Waiting in Hope - Psalm 130
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Intro
We’re continuing on in our series through the Psalms of Ascent.
We come today to a Psalm that is a favorite of the likes of Luther, Calvin, Augustine, Owen and Bunyan.
An all star cast list of saints who have clung to this Psalm.
This is known as a Penitential Psalm.
It is a Psalm of confession and repentance.
This is a Psalm of waiting hope.
No one really likes to wait right?
I’ll never forget February, 1, 2021
That’s the day we welcomed Samuel into the world.
Here’s how that day started.
Hannah wakes me up at 3AM and tells me she thinks she may be starting to go into labor but isnt sure.
She tells me to go to back to sleep.
So how do you think that went for me?
Exactly!
So from there we wait until 8AM when the mid-wives are in to see how far along Hannah is.
That’s when my day of waiting started.
This is in the hight of COVID so of course I am not allowed in to the Doctors office.
I sit in the car trying to read, sweating, praying.
Then here comes Hannah in a wheel chair, I am thinking oh my goodness is he here?!
That’s when they tell me her water broke and we need to go to the hospital but first on the way we need to go get clary sage essential oils.
Wait what?!
We get to the hospital, we get in a room, and the contractions start.
I am thinking any min know we’re gonna be meeting lil Sammy.
This was around 11.
Y’all it wasn't until almost 8:30 that night that the little booger showed up.
Waiting.
No one likes to wait, and yet life is full of waiting.
Waiting on that Amazon package. Waiting on answers to your questions. Waiting on traffic lights. Waiting for the end of your work shift. Waiting on medical results. Waiting.
Psalm 130 is a psalm about waiting.
As we mentioned earlier it is one of the psalms of hope, and yet it almost begins as a psalm of trouble.
The psalmist is crying out to the Lord from a place of deep pain and distress.
Last week we looked at Psalm 129 which was all about persevering through pain.
Now we come to Psalm 130 which is all about waiting on the Lord.
But the focus is not on waiting through the pain. It is about waiting in hope.
Here is our big idea today, Our hope is in the Lord who saves
So let’s jump in this Psalm and see first the Psalmist challenge to hope starts with
I. Cry to Lord for Mercy (1-4)
Psalm 130:1–4 (ESV)
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.
Out of the depths
The Psalmist is in a low place.
This Psalm starts in a place of brokenness.
He feels completely overwhelmed and bogged down.
The depths here represent when you hit rock bottom and you realize you can’t fix this on your own.
Eugene Peterson even translates this verse in The Message:
“Help God – the bottom has fallen out of my life!”
Whether the problem is financial, or illness or relational you are in a place of deep and personal pain.
This is often where our sinful ambition takes us.
It leads us to a place of despair and brokenness
This call of distress shows up all throughout the scriptures.
It is the cry of someone who realizes how far down they’ve gone.
Have you found yourself in a broken place like this?
Beat down and at rock bottom.
Where do you turn when you are in those moments?
To you to fleeting comforts, something to numb you.
Do you fall into despair?
Corrie Ten Boom, who wrote The Hiding Place, was sent to a Nazi concentration camp during World War II Germany for hiding Jews in her home.
I love what she has to say:
“There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.” _Corrie Ten Boom
Coram Deo that’s what you need to remember when the bottom falls out in your life.
God is still there.
When you cry out to him from the depths, he will hear you.
The Psalmist teaches us here that it is in the moments we should call out to God
If God kept a record of sins...
It’s in verse 3 we get an idea of what has led the Psalmist into this place of despair.
Psalm 130:3 (ESV)
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
The Psalmist is in a place of guilt for sins they’ve committed.
If God is keeping a record of your life who thinks they could stand before a Holy God?
The answer is no one.
Romans 3:19 (ESV)
Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
Romans 3:23 (ESV)
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
All of us stand before a holy God guilty of deep sin and rebellion
How should we deal with guilt?
This is an important question because every human being tries to deal with it.
Some people choose denial.
They refuse to believe that they're guilty of anything.
Others choose rationalization.
They may admit they're guilty, but they blame it on something or someone parents, teachers, government, culture, or genes.
Another wrong option is relativization.
Those who choose this response point out that others are guilty also and that their guilt then isn't so bad
Have you ever played these games?
Instead of denying, blame shifting, or relativizing our guilt, the psalmist gives us the way to deal with the root of guilt: admit it and
confess it to God in order to receive forgiveness.
