An Odyssey: The Echo Chamber

Psalm 130

Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord. 2 Lord, hear my voice!  Let Your ears be attentive To the voice of my supplications. 3 If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?  4 But there is forgiveness with You, That You may be feared. 5 I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait, And in His word do I hope.  6 My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchmen for the morning; Indeed, more than the watchmen for the morning. 7 O Israel, hope in the Lord; For with the Lord there is lovingkindness, And with Him is abundant redemption 8 And He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

Have you ever been in a conversation wherein somebody said, “I can’t even fathom that?”  You finished spilling your guts about your life, your marriage, your children, your workplace, a failure, or your pain and agony.  The best advice reeled up  from the depths of the heart of your companion is “that’s deep”.  Maybe you just finished sharing a deep conviction about something or someone really important to you and …crickets…click here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8E_zMLCRNg).  Possibly, the person was simply trying to be sensitive to your situation not presuming they had full understanding.  They may have wanted to avoid giving a “pat answer” or they simply were not listening close enough and the phrase was a substitute for saying ,“ I really can’t figure out what you’re going through because I am dealing with my own issues”.  You have found yourself stuck in a personal “echo chamber’”with only your parched jittery voice bouncing off the canyon walls of your mind and heart. Perhaps, you  are living a life of ‘quiet desperation.’

 The Latin Vulgate entitled Psalm 130 , “De Profundis” , “the Depths”. The isolated Psalmist gasping for his final breath in an aquatic metaphorical grave shrieked,  “Out of the depths I cried unto Thee” (Ps.130:1). Note the entire Psalm is in the First Person, “I have cried…my voice…my supplication…I wait…my soul…I hope”. The Depths for the believer is an unavoidable dimension of our ODYSSEY with the LORD.  We all inevitably face profound seasons of loneliness, lostness, confusion, failure, hardship, adversity, abuse etc. Oftentimes we are our own worst enemies. The reach of human assistance is too short and too late. You are descending fast and the only hope is to look up to the LORD. Be encouraged that the LORD GOD is with you and closely listening. Further, the Father will raise you up from your depths in His way and is His timing!

The idea of the “depths” in the Bible is salted through the canon of salvation history. Over the next several blogs we will attempt to search the biblical narrative on the significance of the deep things or places of our lives and our God. It is imperative to navigate through these often unchartered waters to discover hope, faith and love and the encouragement  only harnessed through the Scripture, the Holy Spirit,  deep prayer and the buoyancy of grace. 

We are in a season demanding a turn FIRST to the Almighty God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The cisterns of human strength, ingenuity, political activism, profitable conferences, stadium gatherings, and slick programs are insufficient to turn the tide of evil and human depravity. WE MUST BE WILLING TO LAUNCH OUT INTO THE DEEP IN OBEDIENCE TO THE HOLY SPIRIT. Read Amos 5:4-6:

For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel, “Seek Me that you may live. But do not resort to Bethel and do not come to Gilgal, Nor cross over to Beersheba; For Gilgal will certainly go into captivity and Bethel will come to trouble. Seek the Lord that you may live,…”

The Holy Spirit is stirring up the depths of our hearts to bring to our awareness not only the deep love of the Father but expose our deepest fears, or our shoreline double mindedness and our unjustified anxieties. This crisis can only be met with an encounter with the unshakeable character of God built into the way we feel, think and behave.  We must know how to navigate in courage the waters of deep darkness, unhinged anger and the fear of death.

Romans 8:26-27: In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; 27 and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God…1 Corinthians 2:10-11: For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. 11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.

