Would you please turn with me in your copy of God’s Word to Psalm 130? Psalm 130. It is a great delight to be with you. I want to extend a greeting to you from the saints at Community Presbyterian Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan. They are delighted for me to be here this weekend and to preach for Dr. Strain, especially because Dr. Strain has been preaching for me the last few months. He doesn’t realize this, but I’ve been working through the book of Corinthians, 1 Corinthians, and I stumbled across his sermon series that he preached here 2017, 2019, and so almost every Sunday night in Kalamazoo, Michigan there’s a pastor that gets up and says, “Well, as David Strain puts it…” So they have warm affection for you, brother! You’ve been blessing them through your insights and they’re glad that I can come and preach for you today. It’s a delight to be here. Please find me after the service, my wife, Carrie Anne, we’d be delighted to get to know you.
As we come to Psalm 130, do note that this is a psalm of ascents. This portion of fifteen songs placed together near the back end of the Psalter that have as their focus the joys of being God’s worshiping people, what it means to go up to Jerusalem. These were likely sung by the Israelites as they would make their way to the city, to the temple, to worship the Lord during one of the three annual feasts, during the old covenant. They are instructive for us in our worship as well. And I think it will become immediately evident why this is a psalm of ascent. As you will see, this is all about ascending. This is about going from the depths to the heights. That’s what we are going to explore together this morning.
Before we do that, we need to ask the Lord to help us. This is His Word; it’s inspired by His Holy Spirit. Unless He gives us that same Spirit to illuminate our hearts and minds we will not understand it aright, so would you please pray with me?
Father in heaven, You instruct us by Your holy Scriptures, and we ask now, we would urge You by Your grace to enlighten our minds and to cleanse our hearts, that reading, hearing and meditating upon the Word we would rightly understand and heartily embrace the things that You have revealed in Your Word to us. We ask that we would not only be hearers of the Word but that we would hear and then also seek to do Your Word, to live in light of Your Word, because we do no live by bread alone but we live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And so we need Your help. Father, we ask that it would be Your voice that we hear today, that we would even hear through the intonations and the words of the preacher, we would hear something of the accent of Jesus Christ, that the preacher would fade into obscurity and we could behold our Savior who alone has the words of life. This is what we need, and so would You do that work in our midst. We acknowledge that all Scripture is profitable for us, that we would be equipped for every good work. So equip us today, give us some measure of grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Would You overcome the deficiencies of the preacher, for they are many, and would You be the one to speak, for we, Your servants, are listening. We ask all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Psalm 130:
“A Song of Ascents.
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 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.”
The grass withers, the flower fades, this is the Word of God and it endures forever.
The author of Psalm 130 finds himself in a place that none of us like to be, a place where undoubtedly some of you are this morning, in a place where the reformer, Martin Luther, found himself often – the pits. Luther was a man plagued with emotional and spiritual distress, prone to depression, and he regularly occupied the small space, that small dark space where the psalmist is in verse 1. You see it there – “the depths of distress.” And yet interestingly enough, Luther also found the way out of the depths from Psalm 130. It’s recorded that once in 1530 during one of these bouts of spiritual depression that suddenly Luther sprang up and he said to his colleague, who was standing nearby, with a smile he said to him, “Come, to spite the devil, let us sing the de profundis!” De profundis is Latin for “out of the depths” and it was shorthand for this psalm. “To spite the devil, let’s sing Psalm 130!”
Now of course to spite Satan we could well meditate on any portion of holy Scripture, but Luther is onto something, isn’t he? There is something particularly powerful about this text that would spite Satan. After all, it is about being brought up out of the depths, which is the devil’s realm. You see the trajectory of this text is what we are going to consider and trace out together this morning. It begins at the bottom, we could say, it begins at rock bottom, but it ends at the glorious heights of God’s redemption with that powerful declaration in the final verse, “He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.” And so we want to get to those glorious heights together this morning, and so we’re going to see first what gets us down, why we’re in the depths, second, what gets us up and out, and then finally, what keeps us going. What gets us down, what gets us up, and what keeps us going.
So first, what gets us down. Why is the psalmist lamenting? Why does he say he is in the depths? You’ll notice that we’re not given any indication that it’s because of some circumstance in his life. It’s not because he is afflicted by disease or poverty. It’s not because his enemies have been exhausted over him. Actually, the reason is given in verse 3. Would you look there? We see there in verse 3 it is the weight and the burden of his own sin. “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” You see, what has immobilized the psalmist is the realization that he is in fact unworthy. He has no merit, he has no right to stand before almighty God on the day of judgment, and that inability to stand now has him cowering and crawling and curled up in a cave made of his own iniquity. It’s his sin that has him so low here.
