“The Depths” – Psalm 130

Sermons Archive - Greenview Church

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Well, it’s not every day that an American president is shot at, but that’s exactly what happened just over a week ago in a field in Pennsylvania. Forty years after Reagan and over 60 years after Kennedy, once more a man titled president was in the crosshairs of a rifle and in the sights of death. Maybe you noticed as I did that this was actually unsettling for many Americans.

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Whether loving Trump or loathing him, many Americans said the same thing afterward. They said, the world feels a little less safe in a world where someone so powerful can be so vulnerable. One person summed it up like this.

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She said, lock your front doors, hide under your fort blankets, cuddle in with your family, because the world is an evil place. And there’s something in that that we all resonate with, I think. Perhaps a presidential shooting doesn’t trouble us, but maybe when we hear of a crime in the news or watch yet another brutal report of war zone trauma, maybe then you feel that instinct to protect yourself and those you love.

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That’s normal and completely understandable. We want to keep the bad stuff of a bad world outside our door. And yet as we look at God’s word this morning, it says to us, beware of a wrong assumption that can flow out of that.

(1:59 – 2:31)

What do I mean? Well, we could develop an assumption that evil is just an outside problem. We could start to think that the wrongs in our world, maybe in the news, maybe in our neighborhoods, but behind my front door and under my blanket, everything is good. At least it’s not evil.

(2:33 – 3:11)

And so what we do is we put, as it were, an Atlantic ocean of distance between our good selves and the darkness of this world. But here’s the question. Is it really that simple? Friends, is moral darkness just something we see on the news? Or is it actually something we can see when we look in the mirror? Turn with me to Psalm 130 this morning, which as you’ll see from the heading, is one of the songs of ascent.

(3:12 – 3:31)

This is one of 15 pilgrim songs that Jews would sing as they traveled up to Jerusalem. And as these songs reflect on the spiritual pilgrimage, one of the things they recognize is evil in the world. You see that particularly in Psalms 120 to 125.

(3:33 – 3:42)

They acknowledge that. But as we’ll see in this Psalm, there is an evil that is closer to home. Psalm 130.

(3:44 – 3:54)

Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.

(3:55 – 4:16)

If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness so that we can with reverence serve you. I wait for the Lord. My whole being waits and in his word I put my hope.

(4:17 – 4:29)

I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning. More than watchmen wait for the morning. Israel, put your hope in the Lord.

(4:30 – 4:47)

For with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. This is God’s Word.

(4:48 – 5:10)

And one thing is clear from reading this Psalm, the psalmist himself, a believer in God, a man who was probably quite godly in other people’s eyes, is in deep moral trouble. He’s not just endangered by the sins of others. He himself is a danger.

(5:11 – 5:31)

He himself is a sinner. So what does he do about that? And what should we do when we become aware of our own personal darkness? He does four things. First, he cries from the depths.

(5:32 – 5:44)

Second, he considers God’s character. Third, he waits with confidence. And fourth, he preaches from experience.

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So number one, he cries from the depths. Look at verse one. Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.

(5:57 – 6:12)

This man and the song he sings starts in a low place. And it’s not just a low place down in the depths. It’s also a dangerous and deadly place.

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Deep places are often deadly. You know, think about the deep sea diver. When the deep sea diver goes down to the depths, they need specialized equipment to keep them alive.

(6:26 – 6:38)

And they can’t stay down in the depths very long. It’s a death zone. Depths are deadly in life and in the Psalms.

(6:39 – 7:22)

Whenever we meet this phrase, the depths in the Psalms, whether the image is the depth of the sea or the depths of the earth, the depths always speak of danger, of burial, of drowning, and of death. It’s a place where you don’t want to stay in. But why, we might ask, is this man in the depths? What has sunk him down to this desperate place? Well, verse two gives us a clue, doesn’t it? Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.

(7:25 – 7:42)

So, when you think about mercy, a person who needs mercy is in a situation where they’ve done something wrong. Mercy is a word in the forgiveness family. So, this man must need forgiveness if he needs mercy.

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And the rest of the Psalm will confirm that hunch. Let’s be clear. There are many reasons in life why we find ourselves in the depths.

(7:55 – 8:11)

Many reasons. But one reason might be that we’ve become aware of what the Bible calls sin. Mina Kunis is a successful American actress.

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And at one time in her life, she dated Macaulay Culkin. Now, Macaulay Culkin, you probably know who that is. He is the little boy that we watch every Christmas in the Home Alone movies.

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Scarily, Macaulay Culkin is now 43 years old. But in his 20s, when he grew up, he dated Mila Kunis. And they were in a long-term relationship.

