
On Sunday I preached a message from
Psalm 130, as a part of
NECC's "God At The Movies" series. I had been personally moved by the passage recently and really felt on mission for that message at that time and place for that people. I titled the message "The Call, The Wait, The Promise" and I would normally hyperlink to the message where it is posted but I was losing my voice Sunday AM. Since it was painful for me to listen to on Monday, I won't subject any of you to it.
My premise was this..."What does salvation look like?" Now I didn't have in mind, "getting saved" particularly or what we mean when we say "giving my heart" or "accepting Jesus." But more specifically what does it look like to be rescued, when we're in over our heads like the Psalmist in 130 seemed to be. So using the first four verses I talked first about the importance of "The Cry."
It seems as if salvation in scripture (and in my life come to think of it) always starts with the cry. More than that, on Sunday I said that "it is essential to what it means to be human that we cry out." I was reminded of this yesterday as I visited a brand new baby born to friends of ours, and as they were showing her off, she gave out a yell, to which her grandmother say proudly, "see there, she's doing well, listen to those lungs."
It also seemed important to me from the passage that our right to cry out is not based on how good we have been. In the passage right after the author cries out, there is this piece of confession coupled with confidence, "If you Lord, kept a record of sing, Lord who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you." Psalm 130:4-5
So I was reminded that I don't have to lie in the messy bed that I made, and I don't have to reap everything I have sown, and that I can still cry out. More importantly, we see throughout the Scriptures that God hears the cry of the oppressed and brings salvation.
But it was in the second section...in "The Wait" that I hit a sore point. Most of us are pretty good about crying out, but in the wait...not so much. I say a sore point because afterward in the lobby and this week since, I have heard several times, "I don't like to wait" and "I'm tired of waiting." I can identify. Now it's easy to see why, especially right now, in our advanced age, we don't like to wait...because we don't ever have to. Recently I was at the beach and upset because I didn't have a fast enough internet connection. I was connected to the internet sitting on the beach but I didn't like having to wait an extra 11 seconds for the email I wanted to read to download.
But waiting hurts so much. Because of the not knowing and the not having. In verses 5 and 6 of this passage, we see that after the cry comes the wait, and in both the Old and New Testaments our existence in relation to God is often described as one of waiting. You can see a patient waiting in the Apostle Paul in Romans 8 but here in the Psalmist the wait is an anxious wait. The condition of our relationship to God is first of all one of not having, not seeing, not knowing and not grasping. I think we often forget that, and when we act as if that's not the case (as much of Christendom today does) we have then replaced God with our own creation of an image of God. A God that we don't have to wait on then is a God that we can possess. If we didn't have to wait for God, then God would not be free and by definition God is infinitely free.
But even though waiting is not having, not possessing it is also having. The fact that we are waiting for something in some way shows that we already have it. Waiting anticipates that which is not yet real, but will be real. This is the truth that Romans 8:25 makes clear when the apostle writes, "But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it." I was absolutely leveled by the repetitive simile (it's not a simile in the TNIV but I still prefer to think of that way) that the wait section of Psalm 130 concludes with. We wait, "More than watchmen wait for the morning...More than watchmen wait for the morning." Psalm 130:6.
So how do watchmen wait for the morning? They wait with eagerness, anticipation and joy. The morning is when the midnight shift has ended, when they get to rest, when the city has been delivered safe through one more evening. Secondly, they wait with confidence, because they know this one thing: Although the night might be dark, the morning is coming. The morning always comes. The sun is coming. The wait will be over soon.
The passage ends with "The Promise." I love that although there is anxiety, the Psalmist ends with these two key God-directed promises. "...with the Lord is unfailing love" and "with him is full redemption." Psalm 130:7
But that's another sermon. :)