Soul, you were redeemed by the precious blood of Christ! Your sins were not marked to you, but they were marked. Your sins were laid on the Lamb of God, and you are forgiven and redeemed by His blood. You have been purchased with the most costly of fortunes. “Plentiful Redemption” (Psalm 130:7). Soul, rejoice with trembling, and serve the LORD with fear (Psalm 2:11)! 

An Address to My Soul,
“If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O LORD, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3). What a terrifying thought. If God Almighty marked iniquities, then no one could stand. If there is a marking of sins, then there is only a fearful expectation of judgment. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:27, 31). God, who burns with righteous indignation everyday, will not, can not, let the guilty go unpunished. Yet why does this verse start with “IF”? Do you mean to say that God might not mark my iniquities against me? Do you mean there’s a chance I can stand before God?
“But with you, there is forgiveness, that you may be feared” (Psalm 130:4). What glorious news, the forgiveness of God! The only way that anyone can stand is through the forgiveness of God.
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Written by T.M. Suffield |
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
The Lord of Hosts [will] chase you down and do you good. To commit every resource of heaven to a single-minded pursuit of getting you to the garden of delight. To chase after you, overtake you, conquer and capture you, and then do you good, and be merciful to you.

Small details matter in the Bible. They often tell the story that’s under the story, or draw out a minor aspect or theme in a greater whole.

One of the details that can often matter is what a scholar might call cosmic geography. Which is the idea that some of the geographical references in the Bible—perhaps even all of them—map onto the symbolic map of the world and so carry some theological significance.
As an example, the garden planted in Eden where the man and the woman are made and live is in the east of Eden. When, after they are cursed, Adam and Eve leave the garden and Eden, they leave to the east.
In cosmic geography to travel eastwards is to move away from the presence of God and to travel westwards is to move towards the presence of God, because it is to journey away from or into Eden and therefore the heavenly temple that the garden was a pattern of. We might infer that Adam & Eve’s successful journey out of the garden as King & Queen of the world would have been westward, into the land of Eden and up the mountain the rivers flow from—which we would infer from the way mountains are employed through the rest of the Bible means straight into the arms of God.
We could overread this fairly easily. Firstly, we should check that inferring a theological edge to a direction actually adds to our reading of the text in a way supported by this passage and more broadly by the rest of the scriptures. Secondly, we should never conflate cosmic geography with actual geography: moving westward indicating moving towards God says nothing about either what we call “western civilisation” or what lies on the west of maps as we draw them.
Everywhere can be west if you shift your frame of reference, and Eden lay—depending on which reconstruction you like—somewhere in the triangle made by the Persian Gulf, the Black Sea, and the Caspian Sea. We’re talking direction when we say west, not destination.
Broadly speaking, to walk towards the east is to go into exile, and to walk towards the west is to go on exodus: to return to the land gifted by God.
There are some interesting exceptions to this—note that the plague of locusts is brought by an east wind (Exodus 10) and blown away by a west wind, which sounds like the same thing until we remember that we name winds by where they blow from, so an east wind blows east to west. The clue here is that the west wind blows the locusts into the Red Sea, east of Egypt.
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The one who trusts in the Lord will, like the Psalmist, know the joys of fruitful labor and the delight of sweet rest. They will, Lord willing, know the rich blessing and heritage of an abundance of children, far greater than all other material blessings this earth has to offer. Such are the blessings when the Lord builds the house.

The culture in which we live is diametrically opposed to the idea of the family as set forth in Psalm 127. Here, the Psalmist refers to a household, composed of a father and mother who married early and are blessed by an abundance of children, as a direct and wonderful blessing from God.
It is, in fact, good for Christians to get married and have many children while young. It is an evil sign of modernity that family life is put off so long. Contra the opinions of secularism, children are not a burden but a blessing. Christians ought to desire a household full of offspring. After all, a household full of children is far greater and grander than a life without, no matter how Instagramable it may appear to onlookers. While it is true that, occasionally, God does not permit Christians to have children of their own, it is no less a good thing for young Christians to get married, have children, and strive toward filling a Christian household with godly, covenant children.
Of course, all such things are impossible apart from God. Building a house, like building a church, cannot be blessed if God is not laboring in the work himself. Solomon, whose inscription this Psalm bears, was a man who understood this well. His father, King David, had long desired to build a Temple for God to inhabit in a special way upon the earth. But God did not permit David to build such a House. The right to build went instead to his son, Solomon, and Solomon knew that the Lord’s blessing was essential to building both his own home and palace, and the Temple of the Lord.
Thus, verse 1 begins with the warning that, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” While there are two ideas here, they are closely related. Just as it is essential for the Lord to build a house or the laboring is done in vain, so too must the Lord defend and protect a city, or the watchmen watches in vain. In other words, if the Lord does not build the house, it will crumble regardless of the materials used and craftsmanship employed.
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