We take a break tonight from our study of the book of James. It was this past week that I was preparing for a lesson for our youth group if you if you know, we've been working through the theme of maturity from Ephesians chapter 4, verse 13 with the youth group. And through my preps for that lesson, I came across this psalm: Psalm 130. As you know, part of maturity, part of growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, is growing in our patience as well. And so that brought me to one Psalm 130. And so I thought it would be good for us to consider that. And so that's my text for tonight. We'll consider Psalm 130, each of the verses.
"Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord, O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who can 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 watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord. For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption, and he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities."
Here ends the reading of God's word. May he bless it to us this evening.
Waiting is one of the most difficult things for us to do, is it not? Ask a child to wait for something and just see how they respond. But it's not just difficult for children; it's difficult for all of us adults alike to wait. When I think of waiting, I think of waiting in line at the DMV. Sadly, me and Trista took a trip to the DMV this past week, and that trip, too, was characterized by waiting, waiting in line. And nobody likes to wait, do they? No, nobody likes to wait. When you're waiting, your mind is given to all kinds of temptations, doubts, discouragement. Again, imagine waiting in line with the hundreds of other people at the DMV.
Well, what about when it comes to waiting for the Lord? Waiting upon the Lord Do you find that difficult do you find it difficult to wait upon the Lord at this moment right now? All of us are in some form waiting upon the Lord. And as we wait, how are we waiting? Are we waiting with a kind of confidence, a kind of assurance assured that our waiting is not in vain? Or are we waiting with doubt, impatience, and maybe even a kind of despair because of our doubt?
You see, this psalm before us tonight is about waiting. It's about waiting upon the Lord. And while we wait, fighting. Fighting for the confidence and the trust that we desire to have and should have given who our God is and what the Lord has done for his people. Because, let's face it, as we wait upon the Lord, as we wait for him, we wait as we battle sin and temptation. We battle the flesh, the world, and the devil. And those things can get us down. They can leave us discouraged and feeling despaired. And so a crisis of doubt can happen to any one of us while we wait. Even to the mightiest of Christians, a crisis of doubt can creep into their lives.
John Owen, one of my heroes of the faith and a man that I imagined to have been mighty in his day, once confessed to a colleague of his struggle with assurance. He said, "I myself preached Christ some years when I had but very little if any experimental acquaintance with access to God through Christ." Although John Owen preached Christ, he felt little of Christ in his life. But then Owen went on to say, "Only after a season when his soul was oppressed with horror and darkness, did God graciously relieve his spirit by a powerful application of this very psalm, Psalm 130."
Psalm 130 can do that for us tonight as well. What it did for John Owen, it can grant to us the encouragement and the assurance as we too wait for the Lord. This psalm, although it begins with the depths of despair, it ends with hope the hope we have in the Lord. And so this psalm reorients God's people. It teaches us true hope, true confidence, true assurance is found only in God and his grace.
And so I want to focus with you tonight on four things the psalmist presents in this psalm. First, the need of the psalmist, the need. Second, the Lord. of the psalmist, the Lord. Third, the expectation of the psalmist, the expectation. and fourth and finally, the redemption of the psalmist, the redemption. this psalm. begins with the phrase, as I said, out of the depths, and This phrase immediately characterizes this psalm It gives it a certain tone and a certain setting. This psalm is a lament. Our psalmist feels disoriented. He feels perplexed. He feels forsaken, maybe paralyzed and overwhelmed. And as such, this psalm is like other laments. Psalm 22: "My Lord, my Lord, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?" Or Psalm 13: "How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts? And every day I have sorrow in my heart. How long will my enemy triumph over me?"
Psalms like this capture many of the feelings that we face as God's people even today. And this is where our psalmist is. To say he's down would be an understatement. Our psalmist is overwhelmed with trouble. But notice that this trouble isn't just general or generic trouble. This isn't trouble brought about by his enemies or a natural disaster or some kind of trial. This trouble is the outcome of his sin the outcome of the sin of the psalmist. the need of the psalmist here is the need for grace and mercy, a need for the forgiveness of his sins. Notice in verse 2, he pleads for mercy. Notice in verse 4, what he seeks is forgiveness. Notice in verse 3, and then again in verse 8, he seeks or speaks of being redeemed from iniquities. And so what we see here is the psalmist acknowledging his sin. He's taking ownership of it. He's confessing it. He's recognizing that his problem is a problem of his sin.
