And these songs are given to us to direct us, to strengthen our souls in that very ascent. So as we come to the 11th of these songs of ascents, I do want to begin by asking you a question about your own heart and life. And that is, what is your redemption song? Where is your hope of redemption in a world of suffering? Meditating on Psalm 130, This week made me curious, so I used this thing called the internet and looked up some of what people sing about as their hope. And I found that people sing about love, people sing about drugs, people sing about moving on from relationships, people sing about even reincarnation as their hope. That's their redemption song. But these songs of redemption, as you listen, as you look, as you watch, you see how superficial they are, how they don't deal with the true nature of our situation. Psalm 130, by contrast, sings of the true nature of our condition as human beings, and also, therefore, the true hope for redemption. I think we could outline the Psalm this way. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord, verses one through four, will be saved, verses five through eight. There's your psalm. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. It's a glorious psalm of redemption. Pardon me. So what begins as a cry of anguish from the depths of human despair turns into a song of confidence in the Lord's redemption. Let's read it together. 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 watchman for the morning, more than watchman 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. Pardon me. A beautiful psalm. You can see immediately why it's been a favorite down through the centuries amongst God's people. Sometimes even read in ancient Israel in the synagogues on the day of atonement, and then continuing on to the church as a penitential psalm, but not a psalm that focuses on sin, although it definitely acknowledges sin, a psalm that starts from the depths, and then you can even see it in the parallelism and the wording of the psalm works a step-by-step upward, upward, upward, until we are completely hoping in the Lord. So we see in verses one through four a calling on the Lord who forgives. First of all, in the first two verses, there's a voice from the depths. Here we have the basic human condition in this sin-cursed world. The depths here are the total effects of the misery of a sin-cursed world in every dimension, personally, socially, politically, legally, economically, medically, every way you can think of. As mankind feels the effects of sin and the curse, this is what the psalmist is crying from. In fact, There is no other place for us as humans to cry from, is there? For we find ourselves here. Who here today can't say that this last week you have heard and felt the groaning of creation bearing the weight of sin? Sometimes people look at this kind of a thing and they think, well, pastor, this doesn't mean that that all the suffering I go through in my life is just because I did something terrible, right? And so therefore God is like this big, you know, bully in the sky. And when you do something bad, wham, you get it and you suffer. Well, that's the way life is. No, it's not saying that. There is no mechanical kind of connection between, you know, our sin, pardon me, and the suffering of this life. We know far too much about God and even too much from scripture, like Job, about that, to think that way. Nonetheless, it is very important that we recognize right from the beginning in this Psalm that the depths that we cry out of are from the misery of sin. You feel the suffering of this world. You experience the sufferings of sin, both your own sin and the sins of all the rest of the human race. This is what we live with. You feel this. Every single person feels this. One of the songs I looked at this week says, I'm holding on to all I think is safe. It seems I found the road to nowhere and I'm trying to escape. Pardon me. And by the way, this was on a list of somebody's favorite songs of redemption. I mean, this is literally what the song list was called. I'm on the road to nowhere and I'm trying to escape. Another song tried. How long till my soul gets it right? Pardon me. Can any human being ever reach that kind of light? People are suffering the effects of sin and they cry out in it, but they look in all the wrong places. Where do God's people turn when we feel the effects of these debts in our lives? We turn to the Lord, as this Psalm says, they call upon his name. Notice how this Psalm uses the name of the Lord over and over and over again. In fact, it uses both his personal name, Yahweh, out of the depths, I cry to you, Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, the one true and living God, the creator of all things, I call to you. And then it says in verse two, O Lord, Adonai, that is master, Lord, in that sense, hear my voice. And then it will alternate back again. If you, in verse three, O Lord, Yahweh, should mark my iniquities, O Lord, Adonai, who could stand? but with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. And then verse five, I