Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2579
“I wait for the LORRD, my soul does wait, and in His Word do I hope, My soul waits for the Lordmore than they who watch for the morning—yes, more than they who watch for the morning.” Psalm 130:5, 6.
As we read this Psalm, we noticed, from the opening verses of it, that David was in the depths. He is not the only one of God’s people who has been there. If we imagine that the experience of true saints is always a happy, high level of peace, we make a great mistake. They have their rising and their falling, their days and their nights, their summers and their winters. Where there is life, there are pretty sure to be changes. The statues in St. Paul’s Cathedral are, I suppose, always cold, but living men are sometimes ready to faint in the heat—and sometimes they are well-near frozen with the cold. If you are a living child of God, expect that you will have many variations in your experience and that sometimes you will be in the depths as others have been. Was not your Lord there? This Psalm is called, in the Latin version, De profundi’s, and I am sure that our Lord, though He is now in excelsis—in the very heights—yet had on earth times when He could sing this De profundis Psalm—“Out of the depths have I cried unto You, O Lord.” Then, how could we have fellowship with Him in His suffering if we were not, sometimes, in the depths, too? How could we know what He felt, how could we be made like unto our Lord if we were not also cast down?
The best of godly men will be, occasionally or even often, in the depths of temporal trouble. David was hunted by Saul, hated by the Philistines, grieved by his son Absalom—he had many trials—and the best of God’s people will have their trials, too. Though faith often lifts us up above them, yet there are times when the iron enters into our soul, when, “for a season, if necessary, we are in heaviness through manifold trials.”
God’s people, too, are sometimes in the depths of spiritual sorrow. They do not always live upon the mountain with their transfigured Master. Sometimes they come into the valley where they are made to feel the power of inbred sin and to mourn over it exceedingly. When the light of God’s Countenance is withdrawn, the dearest of His children has to cry, with his Lord on Calvary, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” There are depths of soul-agony which some Christians have never known, but into which others have been plunged again and again. It has been as much as the saint could do to call his God his own, for his very faith seemed to tremble under the pressure of affliction and depression of spirit. This Psalm ought to comfort you who are in the depths, as you see that others have had to go there, too. But mind that you follow the example of the Psalmist and, whatever you are called to suffer, never leave off praying! Whatever else you do, never neglect this one prime means of deliverance. Then you may say with David, “Out of the depths have I cried unto You, O Lord.”—
“Long as they live should Christians pray, For only while they pray they live,”
but especially when their soul seems, as it were, to have found a sepulcher—when, while yet alive, they appear to be sinking down into the depths. Then is the time when, with sevenfold earnestness, they must lift up their hearts and their voices and cry mightily unto the Lord.
One of the designs of Satan, when he finds saints in the depths, is to keep them there, but the wise child of God will cry to his Lord when he gets there, for then Satan cannot keep him there for long. He who cries “out of the depths” will soon be out of the depths! That cry is the voice of life and God will not leave that soul in the depths, or suffer His redeemed one to see corruption there. Up you will rise if you can but cry! There is something marvelous about the power of prayer—when Jonah prayed out of the belly of the fish—he was soon brought up from the depths of the sea to stand on the dry land and to go on his Master’s errand. Cry, then, if you are in the depths! If you never cried before, cry now. If you have been accustomed to pray, pull out all the stops of this wonderful organ of prayer and let the music ascend into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, even though it seems to you to be nothing but discord.
But notice, also, that while David thus cried unto the Lord, he made confession of his sin. He felt he could not stand before God on the footing of his personal character. He could not hope to prevail with Jehovah by his own merits, so he pleaded, “There is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared.” Come, child of God, if sin is a dark cloud that hides your Lord’s face from you, come to Him with this great Truth of God on your tongue and in your heart, “there is forgiveness.” When Luther was in great trouble of soul, he was comforted by one who said to him, “Do you not believe your Creed?” “Yes,” replied Luther, “I believe the Creed.” “Well, then,” rejoined the other, “one article in it is, ‘I believe in the forgiveness of sins.’” Luther’s heart was lightened at once by the remembrance of the words in this Psalm, “there is forgiveness.” It may be that you have sinned many times and grievously, but, “there is forgiveness.” Though a child of God, you have gone far astray from Him—but, “there is forgiveness.” You have backslidden sadly and horribly, but, “there is forgiveness.” The devil comes and howls at you and tells you that your doom is sealed and your damnation is sure—but, “there is forgiveness.” Oh, blessed sentence! “There is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared.”