Please turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm chapter 130. We're going to be dealing with the text in its entirety. Verses 1 to 8. As I was reading this Psalm some months ago, I thought of an incident that had happened somewhat recently on July 5th in the St. Louis River in Duluth, Minnesota. A man named David Jones was kayaking within the river and heard faint screaming, kind of at a distance. And it was the screaming of a six-year-old boy in the midst of the river, unable to make it to shore. There he was, stranded, alone, in the middle of the St. Louis River, in Duluth, and he was inevitably going to drown. He was abandoned by his father, and he's all alone. And because of the boy's cries for help, David Jones, this random kayaker, heard and kayaked near him. He heard and he made the boy grab onto his kayak. The boy held on, and they both waited until they finally reached ashore, and the boy was led to safety. A cry, a scream, a boy drowning in the depths of a river, and because of that cry, rescue. A pulling out of the depths. And friends, like that young boy, in a sense, the psalmist in Psalm 130 is crying out. And he's crying out of the depths. This word that suggests the sea or the water is being poured out above you. In other psalms like this, like in Psalm 62, the psalmist waits on God to deliver him from his enemies, and the depths are those enemies. Deliver me from these depths that surround me. But in this psalm, the enemy is his sin and himself. He cries out to God to deliver him from the depths of despair concerning his own sinfulness. He's drowning in his own sinfulness, and here's what he says. We begin at verse 1 of Psalm chapter 130. A song of ascent. 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? With you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord. My soul waits, and in His word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning. More than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord. For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with Him is plentiful redemption. And He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities thus far. Let's go to the Lord one more time in prayer. Lord God, we ask your blessing upon the Word of God. Unlock your Word to us. We want to know your Word and apply it to us, each one of us. We might know how to fight sin more and live before you more. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Brothers and sisters, here's the question we're seeking to answer tonight. from the text. What do we do? What do you do? What do we do when we find ourselves drowning in the ocean of our sin? Maybe you're here, even now, and you found yourself here in a state of habitual misery because you're drowned in the depths of your own sinfulness. You're miserable, and of course you are, you're a Christian. God's given you a spirit, a hatred for sin, and a desire to be holy, but you're stuck. So what do we do when we are mired, bogged down, and sinking into our own sinfulness? Well, the passage is going to answer that very question. And here's the point of the passage as I see it. When you're drowning, or if you're drowning, in the depths of your sin, cry to, wait on, and hope in the God of steadfast love and plentiful redemption. I'll repeat the point. When you are drowning in the depths of your sin, cry to, wait on, hope in the God of steadfast love and plentiful redemption. That's what we're going to try to accomplish here today, to kind of get to know what to do when I'm in the midst of the depths of sin. If you're going to get three things out of the sermon, I hope it's this. When in sin, I must cry out to God. Then I must wait for Him. And my only hope in all of this, and even with the danger and threat of my own sin, is Christ's redeeming work. So my prayer, brothers and sisters, is that this text would change your life. And that in the midst of misery over sin, in the midst of the depths of sin, you learn to cry out to God, wait on Him for His presence, and hope in His redemption. So as you probably guessed, we're going to divide the text into three parts. And it's the three parts that were in the point itself. Cry to, wait on, hope in God. So the first point is to cry, verses 1-4. The second part, to wait, verses 5-6. The third point, to hope, verses 7-8. First, before we begin to dive into the text, I think it's helpful to go into some background about the psalm. Again, perhaps you've felt exactly like what the psalmist is describing in this text, drowning in the depths of despair. Well, this psalm, if you've noticed from the kind of subtitle, is one of the psalms or songs of ascents. It's a series of psalms that the Israelites would sing as they would mount, go up the mountain to Jerusalem on their way to the temple. And they'd sing these songs to God and to one another for their edification. And a lot of these psalms, some of these psalms are concerned with the deliverance of Israel from her enemies, her surrounding enemies. Israel feels this oppression