wait for Yahweh, the Lord, my soul waits. And in his word, I hope my soul waits for Adonai, the Lord and the master, the one I am submitted to more than watchman for the morning. And then it concludes the whole psalm with reiterating, going back to and climaxing with the covenant name of God. Oh Israel, hope in Yahweh, for with Yahweh there is steadfast love and with him is plentiful redemption. It truly is a calling upon the name of the Lord and everything that stands for. All of his character, all of his purposes, all of his might and power, his purposes in redemption, as we'll get to in a moment, are what this psalm is appealing to. We call upon the name of the Lord because we know that's the only place where we can truly deal with the suffering brought on from sin. But going back to this first stanza, you'll notice here the emphasis upon cry and voice. 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. God has so constituted us as creatures that we communicate with our voice. And that is also how we communicate with Him. We call upon Him, we cry to Him. And there's an encouragement coming out of this psalm and even an enactment in singing this psalm. Open your mouth and call upon His name. Open your mouth. When you really want help, you open your mouth and you call. You acknowledge that. You say it, even. Pardon me. That's what the Bible says. With the mouth, confession is made into salvation, right? You say, pastor, there's like some magic formula. You have to say something. No, no, no. We're not talking about magic. Again, just like not mechanical. We're talking about a personal relationship. We're talking about when you truly need to communicate, you call out. That's the way God has made you. And folks, if you're truly going to call upon the name of the Lord, you have to cry out to Him. You have to call upon His name. You acknowledge Him. You pray to Him. When you experience the total effects of the misery of this world, cry to the Lord. Don't start looking in other places. Start calling upon the name of the Lord and He will hear. That's what the Psalm is asking Him to do. So there's a voice from the depths which leads to, in verses three and four, with you there is forgiveness. Here the psalm turns to the true reason for, and brings out more explicitly the true reason for the demoralizing, debilitating, depressing, despairing experience of life. Why do people experience the depths? Why do we have to call upon the name of the Lord? It's because of iniquities. And that's what the Psalm turns to. If you, O Lord, should mark, that is, keep a watch over, pay attention to, and acknowledge, write down. If you should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? The fact is here, there's an acknowledgement, even if implicitly, that we are those iniquitous creatures. We are the crooked ones it has the idea of. We're not straight and true. We're bent and crooked. We don't aim at our true end. We go astray. And if the Lord were to truly just give us what we deserve, who could stand? Of course, it's a rhetorical question. The answer every one of you knows as soon as you read the question is no one. There is not a man, woman, and child here this morning that could stand before God if he were to take acknowledgement of your iniquities, and that was the end of the story, right? Pardon me. You see, this Psalm is implicitly appealing to the truth that we stand before a holy, almighty God guilty. James Montgomery Boyce, when he was teaching on this, rightly insisted, we need, a generation ago he was saying this or more, we need a recovery of a sense of sin. We need to discover how desperate our condition is apart from God. We need to know that God's wrath is not an outmoded theological construct, but a terrible and impending reality. We need to come out of our sad fantasy world and begin to tremble before the awesome holiness of our almighty judge. As I said, that was said a generation or so ago. And if it was true then, how much more is it true today? A recovery of a sense of sin. Folks, you're never going to understand the depths of what you are experiencing if you don't put that all into the picture of here's a holy, almighty God, and you are a horrible sinner. You are crooked to your core apart from Him. And if God were to simply give you what you deserve, and that was the end of the story, you could not stand before Him. Nobody could. There should be a real sense in our midst here as God's people that should testify even to a watching world, the depth and reality of sin. Folks, you cannot solve the problem of sin with anything that man can do. You have to grasp how deep our problem is in order to even begin to grasp the real solution to the problem. And here we come back to those songs I was talking about earlier. Why is people saying these things? And they experience the despair of this world, and they try to look for something that will give them hope. Why do they never reach for what is the real answer? In part, because they never acknowledge what is the real problem. And it's sin, it's iniquity. That is, we are