Dave's Diary

Daily Readings: Psalm 142 and Psalm 130

Today you’re invited to memorise Psalm 130:3-4:

³ If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,
    Lord, who could stand?
⁴ But with you there is forgiveness,
    so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

First commit it to memory and then meditate on it throughout the day in light of Psalm 142:7

⁷ Set me free from my prison,
    that I may praise your name.

The whole of Psalm 142 is a cry for rescue from physical enemies that were seeking to destroy David. The title explains that Psalm 142 is a “maskil (a Hebrew musical term) of David when he was in the cave.” This was one of at least two occasions that David was in hiding from Saul who was out to murder him. But as David explains in v.7, his cave refuge had actually become his prison. He was trapped.

How many times do the things in which we try to find refuge from this world’s dangers and troubles actually become a trap? Someone tells a white lie to escape an immediate threat, and suddenly they’re trapped. Somone takes a strong drink to escape the stress of the day, and suddenly they’re trapped in an addiction they didn’t see coming. Someone looks to a person other than their covenant-spouse for emotional support, and before they know it they’ve fallen in love and are trapped in an affair.

When David cried to God out of the depths of this cave-prison trap, God heard his cry and rescued him. Likewise, Psalm 130 is a Psalmist’s witness that when he cried to God out of the depths of his prison of guilt and shame, he did so because “with the Lord there is forgiveness”. The forgiveness of God is the first step in the process of deliverance by which God cuts off the chains of guilt and shame that bind us, and sets us free from the spiritual and relational traps in which we have become imprisoned.

Lord, forgive me for my own folly that has led to my spiritual imprisonment and enslavement to destructive or addictive behaviours, habits, patterns of thinking, relationships or even substances. Please forgive me, cut off the chains that bind me, and set me free. Amen.

Today’s worship song based on Psalm 130 is called “Out of the depths” by Bob Kauflin of Sovereign Grace Music and can be found here.