The Gospel in the Psalms

Good morning.

I I love that song and the picture it paints and the longing to be in God's presence.

You find this all throughout the Psalms.

We're gonna be in the Psalms all summer, as we've said, and you find this longing to be with God all throughout the Psalms.

As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs after you.

Better is one day in your courts than a thousand days doing anything else I could ever imagine doing.

And it's it's repeated in so many ways.

And so by the end of today's sermon, the psalm that we're in, we're gonna be in Psalm 130.

And if you don't have a Bible, there's a pew Bible in front of you.

As a matter of fact, if you don't have a Bible, you can take that home with you.

But but we'd love for you to follow along as we go through Psalm 130.

And we're going to start out in a place of despair, but we're gonna end in that longing to be with God.

So I'm so thankful that we could prepare our hearts with that song.

Um, let's read today's Psalm in Psalm 130.

So you can flip there or tab there on your electronic screen, whichever method you prefer.

Um, and let's let's dig in.

Psalm 130, a song of ascents.

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 for the Lord, and in his word I hope.

My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchman for the morning, more than the 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.

Let's pray.

God, would you bring this word to life in our hearts today?

Would you reveal your gospel, your love, your mercy, your grace, your forgiveness through this psalm in a way that would draw us closer to you and give us a longing to be beside you.

That we would seek your presence in our lives.

In Jesus' name, amen.

So years ago, I would go to restaurants with my family as a younger child, and started, and we go into restaurants, and you know, I don't know, maybe about 11 years old, I became self-aware enough to be really selfish.

And uh at that juncture, you know, you whether it's airplanes or restaurants, whatever, every now and then you'd hear babies start crying at the top of their lungs.

And I remember from this 11-year-old point till my early 20s, that used to annoy me.

I don't know, I mean, I know I'm the only one in society who's had this view, but I'm just confessing the wickedness of my heart here.

But I would be like, why can't those people control their baby?

Right?

Like, I I would get a little indignant, like, we're trying to enjoy whatever I was trying to enjoy, because it's all about me, and and I'd be like, There's some baby crying.

Then I had children.

And I learned something.

You might not know this.

Babies just cry.

They do, babies cry all the time.

Not all of them, they're not at the same rates, different sounds, different cries mean different things.

But here's here's the reality, it dawned on me as I had my first child Sam and he cried, and I began to distinguish his cry.

So that's his hungry cry.

Oh, that's his I need to be changed cry.

And all of a sudden, it began this is the way they communicate.

They have no words.

A cry is all they could do.

So when they have a need, they cry.

They don't know how to meet their need, they're incapable of meeting their own need, they have no ability, no language, no anything with which to communicate except a cry.

And so babies cry.

It's a part of life.

And people, if the baby crying bothers you, just get over it.

Can I just say that right now?

Just get over it.

Even in church, it's a beautiful sound to me.

I remember my pastor at the first church I worked at when a baby would cry in the middle of service, he'd go, I love that sound.

You know what that sound is, people?

That's the sound of us not getting old and dying together.

That's new life being breathed into our church.

Let's celebrate it.

And babies cry, but just as a baby cries to express his need, just as a baby cries to express his need, the psalmist starts crying to express a need in this psalm.

And it's what I thought of when I hear, because it says, 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, mercy.

And the psalmist, in his inability to express exactly what's going on in his soul, he recognizes just like the baby in the crib who's hungry and doesn't know exactly how to cry out to get what he needs.

The psalmist says, I cry to you, Lord, because I need your mercy.

And just like that baby, the psalmist recognizes he is helpless to meet his own need.

He is helpless to meet his own need.

Babies cry to let us know they need sleep and food when it's their most basic needs of life.

And the psalmist has recognized that our most basic need in life is God's mercy.

Our most basic need in life is God's mercy.

And you go, well, what about food, shelter?

What you know, we learn these things in school.

Food, water, shelter, those only sustain life here.

And there is a life eternal that we are waiting for.