guilty. The problem is guilt. And folks, you can't medicate guilt away. You can't legislate guilt away. You can't just make it go away with a different political system. Or you can't get rich enough. You know, hey, let's get a roaring economy and we'll have all the stuff we can ever dream of and more. And you can't get rid of guilt. It won't solve the problem. So what does deal with guilt? There's only one thing, and that's forgiveness, which is why the Psalm says, but with you, there is forgiveness that you may be feared. Forgiveness is what deals with guilt. It's amazing what we humans will do with our guilt, because our drive for justification is unyielding. We want to be justified. We want to be in the right. We can't live with ourselves or others when we're not. And so much of what you see going on even in our society today is a drive, is driven by a need to deal with guilt. And that's not the whole story, but that's certainly a part of it. And you won't understand human society if you don't understand that is a powerful drive always going on. You think of this climate crusades that are going on and you listen to the language of the people who are promoting it. Climate change is a catastrophe that's going to ruin the world. And we have to do something about this. Folks, part of the drive there is a deep need for self-justification. We have to be able to fix the evil of the world. You think about the racial crusades of our day on whatever side so many times. You see the, what can I call them, sexual orientation crusades of our day. There's a deep guilt going on here that is trying to be assuaged. You know, men reject God. They'll throw off God's shackles. They'll ignore God. They'll try to pretend he doesn't exist. They'll try to be God, but guilt won't go away. And they have to come up with something to fix it. Something has to deal with it. You can't make it go away. So we strive to justify ourselves. But coming back to the psalm here, there is only one who can truly and finally forgive. And that is the Lord. The good news is that it is his nature to be forgiving. But with you, and this is describing a quality, a characteristic, with you there is forgiveness. Forgiveness. Here's the true issue that deals with guilt. This is what can remove guilt, true releasing from the debt of sin. And this says here in this wonderful statement, which I think has puzzled many people over the years, but there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared. Have you ever been one of those people that wondered what's the connection between the first part of that verse and the next part, right? Why does forgiveness lead to fear? Shouldn't forgiveness erase fear? Shouldn't forgiveness mean we don't have to fear anymore? Pardon me. Hopefully you already have an inkling of the answer based on what we've talked about with the fear of the Lord already. But how does forgiveness contribute to the fear of the Lord? I wanna just share with you two ways. First of all, God's true character as a forgiving God reveals his greatness and his goodness as something greater than we could ever dream of. Remember we've said the fear of the Lord deals with a recognition of how great God is in relationship to how small we are. see who God truly is in relationship to myself and that I am nothing to him. That greatness inspires fear in us. But then we begin to learn of this great God and we realize he's even greater than a God we could ever dream up because he's not a God like any man, any God mankind ever has dreamed up. He's actually a God who forgives. Now here's the amazing thing, he is so great that not only can he be perfectly just and holy, he can also be perfectly forgiving at the same time without contradiction. How so? Of course, he's revealed that to us supremely in the work of Jesus Christ, right? This is who this God is. He is the just and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus. Why? Because he himself could take upon himself our sins. He's not a God who just blinks or winks at sin in order to forgive. He's not a God who just says, well, I know you meant well, even though you didn't really measure up to my standard, so we'll let you pass. I'll let you into heaven. Pardon me. He's not a God who says, well, I know you prayed a lot over the course of your life, and you tried hard, So even though you were full of iniquities, I'll just set that aside and we'll pretend that never happened. This is not the true God. He is perfectly just and everything he does always enacts his perfect justice. His judgment enacts his perfect judgment. It's justice, excuse me. So how is that? It's when his judgment is enacted in Jesus Christ. When he takes upon himself to pay the true results of our sin. When He enters into the depths of our condition and then satisfies His own wrath and then raises His Son from the dead, there we have a truly great God. And folks, that drives us to fear Him when we recognize how great He is. Secondly, so that's the first way forgiveness leads to fear. But secondly, the Lord's forgiveness produces a people who fear Him. That