"A Song for Long Nights" Psalm 130 Sunday Morning Worship Service

I have been assigned by our pastor down under uh to preach Psalm 130.

So if you would turn in your Bibles to Psalm 130.

I am glad that he assigned me this text.

I will read it for us before we study it this morning.

Psalm one thirty, the song of ascent.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Yahweh.

Oh Lord, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy.

If you, O Yahweh, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand.

But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.

I wait for Yahweh.

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.

Oh Israel, hope in Yahweh, for with Yahweh there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.

And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquity.

So reads the word of the living God.

Jonathan Aitken was a cabinet minister under Prime Minister John Major in England some years ago, and he was sent to prison after perjuring himself in a libel suit that he himself had brought.

But while he was in prison, he became a Christian.

And he started leading Bible studies and teaching God's word to the prisoners there.

And two weeks before his release, he preached a sermon to the inmates on Psalm 130.

But there was someone unexpected in the crowd, the toughest guy in the prison, a gang leader named only the big face.

He was intimidated, Jonathan was, but he taught anyway about the power of God in the midst of suffering.

He noted how this is Augustine and Calvin and Luther's favorite psalm and how powerful it is to minister to those in need.

And by the end of his teaching, the big face was in tears.

He couldn't believe the goodness of God that he had heard in this psalm.

And so he went up to Aitken and said, Will you come back to my cell and reteach this from my cellmates?

Now, Aitken was a little nervous about that prospect, going by himself, and the big face could tell.

And so he said to him, Okay, if you want, you can bring some of your friends.

Get that Augustus guy and Calvin or whatever, those guys on B Block.

Bring them and they can listen as well.

He was not able to summon up Augustine or Luther, but he did bring some friends and he preached, and more came to Christ that day.

Why is that?

Well, because Psalm 130 is a song about suffering, and everyone suffers.

Everyone suffers.

Psalm 130 has had a profound impact on countless many throughout the history of the church.

John Wesley would attribute partially his own conversion to Psalm 130, a chanting of it in a chapel.

Luther wrote a hymn based out of Psalm 130 that became his funeral hymn.

In fact, he called Psalm 130 one of the Pauline hymns because it shared many emphases with Pauline doctrine.

John Owen, the Puritan, wrote a 430-page commentary on Psalm 130 because it had such a profound impact on his life.

It's because this is a song for sufferers.

A song that soothes our souls by leading us to God.

You'll note in the very beginning, it's titled A Psalm of Ascent.

As Pastor Jesse has preached through a number of these, you know, these are kind of road trip tunes for the people of Israel as they make their way up to Jerusalem at the various feast days.

He would be singing this on their trips.

And I think Psalm 130 has some interesting biblical parallels that might give us some insight into maybe some of its original context, where it might have come from.

There's one passage in the Bible in particular that shares a lot of affinity with Psalm 130, and that is 2 Chronicles chapter 6, where everyone was doing their devotions this morning, I'm sure.

2 Chronicles 6 · chapter mention

2 Chronicles chapter 6 is where Solomon dedicates the temple to the Lord, and he prays this long prayer of dedication.

2 Chronicles 6 · chapter mention

And Psalm 130 sounds a lot like that prayer.

For one, there's an exact quote that only appears in both of those two passages where he says, Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy.

That's an exact quote lifted from 2 Chronicles 6.

It also shares very much the same language.

It talks about having pleas for mercy, seeking God's forgiveness, waiting on God, and it uses some of the same logic.

It talks about how all are sinful and can't stand before the Lord, and yet how forgiveness leads to fear of the Lord.

And I think interestingly, Psalm 130 and 2 Chronicles 6 share in that they are connected to the feast days.

When Solomon dedicated the temple, it was the Feast of Boots, the seventh month of the year, September, October timeframe.

And so I imagine maybe some of the first or earliest settings of this psalm looking maybe like a family traveling on their way to Jerusalem, perhaps after the exile, and they crest a hill and they look over the horizon, and there they see the skyline of Jerusalem.

But it's different because there's not a temple in the middle.

Or if there is, it's a very small one compared to what it used to be.

And there's a kind of national lament that's bound up even in the prayer that Solomon himself anticipates.

But Psalm 130 doesn't leave it at this kind of broad national lament.

He makes it very personal.

This is about an individual, one person, and their own struggles, their suffering.

Imagine maybe while this family is on their way to Jerusalem, their oxen breaks down.

It's one of those new fuel-efficient hybrid oxen.

The battery goes out.

Maybe he's behind on the sacrificial bills.

He didn't have enough to bring to really offer to God this feast season.

