That He May Be Feared Text: Psalm 130:1-4
Introduction: Home-Brewed Trouble
There is no trouble quite like home-brewed trouble. Whenever we find ourselves in a mess of our own making, sleeping in a bed we have meticulously made for ourselves, or trying to navigate the troubled relationships that we ourselves have troubled, the great difficulty is learning how to get our arms completely around our own responsibility. The trick is how to do it without falling into final despair. We get ourselves into the depths, and the temptation is either to pretend we are not in the depths, or to conclude that there is no possible way out of them.
The modern world offers two basic, and equally worthless, solutions. The first is the path of shamelessness, which is to deny that the depths are bad at all. It is to call your pit a personal truth and your darkness an authentic expression of your identity. This is the way of pride and delusion, and it ends in a deeper, more permanent darkness. The second path is the way of godless despair. This path acknowledges the misery but denies the existence of a Rescuer. It is the grim acceptance of the abyss. For the Christian, who knows he is a sinner and knows there is a holy God, the temptation is to believe that his particular sin has finally exhausted the store of divine grace.
This psalm, one of the great penitential psalms, shows us the true way out. It is a song of ascents, which means it was sung by pilgrims on their way up to Jerusalem, up to the place of worship and sacrifice. This is a song for people who know they are in the depths but are, by faith, on their way up and out. It teaches us how to think about our sin, how to cry out to God, and what the surprising and glorious foundation of our salvation truly is. It is a lesson in the grammar of the gospel, starting from the lowest point imaginable.
The Text
A Song of Ascents.
Out of the depths I called to You, O Yahweh.
O Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive To the voice of my supplications.
If You should keep iniquities, O Yah, O Lord, who could stand?
But with You there is forgiveness, That You may be feared.
(Psalm 130:1-4 LSB)
A Cry from the Depths (vv. 1-2)
The psalm begins with a raw, desperate cry for help.
"Out of the depths I called to You, O Yahweh. O Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive To the voice of my supplications." (Psalm 130:1-2)
The psalmist is in "the depths." This is not a shallow puddle of inconvenience. This is the abyss. The language suggests a place of overwhelming trouble, a drowning pit of despair. And from the context that follows, we see that this is a pit he has dug for himself with his own sin. He is not a victim of circumstance; he is a sinner experiencing the consequences of his rebellion. And this is the first step of all true repentance: acknowledging where you are. You cannot be rescued if you are pretending you are not in mortal danger.
Notice what he does. He doesn't try to climb out himself. He doesn't start negotiating with the walls of the pit. He calls out, and he calls up. "Out of the depths I called to You, O Yahweh." He knows that his only hope lies outside of himself and his predicament. He appeals to Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God, and Adonai, the sovereign Lord. He is appealing to both God's love and God's power.
His prayer is simple and direct: "hear my voice!" He is not coming with a list of his own merits. He is not trying to explain away his situation. He is simply begging for an audience. He is asking the sovereign King of the universe to incline His ear to the desperate plea of a rebel stuck in a hole. This is the posture of true prayer. It is not the demand of an equal, but the supplication of a beggar. A man who is drowning does not critique the swimming form of his rescuer. He cries for help. This is where salvation begins: with an honest cry from a desperate sinner to a holy God.
The Unbearable Standard (v. 3)
Having cried for help, the psalmist immediately confronts the central problem, the great barrier that stands between him and God.
"If You should keep iniquities, O Yah, O Lord, who could stand?" (Psalm 130:3 LSB)
This is the question that silences all human pride. The psalmist, a sinful man, is crying out to a holy God. He knows the character of the God he is addressing. This is a God who is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and who cannot look on wickedness (Hab. 1:13). The word for "keep" here means to mark, to watch, to keep a record. If God were to set up a strict accounting of our sins, if He were to grade on a perfect curve, who could possibly remain standing in His presence?
The answer is blunt, and it is universal: no one. Not the psalmist. Not you. Not me. Not the most respectable pagan. Not the most devout believer. If the standard is perfect, unblemished obedience, then all men are flattened. All mouths are stopped. All humanity is guilty before God (Romans 3:19). This is the great equalizer. Before the throne of God, all our petty distinctions, our self-justifications, our comparisons with others, all of it evaporates like mist. There are only two categories: guilty sinners, and God.
This is a terrifying thought, and it is meant to be. You must feel the weight of this question before you can appreciate the wonder of the next verse. If you do not understand the absolute impossibility of standing before God on your own merits, then the gospel will only ever be, for you, a moderately interesting religious idea. It will not be life from the dead. The psalmist here is doing the hard work of repentance. He is looking his sin and God's holiness squarely in the face, and he is agreeing with God about his own desperate condition. He is utterly undone.
The Great Reversal: Forgiven Fear (v. 4)
Just when the tension is at its most unbearable, the psalmist pivots to the glorious, central truth of the gospel.
"But with You there is forgiveness, That You may be feared." (Genesis 1:3 LSB)
"But..." This is one of the great hinges of Scripture. On one side is the unanswerable question of verse 3, leading to universal condemnation. On the other side is this glorious declaration. "But with You there is forgiveness." Forgiveness is not something we wring out of God. It is not a concession we extract from Him. It is part of His character. It resides "with" Him. He is, by nature, a forgiving God. This is His divine disposition.
But the purpose of this forgiveness is utterly counter-intuitive to the modern mind. God forgives, not so that we can relax and take Him for granted, but "that You may be feared." This seems backward to us. We think that the threat of judgment is what produces fear. If God keeps a record of our sins, we will fear Him. If He forgives our sins, we will breathe a sigh of relief and go on our merry way. But this is a profound misunderstanding of both forgiveness and fear.
There are two kinds of fear. The first is a craven, servile fear, the fear of a slave before a tyrant. This is the fear that is driven by the threat of punishment. This is the fear that drives a person away from God. But the second kind of fear is a clean, wholesome, filial fear. It is the fear of a son who loves his father and dreads disappointing him. It is a fear born not of terror, but of awe, reverence, and overwhelming gratitude. It is this second kind of fear that true forgiveness produces.
Think of it this way. If you were guilty of a capital crime against a great and good king, and you were brought before him deserving nothing but death, what would happen? If he simply executed you, his subjects might fear his power. But if, at immense personal cost to himself, he pardoned you completely and adopted you as his own son, how would you then relate to him? You would be overwhelmed. You would be undone by the sheer magnitude of the grace. You would not saunter out of the throne room; you would fall on your face. You would live the rest of your life in astonished, grateful, fearful love. That is the fear of the Lord. It is a fear that draws you near, not one that drives you away.
This is what the cross of Jesus Christ is all about. God did not ignore our sin. He is perfectly just, and so He did "keep iniquities." He kept a perfect record of every single one of them. And then He nailed that record to the cross of His Son (Col. 2:14). God poured out the full measure of His wrath against our sin upon Jesus. He was just, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). Forgiveness is not a cosmic shrug. It was purchased at an infinite price. And when we begin to grasp that, when we see that God bought us out of the depths not with silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ, the only sane response is to be flattened with a holy, grateful, and glad fear. The gospel of grace has depths we will never get to the end of, and the result of seeing this is not arrogance, but awe.