And we need mercy to get there.

Sorry, I got a tickle in my throat.

All right.

So the psalmist says, I'm crying, I need our needs.

So he says it, he puts it so emphatically, he says that out of the depths, he's crying.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord, O Lord, hear my voice.

So this depth picture, what do we mean by the depths?

Let's talk because there's a rich imagery in this depth.

Okay?

There's a rich imagery in what is the depth?

You see this term used many times in scripture, from being in a place of despair, in a place of helplessness, just like the baby we were talking about.

There's a helplessness, an inability to help oneself.

I want you to picture an Indiana Jones movie, some hero, some rugged guy, you know, wearing some sort of leather in some distinctive way.

And he's on some really big expedition, and all of a sudden he finds himself trapped in some pit, and he's in this pit, and he's like, hey, help me! And he cries out to whoever may be up there because there's no way that he could get himself out of the situation.

Even though we have our heroes in these movies, they often find themselves in a situation where they have reliance on others for help.

And there's this like pit mentality that if you're in a pit, well, there you are.

You can't get yourself out.

And so we see this imagery used in uh Jonah, when Jonah is in the great fish and under the waters in his prayer in chapter two, as he cries out from the depths and he uses this imagery of being in the depth, because well, he literally was in the depth, but he was helpless.

Helpless.

It's why the psalm mentions the depths.

We have a picture of how helpless and desperate he is.

This is what our sin does to us, folks.

This is what our sin does to us.

Today's message, we tricked you.

We told you we're going through the Psalms, and I don't know what you thought, but today's message is a purely gospel message.

And you say, again, we talked about this last week.

Well, I thought the gospel was Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

This is one of the most perfect pictures of the gospel I've ever seen in Scripture.

And you go, but Jesus' name isn't mentioned.

It doesn't have to be, and we're going to talk about that.

The whole Bible is telling the story of God's forgiveness of a people who cannot help themselves, of saving a people who are incapable of saving themselves.

It was either looking forward to Christ or looking back to Christ, but the whole book is about Christ.

And this psalmist recognizes that he is separated from a God, and he recognizes that what separates him is his sin.

And so he recognizes that the one thing he needs is mercy.

Well, okay, if we're gonna say mercy is our greatest need, let's be clear on what mercy is.

We use these terms mercy and grace, and they're like two sides of a coin.

They go right hand in hand.

Oftentimes what we say is mercy is not being given what we deserve.

Grace is being given something we don't deserve.

And that may sound the same, but but it again, it's like two sides of a coin.

So we deserve punishment.

The wages of sin is death.

We deserve punishment.

Our sin is an offense to a perfect God.

We are imperfect.

We are not basically good.

We know this.

If you search your heart, you know the thoughts in your head that you think, oh my goodness, if people knew that, they would run from me, right?

Like we can easily look at ourselves and say, I am sinful.

And so if I'm gonna be in the presence of a holy God who is perfect, who created me to worship him, and instead I sit and revel in my selfishness, I know in his presence I deserve punishment.

And the only way I can be with him and not receive that is mercy.

It's my greatest need.

So just like our hero in the pit, the psalmist from the depths cries out with pleas of mercy.

And you say, Well, just how serious is our sin?

How serious is our sin?

Listen to what the psalmist says in verse 3.

If your Lord should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?

That word mark is also translated count.

I don't know what translation you have, but it's very often translated count.

If you should count iniquities, in other words, if you should count them against us, who could stand?

It's a rhetorical question.

He's asking it because he thinks obviously the answer is if you would count our sin against us, who could stand?

And the answer is obviously no one.

The word stand used here is a judicial term in Hebrew.

It means stand trial.

To stand trial.

If I was to stand trial and you chose to actually count my sin against me, there's no way I'd make it to the trend of that trial with a not guilty verdict.

Nothing I could do.

Not just, but see, first the psalmist is concerned about his sin.

Now he's giving a nod to humanity's sin.

