Out of the Depths

Read Psalm 130 in full before proceeding; it is only eight verses. Notice that it, too, cries from the depths, but watch how it climbs: through forgiveness, through waiting, to a hope grounded in the LORD’s loyal love and plentiful redemption. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.
Psalm 130:3–4 (ESV)

We have come to the last of the laments, and it begins exactly where the last one ended: in the depths. From the deep water I cry out to you, O LORD (v. 1). It is the same kind of pit from which Psalm 88 prayed, the same deep waters in which Psalm 42’s breakers and waves overwhelmed the soul. But where Psalm 88 sank into the dark and stayed, this psalm cries from the depths and climbs. By its eighth verse it has come all the way up into the light, to loyal love, to plentiful redemption, to a hope as sure as the morning. After the long night, Psalm 130 shows us the road back up, and so it is the right psalm to close the laments: not in the dark, but watching for the dawn.

The church has prayed this psalm for so long that it has a name of its own, taken from its first words in the old Latin: the De Profundis, out of the depths. It is one of the seven psalms the church has always treasured for repentance, and it was especially dear to Luther, who turned it into the hymn Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir (from deep affliction I cry to you), a song of the Reformation that the church sings still, and that was sung at Luther’s own funeral. He loved it because he heard in it the very heart of the gospel: a sinner crying from the bottom, and finding, against all his deserving, that with God there is forgiveness.

For the depths of this psalm are, at least in part, the depths of guilt. The third verse makes it plain: the trouble the psalmist is drowning in is, among other things, the weight of his own sins. And that is fitting, here at the close of a cluster that has taken us through the broken heart of Psalm 51 and the forgiven joy of Psalm 32. Psalm 130 gathers it all up and shows us the whole movement in eight verses: the cry from the depths, the honest reckoning that none of us could stand if God kept score, the gospel turn to forgiveness, the hopeful waiting for the morning, and the plentiful redemption that lifts the believer all the way out.

And the hinge of the whole climb is the two verses at its center, which are as clear a statement of law and gospel as the Old Testament contains. If you, O LORD, were to keep track of sins, O Lord, who could stand before you? There is the law, leveling every one of us. But with you there is forgiveness: there is the gospel, lifting us up. The whole psalm turns on that but, the same gospel but we have heard all through the laments, and everything above it in the climb depends on it.

So we will follow the psalm up out of the depths: the cry, the verdict that none could stand, the forgiveness that changes everything, the waiting that is more eager than a watchman’s for the dawn, and the plentiful, complete redemption that the psalmist turns to press upon the whole people of God. And we will find, at the top of the climb, the answer to the long night of Psalm 88: the morning is surely coming, because the LORD of loyal love has provided a redemption deep enough to reach the bottom of any depths and lift us out.

From the deep water I cry out to you, O LORD. O Lord, listen to me! Pay attention to my plea for mercy! (vv. 1–2). The Hebrew word here, which older translations render the depths, is the word for deep waters, the place where a drowning man can find no footing: the abyss. It is the same country we have travelled all through this cluster: the pit of Psalm 88, the flood of Psalm 42, the overwhelming waters where the soul goes under. The psalmist is at the bottom of something, in over his head, with nothing solid beneath his feet.

And notice, as we have noticed in every lament, the direction of the cry. He does not shout his trouble into the dark, or mutter it to himself, or turn it over alone. He cries it to the LORD: I cry out to you … listen to me! Pay attention to my plea. From the very bottom, his face is turned upward; the deeper he has sunk, the more urgently he prays. This is the posture we have seen again and again: faith is not the absence of the depths but the crying-out from them to God. The man in over his head has done the one thing that matters. He has called to the One who can pull him out.

It is worth saying, before we go on, that the depths can be many things, and the psalm does not narrow them so far that only one kind of sufferer may pray it. A believer may cry these words from the depths of grief, of fear, of affliction, of the long night Psalm 88 knew. But the very next verse shows us what is, finally, the deepest deep of all, the one beneath all the others: the depth of our own sin before a holy God. Whatever else has dragged the psalmist down, it is to that he turns first (not to his circumstances but to his sins), because he knows that the trouble under all his troubles is his standing before God, and that is where the climb must begin.