Now of course the Bible never minimizes the effects of external hardships, persecution, loneliness, homesickness, hunger, betrayal. Scripture affirms that these are real trials that we may have to go through in life. But at the same time, Psalm 130 is here to remind us that the trials external to us are nothing compared to the trial within our own heart. It is guilt before God that drags us down to the place of this psalm. Spurgeon once said that “our iniquities are our worst danger, and if we can be saved from these we will be saved altogether.” Some of you know this truth all too well – that your iniquities are your worst danger. You feel it. You come to worship and you recognize you are a sinner and you are coming in the presence of a holy God and you’re not worthy, you don’t deserve it. And you feel the joy of the Gospel even as Pastor Strain reminded you of those words from 1 John earlier in the service. You know that your sin is your biggest problem.
Some of you here today, that’s exactly why you’re here – to hear that forgiveness, to be reminded of the Gospel. Perhaps though there are others of you here this morning that still have not come to this realization – that the greatest darkness we will ever know is the darkness of our own sin. Now while it might seem counterintuitive to us, it is actually good for us to be in the place of this psalm to lament our sin, to recognize its seriousness, to recognize its heinousness. It’s good to be in the place of this psalm because it draws us near to God. Right? There’s a comfort even in these opening verses that are filled with distress. There’s a comfort because we see that even when the psalmist feels so low he can cry out to God and he knows that he is heard. The same is true for us. The same is true for us. Even when we are convicted of the ways that we have offended God, we can still call out to Him. There is no pit so deep that God cannot hear you if you cry out to Him in Jesus Christ.
There is a film that recounts the story of this detective who is in the search for a missing person. And at the close of the film, the detective, though he is not aware he is mere feet away from his subject, the man he’s been after the whole movie. This individual has actually fallen into an abandoned well in the middle of a field and at the bottom of that well, that victim happens to have a whistle that he’s been blowing for over a day, hoping that somebody up above would hear it and would come and find him. And at the close of this film, it’s the dead of winter, it’s the middle of the night, the detective stands out in this field and the camera closes in on him and the sound of the wind becomes louder and louder as it roars around his face. And you begin to realize the sound of the whistle down below is almost indistinct from the sound of the wind. And the detective sort of tilts his head and turns around. Did he hear something? Is there something he is hearing above the wind? And that’s the end of the movie. Credits roll. We never know if the detective actually heard that cry for help.
Brothers and sisters, that never happens with God. He always hears His children when they cry out to Him. It is our distinct privilege as Christians to know that God hears us, no matter how low we feel. Psalm 40 speaks in a similar way, doesn’t it? “I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined to me and heard my cry and drew me up from the pit of destruction.” And friends, the reason that God hears us even in the pit of destruction is because He is down there with us. You know, that’s the point of the incarnation, isn’t it? In the incarnation, Christ literally comes down so that He can experience the suffering and the travails of this life with us. He comes from heaven the whole way down to earth. No wait, He goes further still! He doesn’t just come down to earth, He goes down into the earth, into the pit, into death itself. He tastes death for us. This is the reach of God’s Gospel love – that Christ would come not just to the earth but into the earth, into the tomb for us.
What do we love to confess when we use the words of The Apostle’s Creed? What do we mean when we say, “He descended into hell”? The descent of Christ, it is a measuring stick to you of the love of God. How deep is God’s love for you? Well in Christ, it is as deep as the deepest pit in hell, because at the cross, that’s where Jesus went, bearing the curse that you deserve for your sin. That’s what we mean when we say “He descended into hell.” He loved me that much! That much. “What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss to bear the dreadful curse for my soul!” What love. What a God. And so dear sinner, this morning, know that when you are overcome by your iniquity, when you feel the weight of your sin, when you feel as low as this psalmist in Psalm 130, you need to know that if you cry out to God through Jesus Christ, He will hear you and He will rescue you.
