From Despair To Hope

Psalm 130 as a Lament and Penitential Psalm

Well now turn please to psalm number 130. The entire psalm will be our text this afternoon. Psalm 130. When you have that please stand for the reading of God's Word. A psalm of a sense. 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 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 the Lord there is steadfast love and with him is plentiful redemption.

And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. I bless the reading. Now the proclamation of his word. Please be seated. You know the psalm was written I believe during the exile in Babylon as I believe with all the songs of a sense I've been going through.

Despair in Exile and the Cry for Mercy

Probably written for a worship leader. A Levite perhaps leading the congregation in song in praise of God. Remembering that when we confess our sins to God he's faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Something like that. The psalm is a responsive psalm in a sense where he calls upon Israel to believe these things and to understand these things so they don't call back in some of the other psalms but internally as it were.

To respond to this psalm and to agree about what it means to call out to the Lord. It's a lament psalm as Israel here laments their sin. The sin that got them into trouble in the first place. The sin that brought the judgment of Babylon against them and their exile to that nation for 70 years.

It's a lament in that song that sentence. It's also a penitential song as you just heard where they call out their need for forgiveness. They cry to God for mercy. Go from the depth of despair to the heights of hope.

And there's a journey that we will go through as we go through this psalm. It's a journey that we must go through in our personal lives, in our spiritual lives with Christ. We go from depth of despair to the height of hope.

Crying out to God and seeking his mercy and his mercy alone. This is a people crushed by the knowledge of their sin, by what they had done, and seeking him and him alone to bring them into a place of redemption.

Restored relationship with him. 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. You know, depths in the Bible are almost always of depths of water.

And you've heard before from me and the other preachers at this pulpit that waters, deep waters in the ancient Near Eastern mind were something dark and dangerous and mysterious. That's the place where Jonah went.

Jonah went to the depths of the ocean in that fish that swallowed him and carried him down there into that dark and mysterious and dangerous and unknown place. From the depths they cry out to God. From the depth I cry to you, O Lord.

And O Lord, hear my voice. I'd like to point out to you, just so you understand, some of what the psalm is bringing out is, out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. And that word for Lord there is the one you've heard many times, Yahweh.

He cries out to the eternal God, the self-sufficient God, the name of God that is most commonly associated with his faithfulness to his covenant and also most often associated with his steadfast love.

Now in R .E .S .V. it's called steadfast love. In the King James, in the New King James, it's called mercy. Mercy. He goes to Yahweh. Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. O Yahweh, the one whose name is associated with his covenant faithfulness, the one whose name is associated with that name that never fails.

Not that any other name of God denotes a different God, they're just different manifestations, different times that God works with men in different ways. Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. O Yahweh.

And then the very next verse, O Lord, and that's Adonai. Adonai. Same God, with the same purpose, the same yesterday, today, and forever. But Adonai more means Lord and Master. Hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy.

So he goes from the depth of despair. Now we're gonna see when we go through a bit more later where he's seeking forgiveness in verse 4. We don't know what the sin is. As a penitential psalm written in Babylon, the sin would be their idolatry, their years of unfaithfulness to God.

Decades and centuries of that finally led to this judgment. Crying from the depth of exile in Babylon to the Lord God for forgiveness, for mercy. He speaks of depth. When I say that to you, I wonder how in our 21st century ears do we hear that.

It's a depth that we go down to when we finally recognize our sin, finally see where we have offended God, finally see where we have failed to take advantage of the means of grace he's given us like prayer and repentance and seeking his forgiveness.

From the depths of what do we cry out to God? Depths of despair, depths of looking for what has gone wrong here and how did I get into this mess and how will I ever come out of this position that I'm in?

This broken relationship with God, these providences, these circumstances that come upon me. Depth of despair, nowhere to turn, all effort has been futile, each failure another shovel full of dirt and an incremental sinking down further and further and further.

But what do we have here also? Out of the depths I cried to you, O Lord, O Lord, hear my voice. We have a final recourse in God, an abandonment of self, finally realizing that the only place I can go to and what I need can only be had from this one from God.

