"Out Of The Depths I Cry"

By Rev. Billy D. Strayhorn

(Psalm 130:1-8)

Psalm 130:1-8

[1] Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD.

[2] Lord, hear my voice!

Let your ears be attentive

to the voice of my supplications!

[3] If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,

Lord, who could stand?

[4] But there is forgiveness with you,

so that you may be revered.

[5] I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,

and in his word I hope;

[6] my soul waits for the Lord

more than those who watch for the morning,

more than those who watch for the morning.

[7] O Israel, hope in the LORD!

For with the LORD there is steadfast love,

and with him is great power to redeem.

[8] It is he who will redeem Israel

from all its iniquities.

(NRSV)

INTRODUCTION:

There's an old Peanuts comic in which Charlie Brown, is sitting at Lucy's psychiatric help desk. He is totally exasperated by the lack of cooperation and help he has received from Lucy. With a forlorn look on his face, he asks, "Where do I go to give up?"

How many times has that question crossed your mind or been uttered from your lips? "Where do I go to give up?" You've done everything you can. But nothing works. You feel alone, empty, cut off, and surrounded by insurmountable problems. You're not even sure God is there. So you cry out: "Where do I go to give up?" Or something like that.

Is that wrong? "No!" Are you abnormal for feeling that way? "No!" That's exactly what the author of this Psalm was feeling. Listen to his plea:

"Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice!

Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!"

That's not the voice of one who has it all together is it? That's the voice of one crying out in despair. That's the voice of one crying our like Charlie Brown: "Where do I go to give up?"

I. WHY DO WE CRY:

A. So what is it that causes us to reach this state in life? One day you are rocking along, everything is going fine and all of a sudden the road just reaches up and slaps you. Or you find yourself at the end of your rope? How does that happen?

It might just be an old fashioned case of the dumbs. We all have those moments. We're not paying attention and suddenly we're not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

The authors of America's dumbest Criminals tell of a suspect who matched the description of a purse snatcher and was picked up by police a couple of blocks from the scene. The officers took him back to the scene of the crime. On the way back, they explained that they were taking him back for a positive I.D. The told him to exit the vehicle and face the victim. When they arrived, the suspect did exactly as instructed. He stepped out of the police car and looked up at the victim. Then before anyone could say anything, he blurted out, "Yeah, that's her . . . that's the woman I robbed." (1)

We've all had those days when it felt like we fell out of the family tree.

B. Maybe the author was crying out in despair at the world's constraints as opposed to God's calling. Maybe this person felt boxed in not by their own faults and failures but by society's bias. Maybe the author felt like Elizabeth Blackwell.

She fought against a hard label. She was a "woman". She had a dream back society put limits on women's dreams. But Elizabeth Blackwell had a sense of calling and didn't care what society thought. She was called to be a doctor, no matter what society said. She applied to eight different medical schools and was immediately rejected. Then one school finally accepted her, Geneva Medical School in New York.

But do you know why they accepted her? The professors thought it would be fun to watch a woman struggle and fail at learning to be a doctor. They wanted to put her in her place. So, they consulted with the other students and agreed to admit her as a joke. But the joke was on them because Elizabeth Blackwell graduated at the head of her class. She traveled to Europe and studied at the best schools. When she returned to the States though, she couldn't get into practice anywhere.

But that didn't stop her. She set up her own clinic in the slums of New York. In spite of harassment, she kept the clinic open, and cared for the poor, immigrants, people at the bottom of society. When the Civil War broke out, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell began training nurses for the battlefield. She trained hundreds of women nurses and sent them to the front lines to nurse the wounded, and even to save lives. By the end of the war, women nurses were an institution in American society. No one gave them a second thought. Dr. Blackwell's legions of women nurses had gained the social acceptance that she had worked so hard to earn. And in 1868, she was able to open a medical school for women. She spent her last years in London, training women nurses and women doctors. Thanks to her efforts, barriers of prejudice came down and women became accepted members in the field of medicine. (2)

Maybe that same sort of injustice and dream is why the author was crying out to God.

II. NEED FOR REPENTANCE:

A. This cry of despair could also be driven by the need for repentance and forgiveness.

Have you experienced one of the new gestures some teenagers are using. Remember the Supremes and their hit, "Stop, In The Name of Love?" It's the same gesture the Supremes used every time they said, "Stop". The hand goes out, and the face turns away. Sometimes teenager will say, "Go on and talk if you want. The hand is listening but the face is not." It's rude and it's disrespectful and it's meant to be.