It's not just him.

It's not it is him.

It very clearly is him in the psalm.

But it says, who could stand?

No one.

The answer is no one.

He's going, God, none of us are good enough.

None of us are good enough.

Again, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

So we have this judicial term.

In other words, none of us would make it through a trial favorably if sin were counted against us, and this is where we get to the good part.

This is how the gospel's here.

We recognize the depravity of our sins.

See, the gospel starts with bad news.

We call it the good news.

It literally means good news.

But it starts with bad news and it means you're in trouble.

You're in a pit, you can't get yourself out, you're going to be separated from God forever if it's up to your merits to be judged.

But it says this in verse 4.

But with you there is forgiveness.

But with you there is forgiveness.

How beautiful is it that our sins are forgiven instead of being counted against us.

That's why this is the gospel today, folks.

This is the gospel.

With you there is forgiveness.

Now, what's really interesting in this sentence is why aren't our sins counted against us in trial?

Well, let's talk on a bigger scope right now because it's we know, looking back, seeing Scripture as a whole, having the benefit of the old and the New Testament, we know very clearly that the reason our sins are not counted against us is because they've already been judged.

They've already stood trial, they've already been deemed guilty, and someone has already paid the penalty for the guilty verdict.

And that person is Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Amen?

Our sins have already stood trial so that we do not have to.

Our sins have already stood trial so that we do not have to.

So we know this.

But why did God send his son?

Why did God seek a way to forgive us?

Why did God, oh, you know what?

Those guys down there, they're just so cute.

I gotta be with them.

I guess I'll have to forgive their sin.

Is that what it was?

Is it, oh, I need some of that on my team.

I guess I'll have to make a way to get them here because I'm lost without them.

No, God didn't need us.

He didn't need us.

He chose to love the unlovable for his own glory.

And what's interesting is the way it's worded.

Why did he send his son?

So that we could be forgiven.

Yes, that's it.

With you there is forgiveness.

But why does he want us to be forgiven?

These verses put this in a way that I think we hesitate to talk about because it says, with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared.

In other words, so that you may be feared.

In other words, for the purpose of causing us to fear you, you forgave us.

That's weird.

That's not the way we like to think about God.

That rattles us a little bit.

Whoa, you just wanted me to sit here and cower, God?

Is that what I don't get it?

What is that?

Seems cruel.

And we get these images, and this is where these terms in scripture, this is where you have some people in the world, they get indignant at scripture and like, oh, would they just have some God who just wants to put people under his thumb and make everybody cower and shake?

No.

No.

But in order to understand what's happening there, we need to dig into this word fear a little bit, because we were just told that the sole reason, not the soul, a reason that we were forgiven was so that he may be feared.

In this particular psalm, the reason for our forgiveness that the psalmist has chosen to focus on is to help us fear God.

So what does fear mean?

See, that word conjures up some things in us we don't like.

We tend to think of an immobilizing fear in ways that might suggest our lives are in danger, right?

Well, first of all, they are in danger.

We just talked about it.

If our sins were counted against us, who could stand?

And we said that standing was standing in a trial.

And guess what?

The verdict is going to be a death penalty.

It's a capital trial.

There's a death penalty hanging over us.

So, in one sense, this fear that's associated with, oh my goodness, my life is in danger, there's a sense of that in there.

There really is a sense of that in there when it says we should fear God.

However, it's not exactly the drive of this word that we're translating fear in Hebrew.

The word is Yare.

And there's a sense of this fear for our life thing in there.

But if you think about it for a minute, have you ever done something wrong against someone that you loved and you had to go ask them for forgiveness?

Everybody should raise their hands at this point, because that's all of us, right?

The uh, but on your way to go ask them for forgiveness, did you feel uneasy?

Did you have that little knot in your stomach?

Were you afraid to start the conversation?

Was it hard to start the words out of your mouth?

Hey, hey, I need I need I need to talk to you.

Right?