from around, and there's this steadfast faith that God will deliver Israel from all its surrounding enemies. And that's what the psalmist is talking about throughout these songs of ascents from different people, enemies surrounding the psalmist. And if you look at the words, as I mentioned, he's crying out out of a need to God, out of the depths, and out of these depths he's crying out to God. And as I mentioned before, that depth kind of language is water kind of plunged into the sea, drowning, and crying out to God. So the psalmist, in the songs of the sense, is talking about the depths of trouble from enemies and surrounding nations, and crying out to God. But as I mentioned before, the enemies surrounding the psalmist in this psalm are not the nations, they're not persecutors, it's not those people that are seeking David's life to oppress him. No friends, the enemy surrounding the psalmist is within, and it's the psalmist's own encroaching, drowning sinfulness. How do we know this? Look at verse 3 and 4. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. A kind of mention of surrounding nations, persecutors. The only kind of persecution that we're aware of is inward sin, inward iniquity. That sets me at odds with God. So, the psalmist is crying out to God out of these deep waters of despair. He's drowning in the depths of his own sin. And it's his own doing as your own misery. Maybe you're sitting here today and you found yourself stuck and mired in your sin. We feel our culpability. We feel our sinfulness before God. And he drowns in this despair and sorrow for its own sake. And it's because of his own sin and sinfulness, as I mentioned. And maybe you've been there, friends, and I said that before, but maybe you've been exactly where the psalmist is in Psalm 130. The feeling of being submerged and almost enslaved, bogged down, mired in your own sin. Happiness and joy, vitality and religion and spiritual things is a distant reality. And instead all you know is struggling, the lure of sin, constant guilt, and just backsliding in abandonment. That's exactly what the psalmist is feeling here. And from that we can conclude that you, Christian, may encounter times of great sorrow and a sense of drowning in the depths of sadness because of your own sinfulness. What is to be done? when you drown in the depths of your own sinfulness. When like Jonah, you're plunged in the middle of the sea. Or like the child mentioned earlier, you're placed in the middle of the sea and are barely keeping afloat in your Christian life and at times are barely able to discern the difference between yourself and the world surrounding you. What do you do? Well, we do what the psalmist does in this psalm. First thing he does is cry out to God out of the depths. And notice this cry. It's a cry of utter desperation. He cries out of the depths to the Lord, and then he uses this really desperate, fervent language to God. Do you see it? Oh Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy. He's begging God to take notice of his drowning in his sin and to pay complete attention to the voice of his supplications. He is so insistent on being heard that he ascribes to God body parts that he doesn't have. God doesn't have ears, he's a spirit, and yet he's so desperate that God would hear this prayer that he says, with your ears, hear my voice. And in the psalmist's immediate, desperate cry to God in the midst of his sin despair, we brothers and sisters find a powerful lesson for ourselves. When we have drowned ourselves in the depths of our sin despair, we ought to, and we'll see the motive later, be propelled to immediately and fervently crying out to God in the midst of them. We ought to cry out in the midst of our drowning to the only one, who can reach down and lift us up from these depths. And Christian, may I ask just personally, how often is that a challenge for you when you are plunged in the midst of despair? Again, there are some here probably who are in the midst of sin despair and backsliding and drowning in the depths of your misery. We're often hindered from crying out because of a knowledge of the guilt and reality of our sin. We've remained in the depths of sin for so long, and they're our own doing. You say to yourself, I've placed myself in those depths. I've brought myself to these depths. How can I cry out to God from them? Well, friends, you're feeling exactly what the psalmist feels in verse 3. He notices, look down at verse 3. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? God, the psalmist is seeing his own sinfulness, the very sin he plunged himself in. And not only is he seeing his own sinfulness, he's seeing the justice, holy, fierce judgment of God. He says to the Lord, if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? He's recognizing that, as the Hebrew says here, if God were to make a list, let's say, of iniquities, and take that list and guard it with his life, There's no one that could stand before God. In the midst of all that depth of misery and sin, God taking notes of every single bit of sin that plunged the psalmist and you, dear brother and sister, into that sin. Who could stand? And some of us, feeling that guilt keenly, are kept from crying out. And friends, on the one hand, we're right. God is fiercely righteous and just and the judger of the wicked. He does keep a list of those who are apart from Him and judges them according to their sins. Friends, we ought to realize that that's no grounds for distancing ourselves from God. To think this way is to deal with a Christless God, a God without a mediator, without an intercessor, without a man in between, and without the God-man, Christ Jesus. The psalmist says in verse 3, if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But then verse 4 comes, that but, O Lord, who could stand, but with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. We ought to praise God for all the buts of Scripture. Like Ephesians 2, when Paul is listing out the sins of our fleshliness before we had known God, and then turns it all on its head with the but God was rich in mercy. The psalmist maintains that there is forgiveness with God and that the bent of God's heart is not such to guard a list of our iniquities and hold it against us and bar us entry. The bent of God's heart is free pardon, free forgiveness, free entrance into His presence. Even that word in the Hebrew that's talking about forgiveness. It's used in the Old Testament of the Day of Atonement. When the Israelites would place their sins on the atoning sacrifice and transfer their sins on this sacrifice. So friends, if you're here today and one of the reasons you bring in your own head from distancing yourself from God and from crying out to God is your own record of sin and your thought that God marks and keeps a record of your sins. If that's your thought, you're absolutely without excuse. You're without excuse in your hard thoughts toward God. You think that the bent of God's heart towards you, his child, in the midst of your misery and accumulated sin, is to guard with all his might the record of your sins? To do so, friends, would be to deny what 1 Corinthians 13, 6 tells us of God. That love does not keep a record of wrongdoing. God himself delights to take his sin-sick, sin-weary, sin-drowning people with a record filled with sin and to wipe it all away in Christ Jesus. So friends, if that's the heart of God towards our sin, How could we delay or deny ourselves from approaching Him with fervency? But friends, the psalmist takes verses 3 and 4 of Psalm 130 as a motive and a grounds to cry out to God in the midst of his sin. He's the one who does not mark our iniquities, but gives free forgiveness towards me. He does it speedily. And if he does that, then I can cry out in the midst of my iniquity and in the midst of the drowning depths. Friends, let that be. propelling thing that drives you to God in Christ. So friends, think about it. Our temptation is to be like, say, the disciples, for instance, in the garden of Gethsemane. When Jesus is there laid in with our sin sorrow, he immediately cries out to God and brings his requests before him. And the disciples cannot pray for long, but fall asleep with sorrow. And so often we are like those disciples, distancing ourselves from God because of our own sorrow over sin, when we ought to be like Christ, running to God with our sorrows, with our sins. Friends, as I said, take as fuel to go to God in crying out to Him, the bent of God's heart being mercy supremely manifested to us, as we'll see later, in the pardon of our sins and the sacrifice of Christ. Friends, if you're struggling and delaying crying out of sins because of your feeling of guilt and are in the depths, you have a friend that has dealt with the very same thing. One godly man, Robert Murray McShane, struggled similarly. And listen to how he himself dealt with this tendency. This is what he says. I feel, when I have sinned, an immediate reluctance to go to Christ. I'm ashamed to go. I feel as if it would do no good to go, as if it were making Christ a minister of sin to go straight from the swine trough to the best robe and a thousand other excuses. But I am persuaded they are all lies, direct from hell. John argues the opposite way. If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father. Jeremiah 3.1 and a thousand other scriptures are against it. I am sure that there is neither peace nor safety from deeper sin, but in going directly to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is God's way of peace and holiness. It is folly to the world and the beclouded heart, but it is the way. So friends, just applicationally, Do you see this delay in the crying out in the midst of the depths of your sin as a lie direct from hell? Do you see it as a desire to prop up your own righteousness before God to have Him eliminate that long record before you, before approaching Him? And that this itself is a denial of free pardon and grace in Christ Jesus. Even now in the midst of this sermon, to cry out to God silently in your hearts. To hear you in the midst of your despair. And to cry out for rescue. So friends, in summary, the psalmist in the midst of sin despair cries out to God knowing that with God his heart is bent towards forgiveness. And not keeping a record of sins. But then the question is, should we, as a congregation of believers, be content with forgiveness alone? What does this forgiveness lead us to? Where does the psalmist go to next? Well, we find that in the next verses, in verses 5 to 6. The psalmist goes from directly crying out to God to describing his disposition in prayer in the midst of his sin. And this is what he says. 