God’s Obligation?
Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. Psalm 130:1-2 NASB
Hear – “Out of my deepest despair, out of my total helplessness in the face of the darkness of my heart, Lord, YHWH, shim’ah.” The cry we bring before our God is not a religious appeal. It’s not an altar call or an appointment in the confessional. It can’t wait for that! It is anguish unabated!
“From the blackness of my soul” is the location of this cry. Until I am in touch with the reality of my sin, I pray. When I know how far I have fallen, I scream, even if there is no sound at all. Now I have come to the place where my only hope is hesed.
We notice that this cry is between the psalmist and the personal name of God, YHWH. The assumption behind the cry is that the voice and YHWH have a mutually obligatory relationship. Once in the past, the writer experienced the grace (hen) of God’s favor, the gift was accepted and the reciprocity began. Now distraught and downtrodden, the psalmist asserts the right of hesed to call upon YHWH. The word should be familiar to us. It is on our lips often. Shema. Hear and obey. But now the direction is reversed. YHWH, God of the covenant with me, with us, You hear and obey. You, my King, my Master, my Lord, You listen with attention to the sound of my supplication – please (implied, of course). Hesed demands faithful loyalty of me. I know this despite my failures. But hesed means that You, my King, have also obligated Yourself to me, and now, in this place of soul-terror, I am in desperate need of Your intervention. The yetzer ha’ra lies at the door and desires me, desires to possess me and rob me of Your presence for all time. Its wiles are too clever for me since every barricade I erect is known by the enemy – myself – before it can be put to use. I have defeated myself. I am in need of external rescue. I bear the cut of the covenant, the mark that tells me You are willing and able. Now is the day of salvation.
For me to say, “Shema, O Israel,” You must hear my voice. All that is within me wants to speak the words of blessing to You. Ha-kadosh baruch hu. But how, how will these words of praise escape from a mouth sewn shut by corruption unless You cut the bonds. Return, O YHWH, return to Egypt and remove us from darkness.
“The voice of my supplication, O Lord. Not my voice since my voice is unable to speak in Your presence. Rather, O Lord, listen and obey the voice of the silent cry of desolation that dwells still within me. And bring me peace.”
Topical Index: hear, shama, hesed, Psalm 130: 2
In such quiet desolation when the tears are flowing and there are no words that come to my lips excepts that of a quiet desperate call for help. Oh how I desire to be heard. As I am dying on the inside yet smiling on the outside. I know I have a loving God that hears me. Sometimes my cry though is for those who hurst so much more then me and are crying out into the darkness for they know not the God I know. My cry if for them. For the 15 year old who lit herself on fire to try to kill herself because the rope broke when she tried to hang herself. For the 10 to 15 children and teenagers who come nightly to the emergency department of the hospital I work at for attempted suicide. SHEMA YHWH, SHEMA their cries and mine for them.
Amein Amein
From the title of TW and reading it I can understand now why there are so many “New covenants” and thank you Lord because your obligation is not with me but with Yourself and Who You are a compassionate God who hears no matter what.
Amein Amein
Skip this is one of the sweetest prayers I’ve ever heard. It’s going in my prayer book.
I received another email this morning appealing to believers to claim 2Chronicles 7:14. I wish I had read this before hand so I could have posted the link. But I’ll share today’s version of what I’ve been sharing at every opportunity for the last I don’t know how many years now.
2Chronicles 7:14 is a promise that has conditions in order for it to be efficacious. Turning from our wicked ways is the key here.
If we call ourselves by His Name and don’t follow Torah to the best of our ability with all our heart, strength and, muchness then we have NOT turned from wickedness and the condition of this promise is NOT being met.
We need to fall on our faces in horror like Josiah and confess our arrogant foolish stubbornness of deliberately casting His words behind our backs. We call good evil and evil good. We don’t have the sense to blush!
Ps. 50:16 But unto the wicked God saith: “What hast thou to do to declare My statutes, or that thou shouldest take My covenant in thy mouth,
17 seeing thou hatest instruction and castest My words behind thee?