There's this fear in us.

Even when we know we're gonna be forgiven, I think of a little kid, right?

My little kid, Owen, comes to me sometimes and he tells on himself.

It's a beautiful feature that I hope sticks around his whole life.

And and he'll he'll be like, Dad, I need to tell you something.

And you hear this hesitation, and he knows I'm gonna forgive him.

But there's still a fear.

Why?

Why is that fear in there?

It's because he knows he deserves a punishment.

And with us, our fear of God is in recognition of the deserved punishment.

That's why we still feel nervous.

We recognize what we deserve.

God wanted us to realize that without him, we deserve to be sentenced to death.

We should fear God when we realize what he has a right to do to us.

Without realizing this, how can we ever truly appreciate how significant his mercy really is?

It is in this sense that the Hebrew word is focused on.

It can be translated reverence, awe, and respect.

See, there's more than just fear.

There's reverence and awe and respect.

You forgave us that we would revere you, that we would awe you, that we would respect you, knowing what you could have done to us and chose not to.

We stand in awe.

We like that word better than fear, don't we?

But it's in there in the Hebrew word.

It's translated in this reverence, revere always, many, many places in Scripture.

We recognize the magnitude of our sin.

We recognize what he's capable and entitled to do to us and how significant forgiveness is in light of this, and therefore we are in awe.

And out of this knowledge, out of this knowledge of what we deserved, what he could have done, and out of the reverence for what he gave us instead, the mercy that the psalmist cried out for, God wants us to be with him and eagerly desire to be with him as a result.

Eagerly desire to be with him as a result.

I want us to read, if you look in verse 5, it says, I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.

This word wait is significant.

It is very significant.

Because we realize what we deserve, because we know we've been forgiven, we're not only in awe, but we're thankful.

And this thankfulness leads us to desire to be with him.

The psalmist says he waits for the Lord.

The word wait here is interesting because it's the Hebrew word kawa.

It can be translated to wait or to look for with eager expectation.

See, we tend to think of waiting as simply an exercise in patience.

We have to wait for a certain event or wait for a certain time, and so we just distract ourselves.

Well, I guess I'll just go about my life until that time comes.

I'll just be patient.

That's not in here.

There's a sense that you are standing ready, looking forward to, eager, excited, anxious to get there.

You cannot go about your regular life.

But we do that with God.

We just get patient until we're gonna see him.

We don't chase and pursue and sit there with eagerness and anxiousness and desire his presence.

We talked about desire last week.

And that's wrapped up in this word wait.

There's two senses in which the psalmist is excited to be with God, this excitement and eagerness.

And one is temporal, it's in his current existence and time frame.

He's going, I want to be with God right now.

I want this better as one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.

It's an acknowledgement of how awesome he is and a desire to be with him.

And that's where the psalmist is.

He's saying, I want to be with him right now.

How do we know this?

Well, look at verse one.

Verse one, the first few words.

See, we skip this often.

We just start with, out of the depths I cry.

But if you notice, part of verse one says, A song of ascent.

A song of ascent.

Well, what's a song of ascent?

Well, historically, a song of ascent was what the Hebrew people sang as they journeyed towards the temple.

They made

Made their trip to the temple to worship or to sacrifice, they were approaching the house of God.

They were seeking his presence.

They were looking to lay down a sacrifice on the altar and say, This is symbolic of my acknowledgement that I deserve to die before you, but you've chosen not to kill me.

And when they were on their way to the temple to worship him, he was getting eager as he approached.

This song of ascent was something he sang on his journey towards God.

He's going, I'm gonna get there, and I can't wait to be with God.

Now, here and now.

See, sometimes we don't get excited enough about being with God in our daily lives, our daily lives.

We think of God's presence as something that we get to experience after we've checked out of this life.

We sometimes look at salvation as mere fire insurance.

In other words, I'll just say the prayer so that I get to not go to that place with the fire.

And it's just fire insurance.