You think of the depths that we go to, how deep down into sin we can go. It doesn't happen all at once. That's why I use the illustration of the shovel, just a shovel full of the times like we're digging out from under our own feet, boom, another shovel full, flip it over our shoulder, down a little further, more and more and more until finally we're up to our shoulders and we can't see out.

There's nothing to grab on to climb out of this hole that we've dug for ourselves. I heard a man during one of the counseling training conferences, I was out up in Walnut Creek earlier this year, he spoke about the Board of Directors for NANC, the National Association of Euthetic Counselors, which just changed its name to ACBC, the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors.

And they're all waiting for two men to come, who were very late, and finally one of them came. I've managed to own this story, it's an actual event, it actually happened, he was one of the Board of Directors waiting for these two men to come in.

One of them came in, he sat down quietly, sadly, he had tears, and finally he had to report to the rest of the men that this other man, the second man that they were expecting, would not be coming. He had fallen in a great moral failure.

The man who was speaking and telling this event didn't tell us what that moral failure was, but we can guess, we don't need to speculate. They were all shocked. This man's telling the story, he said, all these Board of Directors, all of us were just looking down, we were crying, we just didn't know what to do next.

And it was Wayne Mack who finally said, he didn't fall far. What did he mean by that? You don't go from walking with Christ, to following the right path of righteousness, and all of a sudden down to the depth of depravity.

We don't all of a sudden give in to the temptations of the flesh. It's not all at once. It's not one big leap off a cliff. It's a shovel full of time, down we go, and finally we need to be in this position of the psalmist here.

Out of the depths, I cry to you, Lord, and we cry to him, cry to Yahweh, cry to the covenant faithful God. I think our first confession here is out of the depth, I cry to you out of the depth, which I myself placed me into, because your ways, Father, are right, and your paths are all righteousness.

And had I been faithful to you, as you are faithful to me, I would not be in this mess. It doesn't mean that all the troubles we come upon are our fault. As all of you here know, my wife is suffering from stage 4 cancer.

Is it her fault? No. But it's still a depth of suffering, it's still a depth of despair where we call out to God and trust him. In the direct context of the psalm, though, it's the depth that we put ourselves into when we sin against God, and we dig ourselves into this hole.

And so we go to the next verse, O Lord, O Adonai, O Master, O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy. I think the interchange of these words, Yahweh and Adonai, these titles of God, it's because it's Adonai, the Lord, the Master, to whom we owe obedience.

Because he's master of us, he's Lord of the earth, he's Lord of the church. Jesus Christ rules even now. I think it's because that's the one who's offended, our Lord and Master, the one to whom we owe obedience, the one to whom they, who were the first recipients of the psalm, owed their obedience.

Have you ever been there? Have you ever been in this point where you just don't know where to turn next? You've gotten yourself into this mess, into this hole, into this depth. And sometimes when we get there, how do we feel?

We feel like I've gone too deep. God can't reach me here. God's gonna be so angry that he wouldn't even want to, even if I call out to him. Why would he listen to me? Why would he want to save me when I've been so faithless to him?

Do you ever think like that? Do you ever feel like that when you're in sin and you've gotten yourself there and you feel guilt upon guilt upon guilt upon guilt? Know that he calls out to a God of mercy.

Lord, hear my pleas for mercy. He's a God who showers us with mercy. Brethren, if you're a Christian, whatever sin you might be in now, whatever problems you might be in at this very moment, know this, that God saved you because of the great love with which he loved us.

It is God's mercy that sent Jesus Christ. It's because of God's mercy that you believe in him. It's God's mercy that you feel badly about your sin. And it's God's mercy that there's always a way out with him, with Christ, because of him.

How deep can you go to get away from God? Well, the psalmist speaks of, if I go to the heights, you are there. If I go to the depth of the sea, are you there? If I pull a head over my blanket over my head and try and hide, you are there.

He's with you always. Paul says, for I'm sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Cry out to God wherever you are. If you feel that desperation, know that this road in Psalm 130 is the road from desperation to hope, from despair to the heights of hope. You can call out to God. You can join the psalmist and call out to Yahweh and say, out of the depths I cried to you, out of the attentive to my pleas for mercy.

