Psalm 130
All right, let’s hear God’s word.
This is Psalm 130. This is a song of ascents. This is the second one in the
next group of three, 129, 130, and 131. And one of the things
you’ll notice in this psalm is it actually ascends. If you follow
the psalmist through it, he goes from the depths of despair all
the way to Israel hoping in the Lord. So it, in and of itself,
is a psalm that ascends or has ascent in it. So let’s hear God’s
word. Out of the depths I cry to you,
O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice. Let your
ears be attentive to the cry or to the voice of my pleas for
mercy. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness
that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul
waits, and in his word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more
than the watchman for the morning, more than the watchman for the
morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord, for
with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him there is plentiful
redemption. And he will redeem Israel from
all his iniquities. Amen. This is the word of the
living God for us. How do y’all think most people
deal with guilt? just a run-of-the-mill friend,
neighbor. It could be a churchgoer. But how do you think the run-of-the-mill
average person deals with guilt? I think a lot of people think
of it in this way. And I hear this even from church folks from
time to time. Well, as long as I’ve done more
good than bad. And as long as my good outweighs
the bad, I don’t feel so guilty. So it’s the tip of the scales
idea. Some people just hide from it. They’re like the cat that sticks
its head under the couch and doesn’t realize its tail and
its rump end is sticking out, its tail’s wagging. And it thinks
as long as it can’t see you, that you can’t see it, even though
half of it is protruding from under the skirt of the couch.
But a lot of people hide from their sin, their shame. And they
think that as long as they don’t see it, no one else does. Or
others may drown it. Drug addiction, alcohol addiction,
some kind of substance abuse, or some sort of filler. But everybody has a way to deal
with guilt. Everybody has a way, some sort of economy, Some people
just work hard. They serve others so much, they
say, you know, if I’ve done enough good, if I’ve helped enough people,
for sure my guilt has gone away. But do we really believe in the
forgiveness of sins? That’s the $64,000 question,
if you will, of Psalm 130. Do I believe in the forgiveness
of sins? When do we say, I believe in
the forgiveness of sins? Well, for us, since we do various
creeds each Sunday. We say it about every four Sundays
in the Apostles Creed, right? Y’all know that statement’s in
there. We say very boldly, I believe in the forgiveness of sins, but
then how do we deal with our guilt? Do we deal with it in
a godly way or do we deal with it in a worldly way? Or how about
prayers? We say every Sunday in the Lord’s
prayer, forgive us our debts. And so we pray because, well,
I hope we believe that God can and will and does forgive us
of our debts. Or how about a little deeper,
our doctrine? Do we believe in the doctrine of justification
by faith that God sees us as if we’ve never sinned and sees
us as if we’ve always obeyed? Do we believe in the doctrine
of sanctification that God makes us more and more like Jesus and
less and less like our old man? Do we believe in the assurance
of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase
of grace, perseverance? Do we believe that the Christian
can live a life that is victorious in regards to sin? These are
good questions. Psalm 130 is a psalm where the
psalmist is in the depths. Now, we probably don’t understand
what it means to be in the depths. Maybe it’s popped in our lives
on occasion. But think about Jonah for a minute.
When Jonah was called by God to be a prophet and go to Nineveh,
what did he do? Well, if you read the Jesus storybook
Bible, he gets on a boat not to Nineveh, right? Some of y’all
read that in Captain Nursery or read it to your kids. Jonas
doesn’t get on a boat to Nineveh, he gets on a boat not to Nineveh.
And what happens? The sea rages. uh, the, the ocean
is angry because God is judging, uh, those men and that ship because
of Jonah’s disobedience. And so they finally tossed Jonah
overboard. He gets hurled into the sea and
the Bible describes, you know, he’s, he’s sunk down to the depths. He’s got the cords of death and
tangling in the seaweeds or getting him down, and the sharks are
circling. They think dinner has been prepared
and served. And what does Jonah do? He cries
out to the Lord from the depths in his distress. And wouldn’t
you repent very quickly if you were in those depths? Well, that’s
exactly what the psalmist has in mind. Israel was surrounded
by land on three sides. Yes, the Mediterranean Sea to
one side. They did have the Sea of Galilee,
But Israelites were not a seafaring people. They did not have a bath
boat in the garage. They did not go deep sea fishing.
In fact, they hated the water because they were scared of the
water. And so the ocean represented chaos to the Israelites and to
those people of the ancient Near East. And so when there’s a prayer
like in verse one, out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord.