And there's nothing in our hearts that desires to be with him in the here and the now.

And this psalmist is saying, I eagerly look forward to the moment I can be with you.

So how do we seek and get excited about the presence of God in our lives in the here and in the here and now?

Well, one time in, we're focused on God's word.

We talked about this last week in Psalm 1, right?

That the man who meditates and delights in God's word is like a tree firmly planted by the waters.

And we talked about that the roots being directly in the life-giving nutrients of God's word causes the man to grow strong with thick roots that cause him to be immovable like a tree planted by the waters.

So in the here and now, that's one way we can experience God's presence.

And the psalmist himself mentions it.

Look again, verse 5.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for the Lord, and in his word I hope.

In his word, I hope.

His excitement as he approaches the temple of God to experience the presence of God is built off of the fact that his word has promised the presence of God, that God would be God with us, that we will experience him here in our lives.

If we're to look forward to what we've gained in Christ, we need to make sure that the things we're looking forward to and hoping in are things he's actually promised, right?

And that's where we turn to his word.

We read his actual promises.

We learn who he has claimed to be, not who we make him up to be, not who others would represent him to be.

We base it on the truth of his word, and as we seek his presence, his word should be a priority in our lives.

Otherwise, we make him in our image instead of allowing him to make us in his.

That's one way.

Another way we seek his presence now is fellowship with the body.

Matthew 18, 20 says, For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among him.

And yet we we don't always get excited about the fellowship of believers, do we?

We don't always get eager.

I can't wait until Sunday.

Or even if we do, we we let it wait till Sunday.

You realize there's six other days you could hang out with your brothers and sisters in Christ, right?

But are we looking to experience the presence of God through the fellowship here and now?

Prayer.

Prayer is a beautiful gift.

A beautiful gift.

It's what the psalmist is doing right now, right?

Lord, I cry out to you.

The fact that we can take our burdens and lay them at his feet, the fact that he wants to hear, not only wants to hear, has told us, bring it to me, is a gift, and yet it's a gift we let sit in a corner wrapped up in a bow, looking at the package and not experiencing the fruits within.

We do not partake in the richness of prayer the way that we should.

We don't.

And I say we because I'm guilty of the same thing.

This isn't a guilt speech, right?

This isn't to point the finger at you from the stage speech.

This I tell you, in my life, I can look back and go, man, I'm just not experiencing the fruit of prayer and the presence of God in my life.

I'm not eager for it the way that I should be when I read the Psalms.

Do we really get excited about being with God in the here and now?

The now.

I want to read this.

It's one of my favorite verses.

1 Thessalonians 5, 9, and 10 says, For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Pause right there.

That's the psalm.

Who could stand?

No, he didn't appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation.

Then it says in 5.10, it says, He died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him.

Whether we are awake or asleep, the terms awake or asleep there are used meaning dead or alive.

It's pointing to an eternal perspective.

It's going, whether now or in the internal state, whether now or in the eternal state, we may live together with him.

He died so that we live with him starting today.

Are you willing to wait to experience the joy of being with your Savior till you die?

Or are you going to take advantage of the fact that he wants to live with you now?

The psalmist is going, I can't wait.

Because in that Hebrew word, that eagerness, that eagerness, I wait for the Lord, it literally, literally could be translated, I can't wait.

The way that we use that term, it might be unique to our culture, but but that sense isn't, I can't wait.

And I would challenge you and myself.

I need to get more excited about living with him now.

The last perspective in which he wants to be with him is eternal.

We talked about the temporal, and the psalmist, yes, is directly on his way to the temple.

He is on his way to experience God in the here and now, but his eyes are also on the eternal.

And it becomes very clear when you read it because of the way he speaks.

I'm looking for my page.

When you have six pages of notes, sometimes you juggle them wrong.

Okay, there we go.

When the psalmist is excited about his upcoming visit with God, his eyes are not limited to the temporal alone.

He definitely has an eternal perspective.