Maybe in the traveling party there is one fewer than there was in the past.

This is a psalm about individual, personal, intimate, private suffering.

And so, as you approach it, I think it's worth asking what's the burden on your heart?

What dark night do you find yourself in?

What struggle, what sin, what anger, what tense relationship, what problem at work, what wayward child?

What hardship plagues you as you come to this text?

What depth are you in?

And you know what's good medicine for a soul that suffers?

A song.

A song like this.

That takes us from the depths and moves us to the heights.

That takes us from the darkness of midnight into the light of morning.

This is a song that progresses through these four stanzas toward hope in the midst of suffering.

And so we'll look at this in four parts a song for long nights in four kind of truncated lyrics, if you will.

And the first is this, in the first stanza, I need you, Lord.

This is the song that we sing in our suffering too.

I need you, Lord.

This is a declaration of our need.

Look down at verse one.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Yahweh.

This word depths is the only indication of the suffering that we get in this Psalm.

Nowhere else do we see it explained except as just depths.

It's a broad term.

It's usually used just of water, but it's also used metaphorically to speak of suffering, overwhelming flood of anguish and distress, a hardship that you feel under and you're helpless, and you can't get out.

And the psalmist says, out of those depths, I cry to you, O Yahweh, using his covenant name.

There's a kind of personal, intimate cry here, and a desperation even to it.

I can't help myself.

I'm needy.

I'm poor.

I don't know what to do.

And then he goes on to repeat himself.

Verse 2, O Lord, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy.

It's really just saying the same thing, just different words.

And you ask, why do that?

Why repeat the same thing three times?

Is it just poetic?

Well, I think if you've ever been in a dark night of the soul, then you know why.

It's repeated.

Because you're desperate.

Because you don't know where else to go.

You just, God, would you bring me some relief, please, somehow?

I don't know how.

Whatever you would do, God.

It's that kind of pleading.

I can't take this anymore.

I need help.

I'm desperate.

That's what the psalmist is saying.

A couple weeks ago, my back went out, and I got lots of advice from you all about how to treat that.

And uh I tried all of it.

I want you to know, I tried every last bit of your advice because I was desperate.

Because I needed my back hurt, and so I did the okay, elevate your feet, don't elevate your feet.

Uh hot, okay, I'll do the hot.

No, I should do the cold, do the cold, okay, do the cold, then the hot, then the cold.

I did all of it, all of the things that you suggested I tried because I was desperate.

Maybe you've felt like that before.

You try to exhaust all of your options.

Notice that is not what happens in this psalm.

He does not try all of his options.

He goes one place.

To one ear, to one God.

Aren't we tempted to look for solace and comfort and so many other things before we take out the prayer phone?

I think often what this looks like for us, certainly for me, is that we just look at ourselves, don't we?

When we're suffering, we just look inward.

I got this.

I can handle this.

Oscar Wilde, a playwright, was in prison in 1897.

Not all of my illustrations will be prison-related, but this one also is.

Was in prison in 1897 because of what was called gross misconduct.

He had several homosexual relationships with other men, so he's put in prison.

And while he was in prison for two years, he wrote a treatise called De Profundus, which is the Latin title of Psalm 130.

It's the way that this psalm has been referred to most throughout church history, as De Profundus.

And in this treatise, Oscar Wilde said this about his suffering, quote, I have lain in prison for nearly two years.

Out of my nature has come wild despair, an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at, terrible and impotent rage, bitterness and scorn, anguish that wept aloud, misery that could find no voice, sorrow that was dumb.

So what did he do?

Here's what he says.

Nothing seems to me of the smallest value except what one gets out of oneself.

My own nature is seeking a fresh mode of self-realization.

That is all I am concerned with.

End quote.

Yourself?

You know what Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 8 and 9, when we were afflicted in Asia, so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

2 Corinthians 1:8

Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

Brothers and sisters, in your suffering, you do not need more of you.

You need more God.

That's what the psalmist is emphasizing in suffering.

He is recognizing the voice of God.

God is not whispering anymore.

He is now shouting through the pain, you need me.

That's why Derek Kidner writes, quote, self-help is no answer to the depths of distress, however useful it may be in the shallows of self-pity.

This is where our song of suffering must always begin.

Brothers and sisters, going to God and confessing our need.

The way we usually sing it sounds like, I need thee.

Oh, I need thee.

Every hour I need thee.

Do you pray that?

Have you prayed that in your moment of suffering?

That's the first of these stanzas.

The second, he moves then from what we need to what we should feel in the midst of suffering and summarize it this way: I fear you, Lord.

Not only do I need you, Lord, but I fear you.