When we turn our backs on God. When we turn our backs on Jesus. When we knowingly and willingly do those things of which we know God doesn't approve; when we adopt the attitudes and customs of the kingdoms of the world and not God's Kingdom; when we put our will before God's will; when we purposely forget all we have learned in the company of Jesus and other Christians, then we do the exact same thing to God.

When we sin against God, it breaks God's heart and it begins to build a wall. As that wall grows, we get further and further from the perfect love which God has for us. For awhile that love gets over and around the wall but pretty soon we can't feel it. We've held out hand in God's face for so long, and shut our ears to God's love song that we can no longer feel or hear God's love. And that's when our souls begin to cry out because they were created to be in fellowship with God. They cry out like the Psalmist.

B. The Good News is that no matter how far we are in despair. No matter how cut off we feel. No matter the depths to which we have sunk. In God we find hope. The Psalmist says, "there is forgiveness with God". And there is "steadfast love, and great power to redeem." God will "redeem [us] from all iniquities."

It doesn't matter what you've done or where you have gone. It doesn't matter how far you went or how long you've been gone. God love's you and God has been waiting to hear your cry of despair, your cry out of the depths. That's why Jesus came. That's why Jesus died on the cross, so that you might know just how much God loves you. And how far God will go to redeem you and bring you back. God hears your cries of despair. This is a Psalm of despair but it is also a powerful affirmation of faith that reminds us that no place or circumstance is beyond the reach of God's redeeming grace and power. God hears cries and God answers through offering forgiveness and new life.

III. FORGIVENESS AND NEW LIFE:

Forgiveness IS available and new life IS possible. Let me give you an example.

Tracey Bailey stood before the judge with his head held high, his jaw set defiantly against the sentence the judge was about to pronounce. The words of his high school wrestling coach echoed in his mind: "Don't ever hang your head. Don't admit defeat." And Tracey wouldn't hang his head, not before his ashamed and heartbroken parents, not before his shocked community, not before this judge, and certainly not before God. No one would see his pain. The citizens of Goshen, Indiana had been stunned to learn that Tracey Bailey; captain of the wrestling team, member of the student council, good student, from the churchgoing Bailey family; had been one of the teens involved in the devastating vandalism attack on the local high school. He had fallen in with an unruly group who used alcohol to fuel their frequent petty vandalisms and thefts. One night, the boys, in a drunken frenzy, had broken into the high school and torn apart whole classrooms. And the judge wanted make an example of them. Tracy was sentenced to a five-year term in the juvenile offenders facility. This wasn't a slap on the wrist. The juvenile facility was originally conceived of as a lesser punishment, but it was filled with hardened criminals.

In prison, Tracey decided not to bend an inch. He would be tough. He would never admit defeat, no matter how much he was hurting. But during a stint in solitary confinement, Tracey happened to catch sight of himself in a mirror, and the sight shocked him. He didn't just look hardened. He looked dead. And he knew that the deadness would keep reaching down past his face into his very soul. At that moment all his toughness melted away, and tears began to flow as he prayed to God and admitted his defeat. There was no one else to turn to. He couldn't rely on his own reserves anymore. He doesn't know how long he prayed, but he does know that God heard him. One of his guards approached him and offered prayer. Someone else gave him a Gideon Bible. And wasn't long after that he joined the prison Bible study.

He was released early. He went to work to pay off his debts and make restitution to the school he vandalized. He decided that he would pay back society by becoming a good role model for other confused young people. He entered college, and became a teacher with a degree in science and math. I guess you could say he reached his goal. Because in April of 1993, Tracey Bailey attended a special ceremony at the White House where the President honored him with the National Teacher of the Year award. (3)

CONCLUSION:

You see, we've all felt like Charlie Brown and asked, "Where do I go to give up?" We've all hit the bottom. We've all gone brain dead at times when it comes to our relationship with God. We've "all sinned and fallen short of the grace of God" as the apostle Paul says. But it doesn't matter. What matters is that "there is forgiveness with God". And there is "steadfast love, and great power to redeem." And God will "redeem you from all iniquities." All you have to do is cry out.

If you feel cut off from God. If you feel like you have drifted away. If you feel empty and alone. Then don't let another day go by without crying out to God. God is in the depths with you. God will hear your cries.

1. Daniel R. Butler, Leland Gregory & Alan Ray, America's Dumbest Criminals, (Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville, 1995), pp. 19-20.

2. Henry Steele Commager, CRUSADERS FOR FREEDOM (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1962), 20-27, p. 165-168.

3. "Lesson of a Lifetime" by Tracey Bailey, GUIDEPOSTS, April 1997, p. 14-17.