And here is a mercy we must not rush past: the psalmist does not wait until he has climbed out of the depths to pray. He prays from the bottom. From the deep water I cry out to you: not once I have pulled myself up to firmer ground, then I will pray, but here, now, in over my head, I cry. This matters enormously, because the lie that keeps so many sinners silent is the notion that they must get themselves into some better state before they are fit to approach God: clean themselves up, climb a little way out, feel less wretched first. Psalm 130 says no. The depths are precisely where the cry begins. God does not require us to surface before we call; He hears the voice that comes up from the very bottom, and He meets the sinner there, in the deep water, not on the safe shore he cannot reach. This is why Luther could put the psalm in the mouth of the whole church and have it sung from its collective depths: because the gospel is not good news for people who have climbed out, but for people who are still down, crying upward to the God who reaches down.

If You Should Mark Iniquities

If you, O LORD, were to keep track of sins, O Lord, who could stand before you? (v. 3). Here is the honest reckoning, and it is the question that levels the whole human race. To keep track of sins (older translations say mark iniquities) is to keep a record of them, to enter each one in the ledger and hold it on account. It is the same bookkeeping we met in Psalm 32, where the blessed man was the one whose sin the LORD did not count. And the psalmist asks: if God did keep that record, if He held every sin against us and called us to answer for the full account, who could stand? The question is rhetorical, and the answer is brutal in its simplicity: no one. Not one human being could stand before God if God kept track of sins. Not the worst of us, and not the best of us. Not the irreligious, and not the devout.

This is the great leveling word of the law, and it is meant to take the floor out from under every one of us. We are forever tempted to imagine that some people could stand, that the decent, the religious, the morally careful have built up enough credit to face the audit. Psalm 130 will not allow it. Who could stand? No one. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Paul would write; before God’s bar, every mouth is silenced and the whole world is held accountable. The psalmist includes himself first of all (he is, after all, the one crying from the depths), but the question reaches past him to every reader. If our hope of standing before God rests on our record being good enough, we have no hope at all, because the record will not bear the weight. The honest man, measured by God’s holiness, does not ask how do I compare to others; he asks who could stand? and knows the answer is no one, himself included.

But notice that this crushing verse is not the psalmist’s despair; it is the bottom step of his climb. He does not stop at who could stand? and sink back into the depths. He asks the question precisely so that he can leave behind, forever, any hope of standing on his own merits, and turn to the only hope there is. The law’s verdict is real and final: on our own account, none of us could stand. But the psalmist asks the question only to clear the ground for the next word, the word that changes everything.

And there is, strangely, a great relief hidden inside this crushing question, once we stop fighting it. As long as we imagine that some could stand, that the standard, though high, is one a sufficiently careful person might clear, we are condemned to the exhausting treadmill of trying to be that person, forever measuring ourselves against the standard and against each other, never sure we have done enough, secretly knowing we have not. The moment we accept the psalmist’s verdict, that no one could stand if God kept track of sins, ourselves included, the treadmill stops. There is no point comparing ourselves to our neighbor when neither of us could stand. There is no use pretending to a record that will not bear the audit. The honest despair of who could stand? is the end of self-righteousness and therefore the beginning of freedom, because the soul that has given up trying to stand on its own is finally able to hear that there is Another to stand on. The law’s hardest word is the doorway to the gospel’s best one; you cannot walk through but with you there is forgiveness until you have stopped at who could stand?

But with You There Is Forgiveness

But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared (v. 4 ESV). Here we keep the older wording, because the Hebrew says that forgiveness is with God and that it results in His being feared, and both points carry what follows (the NET reads you are willing to forgive, so that you might be honored). There is the turn, on the same small adversative word that has carried every lament: but. If God kept track of sins, none could stand; but He does not deal with His people that way. With you there is forgiveness. The word is one the Old Testament reserves for God alone, the pardon that only He can give. The whole weight of the psalm shifts here, from the ledger to the mercy, from what we have earned to what God gives. The sinner who could not stand on his own record discovers that he does not have to: there is forgiveness with God, and on that he can stand. This is the same gospel we found in Psalm 32 (the sin not counted, the account cleared), now named as the one and only ground on which any of us has a future before God.

