Waiting in Hope

Psalm 130:5, 6

    Through the years words obtain new meaning. Speak today of a train and those who hear you think of a mechanical means of transportation that is confined to two steel tracks.  But the Queen of Sheba had a train that followed her on her visit to Solomon, and it consisted in servants and dignitaries as well as the gifts she brought for Solomon.

    A word with a different meaning today than as used in Scripture is the word hope. Today it means to most men merely desire, wish. "I hope so'' means "I would like to see it happen."  But in Scripture the word hope means, I expect, and am confident it will happen.

    Bear that in mind when you read the words of the psalmist in Psalm 130:5, 6, "I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in His word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say more than they that watch for the morning.'' Here the psalmist voices his great desire but also his absolute confidence that God will bless him and bring him out of the depths of guilt and sin into which he has fallen and that makes him worthy of everlasting punishment in hell.

    For the psalmist is waiting, and doing so even more than those who wait for the morning, because it has come so consistently every day of his life, And what the psalmist is waiting for, plainly, is to be brought, not simply out of his sin's guilt and punishment, but into that awe and reverence for God fur which man was created.

    And note that he says that he waits for the Lord. Applied to us today, that means that we with expectancy wait for Christ to come back and usher in that day when with body and soul God's people fully receive that reverence and awe of faith that glorified God.

    Do you look eagerly for that day, and do you sing (PRC Psalter):

    I wait for Thee, my soul doth wait,
    Thy word my hope in ev'ry strait;
    None watch, O Lord, at morning's gate
    As I for Thee.

Read: Psalm 27 
Psalter versification: #364:3

Meditations on the Heidelberg Catechism

Through the Bible in One Year
Read today:
I Samuel 2:22-36 
I Samuel 3 
I Samuel 4 
John 5:24-47 
Psalm 106:1-12 
Proverbs 14:30-31

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Quote for Reflection:

At the Lord’s Table: "Do we taste, experience, appropriate the love of God in Christ? Do we know that we have fellowship with God? When we eat and drink at the table of the Lord, do we taste that God comes to us in Christ? God comes to us through Christ and in the Spirit and makes His abode with us, and causes us to experience the blessedness of His fellowship and presence."  --  Herman Hoeksema