is, far from producing licentiousness, the Lord's forgiveness draws us to repentance and faith and hence obedience. There is forgiveness with you. And what's the result of the Lord exercising His forgiveness? People who fear Him. That's what actually results from the Lord's forgiveness. This is an amazing thing. You remember as the apostle Paul was expounding the gospel in the book of Romans? how he right away turned to those who had misconstrued what he'd been saying about God's justification freely in Jesus Christ and say, hey, well, if God's grace abounds where sin is, then we can sin all the more, right? And he says, you don't have a clue about God's grace. If anyone thinks God's grace is just sort of a pass for sin, then you don't understand God's grace. You don't understand the God you're dealing with here. You don't understand how powerful his work is, that when he saves somebody, he changes them. He brings them into union with himself and gives them new life. So they recognize him, they love him, they want to please him. They begin to change more and more into his image by the power of his spirit. They repent of their sins. It's God's goodness that leads them to repentance. They repent of their sins, they trust the Lord, and hence they obey Him. God's forgiveness, what does God's forgiveness actually produce in the world? The fear of the Lord. That's an amazing thing, isn't it? So many people today all around us who don't know our God think that forgiveness leads to just ignoring or overlooking sin. You kind of let it go. That's what forgiveness is. And they don't know God. We have the blessing of looking from the depths up to the God who truly is Yahweh, the Lord and Master of all, seeing how He truly acts in His Son, Jesus Christ, and coming to realize that this leads us to fear Him wonderfully. So you have, with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. This is why we call upon His name. We truly turn to Him because we realize there is nowhere else to turn. There's no other God. There's no other one who can forgive. And He is a forgiving God. We turn to Him. That leads us to the second part of the Psalm here, waiting on the Lord for redemption. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And here's the confidence begins to come out more and more. You see in the first part of this Psalm addressing, speaking directly to God, but now the attention shifts, speaking more to others, to the assembly of God's people. Finding confidence in God's salvation, waiting on the Lord for redemption. We have the waiting soul in verses five and six. I wait for the Lord. My soul waits. And in his word, I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchman for the morning, more than watchman for the morning. This waiting and hoping posture. Waiting is a position of hope and trust. And by the way, this is important to understand to capture The imagery of this Psalm here waiting is not merely inert, pointless suspension of activity, just some kind of emotionlessness. Okay, I wait. Okay, now what? I'm just supposed to sit here, right? Is that waiting on God? I just sit here and do nothing and see what happens? This is not at all what the scriptural waiting is talking about. Remember waiting. One of the things that differentiates waiting from merely, maybe in our vernacular, hanging out. When you hang out, you have a purpose to your activities. You're just passing time. You're just doing whatever happens, right? There's no real point to anything. That's not waiting. Waiting always includes expectation. There's something we're looking for to happen here, that we need to happen here. That's the whole goal of everything we're waiting for. That's why, in fact, the word wait is related to watch, watching for something. When you're waiting, you're looking, you're expecting. And this is what's so important about biblical waiting. Hoping is intrinsic to waiting on the Lord. One man put it this way, I think it was well said, waiting does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions. It is the opposite of desperate and panicky manipulations of scurrying and worrying. Right, that's a good way to put it. Going about our assigned tasks, trusting God, to bring it to its appointed end, to give meaning and purpose to our lives, and to make them worthwhile, to redeem us, in other words. Now, as you think about this waiting, if that's what waiting is, and you think about this waiting in our lives, it's important to recognize why this is brought up at this point. When we turn to the Lord, when we cry out to Him from the depths, pardon me, in our earthly pilgrimage, knowing that he is the only one who can bring forgiveness and therefore give hope to our lives, does that mean we just expect the Lord to snap his fingers and everything's good? No, right? No more pain, no more sorrow. As soon as you call upon the name of the Lord, boom, you're in heaven, right? Is that the way life actually works? No, it isn't, is it? There is always, in this earthly pilgrimage, a waiting kind of perspective. Again, one man says, the waiting might