Lord, the psalmist, having appealed here to the highest court, realizes where he's standing and before whom he has sought an audience.

He says in verse 3, if you, O Yahweh, should mark iniquities, if you should keep them, if you should remember them, if you should write them down and put them in front of your face and deal with me according to them, if you should mark my iniquities or anyone's, O Lord, who could stand?

Who could stand?

That is a haunting question.

Could you stand before the righteous God, thrice holy in all of his power and might and wisdom and wealth and justice, and say, I belong here?

Of course it's a rhetorical question.

The answer is no one.

Nobody.

Nobody can stand before God if God would mark iniquities.

And it gets worse.

Revelation chapter 12, verse 10 tells us that Satan, the accuser, stands before the throne of God day and night, accusing the saints.

Revelation 12:10

So whether or not God himself would mark them, Satan comes into the throne room and says, Yes, you should.

Let me remind you of all the sins that he has committed.

That's what the name Satan means.

It means accuser.

So just imagine it.

You're in the heavenly courtroom.

The judge in his seat, you're the defendant, the prosecuting attorney, is Satan.

And he brings out all of his evidence.

Here's exhibit A, gossip.

Here's exhibit B, anger at their spouse.

Here's exhibit C.

Their internet history.

And that was just yesterday.

I got more.

I've been reading the kids' version of that with my son recently.

It's called Little Pilgrim's Big Journey.

And just yesterday morning we were reading the scene where Apollyon, Satan, the dragon, is confronting Christian.

And this is what Apollyon says.

But you don't really serve the king.

You disobeyed him many times.

First, you fell in the bog of despair, then you strayed from the path.

You were lazy and slept too long and almost turned back when you saw the lions.

You don't seem to love the king at all.

If God should mark iniquities, who could stand?

I love Christian's response to Apollyon.

This is what he says.

All this is true and much more that you left out.

But the prince whom I serve is merciful and ready to forgive.

But with you, O Yahweh, there is forgiveness.

Glorious forgiveness, free forgiveness, not on the basis of my works, not because I've earned it, but because you are a forgiving God to guilty sinners like me.

You ask, what's that forgiveness like?

Well, Psalm 103 tells us what that forgiveness is like.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him, as far as the east is from the west.

So far does he remove his transgressions from us.

Beloved, do you believe Jesus' words on the cross when he said it is finished?

We can stand forgiven, through Christ, because John tells us he's also an attorney.

He's a defense attorney, an advocate.

And after Satan presents all of his evidence, the Son steps forward and he presents one piece of evidence: a bloody cross.

And the father says, case dismissed.

This is why we can sing what we just did.

But Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within.

Upward I look and see him there, who made an end to all my sin.

And what's the result of this?

That's surprising.

But with you there is forgiveness that.

You may be feared.

I thought forgiveness was supposed to get rid of fear.

Like fear has to do with punishment.

What's this fear entering in?

Well, this is not a servile fear.

This is not simply being afraid, though I think that might be part of it.

This is a fear of reverence and awe and love and worship towards this God who should rightly condemn you and yet instead looks on you with love and forgiveness.

This is the heart of a believer who has been forgiven.

It's the heart of fear and awestruck worship.

When you're in the midst of your suffering, you don't want a cuddly God.

You want a holy God.

You want a God you have to fear.

Because only that God can control your suffering.

Only that God can use it for your good and his glory.

So can I say it this way?

The greatest cure for your sorrow in the moment of suffering is the fear of God.

To be confronted with the grandeur and splendor and the majesty of the Holy God who has extended forgiveness to you, that's what we need most in our suffering.

Gives us a right perspective.

Such that we could say, I fear you.

I fear you, Lord.

Well, the third stanza moves along, and we could summarize it this way.

He says, I will wait for the Lord.

He's now telling us what to do in the midst of suffering.

Notice he's turned from the second person address, talking directly to God, now to third person.

It seems like maybe he's in some ways kind of talking to himself.

And he's answering the question: what do you do when you suffer?

Everyone wants to do something when you're struggling, right?

What do I do?

What are the practical steps?

Well, here's the answer.

You know what you do?

You wait.

I grew up in a military family.

You always get everywhere 15 minutes early.

Hurry up and wait.

That's what you do.

You wait.

This word, I wait for you.

I wait for Yahweh.

My soul waits.

This is a kind of submissive expectation, a patient endurance.

This is not a foot tapping, watch checking, where you at texting, kind of impatience.

God, wouldn't you just hurry up and resolve this suffering already?

This is a trusting, resigned, believing faith in God that says, your ways are better than mine.

Your timing is better than mine.