God's Forgiveness, the Cross, and Holy Fear

What's the character of this God that you're calling out to? You know, when we get down that low and we feel like, you know, God's just gonna smite me from heaven, God's just done with me, God's gonna take me out of Christ, God should do all these things.

We're forgetting the character of God when we think that way. We're forgetting what Jesus said, that no one is able to snatch you out of the Father's hand, and the Father is greater than all. We're forgetting the great love with which he loved us.

We're forgetting about God who is rich in mercy. We're forgetting his very character. If you, O Lord, that's Yahweh, should mark iniquities, O Lord, now that's Adonai. So if you, O Yahweh, should mark iniquities, O Adonai, who could stand?

The Hebrew order here, some of the words are, if iniquity you should guard or keep, Yah Adonai, who could stand? If God should take your iniquities, your sins, my sins, my iniquities, gather them up, place them in his heart and guard them there, treasure them there the way we do our sin.

Psalm 66, 18, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear. Do we ever feel like God has guarded our iniquity in his heart, and so he refuses to hear? No, may it never be, that is not the God who is our God, that is not Jesus Christ, that is not the God of the psalm.

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? Let me stop and ask, who could stand before God with their iniquities? Remember in Zechariah 3, that picture of Joshua the high priest bearing the condition, the spiritual condition of the people of Israel into the holy place?

Remember, he's covered in filth. Do you remember that? Who could stand? Could I stand before God, if I stand before God with my sin upon me? Could you? No, none of us could, no one in all history could.

If you should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? Who could stand before God with sin upon them? Let me suggest to you that Jesus Christ, when he who knew no sin became sin for us, when God placed upon him our sin, when he became sin, the wages of sin is death, and Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sin.

Of course, he took what we deserve, and if we went where we deserve to go, which is to that cross to suffer for our own sins, we'd be suffering now, and tomorrow, and forever. But Jesus Christ, because he knew no sin, because he rejected all sin, because he had no knowledge of sin in that experiential way, he was without sin because he was holy.

When he died for our sin, he was resurrected again. Who could stand before God with sin? When Habakkuk saw the vision of God, he said, rottenness entered my bones. When Peter saw the holiness of God in Christ, he fell on his knees, said, depart from me, for I'm a sinful man, O Lord.

When Isaiah saw the glory of God, John chapter 12 says he saw Christ, but when he saw the glory of God in Isaiah chapter 6, he says, woe is me, for I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.

I'm ruined, I've come apart, as R .C. Sproul used to say, I've disintegrated, there's nothing left of me. Who could stand before God with sin? None. And yet because of Jesus Christ, our sins have been answered, and so Jesus Christ, he's the one who intercedes for us, and he's the one who tells us from the book of Hebrews that we can boldly enter the throne of grace, and there find help in our time of need.

Why can you and I go to the throne of grace? Because our sin's not on us. Oh, we sin, and we must acknowledge that, and we must repent of that, even as the psalm is leading us to do. But it's not upon us anymore, because Jesus Christ took it upon himself.

Who could stand? Jesus Christ, and he, and he alone. But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. See, the Lord doesn't guard iniquity in our hearts, he forgives. He forgives the penitential cry, he forgives when people cry out for mercy.

He hears the cries, he knows what we're going through. Exodus chapter 3, when he reveals himself to Moses as Yahweh, and he comes to redeem the people of Israel, he says, I've heard their cries, I've seen their sufferings, I know their affliction.

I think I said that wrong, I've seen their afflictions, and I know their suffering. Excuse me, I know their suffering. You cry out to a God who knows, and he knows because in God, in Jesus Christ, God became flesh, and in Jesus Christ, God experienced it all.

In Jesus Christ, all temptation came upon him, yet he was without sin. In Jesus Christ, the whole human experience was his, and yet he was without sin. This is the God we go to, the God who forgives because of him, and says that you may be feared.

Why would forgiveness be a fearsome thing? Why would God forgiving be something that makes him be feared? Both through you, there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. Here's how I work this out. The reason forgiveness should make us fear God in that awesome, respectful way, in that way that he's just inexplicable in his mercies.

But why does it make us fear God? Because forgiveness is not cheap, and sin is so much deeper than we usually think of it. Why do we fear God when we truly seek his forgiveness, but with you there's forgiveness?