Now of course being heard from the pit is not our primary need. Getting out is! Being rescued is! When we find ourselves in the depths of despair, we don’t need anybody’s help to stay there. We don’t need anybody’s help to wallow in pity. But if we want to get out, then we do need help. We need a helper. If we want to actually change our station in life we need God and we need His forgiveness. So we have learned that what gets us down is our sin; what gets us up and out is God’s forgiveness. The psalm revels in God’s delight to bestow forgiveness. Would you look at verse 3? “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” Well this is a distinctly divine perfection that God does not mark iniquities. Of course it’s something we’re all called to as Christians. The way of love is not to keep a record of wrongdoing. We understand that this is what we are called to, but we fail at that often. We are good scorekeepers in our relationships, but God, God keeps no record. He delights to bestow forgiveness. He does not mark iniquities. He is not a scorekeeper. He does not keep a running tally of all the horrible things that we have done. If He kept track of our iniquities we could not stand. Shame would weigh us down, the shackles of our past, wrongdoings would keep us in the dirt, debase before God.
And then verse 4 – what does it say there? “But” – that glorious conjunction – “But with you, there is forgiveness.” What an interesting way of speaking. Forgiveness here is pictured as a property of God, something that He has. You’ll see the same if you look at verse 7. “For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with Him, plentiful redemption.” Forgiveness is a property of God, something that only He can give. Maybe just by way of illustrating we can think of a young suitor who knows that at some point if he wants this relationship with this beautiful young woman to continue he is going to need to get up his courage and he’s going to need to ask her father for permission to take her hand in marriage because permission is found in him. There’s no other way to get it. You have to go through the father. Well in the same way, forgiveness is found with God. There’s no place to find it apart from God. That’s where you need to go. That’s where I need to go – not just once at the start of your Christian life. Every day as we recognize our sin we need to go to God, to no one else and to nowhere else.
And yet, what do we tend to do when we are overcome with guilt, when we are convicted of sin? What do we tend to do when God gives us a window into the darkness of our heart? I think we tend to do everything but go to God with the relief that He has. Instead, we get a low view of ourselves, we become frustrated with ourselves, and we take that frustration out on those closest to us so we’re short with our spouse or with our children. Or maybe we give ourselves to too much work. We start to overwork in order to distract ourselves so we don’t have to deal with all those nasty feelings. Or we indulge. We numb ourselves by indulging in drugs or sex or binging Netflix. But here’s the truth – none of those things can clear your record or clean your conscience. Only God can do that. None of these things can ever get you up out of the pit. Only God can do that. The way out is forgiveness, and forgiveness is found with Him and no one else. And so we must go to Him. And if you discover this truth that there is forgiveness with God and with no other, it will completely transform your life friends.
That was the experience for the great Puritan, John Owen, who confessed this. “I myself preached Christ some years when I had but very little, if any personal acquaintance with access to God through Christ, until the Lord was pleased to visit me with sore affliction whereby I was brought to the mouth of the grave.” He feels like he’s on death’s doorstep. I don’t know if there’s a physical ailment or it’s just a spiritual one that caused him to despair. He says, “under which my soul was oppressed with horror and darkness.” But then listen to what he says. “God graciously then relieved my spirit by a powerful application of Psalm 130 and verse 4 – ‘but there is forgiveness with Thee.’” And so through this experience of spiritual renewal, Owen was strengthened in his ministry and he preached a series of profound sermons of Gospel hope drawn from this little psalm. None of that would have been possible if Owen had not first grasped by faith the beauty of this statement and the truth of this statement – “There is forgiveness with Thee.”
You’ll notice if you look at the second half of verse 4 the psalmist says there is a surprising purpose for God’s forgiveness. “With you there is forgiveness” – why? “That you might be feared.” I say it’s a surprising purpose because in the words of one commentator, the human tendency is not to fear in response to forgiveness but to feel more comfortable in response to forgiveness to the point of presuming on the grace that we have been shown. So we think, “Why should I fear God? He doesn’t punish sinners. God, there’s nothing scary about Him! He’s just a soft, big, giant teddy bear that I can just walk up to and give a big hug! I don’t need to fear God!” But since sin is the offense against God’s standard and nobody else’s standard, God’s standard, since sin is an offense against God’s standard, that means God and God alone has the prerogative to punish it or to pardon it. Or to pardon it. God’s pardon, then, when He could penalize, should cause us to feel this reverence, caution before Him, fear before Him, not flippant self-assurance – “I can do whatever I want before a God who forgives.” No, God’s forgiveness should elicit a response of reverential thanksgiving.
