Psalm Chapter 130 and Psalm Chapter 131 - A Song of degrees

Psalms 130 and 131: From the Depths to a Quiet Room

These two small psalms belong together the way a question belongs with its answer — though the answer is not what you might expect. Psalm 130 begins in the depths, crying out to God with the rawness of someone who knows that if the Lord kept a ledger of iniquities, no one would survive the audit. "If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?" The question hangs in the air. But then comes forgiveness — not as a soft afterthought, but as something so enormous it produces fear: "There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared." And out of that fearful mercy grows the most beautiful image of waiting in all of Scripture: a soul watching for God more eagerly than night watchmen watch for the dawn. Then Psalm 131 arrives, and the temperature changes entirely. The striving is over. The heart is no longer haughty; the eyes no longer scan the horizon for great matters. Instead, the psalmist has become like a weaned child with its mother — no longer grasping, no longer demanding, simply resting. It is the picture of what happens after you have cried from the depths and found that forgiveness was there all along. The journey from Psalm 130 to 131 is the journey every soul must make: from desperate need to quiet trust.

00:00 Out of the Depths
00:15 Who Shall Stand?
00:28 Watching for the Morning
00:42 Hope and Plenteous Redemption
01:00 A Heart That Is Not Haughty
01:12 Like a Weaned Child