Because when we seek his forgiveness, we're acknowledging how bad sin really is, and when we acknowledge how bad sin really is, we begin to appreciate the suffering of Christ on the cross. Just seeing the depth to which we have dug ourselves, we see how bad sin really is, what a blight it is upon God's perfect and holy character, and then we think, Jesus Christ paid for me?

The Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me, Galatians 119? Oh, this is a God to be feared. This is forgiveness to be sought after and held as precious. This is a God who look at and say, you would do that for me?

You would take something as ugly and awful in your sight as sin? The greatest prophets in the world fell at their feet and couldn't even stand before him when they saw his holiness and his perfections.

And yet, and yet, but God, as the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians, but God. What a wonderful word, but. Instead of all that, but. Not that, not the sin, not what we carry in us, not being dead and trespassing sin in which we once walked, but God who's rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us.

But with you there's forgiveness. Fear God. Fear God by thinking deeply about your sin. Fear him. And then rise up from the depth of that and say, God, you forgave me of this. What a glorious God to worship.

What a Jesus Christ to obey. What a redemption we have. What kind of mercy is this? Oh, it's not human at all. We can't even describe it to ourselves, can we? And yet this is the God of the psalm. This is the God just beginning to be, to describe our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

With you there's forgiveness because God placed our sins upon Jesus Christ. And this is how your sin has been removed from you, as the psalmist says, as far as east is from the west. I just love that expression, don't you?

I love cardinal directions. You know, I used to do backpacking, wilderness exploring, and so I'm all into the cardinal directions and magnetic declination. And if you want to know what that is, talk to me after service if you have an hour or two.

How far is east from the west? Well, if you do it geometrically, they point opposite ways, so it's forever. Fear that God. Respect that God. Take your sin deeply. Don't take Jesus Christ lightly. I wait for the Lord.

Waiting for the Lord and the Peace That Passes Understanding

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. Now here's the hard part. If we want to go from the depth of despair to the height of hope, here's the hard part.

Waiting. I wait for the Lord. I wait for Yahweh. My soul waits for the Lord. That's Adonai. More than the watchman in the morning, more than the watchman for the morning. The watchmen are on the walls looking out for enemies, be sneaking up at night.

When the sun comes up, they're relieved. Now they can go back home and go to sleep and get some rest. He's watching more than the watchman of the morning. He's waiting for the Lord, and this is the tough part.

My soul waits. In his word, I hope. His word of forgiveness. For in you there is forgiveness. I will forgive their sins. I will remember their sins no more. In that word, do we hope? Do you hope in that word?

Well, you must if you're in Jesus Christ. If you, by faith and repentance, have come to him, you must believe that. That's implied in it. What does it mean to wait? That's the hard one. I think there's two things we need to wait for.

As Jesus Christ said, my peace I give to you. Not like the world gives peace, do I give you this peace. And then Paul goes on to describe the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. And the same Paul says, therefore having been justified by faith we have peace with God.

Well that peace, justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, that peace is no more enmity with God. We are no longer at war with him nor he with us because of Jesus Christ.

This peace that passes all understanding though, that we must wait for in our soul, that's a little bit more subjective. Now it's not just, okay I repented, I was on my knees, I got up, I feel good about it, let's get on with it.

It's not that simple. I don't mean to make light of it. But what is this peace that passes understanding? It can't be described, it can't be legislated. No preacher can give you several rules to know that you have this peace.

Because when you have prayed, it's when you know that you have understood the depth of your sin and seen the beauty of Christ Jesus that would forgive such a thing freely because of his blood. And you know that you've been forgiven and your spirit is at peace with God.

And you feel confident again in his word and in his working in you and with you and through you. It's that peace that passes understanding. It's gonna come at different times for each of us, might come in different ways, but it does all come through prayer and through faith and we must wait for that.

Not just I feel okay about it now, but a peace that passes understanding. Come say, hey pastor, I just got forgiveness for this terrible sin. Do you have the peace that passes understanding? Yes. Can you describe it for me?

No. We're probably on the right track. But I know that I have it. I know that God has forgiven me because of Christ Jesus. I know that he's gonna put me on the right path. And I know that I am not at war with God.