And isn't this the first step in dealing with our sin? Confessing it? Confessing it to the Lord? And what this should immediately teach us tonight is that we too can have hope and assurance when we recognize our greatest need. Do you know what your greatest need is tonight? Our greatest need is forgiveness. Our greatest need is mercy and grace. If we're going to find assurance in the grace of God, we need to recognize our need for that grace, don't we?
You see, if we don't recognize our need, then we won't appreciate God's grace. And the truth is that we are all in need of God's grace because we all stand before him as sinners. Romans 3:23: "we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." None of us are good. None of us are righteous people. Sure, in the eyes of each other, in the eyes of people in the world, we might be considered decent people. But before God who looks at our hearts, God, who knows the inclinations of our hearts, who knows the intentions of our hearts, who knows the motivation of our hearts. We're all sinners. we are those who willfully and regularly break his commandments. And we have to recognize that this is our primary problem in life.
See, our primary problem in life is not our finances. Our primary problem in life is not our relationships. Our primary problem in life is not that we don't have enough self-esteem or we don't love ourselves enough. Our primary problem is not the job that we have or the people that we work alongside with. Our primary problem is not our family. Our primary problem is our sin. Our sin.
If you're here this evening, friend, and you don't realize that sin is your primary problem in life, then you will not see God's grace for what it is: the single greatest gift ever given. You see, you may be a great humanitarian. You might be involved in all the right activities. You might even vote for the most compassionate candidates. But as our psalmist says here in verse 1, you will still be in the depths of your sin if you don't realize your greatest need.
You see, this psalm is a song of ascents. And as you know, it would have been a song that pilgrims sang as they traveled together to Jerusalem for worship. And here in Psalm 130, we have a reminder a reminder to these pilgrims as they travel and would sing the song that they gather together seeking the forgiveness that they need for their sins.
So let me ask you tonight: why have you gathered here with God's people to worship? Have you gathered for material or possessions, blessings? Have you gathered for some esoteric experience? Maybe you've gathered because you're praying for a certain gifting or a talent, as we heard this morning. Or is it the grace and mercy that is offered to you in the forgiveness of your sins through Jesus Christ?
See, there is only one way to deal with the depths of our sin, and that is to trust in the Savior of sinners, Jesus Christ. And this doesn't just apply to those who have yet to trust in Jesus Christ. This applies to Christians who are called to regularly trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins. You see, it's almost been, if you have not noticed, Six months! since Christmas. Six months. Time flies, does it not? We're almost halfway through the year 2025. But we gather tonight to do the very thing that we gathered together to do on Christmas day: to celebrate the gift of God's grace and the giving of his son, Jesus Christ.
See, Jesus came to save sinners. Isn't that what First Timothy 1 15 teaches? Jesus also says, "The son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost" in (Luke 19). And that's why we are here tonight: to celebrate Christ, to celebrate the salvation that we have in him.
Our psalmist knows that only in his Savior can he have the confidence he needs to stand before God. And so he responds to his need with not only acknowledging his sin, but acknowledging it to the Lord. And that brings us to our second point: the Lord of the psalmist.
"Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord," the psalmist says. "O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attended to the voice of my plea for mercy."
Sometimes, sadly, simply acknowledging our sin can itself lead to despair if we're not careful to bring that confession and sin to the throne of grace. You see, the guilt that we can experience from sin can have the effect of causing us to avoid the Lord. Like Adam and Eve in the garden. right But if acknowledging our sin gives us the occasion to merely wallow in our guilt, then we will get nowhere. We'll get nowhere, and we'll not experience the joy, the confidence, the hope that we can have in Jesus Christ our Savior.
You see, even if we feel unworthy of God and his mercy, we can still have confidence in him because God's mercy and forgiveness is not dependent upon our worthiness. The truth is, no one is worthy of his forgiveness no one, not you, not me. And so thank God that his mercy and grace is not based upon us or our worthiness! His mercy and grace is based upon him. That's the only reason that we can have hope as sinners: because that hope is based upon him, the Lord.
Indeed, there's no hope in us. There's no hope in our worthiness. There's no hope in what we can achieve or think we can achieve. Real confidence is only found in the Lord. Real assurance is only found in the work of Christ. As the old hymn says, "My hope is found in nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness." That's why it's important to cry out to him Cry out to him for forgiveness and mercy because in doing so, we find that there is indeed hope for sinners.
And who is this God that sinners can find hope in? Well, the easiest way of answering that question is to say that he is the promise-keeping God. He's the promise-keeping God. He's the God who keeps his covenant, who keeps his promises.
