We all know what it’s like to be in the depths. Sometimes we have agonized over the loss of a loved one, and we walk in the depths – perhaps for a while. We have agonized over the sins of others done to us or to those we’ve loved. Perhaps your spouse has wronged you and left you, and you are left to walk through the depths of that situation. For others, we’ve walked through the depths of loneliness, infertility, difficulty with our families, unmet hopes and expectations, and on and on and on. Suffering is so part and parcel of the Christian life (and all of life in general), that I believe it is safe to assume that we all know what it’s like to be in the depths of sorrow and anguish and pain and heartache.
But there’s a deeper place of anguish than any that I’ve mentioned. Now, it might be found within any of these situations. That deeper place is when we find ourselves in the depths because of our sin. It’s one thing to find ourselves in the depths of life because of what another has done to us. It’s quite another to say that in large measure (if not altogether) that we find ourselves downtrodden and walking through a deep valley in our souls because of our own sin. Loneliness is lonelier, pain is sharper, and agony is deeper when we feel it because of our own sin. There are times in my own life that I’ve felt myself beyond comfort because the agonizing situation I found myself was crafted with my own hands. I’d made the agonizing bed in which I was lying, if you will.
And there is also just the agony and deeply painful place of having sinned. Maybe your circumstances around you have not changed. Life seems to be going on as is, and yet you know of your own rebellion against the Lord. You’ve not fallen into sin but run after it and got what you wanted, only to know now in the depths of your heart that it is not at all what you truly desired. You feel empty. You’d give anything in the world just to go back to the moment prior to your sin. You feel like God is a million miles away and talking to him would be like yelling in a deep and empty canyon. It would feel pointless, as if your voice is just bouncing right back to you with no one to hear. As we all know, sin can leave us in the deepest of valleys.
But the good news is that God is fully aware of this, and he has revealed to us what we are to do in those times. And the news gets even better when we realize that one chief way he has instructed us in how we are to walk through these times is by giving us the Psalms. You see, it’s one thing to have someone tell us, “When you’re agonizing, do this?” It’s quite another to be able to hear that instruction and then witness someone doing it. The psalms are the experience of the writer. They are inspired by the Holy Spirit like every other portion of Scripture, but they are clearly reflect the heart of the writer. So, for example, we just finished Jeremiah in which it appeared the Lord had perhaps even dictated to Jeremiah what he was to write. It seems that the Lord is saying to Jeremiah, “Tell Judah they have been like a whore,” and Jeremiah writes that down (or has Baruch do it). But the picture of Psalm 130 is not that of the Lord declaring to the psalmist, “Write, ‘Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD!’”
Rather, it is the psalmist crying out in his agony, being moved by the Holy Spirit so that the cries of the psalmist become the very words God intends, while expressing fully the agonizing and struggling heart of the psalmist. And for this reason, they are helpful for us in our agony. We can read them and say, “Now, this is someone who is acquainted with my grief and my pain.” And specifically Psalm 130 is a psalm that is written in a time of agony, as the psalmist cries out to the Lord (it appears) at a point when he had sinned.
For this reason, this psalm has been referred to as one of the seven penitential psalms. There are seven of these psalms in the Psalter, psalms which reflect the psalmist crying out because of his sin. The most famous of these is Psalm 51, in which David cries out to the Lord as he addresses his sin with Bathsheba. And Psalm 130 falls into this category.
Psalm 130 is one of the fifteen songs of Ascent, that is one of the songs that would have been sung as the Jews took their pilgrimage to Jerusalem. As they were ascending to that city, they would sing (it seems) the songs that are provided in Psalms 120-134. And among that list is included Psalm 130 – a psalm which expresses the psalmist’s cry out of the depths because of his sin.