And then the verse says something we might not expect, and it repays close attention. We might have guessed it would read with you there is forgiveness, that you may be loved, or that we may be at peace. Instead it says that you may be feared. Forgiveness produces fear: reverence, awe, worship. Why? Because the fear it produces is not the cringing terror of a criminal before a judge, the fear that makes you run and hide; it is the reverent awe of a pardoned sinner before the God who pardoned him, the fear that makes you fall down and worship. A God who only judged could be dreaded, but never truly worshiped; you cannot adore what you are only fleeing. It is the God who forgives who wins the heart’s deepest reverence. The forgiven sinner does not take God lightly; he holds Him in an awe the unforgiven could never feel, because he knows the cost and the wonder of the mercy he has received.

This guards us against a deadly misreading of grace, the notion that because God forgives, sin no longer matters, and the forgiven may live as they please. Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase? Paul asked, and answered, Absolutely not! Psalm 130 answered it a thousand years earlier: forgiveness is given that you may be feared. The grace that truly lands does not loosen a person toward carelessness; it binds him toward reverence. The more deeply a believer grasps that he could never have stood, and that God forgave him anyway, the less he is able to treat that God casually. Real forgiveness makes real worshipers. The one who has been lifted from the depths by sheer mercy does not stroll away whistling; he falls to his knees.

It is worth naming the two kinds of fear, because confusing them does great harm. There is a slavish fear: the dread of the slave before a master who might destroy him, the terror that wants only to get away. And there is a filial fear: the reverent awe of a child before a father he loves and would not for the world disappoint, a fear bound up with nearness and trust, not distance and flight. The law, by itself, can produce only the first; it is the gospel that produces the second. This is why the Catechism teaches us, again and again, that we are to fear and love God, the two held together, the reverence and the love inseparable, because the God we are to fear is the God who has forgiven us. A child who knew his father would never forgive him would fear him only as a slave fears; a child who has been freely forgiven fears to grieve the love that pardoned him. Psalm 130’s that you may be feared is the filial fear, the only kind worth having, and it grows not in the soil of judgment but in the soil of mercy.

More Than Watchmen for the Morning

Forgiven, the psalmist now does what the forgiven do: he waits. I rely on the LORD, I rely on him with my whole being; I wait for his assuring word (v. 5). The waiting is not idle and it is not anxious; it is hope with its eyes open. And mark what the waiting rests on: his assuring word. Not his feelings, which may be as dark as Psalm 88’s; not his circumstances, which may not yet have changed at all; but God’s word, His promise, the thing God has said and will not unsay. This is where a believer’s hope must always be anchored: not in the shifting evidence of how things look or feel, but in the fixed word of a God who cannot lie. The psalmist waits on the promise.

And then the image that has comforted the church for three thousand years: I yearn for the Lord, more than watchmen do for the morning, yes, more than watchmen do for the morning (v. 6). He says it twice, because the watchman says it twice. Through the long cold hours of the night watch, the sentry scans the eastern sky, longing for the first grey light, certain it will come. The watchman does not wonder whether morning will come; he knows it will. His only question is when, and his waiting is the ache of certainty, not the agony of doubt. So, the psalmist says, do I yearn for the Lord: sure of Him as the sentry is sure of the sunrise, longing for Him with the longing of a man who has been awake all night and knows the dawn is on its way.