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It was eight years long. And eventually, they had, in their own words, a horrible breakup. And years later, Mila was interviewed in a magazine.

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And she was asked about the breakup of the relationship and whether she felt any culpability. Let me read you her reply. She said, When I got to be single, I said, I needed to figure myself out.

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I genuinely need to know why I did what I did. And, like, regroup myself as a human being. And several things struck me in that.

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One is that it’s often in human relationships that the uglier side of us comes out. You know, live like a hermit and it won’t be so obvious. But live with people.

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Work with people. Befriend people. Date someone.

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Marry someone. And as your life rubs up against them, you’ll soon see your darker side creeping out. And you might find yourself, along with Mila, asking, Why did I do that? Why did I say that? Why am I sometimes so selfish? Why am I sometimes jealous and angry and mean? The Bible says it’s because we have sin in our nature.

(10:21 – 10:38)

And that plunges us into a place of danger and death before God. A place from which we need to cry up to heaven. Now, I’ve never stood in quicksand.

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And I hope I never do. But I imagine if I was sinking deep in some kind of horrible swamp, I would forget about decorum. I would forget about pride.

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And I would scream out for help. That’s what this man realizes he needs to do when he’s up to his neck in guilt. He doesn’t pretend there isn’t a problem.

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He doesn’t try to fix himself, as our culture often tells us to do. Fix yourself or find someone else to fix you. No, he cries to the one in the universe who alone has the answer to the darkness.

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Of our hearts. Friends, crying out for mercy is not trendy or easy. But it’s the starting point of a relationship with God.

(11:40 – 12:04)

Have you ever done that? Can I say kindly and gently that if you’ve never done that in some sort of way, you’re probably not a Christian. Because the Christian life starts with a cry for mercy. It begins with the realization that I’m a sinner in need of grace.

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And indeed, as you go on in the Christian life, you keep crying out for grace on a daily basis. But what kind of confidence can we have that God will be merciful? That brings us to our second point this morning. Notice the second thing the psalmist does.

(12:24 – 12:40)

He considers God’s character. He contemplates who God is. And at first glance, this doesn’t seem too hopeful, because the initial thing he sees when he looks to God, he sees that God is just.

(12:42 – 13:01)

In verse 3, he asks a question. If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, who could stand? Now, just before we get into this, a little bit about that imagery of standing, because this is important. This image of standing is drawn from the ancient court of ancient kings.

(13:02 – 13:14)

If you stood in the presence of a king, it meant you were good with him. It meant you were on good terms. It meant you were innocent before him of any crime.

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It perhaps meant that you were able to serve him. But if, on the other hand, you were unable to stand in a king’s presence, if you were, you know, on your face or removed from his presence, it meant that you were guilty before him. And using that picture, the psalmist speaks of the king of the whole universe and says, Lord, if you kept a record of sins, who could stand in your presence? Now, he doesn’t answer the question directly, but the answer is implied.

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The answer implied is no one. Other Scriptures tell us this clearly, that God does, in fact, keep a record of sins. He knows everything.

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He knows every act of moral corruption that there is. And if He held every human being accountable, we would all be facing His judgment. None of us would stand.

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You know, when I was initially thinking about this, I thought, that’s a weird place to go when you’re crying out for mercy, to immediately think of the justice of God. But actually, in a way, that strengthens our need to cry for mercy, doesn’t it? If God is just, then the only thing we can do is cry for His mercy. And this then propels us on also to verse 4, doesn’t it? Which is such a welcome release.

(14:52 – 15:18)

Verse 4 is where the psalm turns, but with you there is forgiveness. Now, this is not a contradiction of verse 3. It’s a complement to verse 3. God is just and He is forgiving. It’s a complement, not a contradiction.

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He’s both things. Both are true of God. And yet His forgiveness particularly stands out.

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Forgiveness, you might say, is God’s trademark trait. But with you there is forgiveness. You know that thing where you’re being introduced to someone new, and the person who knows the one that you’re being introduced to, they’ll kind of try and sum them up in one word so that you can get a handle on them.

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He’s loud. She’s smart. He’s opinionated.

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It’s their trademark trait. Well, let me introduce you to God, says the psalmist. He’s forgiving.

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Without in any way giving up His justice, God restores sinners it’s who He is. And it’s not just that they’re forgiven and then sent, you know, far away. They are forgiven and kept close.

