Psalm 130
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His word I hope… (v. 5) While reading through Psalm 119 we had a number of e-mail and face-to-face discussions on those seven or eight synonyms for God’s “word”. Those discussions have stayed with me. My favorite synonym was “His ways”, so whenever I see “His word” in the psalms now I quickly translate it to “His ways” and find some greater sense of peace, of contentment, of understanding. That to say, in the past I had always thought of “His word” as “The Law” – statutes, commandments, decrees, etc. “His ways” seems more loving, more forgiving – as is the focus of the rest of Psalm 130: …and in His ways I hope…
I like that phrase, The Way, Fred. Lately, I have been pondering on Jesus’ saying, “I am The Way“. And the early Christians were called followers of The Way before known as Christians.
Yes, I have been ghosting along with you all. Maybe we’ll visit when you have an RTB scheduled!
Super to hear from you, Debbie. Yes, we suspected that you had been “ghosting” with us all along. However, please know that your silence has been noted!
Join us on the 31st!
Hopefully, Ps. 130:3 is plain enough to each of us. It is the cry of one who recognizes not only the sin of those around him, but his own sin — that there is no one on earth who is without iniquity. Confession of our own sin is where we all must start. Without such confession, we can make no progress toward redemption whatsoever. Yet v. 3 does not stop there; it also observes that the guilt of sin is not the final verdict, that with the LORD there is hope — that He does not, in fact, “mark iniquities“, else “who could stand?”
But the verse that really strikes me today is the next one, Ps. 130:4. It strikes me because it seems — on its surface, at least — counterintuitive. We fear the LORD because of His forgiveness? I think our usual perspective is that we fear His condemnation. We’re rather happy about forgiveness. But suppose for a moment that we had no hope of forgiveness with the LORD, that He really were the kind of God that many (or most) imagine Him to be, just angry and quick to condemn. How would we then act? Would we turn in repentance? Or would we descend into utter evil? I daresay the latter, because — standing already condemned — we’d have nothing further to lose. In other words, without the prospect of forgiveness we would throw off all constraint. We would not fear the LORD at all.
So it is indeed the possibility of forgiveness that engenders fear of the LORD. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: We should not water down the word “fear” here into simple “respect”. It means fear, and we would do well to remember that. But in that fear there is hope.