And here, at last, is the answer to the long night we sat in last time. Psalm 88 ended in darkness, with no morning in sight, and we said that, for some believers, the turn does not come within this life, that the resolution lies beyond the grave. Psalm 130 is how a believer waits through that night. Not by pretending it is not dark; the watchman does not deny that it is night. But by waiting in the certainty that the morning is coming, because the God of loyal love has promised it, and because, on one particular morning, the Lord Jesus walked out of a tomb at dawn and turned the certainty of the believer’s morning into an accomplished fact. The watchman of Psalm 130 waits for a sunrise that has, in the resurrection of Christ, already broken once and pledged itself to break again, finally, when He returns and the night is over for good. The believer in the dark is a watchman, and the morning is sure.

But we should be clear that this waiting is not passive resignation, not the dull endurance of a man who has simply given up and is letting the time pass. The watchman is awake, alert, actively looking, leaning toward the dawn. So the believer’s waiting is an active, expectant thing: it keeps praying, keeps hoping, keeps watching the horizon of God’s promises. And it is not a waiting we are left to sustain by sheer willpower through the long dark, either. God has given His waiting people the very things that keep a watchman through the night: His word, to hope in; His table, where the pledge of the morning is put into our hands; the gathered company of fellow watchmen, who keep the watch with us when our own eyes grow heavy. The believer does not wait for the morning alone or unsupplied. He waits nourished by the means God has appointed for exactly this, the long night of hope between the forgiveness already received and the redemption not yet seen in full. Waiting, for the Christian, is not doing nothing; it is doing the most important thing, which is to keep looking east, fed by God’s own hand, until the light breaks.

Plentiful Redemption

Having climbed out of his own depths, the psalmist turns and calls the whole people of God to make the same climb. O Israel, hope in the LORD (v. 7). This is what the rescued always do: they cannot keep the rescue to themselves, and the testimony becomes an exhortation. And he gives Israel two reasons to hope, and they are the two great words of the gospel. For the LORD exhibits loyal love: there is chesed again, the covenant faithfulness that has anchored every psalm in this cluster, the love that does not let go. And with him is plentiful redemption (v. 7 ESV): abundant, lavish, more-than-enough redemption, a rescue so ample it can never run short of the sinners who need it. (The NET reads and is more than willing to deliver; we keep the older wording here because the Hebrew word is redemption, a ransom paid, and the psalm’s last two lines turn on it.)

Hold onto that word plentiful, because it is the answer to every fear that our sin might be too much. The redemption with God is not measured out in careful drops, not a scarce resource that might be exhausted before it reaches the worst of us. It is plentiful, and we who read on this side of the cross know how plentiful, and at what cost. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace (Ephesians 1:7). The plentiful redemption of Psalm 130 has a name and a price: it is the blood of the Lord Jesus, poured out in such abundance that it atones for the sin of the whole world, and is received by every sinner who hopes in it. When the psalmist says the redemption is plentiful, he is pointing, without yet knowing the half of it, to a Redeemer whose one sacrifice is more than enough for all the depths of all the world’s iniquity.

And the psalm ends with the sweep of that redemption: And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities (v. 8 ESV). Not from some of them. Not from the lesser ones, leaving the great ones still on the account. From all. The redemption is not only plentiful but complete. It reaches every iniquity, the ones we confess and the ones we have forgotten, the Bathsheba-sized catastrophes and the daily failures, the sins of our youth and the sins of our age. The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin: all of it, with nothing held back and nothing left over. This is the top of the climb, the place the De Profundis has been rising toward from its first cry: a full and final redemption, plentiful and complete, that lifts the sinner clear out of the deepest depths and sets him on solid ground forever.

And we should not let the word redemption slip by as a soft synonym for forgiveness, because it carries something forgiveness alone does not: a price. To redeem is to buy back, to ransom, to pay what is owed so that the captive goes free. When Psalm 130 promises plentiful redemption, it is not promising that God will simply wave the debt away as though it never mattered; it is promising that God will pay it, in full, Himself. And we know now what the payment was. You were ransomed … not by perishable things like silver or gold, but by precious blood like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb, namely Christ (1 Peter 1:18–19); the Lord Jesus came to give his life as a ransom for many. The redemption is plentiful because the price was beyond measure, the blood of the Son of God, and it is complete because that price was paid in full, with nothing left owing. So when the sinner stands on God’s forgiveness rather than his own record, he is not standing on a mere overlooking of his debt; he is standing on a debt that has been paid, down to the last coin, by Another. That is why the redemption can be both free to us and plentiful beyond exhausting: because it was purchased, once for all, at the cross.