But it's not idle.

Look, he says, I wait for Yahweh, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.

So what do you do while you wait?

Will you go to the word?

You remember the word so that you can hope in the truth that's in the word.

And what does it do?

Well, it says it forces you to wait for the Lord.

Notice it doesn't say, wait for the end of my suffering.

It says, wait for the Lord, wait for God's timing, wait for God's purposes, wait for God's plan and God's ministry to me in the midst of my suffering.

That's where the word points us.

When we are in our darkest moments, we need this book.

Now, the Bible doesn't tell us everything about our individual suffering.

It doesn't explain all the whys and everything else.

But it does tell us a couple really wonderful things.

One, you're familiar with, is Romans 8, 28 and 29.

That God works together all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

How does that work its way out?

Well, verse 29 tells us that he does it to conform us to the image of Christ.

So he's making us more like his son through the suffering that he brings into the life of a believer.

2 Corinthians 4, verses 16-18 also tell us that he is producing in us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison in our life, a momentary affliction.

2 Corinthians 4:16–18

So not only is suffering sanctifying us, but it is also preparing for us eternal glory.

Those are wonderful promises.

That you should preach to yourself.

But there's another promise I want you to see.

Turn with me briefly to Lamentations chapter 3.

Lamentations 3 · chapter mention

Lamentations chapter 3.

Lamentations 3 · chapter mention

A passage that shares a number of parallels with Psalm 130.

Lamentations chapter 3.

Lamentations 3 · chapter mention

I'm sure you're familiar with the language of it, from the hymn, Great is Thy Faithfulness.

This, I think, is the highest height of God's promises to those who are suffering.

This is Jeremiah writing after the fall of Jerusalem.

And he says in Lamentations chapter 3, verse 19, remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall.

Lamentations 3:19

Wormwood is just like poison for someone's soul.

My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me.

Verse 21, but this I call to mind, therefore I have hope.

He's preaching to himself.

He's talking to himself.

I bring it to my mind.

What does he remember?

Verse 22.

The steadfast love of Yahweh never ceases.

His mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness.

And then listen to this.

Yahweh is my portion, says my soul.

Therefore I will hope in him.

Yahweh is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of Yahweh.

You know what he's promising here?

You know what he's saying?

In my suffering, when I go to the Lord and I remember the truth about him, then I get God himself.

God gives me more and more of his glory and himself in my suffering when I appeal myself to him.

Do you realize the greatest promise that God could have made to you in your suffering, he has made.

So it's no wonder that back in Psalm 130, the psalmist accents this waiting and longing for God by saying it's more than watchman for the morning.

More than watchman for the morning.

He repeats himself to kind of, in a literary way, help us understand what that waiting and that length of time feels like.

Watchmen who got the late shift.

It's midnight, no sun out, but they are certain the sun will rise.

The sun will come up.

It has every day.

It's gonna happen again.

I know I can't see it.

It's the dead of night, but I know the morning's coming.

And that's what I'm hoping for.

The psalmist says, I wait for you, God, more than that.

I have a certainty of you giving me yourself more than that.

And in the meantime, I continue to preach that hope into my heart.

It's a wonderful hymn written by William Cooper called God Moves in a Mysterious Way.

In one of the stanzas, he says, His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour.

The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.

So it is as we wait for the Lord.

That's what we do while we wait.

And then the song ends, the last stanza, with a turn, no longer addressing heaven or inwardly our own souls, but now looking around him, the psalmist speaks to others.

Speaks to his brothers and sisters, and he says, O Israel, hope in Yahweh.

That's the lyric, hope in the Lord.

The song goes from vertical to inward to horizontal as he enjoins his brothers and sisters to patiently wait for Yahweh, like he has.

Verse 7, O Israel, hope in Yahweh.

He's saying, What the Lord has taught me, let's just all sing it together.

Let's join in the chorus.

And then he gives reasons.

He says, Oh Israel, hope in Yahweh, for with Yahweh there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.

That is, that when you have suffered and experienced in that suffering the sweetness of the love of Christ, as he has ministered to your soul through his word, then you can turn and look at those around you and say, with experiential knowledge, his love is steadfast towards me.

He has always been faithful and he always will be.

So you need to hope in him too.

He has a loyal love.

He will not forsake.

This is the joy of a Christian that when God ministers to us, we can then turn and encourage those around us.

This is exactly what happens with Peter.

You remember in Luke chapter 22, Jesus is speaking to Peter and he says, Satan demanded to have you, Peter, to sift you like wheat.

Luke 22 · chapter mention

Probably speaking of Peter's denials.