Look at verse 4
Psalm 130:4 (ESV)
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.
If you choose this way, you won't have to carry your guilt anymore.
The faulty options will not remove your guilt.
If you confess your sin to God, you can experience God's healing.
Sally and Jack went to their grandpa’s house to visit.
While they were there, Grandpa took them out to teach Jack how to use a slingshot.
Jack was really good at it.
After a little while, Grandpa went off, and by accident, Jack shot a rock with the slingshot, hit one of Grandpa’s ducks in the head, and killed it.
Sally said, “Ooh, I am going to tell.”
Terrified, Jack cried, “Please don’t tell.”
Sally agreed and they went back to the house.
When the kids arrived, Grandma announced that the kids would help clean up the house.
With a sly look, Sally said, “Grandma, Jack would love to do the dishes, wouldn’t you, Jack? Jack doesn’t mind doing the dishes. In fact, Jack, tell Grandma how much you love doing dishes.”
Jack said, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Grandma, I like doing dishes.”
Determined to get a bunch of housework done, Grandma continued, “Well then, Sally we’re going to vacuum the floor.”
“Grandma,” Sally replied, “let me tell you about Jack and vacuuming. That boy is a natural-born vacuum person. Come on, Jack, tell Grandma how much you like to vacuum.”
Grimacing, Jack said through his teeth, “Grandma, I love being a vaccumer. Yeah, I do.”
“Well, then we’re going to dust the house.” “Oh, dust the house, Grandma? Jack, tell her how much you like dusting the house.”
Jack was boiling now. “Yeah, I like dusting the house.”
He knew he was trapped, not only for now but for the rest of his life.
Later that day, well after Jack had done more than his share of the work assigned to the two grandchildren, his Grandpa said,
“Jack, come here. I saw that little episode earlier today. Let me tell you something, Jack.
I know about the duck, but I didn’t say anything, because I wanted to see how long you were going to let Sally make you her slave.
All you had to do to keep her from holding you hostage was to tell me what you had done.”
God knows that you’ve killed the duck.
You don’t have to hide it.
Satan wants you to remember that you killed the duck and hold you hostage to your guilt.
By confessing our sin to God and allowing Him to forgive us, we can release Sins hold on us.
So the question is, are you confessing sin to him?
You will never find liberty, joy, and renewal in hiding sin.
Richard Sibbes says,
"The way to cover our sin is to uncover it by confession" _Richard Sibbes
God does cover our sin, but we must confess it .
We know something more than even the psalmist knew here.
We know that in Jesus Christ you can find the type of forgiveness found in the gospel: complete pardon for your sins.
In this Psalm we see two fundamental concepts that are expressed in the atoning work of Jesus:
God's hatred of sin and God's willingness to forgive.
The cross displays how God punished sin and how he forgives sinners at the same time, through the wrath- absorbing, sin-covering death of his Son
In great love Jesus endured the floodwaters of judgment for us. If you look to Jesus Christ, you hear the words of Paul: "Therefore, there is now no
condemnation for those in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:1).
Praise God he can and does forgive desperate sinners!
That forgiveness should lead to the Fear of God.
We talked about this just a few weeks ago in Psalm 128.
This is the antidote in our hearts to indifferent repentance.
We can take for granted the fact that God has loved us in Jesus.
We can almost expect God to forgive us, as though we deserve it.
We have a care bear in the sky.
Friends he is Holy.
He takes sin seriously.
So should we.
And if we have a right view of God it should lead us to a healthy fear.
I want us to pause here for a moment to consider how far we’ve come in these Psalms of Ascent.
We started way back in Psalm 120 where the main concern for the psalmist was dwelling with evil men and their sin.
But now here in Psalm 130 the greater concern is dwelling with my own sin!
Greater maturity in Christ brings greater consciousness of our own sin and God’s mercy in our lives
This is our first and longest point, so stay with me.
We see the next part of growing in our hope is to
II. Wait for the Lord expectantly
Psalm 130:5–6 (ESV)
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 psalmist has prayed his prayer, he has cried out to the Lord for mercy, and now he waits expectantly for God to answer.
And there are a number of things we can learn from these verses. First of all our hope is in God’s word. Look at verse 5: “in his word I hope.”
We are not just waiting for help, but we are waiting for the Lord himself, and our hope is based on God’s word.