be for days upon end, months. And I would say, actually add to that, in some senses, our whole life on this earthly pilgrimage is a form of waiting. It's a form of hoping and trusting in the Lord. But he goes on here, solutions for the messes our sinful behavior causes are rarely quick and easy. But when we give ourselves into God's keeping, he will bring about our deliverance in his perfect timing. He is a forgiving and merciful God. I think that's well said. One of the reasons we have to describe this as waiting is because it's not instantaneous fixing everything. We're crying out from the depths and we keep waiting, right? And we keep trusting and we keep hoping because we know the Lord will accomplish our salvation. Pardon me. This becomes, if you might say, the driving or the fundamental reality of our lives. Why does everything go back to faith, right? Because we depend upon the Lord. Our soul waits for the Lord. All of our living desires begin consumed with the Lord, the Lord, the Lord. He is the one I want. And I think even our waiting purifies us in that regard. Why does the Lord make us wait throughout this life? One of the things he's doing, folks, I think many times is he's weaning your desires off of all the things that are not ultimately him. He's weaning your trust. He's taking away your trust off of all the things in yourself that you think are so important and putting it on him. He's bringing you to a place where He is your only hope. And that's actually good because that's true. He is your only hope. I think of even the aging process that we all experience in this life. It's part of that waiting. Why does God, even for believers, I mean, why does He, we have to get old and suffer the effects of sin in this world? I mean, the wages of sin is death, right? Why do we have to get old and die? Pardon me. Because God is teaching us to put our hope in Him. We so naturally, especially when we're young, right? The glory of young men is their strength. We think we're capable. We think we know. We think we can do all these things. And we get older and we get older. And all these dreams we had for all the things we were going to, how great we were. And we find out Nobody else seems to think, oh, I'm so great. I've accomplished all these wonderful things. And I'm starting to lose all my abilities. And I'm starting to not even be able to think and remember things like I used to. And God is training you. He's saying, wait, your soul, all of your living desires have to be to the Lord. He is your whole hope. And therefore, it concludes with a statement of confidence, in fact, a command, hope in the Lord's redemption. I love the way this has moved all the way from I'm crying out of the depths, now to I am giving a command to everyone else, hope in the Lord. For with the Lord, there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. This is an imperative addressed to God's people, hope in the Lord. So I would just pass on this command to you this morning. Here's a command from God to you this morning. Hope in the Lord. That's what you need to do, right? Here is God's true character. Here's why you can hope within Him. Because with the Lord, there is steadfast love. We've already seen that with Him is forgiveness, but now we're going to go even beyond that. There is steadfast love. He is a God of chesed. covenant, loyal, kindness, love, commitment to His people, to bring all of His goodness to them, to bring them to Himself, to be their God and Him their people forever, and not to allow anything to separate that bond of love. That's what we have with God. So the command for you this morning is to look at the Lord, Yahweh, and to see who He truly is as you go through the misery of sin in this life. Do you see Him as a God of steadfast love? that he's bringing everything to his appointed conclusion in himself. And he will never, ever fail his people in that. Not only that, it says with him is not just redemption, but plentiful redemption. Pardon me, I think it was Coverdale who first translated in English, plenteous redemption. And that's kept on, it's a beautiful picture there. Plentiful, plenteous redemption that God gives here. In other words, this is all redemption for all aspects of our misery. Yes, you're crying out from the depths. You're experiencing in every dimension of life. Is there redemption that can truly match the depths of the misery you're going through? Yes, with the Lord. There's a kind of love here that is powerful enough, that is great enough, that is good enough to actually deal with every single aspect of the pain of sin that you feel and to bring it to its fullness and to overwhelm you with all of his goodness. You might be overwhelmed right now with the wickedness of this world, but here's a goodness that will overwhelm all wickedness. It's God. And that's why it says in verse eight, with his stunning expression of confidence, he will, Redeem Israel from all his iniquities. All his iniquities. God is going to triumph in the end. All iniquity, God will overcome. He will buy back. He will purchase to himself his people. He will redeem Israel from all his iniquity. Hope in the Lord's redemption. What a beautiful psalm of confidence. A psalm that also almost begins like a lament. but ends having that lament turned into a song of confidence and hope in the Lord. So now that we've heard this song, I just wanna make one more point here today. I want you to hear this song again. In contrast to the songs that all the world around us sings, I want you to hear this song of redemption on the lips of Jesus, God in the flesh, the son of David, as he was just acclaimed on Palm Sunday, right? Folks, could Jesus really pray this prayer? Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Could he really say, O Lord, if you should mark in Nicotes, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. I thought Jesus didn't sin. How could he pray this prayer? Folks, the reason Jesus can pray this prayer truthfully is because the Lord has laid on him the iniquities of us all, right? When you see, even this week, as we will consider Christ going to the cross, when you see Jesus coming to the cross, you see his incarnation, I should start there, when you see him taking upon himself true humanity and all of our weakness, true human flesh, just like us, living in this sinful world, ultimately culminating in going to the cross and Lord laying on him our iniquities, what you are seeing is Jesus taking upon himself the depths of our iniquities in a way that no one here even begins to understand. You think of the most pain you've ever experienced in your life because of all the effects of sin. And you just need to understand today That doesn't hold a candle to what Jesus took, because He took it all. Everything that this whole sinful world has ever dished out against God. On behalf of His people, Jesus took it. And He cried out from a depth that no human being ever before or since has ever known. not because he sinned, and here's the amazing thing, but because he identified with his people. He cried out for forgiveness. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. We see in the Old Testament some prayers of confession a little bit like this. We see in Nehemiah, praying on behalf of the sinful people. We see Daniel praying, confessing the sins of Israel, not because he personally had done a lot of those wrong things. In fact, he was an amazing example of a faithful man. And yet he said, we have sinned. He's identified with his people. And now in a much greater way than a Nehemiah or a Daniel could ever do, You have Jesus being the full embodiment of his people, truly taking to himself to bear their iniquities, crying out from the depths, but finding hope in the Heavenly Father. There is forgiveness. In fact, in himself, accomplishing that forgiveness. Did he have to wait for the Lord? Did his soul have to wait upon the Lord more than a watchman for the morning? Yes. He went through the dark night of the soul, and He comes out triumphant saying, 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." Folks, based on the work of Jesus Christ, and especially today, based upon His triumphant resurrection from the dead, God vindicating His servant, Jesus, I can pronounce to you today that He will redeem all of His people from all their iniquities. There is no doubt about it. It's absolutely accomplished. And that applies to you if you're one of His people. It is absolutely certain that God will redeem you from all of your iniquities. And it is absolutely certain that He will redeem all of us together from all of our iniquities. All the pains and sorrows of this world will be put away. We sang about it a moment ago here. Tell me ye who hear him groaning, was there ever grief like his? Friends through fear his cause disowning, foes insulting his distress. Many hands were raised to wound him. Pardon me, none would interpose to save. But the deepest stroke that pierced him was the stroke that justice gave. God accomplishing his forgiveness. Folks, we cannot ignore the depths of sin, our own sin, and the misery it really causes. Pardon me. Tell me ye who think of sin but lightly, nor suppose the evil great. Here may view its nature rightly. Here its guilt may estimate. Mark the sacrifice appointed. We cannot ignore sin and expect to find resolution in our lives. And that's what our world is trying to do. but we have a good news. We have a gospel, right? Here's the rock of our salvation, as we sang a moment ago. So let me just close by saying this today. Because of Jesus, whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. That is God's absolute promise. I would ask, if you have come in here today feeling the depths, do you have that confidence? the absolute assurance in Jesus Christ that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. I hope you do. And if that confidence is yours today, appropriate it by calling upon the name of the Lord. Rejoice in the Lord Jesus Christ today. Let's confess our faith in him, that he is Lord, our saving, crucified, resurrected Lord that we worship today. Jesus is Lord, let's say it together. Jesus is Lord, amen.