It’s a dire situation. Maybe you’ve had one of those
where you woke up in the morning, you peeked your eyes from over
the covers, and you just knew in your heart deep down, if I
get out of this bed, bad things are gonna happen. Maybe you’ve
been there in job stress or family stress or personal sickness,
but maybe you’ve been in those depths. But here the depths are
sin, are a count that rises up to the heavens and cannot be
paid. It cannot be wiped away except
for the blood of the Lord Jesus. And throughout this psalm, you
see the psalmist in the depths. He’s covered up in his iniquities
and he cries to the Lord. He pleads to him for mercy. He
waits, he trusts, he hopes. And his object of waiting and
hoping and trusting and praying is the steadfast love of God.
It’s the forgiveness of sins and it’s the intimacy that he
desires with God himself, and then ultimately redemption. And then finally, at the very
end, he speaks of worship. Walk through Psalm 130, just
a second, and you’ll see these things. Out of the depths, I
cry to you, O Lord. So he’s covered up in his sin.
Then he prays, Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas. for mercy. And then he gives
a statement that I think we would do well and the American church
would do well to give notice. If you, oh Lord, should mark
iniquities, oh Lord, who could stand? But with you, there is
forgiveness that you may be feared. Think about Martin Luther for
a moment. Some of y’all remember back in 2017 when we did our
studies of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s protest his 95 theses
on the wall of the Wittenberg Chapel, remember that one of
his great crises was how can a righteous God accept unrighteous
people? And then he, of course, as a
New Testament teacher, studied the book of Galatians and Romans
and other wonderful passages and found out that our righteousness
is credited to us. It is imputed to us. It is credited
to our account. about faith is the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus given to us. And so this is a wonderful question
to ponder. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
who could stand? Think about Jesus in the garden
of Gethsemane the night before his death. Was he excited? Lord, I’m ready. I’m ready to
go to the cross. I can’t wait to have your wrath poured out
on me. This is just going to be wonderful. He prayed, he begged
God with sweat and tears and even blood pouring forth from
his pores on his body, if there be another way, Lord, let this
cup pass from me. For even the Lord Jesus knew
that he could not stand if God should mark his iniquities. Of course, he had none, but he
who knew no sin became sin and he took on our iniquities. He
took on our diseases. that he might heal us. Oh Lord,
if you should mark iniquities, who could stand? But with you
there is forgiveness that you may be feared. And so the psalmist
carries on. I wait for the Lord, my soul
waits, and in his word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord as
a watchman for the morning. And then he gives a little sermon,
doesn’t he? Oh Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there
is steadfast love. With him there is plenteous redemption. He will redeem Israel from all
her iniquities. So the question, do you know
of your iniquities? Do you know of your sin? And
do you know of your need of a savior? Our first membership question,
it’s a typical Presbyterian question, but it goes something like this.
Do you acknowledge yourself to be a sinner in the sight of God? deserving God’s wrath and curse
and judgment for your sin and that you were lost and without
hope save the gift of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you
believe that? And I’ve got a friend who pastors
in the Greensboro area and he says he has a man visiting his
church right now that says, I am not a sinner. I would take about four steps
away from him and keep backing up as fast as I could. You know
the old saying, lightning will strike and you don’t want it
to hit you as well. But isn’t that an audacious claim?
I am not a sinner. Who says we’re sinners? God does. And if God says you’re a sinner,
guess what? You’re a sinner and you need to come to terms with
that and come to faith. in the Lord Jesus Christ. But
what a great blessing, what a great message for the church in verse
seven. Oh Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there
is steadfast love and with him there is plentiful redemption.
I’ve been reading a book over the last two weeks about the
rise of secularism in America and it talks about the rise of
secularism and how it’s really infected the church. You know,
the church has taken up The social gospel in some sectors, particularly
now the Black Lives Matter is the gospel of mainline churches.
The church has taken up the prosperity gospel. If you trust God, he’ll
give you all the riches of this earth and you can have your best
life now, happy, healthy, and wealthy. The gospel has also
become, in the American church, moralistic, therapeutic deism. Be good, feel good. And there
is a God, if you should need him, just pull the rope and the
divine bellhop will come to your rescue if he so desires. And then there are other gospels
along the way. But those don’t give answers,
do they? Those don’t give hope, those don’t give anyone an eternal
outlook. And so thanks be to God that
we can be part of a, we can be a congregation, we can be part
of a larger denominational church that believes the truth of God’s
word, the glories of the gospel, and these wonderful truths. But
may this psalm give us the grace that when we’re in the depths
of sin, when sin overwhelms us, we can come to God and seek his
forgiveness. Let’s look to him in prayer.
Lord, we give you thanks for your mercies. They are new every
morning. We thank you that no matter how
deep and dark and prolonged Our sin has entangled us. We can come to you and you forgive
us the moment we ask for our sins have been paid for by the
precious blood of Jesus. And so we pray that we would
not find ourselves in doubt or darkness or despair, but that
we would put our faith, our hope, our cries and our trust in you,
our great God, hear us and help us as we make our prayer in the
name of Christ, amen.