18 When thou sawest a thief, then thou consented with him, and thou hast been partaker with adulterers.
19 Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.
20 Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son.
21 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself. But I will reprove thee and set them in order before thine eyes.
22 “Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces and there be none to deliver:
23 Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me; and to him that ordereth his manner of living aright, I will show the salvation of God.”
Our half hearted sporadic attempts at unbiblical repentence are pitiful! We need to appeal to Him to take pity on us and then KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS. How many times does he need to tell us that. We believers have added thick headedness to our stiff necks.
We have a responsibility to be who He has called us to be and do what He has called us to do before we can approach Him in such boldness.
This land will not begin to be healed until this happens.
Happy Preparation Day
Shalom Shalom
Pam,
A young lady posted 2Chronicles 7:14 on facebook recently and this is how I responded.
I can strongly agree with this passage you posted here, but I do have some gentle but firm questions. What are the wicked ways described here by YHWH? By what standard do we define wicked ways? Would not turning from wicked ways imply returning to the King’s righteous ways? Where is God’s righteous ways revealed? Who was this message oringinally addressed to? If YHWH does not change, what are His people today turning from and then what are they returning to? Will it be true repentance if they “turn” from one and not “return” to the other?
Up to this point, there has been no response from her.
YHWH is King!
Bravo Brian.
I’ve been approaching it with exactly the same questions for many many years. Silence is usually the response. This morning I just couldn’t justify containing my passion to call YHVH’s people to repent BIBLICALLY!
I don’t believe it’s too late however I honestly think we’re running out of time. We must act. Now.
This is just what I needed to hear! 🙂
“The voice of my supplication, O Lord. Not my voice since my voice is unable to speak in Your presence. Rather, O Lord, listen and obey the voice of the silent cry of desolation that dwells still within me. And bring me peace.”
Your prayer reminded me of Shaul’s thought in Romans 8:26: “Likewise the Spirit also helps our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”
There are some things in the spirit that cannot be voiced, except by silent screams and silent groanings. Shaul, like David, would have known that primal anguish, not because he had a past (we all do), but because he faced it in all of its gory wretchedness…and so do all those who have gone through the “blackness of the soul”. You are a brother Skip, not just by your confession of faith in Messiah, but by your confession of desperate need. Thanks for your willingness to bare your heart-especially when it is not yet where it wants to be. He is the faithful light to bring us out of our darkest places of the soul. But if we never visit those dark places and unlock the pains, He can’t shine His light thereupon. I say away with this happy-go-lucky sentimentality that dares not go where angels fear to tread. It is only when we go through the trials of the darkened heart and scream or groan silently that we really know the covenant hesed of YHWH. Michael
Shema O ABBA YHWH, hear our cries for our loved ones, the ones who have strayed from you, the ones who have been led astray, the ones whose hearts have gone cold through lack of knowledge of You through Your Word taught erroneously by irresponsible “shepherds”.
Shema, O ABBA YHWH, hear our cries. Out of the depths of our beings we cry to You, restore!
Restore, ABBA, the trust of those who once trusted and walked in Your ways. Restore to them the joy of blessing and and praising You. Restore the joy of salvation to them, to call upon You.
Restore the Ruach to fill their lives of emptiness that now exists in their lives, though they may not realize it.
Shema, O ABBA YHWH, to draw them back to You, by Your chesed and rachamim.
Make all things, all relationships, beautiful once again, in Your time. Amein v’amein!
Psalm 69
1 Save me O God, for the waters are come into my soul
2 I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold. I am come into deep waters, where floods overflow me.
Psalm 69 is like 130, a cry from the depths and a fear of drowning
But as Edward F Edinger states in The Sacred Psyche, there are two interpretations
One is “Help me I’m sinking in the deep mire,” and the other is that
The saints are graced by the experience of the depths
So that they can praise God out of the depths at the center of the soul/self
Nathaniel Hawthorne describes this experience in The Scarlet Letter
Hester Prynne, the Hero, transforms herself from an Adulteress to an Angel
While serving the community in shame
On her journey through the Heart of Darkness to the center of the soul/self