Truly, friends, if there is one thing that should buckle our knees before almighty God, in trust and in obedience, it’s the fact that He knew all our sin, He knew all of our shortcomings, was well aware of the hatred that we harbored against Him in our hearts, and He forgave us anyway. What a God! We can say, and we must say, “Lord, You didn’t have to do that. You could have consigned me to hell, but You gave me heaven!” How do you not revere, love, a God like this? There’s forgiveness with Him so that we would humble ourselves before Him. And so friends, if you are feeling trapped in the prison of sin, if you feel like you are in that dungeon of doubt, that pit of hopelessness and you cannot get out, then you need to look up and you need to see the arm of God extending down to you with a hand open, ready for you to take hold. And what is that arm of God that is reaching down to you in your pit? What is it? It is His forgiveness in Christ Jesus.
Now if the hand of God that comes down is forgiveness, the hand of ours that reaches up and takes hold of it is faith. It’s faith. Faith receives all that God offers to us. Faith receives all that Jesus is promised to be in the Bible. And we see that critical component of faith in this psalm as well, though it goes by the name of hope in Psalm 130. You notice that that theme becomes predominant in the latter verses, verse 5 – “In His Word I hope.” Verse 7, “Israel, hope in the Lord.” This is a description of faith, a hope, a trust in God. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. That’s what we are seeing in the latter portion of this psalm.
So as we follow the trajectory of this text, we were in the depths because of our sin, we have been brought out because of God’s forgiveness, the question now, the final question is, “How do we press on in the Christian life?” Receiving the forgiveness of almighty God utterly transforms our station in life. Sinners become saints, orphans become heirs, but how can we live like that, especially when our lived experience doesn’t seem to square with that reality because holiness doesn’t always seem so sweet and sin doesn’t always seem so bitter, God doesn’t always feel so near, and sometimes we are prone to doubt our status in Christ. So if forgiveness is the way out of the pit, what keeps us going? And the answer is – faith, hope, trust in the Lord. It’s a hope in God and in who He is for His people. “I wait for the Lord,” verse 5, “my soul waits, and in His Word I hope.” This is my motivation. It’s God and it’s His promises to me. This is what keeps me pressing on, even when I feel like giving up.
Recently, this past summer, our family was able to visit the Highlands in Scotland and we were able to do a massive hike called The Old Man of Storr. And friends of ours who had been to Scotland – and perhaps Dr. Strain would have agreed with this advice – they said, “Do not take your young children up to the top of Old Man of Storr.” So we had, at that time, a five year old, a three year old, and a one year old. Well we thought it was crazy enough that we brought them to Scotland in the first place, so might as well take them to the top of this hike! And I am proud to say that the older two made it the whole way to the top with never needing to be carried, not even once. This is like a three hour hike; it’s a big deal. But of course they needed motivation along the way, right? So we’d say to our daughter, “Honey, if you can just make it around the next bend then you’ll get a cookie!” We ran out of cookies so quickly! But as adults, we also needed motivation, right? So we were motivated by the view that we would get if we reached to the top, so we wanted to press on. Once we were at the top, we were motivated by the warmth of the car back in the parking lot, so we were motivated to get back down!
What’s your motivation in the Christian life? What’s your motivation? What keeps you going, even when the promises of God don’t seem to ring true, even when the calls of Christian discipleship seem difficult, when sin perhaps doesn’t seem as bad as you’ve been told? What’s the motivation? Because sometimes we’re as deflated and worn out in the Christian life as a toddler on a hike. We just want to collapse and cry and say, “I give up!” What’s your motivation? The psalm here is teaching us that our motivation is God Himself. “Israel, hope in the Lord.” We press on in life because there is more of God to be had. Paul says, “I’m willing to suffer the loss of many things in order to know Christ, to know Him, to be found in Him. Once I have Christ, it will make it all worth it. It will make this earthly pilgrimage worth it.” Oh to gain heaven, and in gaining heaven to gain God – that is what will keep the Christian faithful on earth! This is what keeps you pressing on – the hope of seeing God in the face of Christ Jesus. That has to be your motivation, not things you will get from God, but God Himself. Getting Him, knowing Him better, one day seeing Him.
And this hope, it’s a sincere, bottom of the heart kind of hope. You see that, right, in verse 6 – “My soul waits.” I feel like my body is waiting, I’m loitering. I’m not sitting in a waiting room. No, my soul is engaged in this. My heart is waiting. It’s not superficial in the least but it’s born out of the believer’s heart. Here is faith that what God says will come to pass. I think of the imagery given there at the end of verse 6. The image of a watchman, a watchman or a sentry; someone who is stationed at their post to keep a lookout for the city in the threatening hours of the night. Many of my friends, when I was in seminary, were employed as watchmen. They did the graveyard shift at a local retirement village. And they were employed to wait. They waited for morning. In what ways? Well, eagerly. When the morning came, that was not only the indication that their shift was over but also that another night had passed eventually and the village was safe. They waited eagerly. They also waited confidently. The coming dawn is a mutable fact of nature. Nothing can keep the sun from rising and so they are eager, and they’re confident.