Watching for the Dawn

So Psalm 130 hands us the whole journey of the soul in eight short verses, and it is the journey this entire cluster has been walking. It begins in the depths, and we have been in the depths: in the how-long of Psalm 13, the thirst of Psalm 42, the broken heart of Psalm 51, the long dark of Psalm 88. It faces the law’s leveling verdict, that if God kept track of sins, none of us could stand. It turns, on the gospel but, to the forgiveness that is the only ground we have, and finds that this forgiveness produces not careless presumption but the deepest reverence, real worshipers made by real mercy. It waits, then, in hope anchored to God’s word, with the eager certainty of a watchman who knows the morning is coming. And it climbs, at the last, into the loyal love and the plentiful, complete redemption that reaches every iniquity and lifts the sinner all the way out.

And it is worth pausing, as we leave the largest room of the Psalter, to gather what these six sessions of lament have put into our hands. We have learned that faith is not the absence of the depths but the crying-out from them; that the believer is not required to pretend he is fine, but is handed, in God’s own prayer book, the words to be honest: the how-long, the why, the out-of-the-depths. We have learned that the laments are almost always addressed to God, even at their darkest, and that this bare turning toward Him is faith when everything else has been stripped away. We have learned that most of them climb, by way of a gospel but, from complaint to trust, and that the one that does not, Psalm 88, is itself a mercy for those whose night is long. The believer who has prayed through this cluster is no longer defenseless in the dark. He has a vocabulary for grief, a road map for the climb, and the assurance that there is no depth so deep that the loyal love and plentiful redemption of God cannot reach the bottom of it and lift him out.

That redemption is, of course, the Lord Jesus, who is the burden of this whole book. He is the One in whom there is forgiveness, so that none of us has to stand on a record that could never bear the weight. He is the plentiful redemption, poured out in blood enough for the whole world’s depths. He is the One who went down into the deepest depths Himself (into the darkness of Psalm 88, into the grave) and rose on a morning, so that every believer’s waiting for the dawn rests on a sunrise that has already broken once and will break again for good. The cry from the depths is heard, and answered, in Him.

And so the laments end not in the dark but watching for the dawn. We have prayed our way through the largest room of the Psalter, the how-longs and the why-have-you-forsaken-mes, the broken hearts and the long nights, and we end here, at the bottom of a pit, crying to God, and finding that with Him there is forgiveness, loyal love, and a redemption deep enough to reach us and plentiful enough never to run out. Whatever depths you pray from, this is the road up: cry to the LORD, who keeps no record of sins against His own; stand on His forgiveness, not your record; and wait for Him in hope, more than watchmen for the morning. For the morning is coming, and the One who is its light has already risen, and He will redeem His people from all their iniquities, and wipe every tear from the eyes of those who waited through the night.

Gathering the Threads

We closed the laments where the last one had ended, in the depths, but with a psalm that climbs. The De Profundis cries from the deep waters to the LORD, and finds the deepest trouble beneath all its troubles to be the weight of its own sin. It faces, without flinching, the law’s leveling verdict: if God were to keep track of sins, who could stand? The honest answer is no one, the best of us no less than the worst. But it turns on the gospel but (with you there is forgiveness), the pardon only God can give, the one ground on which any sinner can stand; and it shows us that this forgiveness, far from breeding carelessness, is given that you may be feared, making real worshipers of those it lifts from the depths.

Forgiven, the psalmist waits, not in anxiety but in hope anchored to God’s word, with the eager certainty of a watchman sure the morning will come. We found there the answer to the long night of Psalm 88, for the believer in the dark is a watchman, and the morning is sure, pledged by the God of loyal love and proven by the Lord Jesus, who rose at dawn from the deepest depths of all. And the psalm climbs to its height in two great words, loyal love and plentiful redemption: a chesed that does not let go and a rescue abundant enough never to run short, fulfilled in the blood of Christ that cleanses from all sin and redeems His people from all their iniquities. So the laments end not in the dark but watching for the dawn: from whatever depths we pray, the road up is to cry to the LORD, stand on His forgiveness and not our record, and wait in hope for the morning that the risen Christ has already made certain.