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. So friends, what is the psalmist waiting for? What is he hoping in God for? He's waiting on God for God. The way the psalmist would have waited on God for dealing with his enemies is the way he waits on God in the response to his guiltiness over his sins. In other words, the psalmist waits for God's return of favorable presence in the wake of his sins. And friends, you yourself, in your repentance, when you've caught yourself in sin despair and in the depths, What is your own hope for in your repentance? What do you desire? Why are you crying out to God in the midst of debts or in the midst of sin? Is it escape from punishment or garnering God's favor or His blessing on your endeavors, maybe your work, or a prolonged healthy life? And what did the psalmist desire? He desired to confess his sins. to be done with them, to be rid of them before God, because he wanted God Himself. And what of you? Is it those previous things, or is it, as the psalmist, thirst, and hunger, and bold waiting on the living God Himself? What makes you most miserable is, as the hymn writer said, the sins that drove the Spirit of God from your breast. You cry out to Him, So where did God go? What happened to God here? If this isn't salvation, what is this waiting all about? And again, to bring it home, maybe some of you here, again, experiencing the depths of sin, experiencing being surrounded by sin, You've emerged from the depths of sin despair, let's say you've confessed that sin before God, weight somewhat alleviated, but the sense of God's nearness, the sense of God's pardon, the sense of fellowship with God, that life vitality and power in Christianity that you once had is stunted. The word of pardon is not felt in you. We see that in these two verses. He waits for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope. That word is not just the scriptures. He's not just waiting or hoping in the Bible itself, but it's probably him waiting for that word of forgiveness from God. Waiting for God to proclaim forgiveness to his own soul. So maybe you're like that. God's distance is acutely felt. You feel spiritual desertion. God's favorable presence, communion with Him, joy in Him is a distant reality. Scripture's commandment to rejoice always in the Lord, and again I say rejoice, sounds like a total unrealistic expectation. And if this were not bad enough, you yourself may feel that your sins have forfeited any right you may have to plead with God concerning the return of the fellowship with him you once knew. Would God indeed come back, you might wonder, if you've already grieved and quenched his spirit and disobeyed him so grievously and even in a prolonged manner? Some, sadly, might even be in this form of Christianity, so-called, and think that this is normal Christianity from now on. It's not about joy and vitality in God, but it's about walking by faith, and the other stuff doesn't really matter. This is the kind of Christianity that God has dealt me. Friends, what does the psalmist do as he cries out to God and emerges from his sin? According to verse 5 and verse 6, The psalmist determines within himself to wait on the Lord and wait for his pardoning word. If you look at the language of the text, it's emphatic and it's bold. The psalmist says, I wait for the Lord. He determines within himself to wait on him and hope in his word despite his sin, despite the depths of drowning in sinfulness. And he waits for the Lord. You notice this very unique phrase, more than watchman for the morning. I wonder what that means, more than watchmen for the morning. The psalmist is saying, the way those watchmen that guard the city, or have their post in guarding some kind of building, in the night watch, wait for the sun to arise, so that they might be able to go back home, enjoy sleep, enjoy their family. The way they wait expectantly for that sun. I wait, more than they, for the Lord, and for His return. And even the way he says twice, more than watchman for the morning, more than watchman for the morning, it gives you the sense of a watchman looking for the rising sun, turning and seeing if the sun has started to peer over perhaps the mountain and to shine, that a shift is over. And that repetition makes it all the more clear that this is an important passage within Psalm 130. This