Songs of the Great Ascent - Out of the Depths

Psalm 130

Martin Luther counted Psalm 130 among his favorites, giving it the (to him) supreme honor of being “Pauline.” In other words, he found the psalm full of characteristic emphases beloved by the apostle Paul. Introducing the Psalm, Jonathan Cruse writes:

“The author of Psalm 130 finds himself in a place where none of us like to be and where the great reformer Martin Luther found himself often: the pits. Luther was a man plagued with emotional and spiritual distress, prone to depression, and he regularly occupied that small, dark space where the psalmist is in verse 1: the depths of distress.

“And yet he also found in this psalm the secret for getting out. It is recorded that in 1530, after a bout of depression, he at last jumped to his feet and said to his friend with a smile, “Come, to spite the devil, let us sing the de profundis!”

“De profundis is Latin for “out of the depths,” and it is shorthand for Psalm 130. To spite the devil, we could meditate on any piece of Scripture, but Luther was on to something. There is something particularly powerful about this text that spites Satan. After all, it’s about being brought up out of the depths, which is Satan’s realm.

“It begins at the bottom – rock bottom. But it ends at the glorious heights of God’s redemption with this powerful declaration: ‘He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.’” (Worshiping On the Way: Psalms of Ascent)

Join us this week as we continue our series in “The Psalms of the Great Ascent” by looking at Psalm 130; “Out of the Depths.” The trajectory of this text (from ‘the depths of distress to the glorious heights of God’s redemption’) is what I would like us to trace together.

Grace Upon Grace,

Pastor Wayne