That Jesus Christ has me in his hand and has brought me to the Father. We also have to wait for circumstances, for God by his providence to help us out. Does it not say in the book of Corinthians that no temptation has come upon you but what is common to man?

But in the temptation, God makes a way of escape that you're able to bear up. A way of escape that's true to his word. A way of escape that because you have that peace that passes understanding, you are confident in your forgiveness and know from the Word of God and from prayer and from counsel with others, that you're going on the right track again.

This is what we must wait for. This is the hard part, is to stay on our knees and to not turn left or right, to not make any decisions until we know that we have God's forgiveness for this particular, this discreet sin, whatever we've gone to him with, and that he has brought upon me a circumstance, a providential work of God that gets me on the right track.

Not gets me out of all the mess I'm in. There are consequences usually, but gets me going again to the right prayer, on the right path. Oh Israel, he now says, having gone through this journey from the depth of despair to the height of hope himself, because he's cried out to God, he's waited upon God, and he now knows he's been forgiven, he's been reminded of the truth of God's Word.

I hope in his Word, his Word says he will forgive, he will remove sin as far as decency from us, and I have that certainness, I have that certainty. Now he calls out to them all, says here's what I've gone through, and most of us can make this testimony.

Most of us could stand right here and call out in the same way, because I went through this and God forgave me, and here's how I know, and this is how I got on the right track, and the right path again, and I could call out to you like the psalmist does in verse 7, Oh Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there's steadfast love, King James, with him there is mercy, and with him is plentiful redemption, and he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

Plentiful Redemption and Hope for Israel

Well again, Yahweh speaking of God's self-existent, that name that is paired often with his mercies and with his covenant faithfulness, with him there's steadfast love, that great love with with which he loved us, and plentiful redemption.

You know the cross of Christ is that plentiful redemption, because the cross of Jesus Christ left no work undone. When Jesus Christ in John chapter 19 says it is finished, it is finished indeed. I wish that were the cry of the church, we say he is risen, and we answer back, he is risen indeed, it is finished, it is finished indeed.

With him there is plentiful redemption, full redemption, not a drop of Jesus Christ's blood was wasted. There's one reason we love the L in Tulip, limited atonement only means that Jesus Christ bled for those whom God gave him, that that blood was poured out for those intended.

Do we know who those are? No, we do not know. I know it was me as one of them. I hope you know it was you to be one of them. There's plentiful redemption. This is Psalm 130, this is the people coming back from Babylon having been released and they're going back to Jerusalem.

This is you and me, released from a life of sin, released from being God's enemy, released from the darkness of this present age and now knowing that we have the plentiful redemption of the cross of Jesus Christ.

In him there's plentiful redemption and he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. He will redeem the church, all of us, from all our iniquities. None left behind, not a drop of blood wasted, all your iniquities.

First John 1 9, if we confess our sins, well that assumes there's sins to confess even for the Christians as we go through life. If we confess our sins he's faithful just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, but he will redeem us from them all.

Jesus Christ has redeemed us and continues to redeem us as we continue to sin, as we continue to have need for that forgiveness, that confession. It's Jesus Christ who sits at the right hand of the Father and Majesty now and intercedes on our behalf, our great high priest.

Have you ever been in that depth of despair because you don't know what to do with your sin? Have you ever looked up and seen that you've got yourself down below ground level and there's nothing in that ditch to grab on to, to pull yourself up?

What a great position to be in because now you know that you're striving is useless. Now you know that you cannot do it. Now you can cry out to God and God will reach down and pull you up as you cry out to him and confess your despair, confess your sin and know that in him there's plentiful redemption and he will redeem you from all your iniquities because of Jesus Christ, because of him and him alone.

So may this psalm be an encouragement to your souls. May this psalm lead us in our prayers this afternoon in just a few minutes. May this psalm remind you of the goodness of God and that he is a God of mercy and you can cry out to him that as he said I've seen, I've heard and I know and that's the God we go to and cry to him in all our despair and know that in him as we wait upon him as does the psalmist here, that he will come to us.

He will forgive you. He will give you by his spirit that certainty, that peace that passes understanding that you have indeed been forgiven and then in his wonderful providence give you a circumstance to get you on the right track once more.

Amen.