Look to verse eight.

It says, And he will redeem Israel from all iniquities.

His eyes are on the promise of God.

He is suffering through the realization of his own sin.

When we start this Psalm, he's going, Oh, I cry out from the depths, please hear my pleas for mercy.

Because he's going, I know I'm sinful.

And in this, he's going, I'm looking forward to the day when all sin is removed.

All sin is removed.

All sin will be removed.

No consequence, no presence, no struggle, no temptation, no need to cry for mercy any longer because it is completely wiped out.

There is a promise that there will be no pain, no suffering, no sickness.

And he's going, yeah, I'm looking forward to being with you when I get to the temple, God, but I'm also looking forward to the day that you will redeem Israel from all iniquity, all sin, all consequence.

Do we focus on the eternal?

His eyes are on the promise of God to ultimately cleanse us from all our sin.

He knows all too well the earthly consequences of sin.

We saw in his lament in the opening verses.

And even though he rejoices in the knowledge that God has not counted sin against him, he also rejoices at the thought of being completely free of all effects.

Now look at verse 6.

My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchman for the morning, more than the watchman for the morning.

Scholars believe that what he did here is he stuttered, he accidentally repeated.

No.

The psalmist writes the exact same phrase twice for a reason.

For emphasis.

So that means there's something rich in this picture that we need to get.

So I want to end here.

The phrase is repeated that he's waiting for the morning more, waiting to see God, anxious to see God more than a watchman is anxious to see the morning.

What's the point of being a watchman?

What's the point of being a watchman?

How do you know when your job's done as a watchman?

How do you know when you're through?

How do you know when you've made it safely through the night?

See, a watchman is looking for one of two things, one of two things, danger or the morning.

Which do you think he'd rather see?

The morning.

When the watchman starts his job, he knows all I've got to do is make it till morning.

And if I do, we're safe.

So the watchman is really eager to see the morning.

It's the whole point of being in the watchtower.

There's nothing the watchman would rather see than the morning.

And so the psalmist says, more than that, I want to see you.

Why?

Because like the morning sun to the watchman, when we get through this life and come face to face with God, it will be our sign that we've made it.

That we have made it.

That we are safe.

That his salvation was true.

That we are his and we can rest easy.

That forgiveness in all of its beauty is ours to celebrate for eternity.

When we are in his presence, when he says, I wait for you, I want to be with you more than the watchman wants to be with me, because in your presence, Lord, I'm safe.

And that rings true in both the temporal and the eternal sense that's wrapped up in this psalm.

When we are with God, we are the safest we can be.

There still may be danger on this earth, but there's no safer place to be than in the middle of his will.

And when we get to the end and we see him in all his glory, we are not going to be looking down going, oh look, the streets are made of gold.

No.

We're going to be focused on him and going, it's you.

It's really you.

And all the safety that morning provides for the watchman, God's presence provides for us.

And the last thing that I want you to notice is this safety, this excitement to be with God, this recognition of his sin and the forgiveness that's wrapped up to there ends with this.

And it's a challenge I'm sending you with today.

Verse 7 says, O Israel, hope in the Lord.

For the Lord, with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.

His recognition of his need for mercy, his recognition of the provision of salvation, his desire to be with God is so much a part of who he is that he cannot help but turn to those around him and ask them to join in the rejoicing.

He turns from himself to Israel and says, Oh, Israel, hope in the Lord.

For with the Lord there is steadfast love and with him is plentiful redemption.

Today I ask you, I ask myself, are we so excited about being with God that wrapped up inside of us we can't even contain our excitement to the point that we tell others of his goodness?

Are you proclaiming the goodness of Jesus' forgiveness?

And if not, why?

Because as we see in Psalm 130, that's where it should lead.

Let's pray.

Lord, we come before you, we are thankful.

You have provided mercy.

Change us.

Move us.

Give us desires to chase your presence in the here and now and in the eternal state.

And make us a light for you in the meantime.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.