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They, notice the end of the verse, they serve in the presence of the King. Is this how we see God this morning? Is this how you view God yourself? Do you see forgiveness as His trademark trait? Do you understand that throughout history, this is who God has shown Himself to be in His dealing with people, with individuals, with Israel, with rogues like Moses and David and Samson in the Old Testament, with scoundrels like Peter and Paul in the New? It’s been God’s trait in the way that He deals with the church. He has shown His trademark of forgiveness.

(17:18 – 17:51)

Of course, most of all, we see that forgiveness at the cross of Jesus. And indeed, that is where the apparent tension between verse 3 and verse 4 is finally resolved, because it’s not resolved in this psalm. We don’t get an explanation here of how God can be both fair and forgiving, but we come eventually to the cross, don’t we? And we see in the wisdom of God these two things going hand in hand.

(17:52 – 18:21)

Jesus, the sinless Son of God, takes on our moral culpability. He endures in our place the just punishment we deserve, so that a waterfall of God’s mercy might rain down on us. If we want to strengthen our reasons to cry for mercy, then it’s the character of God that will give us the courage to cry.

(18:23 – 18:44)

And let me say, whether you’re a Christian this morning or whether you wouldn’t call yourself a Christian, this is where you need to fix your eyes today. Not even so much on your sin, although you need to start there, but you need then to fix your eyes on God’s character. And what He has done because of that character.

(18:46 – 19:07)

Fixing your eyes on Jesus and His death and resurrection, that’s your only hope. See, the call here is not to live a sin-centered life or a works-centered life, but a cross-centered life. And we don’t just do that once.

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We do it as a lifestyle, which brings us to our third point. Thirdly, notice the third thing the psalmist does. He waits with confidence.

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He waits with confidence. Now, I must admit that this bit of the psalm puzzled me for a bit. This appearance of the theme of waiting.

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It’s there in verse 5. I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits. And verse 6, I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. If I was writing this psalm, I think I might have skipped the waiting part.

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Here’s how I would have done it, okay? He cries out to God for mercy. He considers God’s forgiving character. And then, hey, presto, He’s forgiven.

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And He just enjoys the full experience immediately of all of God’s grace. That’s how I would have wrote it. But instead, there’s this waiting element.

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Now, we need to understand that this is not like waiting for a bus. In the sense that when you’re waiting on a bus, you’re never entirely sure that the bus will come. Now, the app might tell you that it’s coming, and the board might tell you that it’s coming.

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But we’ve all had that experience, haven’t we, where everything says it’s coming and it doesn’t come. So, there’s always a degree of uncertainty in that kind of waiting. But this is not like that.

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This is not the waiting of that. It’s the waiting of a watchman. Notice the imagery.

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It’s like being a watchman on the walls of a city who is waiting for the morning. And the night may be long and frustrating and hard, but he knows with absolute certainty that morning is coming. Think about it.

(21:10 – 21:35)

There is nothing more certain than sunrise tomorrow. So, we need to be clear here that when the psalmist says that he’s waiting on the Lord and that the full experience of redemption hasn’t come yet, he’s not doubting that it’s coming. He’s just saying that it hasn’t all come yet.

(21:38 – 21:51)

And I think we can relate to this as Christians. Fast forward for a moment to our Christian experience. If we do know Jesus, we experience this kind of waiting.

(21:52 – 22:15)

Even when we know that our sin is forgiven, even when we sing that Jesus paid it all, we are still waiting for the time when Jesus will return and remove sin completely. We’re forgiven, but we’re waiting. We’ll be doing this in a moment.

(22:15 – 22:45)

We’re rejoicing at the Lord’s table that Jesus came once, but we’re longing for Him to come again. Because actually, we’re a bit fed up with our battles with sin, are we not? We’re tired of always waiting on the walls in the middle of the night with danger all around. We’re tired of those battles with sin, but we know that Jesus is coming.

(22:46 – 23:06)

He’s surer than the dawn, and He will bring sin to an end. We need that perspective as we find ourselves tiring in the up and down of sin and guilty conscience and seeking God’s grace again. We need that future perspective.

(23:08 – 23:20)

The fullness of a sin-free world is coming like the dawn. What a helpful example this psalmist is. He cries from the depths.

(23:21 – 23:31)

He considers God’s character. He waits with confidence. But fourthly and lastly, he preaches from experience.

(23:32 – 24:11)

Having renewed his own confidence in God’s present and final forgiveness with a sense of God’s mercy to him pulsating through his veins, he now preaches to others. And this is a twist at the end of the psalm, because this psalm has been highly personal and hugely individual. The word, I, has been everywhere in this psalm, and yet at the very end of the psalm, in verses 7 and 8, he addresses Israel, the nation.