And it is a rich psalm in the history of the church. It was the psalm that John Wesley heard one afternoon as he went on to be converted that evening. It was one of Luther’s favorite psalms, which he described as a Pauline psalm, no doubt because it speaks of the Lord’s holiness and forgiveness. It was also a psalm that was deeply helpful to John Owen. Owen, who wrote a treatise on communion with God said that though he preached Christ many years, he didn’t believe that he really experienced being able to come to God through Christ in prayer until he because quite sick and almost died. And in that time, Psalm 130 ministers to him, specifically verse 4. Therefore, Owen wrote an exposition of these eight verses that is nearly 330 pages long!
And I think the reason it affected so many universally is because of the universal struggle with sin. Owen notes in his exposition the exact nature in which he perceives this psalm is written, declaring, “He cries out under the weight and waves of his sins.1 And since we are all all-too-well acquainted with sin, this is a psalm that we need as it provides for us example and instruction in how we are to respond in the midst of agony because of our sin. This is what I want to note for us this morning.
The psalm is divided into four two-verse sections, and I want to draw a note from each of these sections. From the first section, we are reminded simply that when we are crushed under the weight of our own sin, we are to cry out to God.
This is clearly the response of the psalmist. He does not remain silent but writes, “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!” (1-2). Listen to his boldness. He cries out to the Lord to hear his voice. He tells him to let his ears be attentive. This is a bold and desperate cry. And it’s exactly what God would have us do.
But this is not the natural reaction, is it? In Genesis 3, after Adam sinned and the Lord came walking in the garden, what did Adam do? He hid. In fact, when the Lord says, “Where are you?” he answers, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself” (Gen 3:10).
That appears to be our natural reaction. In my home that’s the natural reaction. Often if something is clearly wrong, and I yell, “Kids, come here,” they are not often anxiously running to get to me. They know they’ve done wrong, and I’m the one they’ve done wrong against. So they avoid me. And the enemy will convince us that we should respond similarly in regards to the Lord when we sin.
That is, we will sin, and the enemy will tell us that we do not deserve to read our Bibles. “Are you really going to read your Bible after doing what you did?” he might proclaim. Or we go to pray, and he convinces us that the Lord wants nothing to do with us. Rather, we are tempted to believe, we need to get things right, and then we can engage with the Lord again.
But consider the nature of the problem here. When I was around six or seven years old, I was playing on a wall in my back yard that my parents had told me not to play on. We lived in a house that was pretty much a basement with no upstairs. In fact, from the front yard, you could walk right onto our roof without stepping up that much. And the yard sloped down in the back yard so that we had this patio where you entered the house, and that patio was surrounded by these cinder block walls.
Anyway, my parents had told me not to play on these walls. However, I thought better of it and one day found myself standing on the wall, sword-fighting against an imaginary opponent. And I don’t have a memory of exactly why this happened, but I fell off the wall. Perhaps my imaginary opponent got the best of me! And when I fell, I landed pretty hard on the side of my head so that I cut my head open pretty good, right beside my eye.
When I realized that I had hurt myself pretty badly, I took off running for the door. My mom answered the door and knew we’d have to go to the hospital again. And, I do mean again, since I had to get stitches several times.
But why did I run to her? After all, she’d told me not to get on the wall, and I had disobeyed her. Why not run from her? Why not try to take care of the situation myself? Well, the answer is pretty obvious. My need was bigger than anything I could take care of myself. I was hurt quite badly and in need of stitches. And I ran to her because my mom she alone could get me to the hospital.
Similarly, in this psalm, the psalmist’s need is forgiveness. His chief problem is sin. And that’s more than he can apply to himself. Even a good friend coming over and telling him he’s forgiven be meaningless, wouldn’t it? He hadn’t sinned against his friend. And, even if he had, he had chiefly sinned against the Lord in sinning against his friend. God alone is our hope in dealing with our sin. And so we must remember in these times to flee to him, cry out to him, call out for him to hear our cries, to make his ears attentive, and listen to our cries for mercy. After all, he alone can deal with our sin.