almost waits for God more than watchman for the morning, actively and boldly. And you, Christian, after you've cried out for forgiveness of sins, ought not stop there. You ought not to stop your expectation and stunt it to thinking that all God will give me is forgiveness, a glorious thing, but will withhold from me his presence and joy and life and spiritual things. If we're indifferent towards living, active, vital communion with God, coursing through our veins, we'll soon become living spiritual corpses. And I think it would be good for us to see that. I don't think I'm reading too much into this text, but to see other Psalms like this and the way the psalmists confess freely their sin before God and hope on God for His return. This psalm is one of seven penitential psalms in the book of Psalms. Psalms that express repentance before God from sins committed. I think it's important for us to listen to one of the most famous of the penitential psalms, Psalm 51. See if once you see these verses in Psalm 51, your sins will preclude you, keep you from seeking God's face again for the restoration of experiential felt religion. I wonder if there are any in this congregation who have murdered and committed adultery like David. Has anyone murdered or committed adultery after their profession of faith? David did. He knew what it was to be filled with the Holy Spirit and used by him mightily. To be king of Israel and then to commit sexual, grievous sexual immorality and murder. He felt the tremendous guilt of his sins committed against God and what is his plea? Psalm 51 verses 11 to 12, part of what we read in that call to worship. He cries out to God, after this confession of sins against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight. He asks, cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. He doesn't stop at just mere forgiveness and mere cleansing. And I feel bad even saying that, mere forgiveness and cleansing. It costs the blood of Jesus Christ. I'm not trying to downplay that. But he sees forgiveness and cleansing of sin as a means to enter into communion and vital relationship and fellowship with God. And Christ did the very same thing. When in the midst of sin agony, not his sin but ours in him, Hebrews 12, 1 tells us, for the joy that was set before him, reconciliation with the Father, coming to him again, experiencing joy and fellowship with him. He endured the cross, despising the shame. He intensely waited and desired the restoration of fellowship with his God. So you're here and you're saying to yourself, yeah, I know that God forgives my sin when I confess it, 1 John 1, 9. If I confess my sins, He is faithful and just to forgive them and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. He may forgive, but He won't restore and won't come back that presence that I once knew, at least not how it once was. He won't give me joy and vitality and spiritual things that I forfeited. He won't give that word of pardon and sense of forgiveness and deliverance from my sins committed against Him. Friend, if that's you, if that's the temptation and bent of your heart towards God, Pray like David. Pray like the psalmist here. Be like Jesus. And you're waiting in the midst of darkness. And say to him, I wait on you. So friend, you cry out to him, and then you wait. You don't rest till the word of forgiveness is applied, till your heart, till you have a restoration, a fellowship with God in his presence. And so we wait and we hope. But where do we get the confidence and the boldness to cry out to God and to wait on Him? How do we get this confidence to trust that God will hear our cry and God will return in our waiting? That's where we come to our last point. Number three, hope. The psalmist goes from praying to God directly and crying out from the depths of his sin to narrating his own experience of waiting on God, to teaching the people of God, Israel, and telling them, 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 psalmist turns to Israel, and in the same way God would have given deliverance from Israel's many enemies, the psalmist tells Israel, mired in sin perhaps, like some here, and says to the Israelites, those sin, death, drowning sinners, that God will deliver them abundantly from that sin. And any hope, brothers and sisters, any hope we would have towards God and the answer to these prayers is completely hinged upon, our only hope is in the Lord with whom there is steadfast love, plentiful redemption, and a future redemption from all iniquities. So friends, again, if we look at it just line by line, the hope that the people of God can derive in him, it's found after that for, here's the reason, for with the Lord there is steadfast love. His covenant immovable love towards his people. Steadfast, immovable, constant, and then that wonderful phrase, with God there is plentiful redemption. Plentiful redemption. The hope of the Israelite, the hope you Christian, you Christian mired in your sin, the hope you have for the forgiveness of your