For Discussion

The psalm cries from the deep water, yet verse 3 shows that the depths are, in part, the depths of guilt. How does naming the trouble beneath our troubles as sin, and not only circumstance, change where the believer looks for the way out?
If you, O LORD, were to keep track of sins, O Lord, who could stand before you? (v. 3). What is the honest answer to that question, and how does it level every person, the religious and the irreligious alike, before God (compare Romans 3:23)?
The whole psalm turns on one word in verse 4: But with you there is forgiveness (ESV). Why is forgiveness, and not the absence of sin, the only ground on which any of us can stand before God?
Strikingly, the psalm says God forgives that you may be feared, not that we may take Him lightly. Why does true forgiveness produce reverence and worship rather than carelessness or presumption (compare Romans 6:1–2)?
The believer yearns for the Lord more than watchmen do for the morning, and waits for his assuring word (vv. 5–6). What is the difference between waiting in hope and waiting in anxiety, and why must that hope rest on God’s word rather than on our feelings or circumstances?
The psalm ends by calling all Israel to hope, because with him is plentiful redemption and he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities (vv. 7–8 ESV). How is that abundant and complete redemption fulfilled in Christ (Ephesians 1:7), and how does it answer the darkness we sat with in Psalm 88?

Looking Ahead

With Psalm 130 we close the laments, but the prayer book is not finished with hard things. The next two sessions take up the psalms many readers wish were not in the Bible at all: the imprecatory psalms, the prayers that call down God’s judgment on enemies, the psalms of cursing. We will not skip them, because they are Scripture, and because they have something to teach us that we badly need, even though, and partly because, they make us uncomfortable. We begin with Psalm 109, the most sustained curse in the Psalter, the prayer of a man so wronged that he calls down ruin on the one who wronged him.

These psalms raise hard questions. How can the inspired prayer book contain such fury? How do they square with the Lord Jesus telling us to love our enemies and bless those who curse us? We will see that the imprecatory psalms are not the opposite of that command but, rightly understood, are bound up with it: they are the believer’s way of handing his rage and his cry for justice to God, rather than taking vengeance into his own hands; they rest on the truth that vengeance belongs to the LORD; and they finally drive us to the cross, where the judgment they call for fell, and to the One who prayed for His enemies even as they killed Him. We will not soften them, and we will not be embarrassed by them. We will learn to read them with Christ.

Read Psalm 109 in full before the next session. It is a hard read, full of curses; do not be alarmed by it. As you read, notice how the psalmist, however fierce, leaves the judgment to God and does not lift his own hand, and watch for the verse the New Testament will later apply to Judas.

Closing Prayer

Out of the depths we cry to You, O LORD; hear our voice, and let Your ears be attentive to our pleas for mercy. We confess that if You should mark our iniquities, not one of us could stand, not the worst of us and not the best. We have no record that could bear the weight of Your holiness, and we stop our mouths before You. But with You there is forgiveness, full, free, and undeserved, and on that, and not on ourselves, we dare to stand. Make us, by Your mercy, not careless but reverent; let the wonder of being forgiven bind our hearts to You in worship.
Teach us to wait for You as watchmen wait for the morning, our hope anchored not in how we feel or how things look but in Your sure word; and when the night is long, remind us that the morning is certain, for Your Son has already risen at dawn from the deepest depths of all. We bless You that with You there is steadfast love and plentiful redemption, abundant enough never to run short and complete enough to reach every one of our iniquities: the redemption bought by the blood of Your Son, which cleanses us from all sin. Lift us from every depth, and bring us at last to the morning that has no evening. Through the same Lord Jesus Christ, our plentiful redemption, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.