The psalmist acknowledges this point throughout this text and how he refers to God. Notice with me that in each of these sections of this psalm, the psalmist uses as a the specific covenant name of God. He invokes the name Yahweh. In the first section, in verse one: "Out of the depths I cry to you, Yahweh, lord there is written in all capitals because the psalmist is invoking the covenant name of God. Notice how the letters differ from "Lord" in the beginning of verse two, where the letters are not all capitalized. And this occurs four other times in the psalm.
We see this again in the second section, in verse 3: "If you, Yahweh, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who can stand?" Verse 5: "I wait for Yahweh," compared to verse 6, "my soul waits for the Lord." And then the last section, verse 7, the covenant name is invoked twice there: "O Israel, hope in Yahweh, for with Yahweh there is steadfast love."
Now, maybe you're thinking we're kind of getting in the hairs here with the name of God. But not at all! You see, the psalmist here is presenting with us with something of a crescendo here with the covenant name of god you probably know what A crescendo is right a crescendo occurs in music when the the loudest part or the the most intense part of that music is reached by a gradual progression. Something like that is happening here, where the psalmist is drawing our attention to the name of God. He's underlining that name. He's emphasizing that name. He's highlighting who God is. He is Yahweh, the Lord. He is Yahweh, the Lord. He is Yahweh, Yahweh.
And what does the covenant name of God actually mean? Well, it's a pledge. It's a pledge of God's faithfulness. Deuteronomy says, in Deuteronomy 7, "Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant." His name is his pledge.
Exodus 34 makes this point so clearly. If you recall, Exodus 34 comes just after the people had committed idolatry with the golden calf. Moses intercedes for the people. God relents from obliterating them from the face of the earth. And so God calls Moses back up to himself to draw and write on two new tablets. And the text says, "The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.
The name of God is a sure and certain pledge of his mercy and grace, his long-suffering covenant love and faithfulness. He reveals that name here to Moses and the people when making a covenant and he does so to show and to prove that he indeed is faithful.
I remember as a kid growing up in the neighborhood we would have called it "the hood," and in the hood kids would swear by God's name. Now, I'm sure they didn't understand what they were doing, but what they were trying to do was to invoke someone greater than themselves in order to prove that what they were saying was true. Sadly, I recall they oftentimes weren't even being truthful when they did that.
Well, God does that very thing. He invokes his own name, attaching his name to his promises in order to prove that he is speaking the truth. The author of the book of Hebrews impresses this in Hebrews 6 when he says, "For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, surely I will bless you and multiply you And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes, an oath is final for confirmation."
The Lord does that. He invokes his name. This is the God that the psalmist reminds us is the God of hope. He is the God who has been faithful to all of his promises. He is the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. You see, Yahweh is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He is still Yahweh. He is still faithful. He is still a God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.
Now, that's music to the ears of sinners, is it not, brothers and sisters? Our psalmist is coming to realize this. And so he acknowledges his sin and he confesses it to the Lord. He's not hiding from God because he knows who God is. And this is where our hope and assurance resides tonight, does it not? It resides in him.
And so, equipped with who God is, our hope like a crescendo, builds into a kind of certainty, a kind of expectation, we see here in the life of this psalmist. And that brings us to our third point tonight: the expectation of the psalmist.
The psalmist not only cries out to the Lord, but he also waits for the Lord with a certain expectation. Knowing who God is, even with the psalmist's sin before him, means he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt what God has done for him, who God is. And that's why verses five and six here are so comforting: "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning."
This is something of a turning point in the psalm. The psalmist has cried out to the Lord, acknowledging his sin. And after acknowledging who God is, his cry has turned into a certain kind of expectation. And so again, what do we see here but a progression? A progression where the psalmist begins at one place, the depths of his sin, but trusting in God brings him to an entirely different place: a place of hope, a place of expectation.
Think again with me of a crescendo. If you like music, you almost certainly like a good crescendo, right? Where the music builds, it intensifies. That's the experience of the psalmist here: a crescendo of expectation, of hope, of certain forgiveness that he has in God. Our psalmist is snatched from the depths of his sin, taken to a place of confidence, and now he waits. He's able to wait, wait with confidence.
And what is this waiting but a kind of dependence upon the Lord? The psalmist uses the illustration here of someone waiting in great expectation like watchmen for the morning. And maybe some of you know what that means. Maybe you've served in the military, you've been in a military situation. You know the dangers that lurk in darkness in those settings. You know how you can feel dependent upon the the breaking of dawn.