And the psalmist says he waits on God with even more eagerness and even more confidence than these watchmen. And so should we. We are eager to receive everything that God has promised and we are confident that one day we will receive everything that God has promised. And so if I could sort of sum up the idea here of what keeps us pressing on in the Christian life or what it looks like to press on, here it is. This is the idea. The Christian is one who calls out to God for forgiveness and then lives as one who is forgiven. The Christian is one who calls out for forgiveness and then lives like it. Not a slave to sin, doesn’t let sin reign in their mortal body, but trusts the Lord, follows the Lord. And that’s what the psalmist wants you to do – to trust in God and follow after God.
You see in verse 5 he says that he waits for the Lord, but then you look at verse 7, now he is talking to you and me. “O Israel, O people of God, you also must hope in the Lord. You must take His promises and live by His promises.” The psalmist is saying, “Why shouldn’t you live with your back straight and your head held high as a fully forgiven child of God?” Because His forgiveness is greater than your sin, His forgiveness can never run out. Why should you act like sin gets the better of you? His mercy is greater than your sin. That’s verse 7. “With the Lord, there is steadfast love, and with Him is plentiful redemption.” You can maybe imagine a sort of back and forth with the psalmist and his audience. He’s anticipating an objection. “Hope in the Lord and in His promises” and then Israel saying back, “We haven’t seen His promises fulfilled. We sometimes feel like maybe this holiness thing isn’t all it’s cut out to be. Maybe sin actually is what we’re consigned to.” And he says, “No, no, no, no! With the Lord is steadfast love and with Him is plentiful redemption.” Plentiful redemption. One translation says, “His redemption overflows.” And so our sin is not greater than God’s mercy.
You put your faith and hope in God because His love never fails, because His redemption never runs out. And that’s a good word for you and I to hear today because we have a lot of sin. You and I, we have a lot of sinning, and therefore we need a lot of saving. And the psalmist is saying that God’s grace always outpaces your sin. And we’re told here that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. Oh yes, there is plenty of sin in us, but here’s the Gospel good news – there is more mercy in Christ than sin in you. That’s why the psalmist calls this mercy abundant, or plentiful, or overflowing, because such is the smallness and the weakness of our faith and such is the paucity of our prayers that His mercy far exceeds our biggest hopes and our wildest dreams and even our best prayers. Can you believe it? You must. You must. Today, you need to believe. This is the kind of God presented to you in the Scriptures – a God who is eager and ready to offer forgiveness that can more than overcome all of your sin. You must also believe that you will soon experience the full realization of God’s promise when you reach your journey’s end.
And the end of the journey there is expressed for us in verse 8. That “God will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.” Here is expressed the heights of glorification when we will be entirely freed from sin. Not just the penalty of sin, which has happened the moment we are justified we are freed from that, but we are freed from the power of indwelling sin and we’ll be freed from the presence of sin. This is future promissory language. “He will redeem His people from all their sin.” We think of the words in 1 John, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” That’s the end of the journey. That’s where you’re headed, dear Christian.
The psalm has progressed from the depths of distress to the heights of hope, rejoicing in the certain gladness of glory. There’s that trajectory of the psalm, and it can be the trajectory of your life as well. But first, you have to see that your sin is serious. Do you see your sin as laying you low in the depths? You must first see that before you can be lifted up to the heights of redemption. Do you sense your sin as being deep? Do you recognize you have more than a surface level problem here? Friends, if you are willing to first acknowledge the depths of your sin, then you can know the depths of God’s mercy, the reach of His grace, and the abundance of His redemption in Christ Jesus.
Let’s pray.O Lord, although it must be granted that if You were to mark iniquities according to Your Law, everyone living would perish, and forever, be consigned to the pangs of hell for an eternity. Yes we have found a hope for our souls that even when we are in the depths of the entanglements of sin, there is an offer to come to You and we can find acceptance with You. There has been a path made for us to come up out of the pit of our own making and to be seated in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus. O Lord, for that to happen we need humility, we need to acknowledge our sin, and we need faith. We need to recognize that Christ is offering to take us all the way to glory if we would but put our hope and our trust in Him. And so would You strengthen our faith? Would You strengthen our trust in this beautiful promise, this beautiful declaration that with You there is forgiveness? May we never forget it and may we always seek to live by it. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.