And notice, Jesus doesn't say, so I told Satan no.

He lets it happen.

But he says, This, I have prayed for you.

Believer, do you know that the Lord is praying for you at this very minute?

And then Jesus says, I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail, so that when you turn again, Peter, you're gonna fall.

You're going to sin, you're going to suffer, but when you stand back up, when you turn again, he says, Strengthen your brothers.

Encourage those around you.

Preach to them the truth that has become sweet to your soul.

Some of you all here in this congregation have been through deep water.

I mean, really deep, hard circumstances.

I don't know anything about.

And the psalmist here is just encouraging us to don't you waste that by keeping it to yourself.

However, the Lord has manifested his kindness to you throughout your suffering, you gotta tell other people so that they can also hope in the Lord.

That's how we encourage one another.

And then he says, with him is plentiful redemption.

He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

He will buy him back from his sin.

He will purchase him.

And notice the words here: plentiful and all.

These are quantity words.

He's saying you can stack up the sin as high as you want.

He has more mercy and more redemption than you have sinned.

Our sins they are many, but his mercy is more.

He will redeem Israel.

There's a kind of eschatological note to this.

God will bring all of his people together.

He will redeem them from all of their iniquities and banish sin and do away with sorrow and do away with suffering.

So the psalmist is saying, in effect, pilgrim, when you crest that ridge and you see the skyline of Jerusalem without its temple, I want you to imagine in your mind's eye, in its place, the new Jerusalem.

That glorious city where tears have been wiped away, where sorrow has ended, and where the bright, glorious center of it all is the one who has been your hope all along.

The Lamb.

Revelation 22 tells us that we will stand before Him, forgive Him, and see Him face to face.

What will our hearts declare when we see all of that?

Well, Isaiah gives us a little bit of a glimpse.

If you want to, you can turn to Isaiah 25.

Isaiah gives us a glimpse of what we might say when we encounter that moment, a full redemption.

Interestingly enough, it's posited to us as a feast.

Isaiah chapter 25, verse 6, on this mountain, Yahweh of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food.

Isaiah 25:6

A feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined, and he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all the nations, he will swallow up death forever.

And the Lord Yahweh will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for Yahweh has spoken.

And then what will we say?

Verse 9 it will be said on that day, behold, this is our God.

We have waited for him that he might save us.

This is Yahweh.

We have waited for him.

Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

On that day we'll look around at each other and say, there he is.

Behold him.

And so today we look around and we say, hope in him.

Look to him.

Trust in him.

Wait for him.

Don't waste your pain.

Use your suffering.

This psalm helps us see, even while we're in the valley, from the perspective of the top of the mountain.

It gives us a grand vista.

God's perspective on our suffering.

And Samuel Rutherford noted this very thing when he wrote while he was imprisoned in Aberdeen.

He wrote to one of his congregants the following.

And look back to the water and to your wearisome journey and shall see in that clear glass of endless glory nearer to the bottom of God's wisdom.

You shall then be forced to say, If God had done otherwise with me than he hath done, I had never come to the enjoying of this crown of glory.

When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be.

When we all see Jesus, we will sing even as we sing now.

If you're here and you don't know this Lord, you've never cried out to him, well then none of this is helpful for you.

Do you notice how all of this is about God?

All of this.

You need to know God in order for any of this to be true.

So if you don't know him, then I appeal to you, as does the psalmist, cry out to him.

Call out to Jesus Christ.

Save me.

I cannot stand before you.

Forgive me for my sin by the blood of your cross and through your resurrection, give me life, so that I might hope in you.

A believer, if you find yourself here this morning struggling and suffering, unsure, timid, in pain.

Hope in the Lord.

Hope in the Lord.

More than watchman for the Lord.

Let's pray.

God in heaven, thank you.

For being a God so willing to forgive.

A God so eager to call your children and to hear our prayers.

God thank you for ordaining suffering.

So one Puritan wrote, our chains, they are golden.

There is nothing that we encounter in this life that falls apart from your sovereign will.

All of it is for our good.

Give us more of yourself, so thank you.

Even as hard as it is to say thank you for our suffering.

And for giving us more of yourself in it.

I do pray.

Gracious Father for any in this room, our brothers and sisters who are weary and hurting.

Would you give them fresh comfort this morning?

New hope from your word.

Would you lighten their hearts with the goodness of Jesus Christ, his love for them, and his full redemption.

And Father, may we all set our faces toward that eternal city.

What a glorious day indeed it will be.

But even now, Father, we confess, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will not fear, for you are with us.

Be with us.

We pray this week.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to ibc.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with all of us.