I got a little taste of this, not in a battle setting by any means, but when my family went camping. When you go camping, you're dependent upon the light, right? And so oftentimes when you go camping, you go to bed quite earlier than you normally would because, as the sun goes down, you know you don't have electricity, and so you tend to go to bed when dark strikes. Well, as I've shared with some of you in the past, I don't really sleep all that much, and so I usually get about five, five and a half hours. And so if I go to bed early, what that means is I wake up early.
When you go camping, well, if you're dependent upon the light of day, you go to bed early. I found myself waking up at like 3 30 in the morning, wide awake. And in the night, as you're sitting in a tent and everybody is asleep, any little rustling of the wind brings something to your mind, right? "It's a bear. It's a mountain lion. It's a monster," I don't know. Your mind plays tricks on you. But you sit there waiting for the break of dawn.
That's what it means to wait with expectation, like watchmen longing for the morning. That's how our psalmist is feeling. He waits.
Maybe you know this feeling personally. Maybe you feel tonight like you're waiting for the Lord. You too desire that assurance of faith and trust. You desire to feel that deep sense in your soul of being forgiven for your sins. Oh, Christian, I would remind you of christ of your Lord, of what he has done for you. Wait for him. Trust in him. Remember who he is.
John Owen once said, "Faith's discovery of forgiveness in God is the greatest support of a sin-perplexed soul."
Faith's discovery of forgiveness in God is the greatest support of a sin-perplexed soul.
Truth is, friends, we're all waiting in one degree or another, right? We're all pilgrims in this world, sojourners passing through. And although God has forgiven us of our sins, we still are here on earth struggling with temptation, waiting for him. And in the time between now and then, how are we waiting?
How are we waiting?
The psalm speaks of waiting and hope. waiting with expectation. See, as we wait for our Lord, it's easy to be tempted to lose our sense of security, our sense of assurance. Temptation discourages us. Sin can seem so bleak. It can seem so heavy. It can seem so discouraging. But remember who he is! Don't remember who you are. Remember who he is. Don't remember what you've done. Remember what he has done for you. He who is in you is mighty to save. He's mighty to save.
That brings us to our last point this evening: the redemption of the psalmist. the redemption
If you remember, at a certain point in the allegory pilgrims Progress, Christian and Hopeful begin to follow another pilgrim by the name of Vain Confidence. And Vain Confidence leads the two of them to get lost and eventually to be captured by Giant Despair. giant takes them captive into his Castle castle called the castle of doubt, where they're there for four days without food and water. The giant begins to torture them and tempt them with suicide. And with all the pressure that the giant is placing upon Christian and Hopeful, Christian begins to crack. He begins to despair. He begins to be tempted to suicide.
Then his friend Hopeful counsels him. Hopeful tells Christian, "Be patient, wait upon the Lord, and pray." Then after waiting and praying, Christian breaks out in a passionate speech. He essentially says, "I have a key named Promise that I've had all this time that I can use to open any door in the castle."
Christian, the entire time, had a key called promise. Promise, the promises of God. He simply needed to trust God.
That's where our psalmist is is in verse 7: "O Israel, hope in Yahweh, for with Yahweh there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption, and he will redeem Israel from all of his iniquities."
Notice our psalmist has come to trust fully in the redemption that God has promised. And he does so so much now that he is no longer focusing on redemption for himself, but he's now speaking to others. "Israel, brothers and sisters, trust in the Lord. Hope in Yahweh." He's like Christian and hopeful. Pilgrims. After breaking free, they erect this pillar on the steps that go to the giant despair. And on this pillar, it reads: "Over these steps is the way to Doubting Castle, which is kept by giant despair, who despises the king of the celestial country and seeks to destroy his pilgrims."
This psalm, Psalm 130, is essentially that inscription, that pillar. The psalmist is telling us here tonight, "Out of the depths I cried, Lord save me from my sins. The Lord has answered my cry. Brothers and sisters in Christ, trust in him, for he will forgive you. He's faithful. He's good." That is the truth.
In Christ, brothers and sisters, we have all that we need. Our greatest need doubt with, fully and freely. We have full redemption. Look to him tonight. Hope in him. Wait upon the Lord.
Let's pray.
Lord, what a glorious text you have given to us here in Psalm 130. What a comfort for sinners like us. We thank you tonight for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We thank you for his work, which paid the penalty for our sins. We acknowledge tonight, Lord, that we indeed are sinners in need of your saving grace in Jesus Christ. Wash us. Cleanse us. Continue to sanctify us in Christ for your namesake. We pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.