What does it mean that deep calls to deep (Psalm 42:7)?

"Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls. All Your waves and billows have gone over me" (v. 7). It is as though the depths of suffering go deeper and deeper, yet is recognized as the work of God behind the scenes, the sound as it were of a waterfall, or waterfalls combining in alarming its victims. Thus, the psalmist felt that all God's waves and billows had gone over him. Such will be the feeling of the remnant of Israel in the Great Tribulation, yet it is only their feeling, for the fact of suffering all God's waves and billows is true only of one Sufferer, the Lord Jesus Christ, who bore this alone at Calvary.

Would not one say, then; that the trouble would be over now? And how often we think it is; when in fact we have but been lifted up on the crest of a wave, which presently sinks deeper than before. Thus the second part of the psalm reveals worse perplexity than the first. The distance between the soul and God is more evident; there seems a more positive breach; though the eye is turned as ever imploringly toward Him. It is here that we can localize the place of distance as the land of Jordan and the Hermons, the hill Mizar." The significance of this we have already seen. "My soul is cast down;" says the speaker; and the voices of nature which surround him seem full of a might by which he is confounded and cast down: "deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy cataracts: all Thy breakers and billows are gone over me."

But, note, there is another sense connected with righteousness here - mercy going before righteousness, but righteousness appealed to on the ground of promises: the soul in the lowest depth of feeling; Psalm 42. "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts"; "Out of the depths have I cried," etc.; "Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps," is in quite a natural kind of experience. There is either the sense of hope in His mercy, or consciousness of sins: when thinking of the mercy, trusting in God; when under the sense of sin, down in the depths. This is not having the sense of everlasting righteousness brought in. All these exercises of soul being expressed give warrant, as it were, to these experiences of heart. It will give comfort, when down in the depths, to know that One has gone down into the depths for him; the soul will find Christ has traced all the way for him. The Spirit of God in Him, going through all these things for us, shews that not one place, from the dust of death to the highest place in glory, but He has been in for us, sins and all having been gone under. The feeblest Christian now knows more than the apostles could when Christ was on earth. Should we be surprised at His speaking of the cross and His rising again? The Holy Ghost has shewn it to us. We feed upon that which frightened them - " Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood," etc. What frightened them was a dead Christ; they fled from it when they saw it in the distance. When once founded on righteousness, it is different. How sad to see a saint crouching on the other side of divine righteousness, instead of having on the "helmet of salvation," having communion with Him in the efficacy of His death!

Now in the midst of redemption-mercy there was One for whom there was none. For the firstling of the clean beast there was no escape from death. Strange may seem the reason: it was holy. The unclean might find an escape, the holy never. What a riddle this presents to the natural mind! It seems subversive of all justice, and it would be of all human and legal righteousness. But what a vivid picture it is of God's righteousness in saving the sinner! Here was the will of God, our sanctification. This must be by sacrifice; namely, by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once. (Heb. 10:10.) Our Lord comes to do that will. He takes the place in infinite grace of the clean animal, being Himself the firstborn of every creature, and "that holy thing," as Luke declares. Now the absolute doom of the firstborn of the sheep, etc., pictures His awful position as thus come, shut up without escape to judgment. True He looked beyond it to that right-hand place where there are pleasures for evermore; and He could say, "Thou wilt shew me the path of life;" and, "The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places." But it was nevertheless true that the weight of that judgment into which He had to go was on His spirit. His enemies, ignorant of the truth, correctly expressed it in the bitter and cruel taunt, "He saved others; Himself He cannot save." As the end draws near we find Him fully alive to the situation, but absolutely undeterred by it. So we read, "Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon Him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye?" As indeed in the garden the terror of it was upon His holy spirit - "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." It is not possible - "Thou shalt not redeem." There is the type - "Thou shalt sprinkle their blood upon the altar." So too the, for the time, unanswered prayers for deliverance in Ps. 22 - "I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not" Now in all this depth of suffering, shut in to judgment, "deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy waterspouts," we see the wonderful perfection of the Lord. He justifies God in the midst of all - "Thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel." The depth of His trial proved how truly He was holy. There was no answer of evil to be wrung from His heart. There was a Man in whom only good was, and only good could come forth; thus He was a sweet savour to God. All men much tested had utterly failed - Job and others - and must range themselves, as we must, side by side with the unclean beast. In Christ we find the only antitype of the clean animal, and (consequence to Him of His grace and love to us) He was the only One for whom there was no escape; so that through the grace of God there might be for the sinner who believes in Him.