I was very freaked out by the 1954 movie Creature from the Black Lagoon. My oldest brother Johnny made me watch it because he was charged with taking care of his two younger brothers and sister.  Like any good older brother he fulfilled his calling to lead the charge of  torturing me with fear most of my childhood. This movie set the stage for an inordinate fear of monsters by land or sea. I grew up as a competitive swimmer in Colorado, swimming my first race of 25 meters backstroke at the age of 4 for the Belmont Barracudas. As I grew older, I remember during practice I would look down at the drain grate at the bottom of the 10’ deep end. I would picture the face of the Creature from the Black Lagoon staring at me while grasping the grate with his hands. This vision deep in my mind would cause chills to run through my already chilled body. I imagined him tearing the grate off and ascending from the depths to capture me and pull me to his aquatic lair. Our past experiences can have a profound impact on our current mindset or choices. Fear of public speaking, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of success, fear of the unknown, fear of the future etc., can be arenas wherein the God of love wants to reveal Himself to you. 

II Timothy 1:7: “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of love, power and a sound mind.”

 There are the depths of God, the deep things of Satan, the depths of human experience, the literal deep of the ocean etc. I have broken down the biblical narrative on the “the deep” into two categories. Like the movie, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the “Deep” in the bible conjures up both positive and negative images and metaphors. Open the Scriptures and read these passages below.

Positive

·         Agricultural Provision (Deut.33:13)

·         The Void in Man only God can fill (Psalm 42:7)

·         The Sovereignty of God (Psalm 135:6)

·         The Love of God (Ephesians 3:18)

Negative

·         Barrier to Progress of Redemption (Isaiah 51:10)

·         Deep State Governmental Corruption (Job 12:22)

·         Man’s Sinful Nature (Psalm 64:6)

·         Persecution of the Righteous (Psalm 69:2-3)

·         False Doctrine (Revelation 2:24)

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.

Alexander MacLaren,  Expositions of Holy Scripture, commented on Romans 16:20 says,  “Two antagonists are at hand-grips in every one of us, on the one hand, the ‘God of peace,’ on the other, ‘Satan.’ If you believe in the personality of the One, do not part with the belief in the personality of the other. If you believe that a divine power and Spirit is ready to help and strengthen you, do not think so lightly of the enemies that are arrayed against you as to falter in the belief that there is a great personal Power, rooted in evil, who is warring against each of us. Ah, brethren! we live far too much on the surface, and we neither go down deep enough to the dark source of the Evil, nor rise high enough to the radiant Fountain of the Good. It is a shallow life that strikes that antagonism of God and Satan out of itself. And though the belief in a personal tempter has got to be very unfashionable nowadays, I am going to venture to say that you may measure accurately the vitality and depth of a man’s religion by the emphasis with which he grasps the thought of that great antagonism. There is a star of light, and there is a star of darkness; and they revolve, as it were, round one centre.” (bold underline mine)

Psalm 130, a Psalm of Ascent, is not a Sunday Swim in your local church sanctuary. It is not a spiritual retreat to learn 7-steps to a highly effective Christian life. This poetic Psalm may have been born in a ‘near death’ experience.  This Psalm is a collision between the reality of God’s infinite love and mercy with the profound depth of human depravity and active evil. There is no grand jury or a jury of peers, it is a man or woman staring at the dark abyss they deserve and the firm grasp of a just, holy and angry God.  You are a sinner in the hands of an angry God. No human court can overturn your guilt, your conviction nor your sentence. The Psalmist has only the countenance of God to face. The deep darkness experienced by the Psalmist is the very prerequisite necessary to know the Radiance of God’s forgiveness, redemption and buoyant hope! 

    In conclusion, this abyss is the very underworld that Jesus Himself descended into upon His death and burial. This terrain of depravity and lostness is where He snatched the keys of Death and Hades. He is the Resurrection and the Life and nobody comes to the Father but through Him.  The wages of sin were paid in full by Jesus and He alone is able open access to the Father.

Our cry in the depths will be followed by our shout of joy in the heights of His redemption! 

Going through the depths and facing our deepest personal fears, in all their shapes and faces, is the very sacred ground upon which the LOVE OF GOD is imparted to the human spirit.

“FEAR NOT“, the most repeated command in the Scripture, is always followed by “I love you and I am with you.”

This love becomes the source of confidence to approach God, to obey God and to love others. The depths determine the scope by which we are able to receive and give love.

I John 4:17-19: By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. 19 We love, because He first loved us.