sins and the progress of any holiness, anything in this life is this, a steadfast love of God supremely manifested in his redemption. And again, as I said, if you notice that phrase, plentiful redemption, God does not just deliver from sins in an equivalent way. plentifully, abundantly redeems us and delivers us from our sins. It's a plenteous redemption. God is the God, brothers and sisters, who according to Psalm 23 does not just fill our cups, but causes them to overflow. Christ's love is not only sweet, but surpasses knowledge. His ways are not just wise, but above ours, and His redemption is not just equivalent to our sins, but plenteous, overwhelming, bottomless as His being, and His person, and His acts. And that's why the Puritans could say there's more mercy in Christ than sin in us. Because every one of his wonderful attributes is in super abundance towards us. So friends, all those sins that you're mired in, he will abundantly deliver you from it, confession of sin, and will deliver you from them abundantly and plenteously, and has done, in the death of Jesus Christ. Finally, we look at verse eight. You notice the psalmist here is giving hope to the sinners of Israel. This believer talking about this hopeful redemption in the future it seems. He says in verse 8, and he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. He will redeem. The Israelites are looking forward to a time, the psalmist is, where one would come and would in the future redeem the people of Israel from all their sins. But friends, as the Israelites look forwards, we look backwards at a task that's already been accomplished, detailed for us, and known by us. And that's the finished work of Jesus Christ. That redemption, that redeeming work of Christ is all the hope of the Christian. And so if you have not this Christ, if you're here today and you've not trusted in Jesus Christ, you do not have this hope. Glance at verses 3 to 4 again, if you will. Notice those two verses. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. I gave Christians here hope in the fact that with God there is forgiveness. It doesn't guard their record of sin, but freely pardons it. But for you, if you're here and you're not a Christian, you've not trusted in Christ, the opposite is true of you. If you're keenly thinking about this text, you might see that and think, well, God is just. How could he just forgive my sins that I might fear him? The answer is he can't just forgive your sins. It's not possible. It's not possible for him to just bypass your sins and to say, I don't want to keep a record of wrongs because I'm a loving God, and I'll bypass all the wrongs and the iniquities you've done. That's not who God is. God is a God of absolute justice. For us to say that he doesn't keep a record of your wrongs, all the wrongs you've done and accumulated before God, would be to violate God's justice. It's like looking at a judge who acquits murderers, and child predators, and cheaters, and thieves, and to call that judge just. It's an absolute impossibility. And friend, you yourself have done wrong. You're not acquitted. I've said this before, there's no middle ground in terms of records with God. There's no C pluses and B pluses and grade curves where God looks at a certain kind of grade and causes you to bump up and to enter into the kingdom of heaven. God's standard is perfection. And if God is guarding that record of your iniquities, you will die and you will go to hell. So friends, what is the solution for you? One who is apart from Christ. One whom God keeps a record of iniquity against. What's your hope? Friends, it's the one in Psalm 130 all throughout. The one that Psalm 130 points to. Jesus Christ is your hope. Jesus Christ is the one who out of the depths of sin misery cried out to God. But it wasn't his sin misery, wasn't his iniquity that caused him to cry out to God and to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It was the sins of sinners placed on him and his being treated as the filthiest sinner that caused him to cry out in the depths to God. Friends, that's the gospel. Jesus Christ, the God-man, the Son of God, comes down on this earth, obeys the law perfectly in every way you've broken it. You've broken it constantly. You've not been honest all your life? You've not looked at others purely all your life? And God takes all of those sins and He marks those iniquities and He guards them and He holds it till the day of judgment. But the good news is for you if you're not Christian, is that God takes that record for those who will believe on Him and He treats Jesus Christ as if He had committed every single one of those sins. So friends, your hope tonight is to trust in this very Savior. Turn from your sins to trust in the one who cried out to God in the depths of sin, misery for sinners. And if you'll trust in this one who died, who was buried, who's raised and ascended at the right hand of God, you'll know forgiveness, you'll know pardon, you'll know the bent of this God's