Deep indeed were those waters whither the prophet Jonah was sent, when "the waters compassed him about, even to the soul, and the depth closed him round about, and the weeds were wrapped about his head." But deeper, incomparably deeper, were those waters of death into which the obedient Son of God went down for our disobedience. "Deep called unto deep at the voice of God's waterspouts;" when not only the waters of death were beneath and around Him, but all the waves and billows of God's wrath went over Him.

God's rod of power was stretched out when Israel were passing through, and there was no sea, except as a wall on their right hand and on their left, shutting out Pharaoh. Where do we find the ground of the confidence of faith? It is altogether of a different sort to that of the mere professor. "That sea," says the believer, "I dare not go through it; I dare not put a foot in it, except at the bidding of God, and then there is no sea." Because people call themselves Christians, the mischief is, they expect to get through as well as the real people of God. Because the way has been opened to faith, so that faith can tread it, and walk through as on dry ground, they think they can go too. The path is opened to faith, and there is not a drop of water there - death is gone, and judgment is gone, all is over - it is dry ground, and God has made it so; but it is the people of faith alone who can tread it. That which is dry ground to Israel is sea to all besides. Let the Egyptians attempt to follow, and things take their natural course, death and judgment are there, and there shall be no man living justified. The believer has no such thought as that of going to stand in the judgment. When God steps in between him and Pharaoh, what does he see? The "salvation of the Lord." The very thing he dreaded becomes his security. Christ is there in the deep; he sees the judgment of God in all its weight and in all its power borne by Christ. "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows have gone over me." The waves and billows of the Red Sea have gone over Christ. There I have seen death and judgment. I have seen the Son of God, crying, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" I have seen Him made sin, bearing the judgment due to sinners. Yes, I have seen all the weight and terror of those waves, but they have passed over Christ. It is the thing that saves me, is death. It is the thing that saves me, is judgment. Grace has found its way into death, and it is all "dry land." God takes me there, and says, "Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord."

There is no condition but what I may have Him for my companion in. He has gone into the fullest depths of my sorrow. "Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts," He could say. There is not a place faith cannot find Christ in. "Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above the heavens, that he night fill all things." But am I going on in the world with Him? Are my joys such as I can share along with Him? Am I walking with Him in my every-day life? If I am in sorrow, how far has He lifted me up? If I am resting on Him, He has lifted me up, and this is my positive privilege. The heart that is cast upon Christ finds constant comfort. The heart that keeps close to Christ gets nothing apart from Him. See Psalm 23. If I have a question of want, I can say, there is no fear, "the Lord is my shepherd." Am I saying, I am in green pastures, but they will be soon gone? Nay, He maketh me to "lie down" in them. Then there are "still waters," but may they not be shortly troubled? How is that, when Christ leads me beside them? My heart is sorrowful; I have wandered away from Him. This is sad. But Christ "restoreth my soul"; and if I have to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, He will be with me, and will comfort me. Ah! but I am in the land of my enemies. What of that? Christ prepares a table for me in their very presence. "Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

I love to think of this verse, too, as a shadow of the experience of my blessed Saviour, who went through all the waves and billows of Divine wrath that never one of them might fall on me. But the man whom God takes in hand goes through deep exercises of soul, though I want you to see that your exercises, however deep, do not save you.

He "divided the sea, whose waves roared," and "made the depths of it a way for the ransomed to pass over." He divided it by passing through it, while all its fury was spent upon Him, and now in resurrection He can celebrate His great triumph, surrounded by those whom He has set free: and so is fulfilled the word, "In the midst of the church will I sing praise to Thee." But He also sang on the other side. When deep called to deep: when the waters were gathered to compass Him about: when the waves and billows of judgment uprose to pass over Him: as the darkness of Gethsemane and the deeper darkness of Calvary, with all its shame and woe and ignominy and unspeakable sorrow confronted Him; then He lifted up His voice and sang to God.

89 But this leads to another point. The troubles themselves come from God. Inward self-judgment and looking to God bring Him and Him alone into everything. Enemies have disappeared, with blessings. "Thy waves and thy billows are gone over me." God began the matter with Job and told neither Satan nor Job what He was about, and uses Satan's blind malice to break Job's unsubdued, and of himself unsuspected, nature, and to bring about a blessing. Deep called to deep, but it was at the voice of God's waterspouts.