And yet, we do not cry out to him with great doubt as to what will be his response. This brings us to our second truth in this text:
The psalmist acknowledges in verse 4 that with the Lord there is forgiveness. This is something we must hold to. If we forget this, we will never cry out to the Lord when we are mired in our sin. If there is not forgiveness with the Lord, then we would do well to be afraid and hide like Adam. But even that would be hopeless, wouldn’t it? After all, only a few psalms later, David will declare, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!” (Psalm 139:7-8). Fleeing from the Lord is vain.
But we need not flee from him, for with him there is forgiveness. We approach the Lord, knowing, in the words of 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Surely there are few other promises that believers have held onto more tightly than this one – that God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins.
But before we dwell on that reality too much, let’s not that the psalmist takes a bit of a journey to get to that reality. He first acknowledges the severity of sin in verse 3. There, he proclaims, “If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?”
That is, if God should count our sins against us and give us the punishment we deserve for them, then none of us could stand before him in judgment. We would all be condemned. After all, Adam and Eve sinned one time before they were condemned before God and driven from the garden. Why? Because God demands perfect righteousness. So, the answer to the psalmist’s question is obviously, “No one would stand.” All would be condemned, for all have fallen short of the glory of God.
But why does he remind himself of this reality? I’m not sure, but I can tell you that it serves at least two purposes when we acknowledge this truth in dealing with our sins before God. First, it reminds us that sin is not some trite matter. It is no small thing that we sin. We all sin, and John tells us that if anyone says he is without sin, he is a liar and the truth is not in him. But sin must never be seen as something that is acceptable for us. It is, rather, an affront to our Lord, an outright rebellion against the one who created and redeemed us. Any sin that we do is enough to send anyone to hell, and, indeed, thousands upon thousands will suffer in hell for eternity for the same kinds of sins that we have participated in. Sin is a big deal. And reminding ourselves that no one would stand before God if he marked our iniquities helps us to remember this.
But a second purpose served in acknowledging this reality is that it leads us to the gospel as our only hope. See, if we forget that we are hopeless of attaining any righteous standing before God, then we might attempt to make penance for our sins as our hope for forgiveness. That is, we might say, “God demands better than this of me. Therefore, I will never do this sin again, and then he will be pleased with me.” But that is not true. Indeed, if you never did that sin again, you’ve already done enough to stand condemned in a thousand lifetimes before God. So, we might say, “Well, I will at least get a little beyond this episode. Feel cleansed a bit, and then I will come to God.” But you can never do enough to stand cleansed before God. So, we might think, “I will just make sure I grovel long enough and feel bad enough.” And as holy as that might feel, that too is an attempt at self-righteousness. There is no amount of self-loathing that will cleanse you from the stain of sin.
Rather, our only hope in light of God’s demand for perfect righteousness and our sin is Christ’s perfect life, penalty-bearing death, and justifying resurrection. We are forced to look to another if we are to find forgiveness. But God has provided one for us. Christ came to live, die, and be raised for us. He perfectly satisfied God’s just demands, and our only hope is to have his perfect righteousness credited to us by faith.
So, remembering the truth of verse 3 is key if we are to truly experience verse 4. There, the psalmist writes, “But with you there is forgiveness.” Indeed, and it is only through faith in the crucified and risen Christ. Attempting to be cleansed of our sin through any other means than faith in the crucified and risen Lord is an affront to God and the sacrifice of his Son for us.
And it is important that we remember the gospel not only because in the gospel alone is our hope for forgiveness because also it is only through realizes the truth of the gospel that we rightly respond to God as we should. You see, the psalmist says something rather surprising at the end of verse 4. He says that with the Lord there is forgiveness, “that you may be feared.”
Now, we would expect that to read, “With you there is no forgiveness, that you may be feared.” After all, it is fearful to stand condemned before a holy God. Or, we expect it to say, “With you there is forgiveness, that you may be loved.” For, we know that he who has been forgiven much loves much. But it doesn’t. Rather, the reality of our forgiveness before God produces in us a fear of God. What does that mean?
