"If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared."
Psalm 130:3-4
Part 1
Psalm 130, is another of the “traveling Psalms” that the Jewish people sang on their way to Jerusalem as they trekked to celebrate the special feast days there. Contained in this short song are great truths about Jehovah. We are interested in His view of forgiveness in verses 3-4.
“If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities,”
Have you ever had someone watch over you just to catch you doing something wrong? There were times back in my childhood elementary school days that the teacher would leave the room for a few minutes and assign one of the “good children” to keep watch over the class while she was gone to the office. Now, that could be a time of great fun or great misery, depending upon who the chosen monitor was. If the child was lenient, a relaxed time of frivolity. If the guard was a stickler, a time of woe, mainly if this jailor was pharisaical, and looked for every possible thing you could do wrong. This kind was a specialist at putting names on the board. And then rows of chalk check marks recording each offense! What hopelessness, no one could measure up!
The word “mark” in this verse is a Hebrew verb that means “to guard.” It requires the kind of vigilance that is required of guards protecting a city at night. Barnes explains the thought, “The idea is, If God should thus look with a scrutinizing eye; if he should try to see all that he could see; if he should suffer nothing to escape his observation; if he should deal with us exactly as we are; if he should overlook nothing, forgive nothing, we could have no hope.”1
It’s not that God does not know, or see what we do, He sees and knows all. As Spurgeon says,
“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?”2
The psalmist understood what it is to be a sinner, to realize the best he can do is still falling well short of the “glory of God.” No doubt he understood Job’s feelings of frustration when he said:
“If I sin, then thou markest me, and thou wilt not acquit me from mine iniquity,” (Job 10:14).
“For now thou numberest my steps: dost thou not watch over my sin?” (Job 14:16).
The psalmist must be thinking about his own sin. He seems to be saying, “Lord, if you deal with me only according to my works, my deeds, — then I’m in big trouble!
“O Lord, who shall stand?”
Who could stand upright under that kind of intense scrutiny? Who could ever be cleared as “not guilty?” And the only answer that we can give is “no one.”
“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one,” (Romans 3:10).
“Lord, if this is how you look at me and handle my sin, then I will never make it!” “Help me Lord!”
Come back tomorrow and see how God handles us and our sin.
1. Albert Barnes, Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible, the electronic version in eSword.
2. C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, the electronic version in eSword.