Don’t base your hope on your feelings or your circumstances, but base your hope fully on the word of God.
Trust God’s promises to you in Scripture.
See God’s promises in Christ, and pray God’s word back to him.
When you put your hope in the Lord and in his word, you may wait for the Lord expectantly. You will be able to pray like David did in Psalm 5:3
Psalm 5:3 (ESV)
O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;
in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
In his Word he meets with us and speaks to us.
In his Word we hear the gospel afresh, his assurance of pardon every day
Psalm 119:147–148 (ESV)
I rise before dawn and cry for help;
I hope in your words.
My eyes are awake before the watches of the night,
that I may meditate on your promise.
In our busy world we must fight to find time to sit patiently before the Lord and in his Word.
Our spiritual lives will be shallow if we refuse to wait for the Lord, if we refuse to be long in moments of prayer.
The Puritans used to say, "Pray until you've prayed.
Don't get in a hurry.
Seek God in the quiet place.
Protect your daily communion with God, and long to see the risen Son, like the watchmen wait for the rising sun.
At least as important as the things we wait for is the work God wants to do in us as we wait…
Picture a blazing hot forge and a piece of gold thrust into it to be heated until all that is impure and false is burnt out.
As it is heated, it is also softened and shaped by the metalworker.
Our faith is the gold; our suffering is the fire.
The forge is the waiting: it is the tension and longing and, at times, anguish of waiting for God to keep his promises…
It isn’t easy to wait.
It demands persistence when common sense says “give up.”
It says “believe” when there is no present evidence to back it up.
Faith is forged in delay.
Character is forged in delay.
The forge is the gap between the promise and the fulfillment.
As gold is purified and shaped in the white-hot heat of a forge, so we and our faith are purified and shaped in waiting.
The psalmist’s hope is in God’s word.
His hope is in God’s promise to rescue and deliver him.
He is like a watchman waiting through the long stretches of the night for the morning to come.
The night is real, the night is dark, and the night is long, but he has no doubt that the morning will come, and so he waits expectantly.
we see finally that all of this leads to hope.
III. Hope in the Lord (7-8)
Psalm 130:7–8 (ESV)
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 Psalm now takes a communal turn.
Not only is he speaking to his downcast soul.
Yes he is trusting in the Lord to forgive.
Walking in the fear of the Lord, looking to his word for confidence that produces waiting hope.
Now he is stirring up other s to join in this hope.
He gives them three reasons
With the Lord is steadfast or unfailing love
Why should you put your hope in the Lord?
First of all, because with the Lord is unfailing love.
The word translated “steadfast love” in verse 7 is the Hebrew word for God’s covenant love or mercy.
God will never break his covenant with his people.
Psalm 86:15 (ESV)
But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
God is not only abounding in love but in faithfulness. He is faithful to his covenant, faithful to his people, unfailing in his love.
1 Corinthians 13:8 (ESV)
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
Human love can come and go and often fails us when we need it most.
But not God’s love. God’s love is unfailing. With the Lord is unfailing love.
2. With the Lord is full redemption
And then with the Lord is full redemption. This redemption was foretold in the sacrifices of the Old Testament but was brought to fulfillment in Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. We read in
Ephesians 1:7 (ESV)
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,
A lot of us are familiar with Romans 3:23 in the New Testament, but Romans 3:24 is a great verse, too! We read in Romans 3:23-24
Romans 3:23–24 (ESV)
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
With the Lord there is full redemption!
Do you have great sin? Don’t be afraid, God has great grace! He has full, lavish, overflowing grace that is greater than all your sin. As the Bible says in Romans 5:20: “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more!” (Romans 5:20)
You can never out-sin God’s grace.
Even when you are in the depths of your sin, you are never out of God’s reach or redemption.
3. God himself will rescue his people
Psalm 130 tells us that God will do it himself!
We couldn’t redeem ourselves and no other human could do it for us, so God took it upon himself to redeem his people from all their sins.
God sent his own Son into the world to die for us so that we might be redeemed.
Even Jesus’ very name proclaims this precious truth.
When Mary was pregnant with Jesus, God’s angel told Joseph:
Matthew 1:21 (ESV)
She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
How wonderful to know that Christ has redeemed us from all our sins.
Not just some of our sins, not just certain classes of sin.
Psalm 130 tells us the Lord himself will redeem his people from all their sins.
No sin left behind!
Psalm 103:2–4 (ESV)
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
God forgives all your sins in Christ.