(24:11 – 24:22)

Israel, he proclaims, put your hope in the Lord. See, sin is not just the psalmist’s problem. It’s everyone’s problem.

(24:23 – 24:33)

No one can stand without mercy. Everyone needs to hear of mercy. And so he preaches it with all that he has.

(24:33 – 24:51)

I mean, this is one of the greatest sermons on God’s mercy that’s ever been preached, verses 7 and 8. God’s love, he declares, is an unfailing love. The promises of the gospel are always kept. They’re never proved to be untrue.

(24:52 – 25:07)

And God’s redemption is full and complete. There’s nothing lacking in the forgiveness that God offers. You know, when you buy an item, even something that’s kind of amazing, but they give you the 14-day return guarantee, just in case.

(25:08 – 25:34)

There’s no need to return God’s forgiveness within 14 days. It’s everything that we need. God himself personally makes amends, verse 8. Get this, not just for some of our sins, or most of our sins, or nearly all of our sins except those worst ones.

(25:35 – 26:11)

No, he himself will redeem Israel for all their sins. Just think how vast this redemption is. Someone has calculated that if you’re in your 40s, I think if you’re over the age of about 41, if you have sinned once per day, which I think is a very conservative figure, but say you sinned once a day, it would mean that by the time you were in your 40s, by about 42, you would have sinned 15,000 times.

(26:11 – 26:39)

Now, if you then get 100 people in a room in their 40s, that’s 1.5 million sins. If you get 1,000 forgiven 40-something-year-olds in a room, that’s 15 million sins. What percentage of sins does God cover? 100%.

(26:40 – 26:52)

Every last sin, all of our sins is covered. And the psalmist can’t keep this to himself. He’s so thrilled about this forgiveness that it spills over.

(26:53 – 27:13)

Think about this. Think about this. What do you talk about? You talk about what you’re excited about, don’t you? I’ll guarantee that whatever it is you’re thrilled about at the moment, whatever’s floating your boat is the thing you’ll be chatting about at coffee today.

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If you are thrilled by your own forgiveness, it will be impossible, impossible to never talk about it. As I examine my own life, I think this exposes me. I wish this was truer of me.

(27:35 – 28:09)

The question this raises for all of us in the church here is whether as gospel-believing people, we’re actually living out this gospel culture. What do I mean by a gospel culture? I mean that what we believe about the gospel theoretically translates into action. So, in a gospel culture, believers battle with sin, they talk about sin, sin’s out in the open, it’s on the agenda.

(28:10 – 28:30)

They acknowledge it often, they cry out for mercy regularly. In a gospel culture, the church is not focused on superficial things and trivial things, but on gospel things. It’s focused on God’s character, not least on His forgiveness.

(28:30 – 28:50)

It’s what you hear about, it’s what you talk about in church and in relationships in church. In a gospel culture, out of the wonder and relief that we feel, the church instinctively shares the message of forgiveness with the world around us. That’s a gospel culture.

(28:51 – 29:38)

The gospel culture of Psalm 130, if sin is rarely mentioned or talked about, if mercy is rarely celebrated personally in our lives, if evangelism is rarely happening, then maybe we’ve just become a blanket fort church, hiding away from the world rather than taking the good news to it. But I finish with this. Maybe as you sit here this morning, the Holy Spirit’s just been touching your heart and convicting your heart of sin in your life.

(29:40 – 30:02)

Maybe it’s been a long time since you’ve cried up for the mercy you need. And maybe you’re fearful, maybe in the pit you’re just not so sure that God will hear you or that He wants to hear you. It’s as if you’re too sunk down.

(30:04 – 30:22)

But listen to these words from Charles Spurgeon as I finish. This is what he says. The depths usually silence all they engulf, but they could not close the mouth of this servant of the Lord.

(30:24 – 30:40)

On the contrary, it was in the abyss that he cried unto Jehovah. Beneath the floods, prayer lived and struggled. Yes, above the roar of the billows rose the cry of faith.

(30:42 – 31:17)

Spurgeon writes, it little matters where we are if we pray, but prayer is never more real and acceptable than when it rises out of the worst places. He that prays in the depth, says Spurgeon, will not sink out of his depth. Will you sink or will you pray? Let’s just come to God for a moment.

(31:18 – 31:53)

Father God, Father help us, humble us, enable us, give us a simple faith of a child. Give us that self-awareness. And that awareness of you, of Christ, of redemption, of all the hope that is present in the gospel and help us to cry once more today or for the very first time.

(31:54 – 32:00)

Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. Amen.

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