heart, who will not keep a record of your iniquities, but freely pardon you for the sake of Jesus. Trust in Him tonight. I'd encourage you, if you don't know Him, to talk to one of us at the doors. We'd love to talk to you as long as it takes about what it means to trust in Christ, what it means to believe on Him savingly. So non-Christian, that's what we would ask you to do, to trust in this freely pardoning God who sent his son to cry out in the depths of sin, agony, your sins on him, that you might be reconciled to him. Christian friend, how does this apply to you? The fact that all your hope, crying out, all your hope of the redemption of your iniquities, yes, also all the hope of your crying out to God and being heard, All the hope of your waiting on God and seeing Him return in vitality. How does that apply to you? Friends, all of the Christian life is to be gospel-centered and gospel-applied. Our only hope in being heard in our cries, despite our countless iniquities, is because of the one who was plunged into the depths of our punishment for sin. He cried out against a brassy sky and God forsook him, so that very brassy sky would break open, would yield at our cry of forgiveness. And that's what Christ's atonement accomplishes for you and me practically. Jesus Christ has bought us the right to give God no rest with our sin, confessing it before Him, and believing on Him by faith. He's given us that right by His blood. So friends, with this hope, this knowledge that Christ will redeem you from all your iniquities, that's your only hope, His work of salvation, with that hope, When you cry out of the depths, when you cry for forgiveness, don't take your record, don't take your inconsistencies as your grounds to be heard. That's no grounds for a cry. But put all your hope in this provided redemption that opens the key to heaven and propels you to the throne grace. Go with the blood of Calvary alone and plead there. and your cry will ever be welcomed, your crying out, your waiting might be empowered because it's as certain as Christ's death on the cross in his resurrection. He was forsaken of God, waiting for the return of God's favorable presence and glory so that we might plead and wait upon the enjoyment of a sensible pardon and the return of his presence. And even the waiting is of God. Friends, here's the point. The hope of deliverance from your sins in the future and eventual deliverance from this wicked, sinful, fleshly body is all in the sacrifice of Christ and the hope of all your crying out is God's plenteous redemption and Jesus' deliverance from all sin. I'd like to say one more thing. If you're not a Christian here, you may notice that term in verse 4, with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. Fear to you might seem like this kind of term that is invoked by a slave master, or a mean boss, or a police officer when you've done something wrong. But this fear comes about through forgiveness of sins. And it's a fear that God wants his children to have, that they would walk with him in love, in reverence, in seriousness, in obedience, and in consistency. Friends, if you believe on God, He will give you that very fear. It's not a whip-cracking fear. It's an in awe, loving, childlike fear. We'll never leave God alone. That's the kind of fear that God would give you. So friends, your salvation, the deliverance of yourself from your sins, you're crying out to God, even that itself. You're waiting on Him. is not hinged upon your obedience. If it's that, you won't cry out to him. You have no hope in yourself. But all your hope is fixed upon, hinged upon the one who ultimately cried for you, the ultimate Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ. So friends, in conclusion, what will keep you from crying out to God in the midst of your sin? What can keep you from waiting boldly for the return of joyful, vital life In His presence here, if all that is hinged upon you, if all that's hoped on you, everything keeps you from crying out to God. But if He's the hope, nothing. Friends, all your hope in crying out, in waiting on God, and all your hope of deliverance from all the sins that assail you and trouble you is hinged on this glorious gospel. It's hinged on this glorious Savior. So will you not apply Calvary's cross and resurrected, ascended, interceding Lord, not just to the redemption of your sins, though that's its prime function, but to all your life? If you're in the sin depths now, cry out to Him. Wait on Him to return. Hope in Him to redeem you from all your iniquities. Let's pray. Lord God, we thank you so, so much, God, for this psalm. Father, we thank you for free redemption in Christ Jesus, that you have cleansed us of all our iniquities and all our sins, that you've pardoned us freely in the blood of Jesus Christ. Father, we thank you so, so much. We ask, God, that you would cause us to be emboldened, to cry out to you, to cling to you, and to wait on you for your presence. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.