Psalm 130:3-4, 7-8 (NIV)
If you, LORD, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you. Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.
“If Jehovah, the all-seeing, should in strict justice call every man to account for every want of conformity to righteousness, where would any one of us be? Truly, he does record all our transgressions; but as yet he does not act upon the record but lays it aside till another day. If men were to be judged upon no system but that of works, who among us could answer for himself at the Lord’s bar, and hope to stand clear and accepted?” In this quote, Charles Spurgeon clearly understood the crushing weight of not only his own sin, but the sin of every human to have ever walked the face of the earth. John Wesley was impacted by this psalm as well when he heard it sung as an anthem in the halls of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Later that day he trusted in Christ as Lord and Savior.
How many sins have you committed against the Lord? How long would the book be—or the movie—if God were to open up the full measure of His knowledge as it relates to the almost innumerable ways in which all of us “fall short of the glory of God” on a daily basis (Rom. 3:23). I have been married for nearly 27 years as of the writing of today’s Daily Dose. Let’s say that I have sinned against my wife on average about five times per day. That would include sinful things I did, said and thought as well as the things I should have done and/or said. That would amount to forty-nine thousand five hundred seventy-five sins…and that’s only counting the one person in my life that I love more than any other. That amounts to a 180-page book that is one giant list without much detail. Add to it our four children and the sin count jumps rather significantly:
43,800 for our 24-year old
38,325 for our 21-year old
32,850 for our 18-year old
25,550 for our 14-year old
If you are a parent, you might be thinking I’m being rather generous to myself, but what if you could hold God’s perfect standard? Indeed, the weight of all of that is exactly what was going on in the mind of the psalm writer when he asked, “If you, LORD, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?” It also provides a little more context to when Paul wrote, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). With all of that red ink on your ledger the God of Heaven—who keeps perfect records (Rev. 20:12)—was still willing to ascend the hill of Calvary and die on your behalf, paying in full the overwhelming and unfathomable debt of your sinful life (as well as mine).
Who can love like this? Who can forgive like this? Who can show this kind of mercy? “Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins” (v. 7-8). I encourage you to do a little math when it comes to your own life and see if the “weight” will not lead you to worship.
Octavius Winslow was a 19th century evangelical preacher in America and England and was a direct descendant of John and Mary Winslow who braved the Atlantic to come to America on the Mayflower in 1620. Known as “The Pilgrim’s Companion,” Winslow’s summation of the final verse of this soaring psalm is worth sharing in full as we close today’s Dose:
“What a graceful and appropriate conclusion of this comprehensive and instructive Psalm! Like the sun, it dawns veiled in cloud, it sets bathed in splendor; it opens with soul depth, it closes with soul height. Redemption from all iniquity! It baffles the most descriptive language, and distances the highest measurement. The most vivid imagination faints in conceiving it, the most glowing image fails in portraying it, and faith droops her wing in the bold attempt to scale its summit. ‘He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.’ The verse is a word painting of man restored, and of Paradise regained.”