Well, first, “fear” here doesn’t mean the same kind of fear that Adam felt in the garden when he ran and hid because he was “afraid” of the Lord. Rather, it is a kind of fear that recognizes his holiness and the depths of his glory and longs to serve him. It is a fear that drives us to God, a fear that causes us to be amazed that we get to serve God. Therefore, this is another verse that reminds us that holy living is rooted in realizing the forgiveness that is ours in the gospel. A right fear of God is not created merely by laying commandments on us but by realizing that we have been justified by faith in the crucified and risen Savior so that we are truly forgiven of our sins. Then, in light of that, we long to obey the commandments of such an awesome God. In light of that God we would give up every right we have to be able to serve him, wouldn’t we? And, so we must remember that with the Lord there is forgiveness because of what Christ has done for us.
Third, we see in verses 5-6 that …
The psalmist clearly paints this picture of waiting with confident assurance in verses 5-6. He writes, “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.”
The watchman would stand post at night to guard the city. He would stand, knowing that there could be the threat of danger or the need to act quickly to alert others of an oncoming threat. But, as morning arrived, he was able to be relieved, to rest from his duties. And so, the watchman would wait for the morning. He knew it was coming. The rising of the sun the next day was certain, but he waited for it in the night. The psalmist, thus, says similarly that he waits for the Lord, even more eagerly than the watchman for morning.
But what is the psalmist waiting for? We might say that he is waiting to be delivered from his circumstances that his sins have left him, but such circumstances do not always change. The one who murders can indeed have the hope of forgiveness, but he will probably sit in prison the rest of his life if not be executed, and his waiting for deliverance would be futile.
So, we might suggest that he waits for forgiveness, but the Lord’s forgiveness is instant. Rather, then, it seems best to conclude that the psalmist is waiting for the assurance and comfort from the Lord that he is restored. That is, this is not the picture of someone who confesses his sin and then says, “Well, I feel nothing, it must not have worked. Forget it.” No, this is the picture of a man that says, “God, assure my soul that I’m forgiven. I am here until you do.”
But I don’t think this waiting is always passive. Rather, we might find ourselves continually meditating on the gospel, looking at the text, preaching to ourselves, etc. and then find the Lord lift up our souls in remembering that we are forgiven.
I’ve laid in my bed at times weeping over my sin, preaching the gospel to myself again and again when right in the midst of that the Lord breaks through my self-righteousness and convinces my heart of my forgiveness. That assurance seems to be what the psalmist is waiting for, and what is knows is as certain as the rising sun for the watchman.
The psalmist is not content to relish in the forgiveness he has tasted in the Lord. He wants others to know this as well. Thus, he writes in verses 7-8, “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.”
If you’ve truly found your soul realizing and delighting in the glory of forgiveness through faith in the crucified and risen Christ, then there is a longing for others to know this joy as well, isn’t there? You see a man caught a legalistic attempt to justify himself by his own works, and you want to plead with him, “Stop it, and see the forgiveness that is ours through faith alone in the crucified and risen Savior!”
When you realize that we can truly be forgiven of sins, then you must proclaim hope to the prostitute who is destroying her own life, to the one who has thrown himself into sexual immorality, to the one living in homosexuality, to the one has committed adultery, to the one who has wrecked his life because of greed and envy, to the one who has done things that it is hard to name that there is hope. And the reason there is hope is because though none of us could stand before the Lord if he marked iniquities, with him, there is forgiveness of sin because Christ lived, died, and was raised for us. There is hope if we will place our faith in him as our only hope for righteousness.
But unless we realize this gospel truth and apply it to our own hearts again and again we will never be driven to proclaim that truth to others. So, this morning, the greatest thing we can do to move our hearts to obey the awesome God and proclaim the news to others is to delight in the gospel. Pray that the scales that keep you from seeing its beauty would fall away. For those of us in the depths because of our sin, let us cry out to the one who forgives, delight in the assurance that is ours in his Word, and remember why this is certain as we come to the table. Amen.