He redeems your life from the pit, from out of the depths of sin, and crowns you with love and compassion.
Conclusion
This is the message for the believer, hope.
Is there hope for the hurting? Yes! Is there hope for the helpless?
Yes! Is there hope for the sinner?
Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes!
Those who wait on the Lord wait in hope. Life is full of waiting, but God will never disappoint you. With the Lord is unfailing love and with the Lord is full redemption.
As sure as the morning is coming, he will rescue you.
I want to close with a story from Joni Erickson Tada.
Joni snapped her neck in a horrible diving accident at the age of 16 and became severly disabled losing all motor function from here neck dow.
On hope she says this:
But hope is hard to come by. I should know. I remember the time when I was once busy dying. It wasn’t long after I had broken my neck in a diving accident that I spent one particularly hopeless week in the hospital.
I had endured long surgeries to shave down the bony prominences on my back, and it was a long recovery.
I had lost a great deal of weight.
And for almost three weeks I was forced to lie facedown on what’s called a Stryker frame—a long, flat canvas sandwich where they put you faceup for three hours and then strap another piece of canvas on you and flip you facedown to lie there for another three hours.
Trapped facedown, staring at the floor hour after hour, my thoughts grew dark and hopeless.
All I could think was, “Great, God. Way to go. I’m a brand-new Christian.
This is the way you treat your new Christians? I’m young in the faith.
I prayed for a closer walk with you. If this is your idea of an answer to prayer, I am never going to trust you with another prayer again.
I can’t believe that I have to lie facedown and do nothing but count the tiles on the floor on this stupid torture rack. I hate my existence.”
I asked the hospital staff to turn out the lights, close the blinds, close the door, and if anybody came in—visitor, parent, nurse—I just grunted.
I justified it all.
I rationalized that God shouldn’t mind that I would be bitter—after all, I was paralyzed.
And I didn’t care how much joy was set before me. This was one cross I was not going to bear without a battle…
My thoughts got darker because no longer was my bitterness a tiny trickle.
It had become a raging torrent, and in the middle of the night I would imagine God holding my sin up before my face and saying lovingly but firmly, “Joni, what are you going to do about this?
What are you going to do about this attitude?
It is wrong. This sin is wrong. Get rid of it.”
But I, hurting and stubborn, preferred my sins.
I preferred my peevish, snide, small-minded, mean-spirited comments, grunting at people when they walked in or out, and letting food drool out of my mouth.
Those were sins that I had made my own.
… And I broke. I thought, “I can’t do this. I can’t live this way. I would rather die than face this.”
Little did I realize that I was echoing the sentiments of the apostle Paul, who in 2 Corinthians 1:8 talks of being “so utterly burdened beyond [his] strength that [he] despaired of life itself.”
Indeed, he even had in his heart the sentence of death. “O God, I don’t have the strength to face this.
I would rather die. Help me.” That was my prayer. That was my anguish.
… That week a friend came to see me in the hospital while I was still facedown counting the tiles.
She put a Bible on a little stool in front of me, and stuck my mouth stick in my mouth so that I could flip its pages, and my friend told me to turn to Psalm 18.
There I read: “In my distress I called upon the L ORD ; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears. Then the earth reeled and rocked. . . . Smoke went up from his nostrils…
He bowed the heavens and came down. . . . He sent from on high, he took me. . . . He rescued me”—and here’s the best part—“because he delighted in me” (vv. 6-19).
I had prayed for God to help me.
Little did I realize that God was parting heaven and earth, striking bolts of lightning, and thundering the foundations of the planet to reach down and rescue me because he delighted in me.
He showed me in 2 Corinthians 1:9 that all this had happened so that I would “rely not on [myself] but on God who raises the dead.”
And that’s all God was looking for.
He wanted me to reckon myself dead—dead to sin—because if God can raise the dead, you’d better believe he could raise me out of my hopelessness.
He would take it from there. And he has been doing the same for nearly four decades.
Coram Deo, When you cry out to Christ for mercy, he will hear and he will answer. He has never turned anyone away yet.
You may be sunk under a load of sin, you may be calling to him from out of the depths, but God is full of love and mercy.
He will hear your voice and be attentive to your prayer.
No matter how bad your situation, no matter how deep the pit, God’s love is deeper still and he will rescue you from out of the depths. Those who wait on the Lord wait in hope.