pretty rare. But I searched on the Internet, and sure enough, I found reports of some recent sightings and even a few attacks in Florida. At trackingsharks.com, I read about a man who encountered a great white shark when he was spearfishing about 25 miles off the coast of Port Canaveral. Zack Spurlock actually grabbed his camera and started filming the 11 to 12-foot shark making 3 passes by him, until his friends hollered for him to get back in the boat. He was, perhaps miraculously, unharmed.

     Josh Green, however, needed 18 stitches when a shark attacked him May 11 while he was swimming at Cocoa Beach, about 60 miles south of my parents’ home in Port Orange. Josh “felt a yank on his leg,” the Jacksonville Sun Times reported. Then he “felt several bites and fought back.” “I didn’t realize it was a shark,” he said, “until I punched it, thinking it was someone messing with me then felt the face.” Another man survived a shark attack in April on the Gulf Coast of Florida while he was walking in only 2 feet of water! The April 27 newspaper story (in The Patch) began: “A 60-year-old man’s afternoon on a Marco Island beach ended with a trip to the hospital Sunday.”

      And if fear of sharks is not enough to deter me from swimming, reports of the dangerous rip currents in the area are too sobering to ignore. On the Atlantic Coast of Florida over Memorial Day Weekend, lifeguards struggled to save more than 500 people from drowning. 

      People know about the danger. They hear about the powerful undertow and dangerous rip currents every night on TV and read about them every morning in the newspaper. Yet even native Floridians who should know better are enticed to go into the sparkling, greenish-blue water on a hot sunny day--only to have rip currents catch them off guard, pull them down and carry them away, farther and farther into the watery deep.

***

      How I am drawn to go in the water, like so many other swimmers, despite knowing the risk of drowning from dangerous rip currents is similar to how we are drawn to sin.  Sin always looks good to us, even though we know what sin is and that we should never do it and that it is bad for us and for the people we love. It is bad for the entire community, the whole Body of Christ. Sin is, plain and simple, being disobedient to the Lord in thought, word or deed. And we know that our sin may prompt others to sin because when someone sees us doing something wrong, they are tempted to do the same. Or they will see our sin for what it is and be upset by it--and possibly respond sinfully--by being angry and judgmental or gossip about it with others. Sin hurts our relationships with one another. It hurts our witness as Christ’s followers to the world. Worst of all, sin hurts the Lord. And it separates us from Him!

       Friends, what I am trying to say is that our sin matters, even though Jesus has died to take away the sins of the world, and to make a way for us to be reconciled with God. Our sin still matters! The saddest part is that when we sin, the last thing we want to do is talk to God about it --or confess to a fellow Christian, who will hold us accountable for our sin. This is exactly what we need to do when we sin--go to the Lord with a contrite heart and seek help from our Christian brothers and sisters. What gets in the way of our confessing and seeking help is the sin itself. We don’t want to give it up! We keep wanting to go back in the water, though we keep getting pulled under, carried out, and almost drowning every time, maybe pulling others down with us! Or, we don’t want to admit that we are sinning. We convince ourselves that what we are doing -- or not doing -- isn’t really offensive to God or hurting anybody else.

      A little gossip here and there. That’s not going to hurt anything, right? A little gluttony, greed, deceit or discontentment now and then.  A little spiritual laziness--not reading the Bible, praying, or going to worship regularly. That won’t hurt anyone, will it? Losing our temper, being impatient, complaining, flirting, refusing to share what we have with others, pretending we don’t have anything to give when we do, failing to show compassion, coveting what our neighbor has. It’s all sin. And none of us is without it. Romans 3:10 assures us, “there is no one righteous. Not even one.” Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

      For all of us, for all the world, there is only one answer--and that is crying out to the Lord for forgiveness, like the composer of the psalm we read today. Not just one time in our life to be "saved," but over and over again, when we find ourselves slipping into the murky deep of sin. The composer of Psalm 130 cries out to God when he comes to the end of himself and understands his complete, utter dependence on God's mercy and grace. “Out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord, hear my voice!” The psalmist doesn’t hold back or try to hide his guilt; his “cry” is personal and emotional. He is authentic and real with the Lord! He isn’t arrogant, expecting that of course the Lord will forgive him, no matter what He does. The psalmist realizes the depth of his own depravity and is ashamed, while at the same time, approaches God’s throne boldly, without fear. He trusts in the One whom he knows truly loves him and will not reject, condemn or abandon him. Still, he begs the Lord not to “mark”-- take note of or count up or hold his sins against him. You can hear the sincerity of his words--that whatever mess he got himself into, whatever wrong he did, he knows it is his own fault. He doesn’t make excuses. He doesn’t blame or name someone else. He doesn’t say, like Adam, “the woman gave it to me, so I ate.”

      Psalm 130 is called, along with Psalm 120-134, “A Song of Ascents.” God’s people on pilgrimage in ancient times may have sung these hymns as they went “up” to the temple in Jerusalem. Along their spiritual and physical journey, the pilgrims sought to prepare their hearts and minds as they drew nearer to their encounter with the Lord in worship and sacrifice.

      We find a pattern for righteous living in this psalm--that is, living in submission to the Lord. Not our will, but Thy will be done. We discover a model for prayer --one of humility, honesty, gratefulness and reverence. And we find a promise--that when we come face to face with our own sin and see ourselves as we really are, if we turn back to the Lord with a contrite heart, we will receive God’s mercy and grace. But the one who is forgiven is called to respond to God’s grace by living in fear and awe of Him. The psalmist says, “But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.” If we receive God’s forgiveness, only to turn around and willfully engage in sin again, we are not living in the awe and fear of the Lord. Likewise, in John 8:11, when Jesus delivers the adulterous woman from being stoned, he mercifully forgives her, but tells her, “Go and sin no more.”

     After seeking God’s forgiveness, the psalmist says, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits.” But the psalmist isn’t waiting in agony, fearing that God will withhold His mercy. He waits in joyful anticipation, trusting the Lord will redeem, renew and restore his soul. “In his word I hope,” the psalmist says. “My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning.” He says it again for emphasis, “more than those who watch for the morning.”

***

     Friends, meditate on Psalm 130 this week to remember God’s steadfast love for you--and His mercy and grace! Know that you can, like the psalmist, approach God’s throne of grace boldly--every day--to confess your sins, so that your soul may be renewed and restored. Don’t hold back or try to hide your sins from Him! Be honest, be real with the Lord who knows you better than you know yourself!

      If I do get to the beach next week during my visit to Florida, with the seagulls’ cries overhead, I will remember the Psalmist’s words, “Out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord!” When I see the sparkling turquoise ocean washing up onto the sand, I will be reminded how we are always attracted to sin, no matter how dangerous we know it is--how it hurts not only us, but God and other people.

      And I will try hard to heed my mother’s ominous warning, like the tagline from Jaws: “Don’t go into the water.”

Let us pray.

    Out of the depths we cry to you, O Lord! Hear our voice, we pray. Please forgive us for our many sins. Do not count them or hold them against us, for if you did, who could stand? Thank you for your mercy and grace. Help us to respond to your grace by living in reverence, in awe of you, obeying you out of love and gratitude. Thank you for giving up your only Son so we could be forgiven and reconciled with you. Lord, teach us to set aside time each day to praise you, humbly confess, and wait on you in joyful anticipation that you will renew and restore our souls. Lead us to hope in you always, to trust in your steadfast love and in your great power to redeem. In Christ we pray. Amen.