Four Solas in a Psalm

Introduction

Good morning church! It is my privilege this morning to share the word of God with you, and more so as we celebrate Reformation Sunday, the day we commemorate Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenburg, setting off the Protestant Reformation 507 years ago. The Reformation itself came to be summarized via five “solas” that articulated the key rediscoveries of the Reformation:

Sola Scriptura - “Scripture alone” - theology must be scripturally grounded as its main source. Only Scripture can be authoritative for our theology - tradition and history may be helpful, but ultimately we must defer to Scripture for theological concerns.

Solus Christus - “Christ alone” - theology must be Christ focused - Christ is the main point of the Bible, and the whole Bible testifies to Him and His work.

Sola Fide - “Faith alone” - theology must be driven by faith - without faith, it is impossible to please God. By faith, we believe and receive what God has promised to us through Christ.

Sola Gratia - “Grace alone” - our theology must be saturated with grace. We are saved not by works, but by grace alone. God’s generosity lavishes upon us what we do not deserve - it is entirely his work that saves us.

Soli Deo Gloria - “To the glory of God alone” - our theology must be dominated by God. Our salvation is brought about so that God might be glorified, and in all that we do we ought to glorify Him.

It’s important for us to remember that these ideas were not novel - but they had been de-emphasized (or even forgotten!) by the Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation. The Catholic Church taught (and still teaches) that salvation was achieved through a synergistic process of God’s grace and our own good works, but Luther correctly understood that salvation was a sovereign act of God’s grace alone. He found this most clearly articulated in Paul’s letters (especially Galatians!), but the truth is that the principles inherent in the solas are not simply confined to the New Testament. They can, in fact, be found throughout Scripture, because God’s plan for salvation has not evolved or changed, as though Plan A was for the Israelites to follow the Law and when that didn’t work out he needed to pivot to Plan B of sending Jesus. No, the story of salvation is consistent throughout the Old and New Testaments because the incarnation was no accident, the plan had always been the same, and the snake-crusher had been promised all the way back in Genesis 3. It should come as no surprise to us that we see these principles clearly in the Old Testament, and it is my hope today as we work our way through Psalm 130 that we will see the marvelous grace of God just as it has been from the very beginning.

Turn with me, please, to Psalm 130:

Psalm 130 ESV

A Song of Ascents. 1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! 2 O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! 3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? 4 But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. 5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; 6 my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. 7 O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. 8 And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

Let’s pray:

Gracious God, we thank you for the way that you have revealed yourself to us through the Bible. We rejoice that you are the same yesterday, the same today, and the same forever - that even if we lose sight of the glorious truths that you have revealed to us in your word, that those truths will never fail. Father, as we explore this Psalm today, we pray that you would stir our hearts to know you and to love you more, and as we reflect on our own sinfulness and on your great love and mercy for us that we would be spurred to repent of our sins and turn to you, where there is plentiful redemption. We love you, Lord. Amen.

The Songs of Ascent

Psalm 130 is one of the 15 so called “Psalms of Ascent” that were likely sung by the people of Israel as they completed their annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the main feasts (Passover, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Booths) that were mandated under the Mosaic law. These psalms were meant to stir many things in the hearts of the pilgrims - they were meant to stir an understanding of their own sin and the corporate sin of the people that required atonement. They were meant to help the people to see the grace of Yahweh and rejoice in the mercy that he had shown them. They were meant to help the people consider the virtues of a righteous life, and how they ought to orient their entire being around the instructions that Yahweh had provided for his people. As the people came to worship during the great feasts of Judaism, they were reminded of their own nature, the character of God, and the call that had been placed upon them to follow his statutes. Because the people were called to come to Jerusalem to worship multiple times per year and because these psalms were sung as part of that procession, it is very likely that these would have been some of the most well known psalms in the entire psalter! Most Israelites would likely have at least been familiar with the psalms of ascent, a fact that underscores their importance in shaping religious life of the time.

Psalm 130, in particular, is typically described as a hymn, although it also includes a lot of the elements that we see in a typical psalm of lament. In that sense, we could also call it a “penitential” psalm, one where the psalmist is acutely aware of his sin and the consequences thereof. In many ways, the theology of this psalm feels right at place with the letters of Paul - after all, it touches on our deep sinfulness, our need for grace and mercy, the hope of forgiveness, the promise of restoration, and the ultimate redemption from our sins. It is a psalm that shows that these concepts were not new or novel, but rather had been the essential thread of Israelite religion from the beginning, even if we only fully understood the implications of these ideas in light of the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior.

Our outline today will trace the following points:

Our need for grace (v. 1-4)

Our need for faith (v. 5-6)

Our need for a redeemer (v. 7-8)

Let’s begin.

Our Need for Grace

English Standard Version Psalm 130

1  Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD!

2  O Lord, hear my voice!

Let your ears be attentive

to the voice of my pleas for mercy!

3  If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,

O Lord, who could stand?

4  But with you there is forgiveness,

that you may be feared.

Let’s begin with the depths. What are these depths from which the psalmist cries out? Throughout the Old Testament, the phrase “the depths” often refers to the chaos of the primordial sea, the one that Yahweh demonstrated his mastery over in Genesis 1.2, when he hovered over the face of the deep waters and brought order into the cosmos. The imagery here has many dimensions - the “depths of despair” or the “depths of understanding” of the psalmist’s sin, or even the idea of being engulfed in a “sea of troubles”. A second understanding of the “depths” in the Old Testament has to do with the grave and the idea of Sheol. When we cry out of the depths we cry out from the place where we are beat down, where it seems that we are as far away from God as we could possibly be. It is from this state that the psalmist makes his initial plea to Yahweh.

And what is that plea? Is it a righteously indignant explanation about how he doesn’t deserve this suffering and abandonment? Is it a full throated defense of his own good character, lamenting the fact that he is facing trouble even though he doesn’t “deserve” it? Not at all! The text tells us in verse 2 that this is a simple plea for mercy. The psalmist understands that this is in fact his natural state. There is nothing that he can stand upon where he can advocate for himself. He will not assume that he can argue with God that he is in fact righteous that that this suffering that he is undergoing is unrighteous. He asks for only one thing - that Yahweh hears his pleas for mercy.

I think that this is an attitude that Luther could have related to well. Before he fully understood and rediscovered the doctrines of grace, Martin Luther was a man who was consumed by his conscience. He developed a reputation at his monastery of being the monk who was constantly in the confessional, the one who would take hours to exhaustively make sure that he had acknowledged and confessed for every single sin that he could recall that he had committed. I think there is a certain irony here - after all, how much trouble could you actually get into in a 15th century monastery (at least as compared to the rest of the world around you!). If I had to pick any place where I would imagine that it would be easier not to sin, I have to think it would have been somewhere like there! But Luther understood what the psalmist understood - that there was always going to be something that condemned him. He was in constant need of grace, in constant need of mercy, in constant need of forgiveness. Of course, at first, this was no comfort to Luther at all, because he could not fathom how he could possibly merit the favor of God if he was in constant need of confessing his sins! How wonderful it is, though, that we see the full answer to this question all the way back in the Old Testament, here in Psalm 130.

You see, the psalmist had a very good understanding of the consequences and the graveness of his own sin. Look at verse 3! “If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” It is a rhetorical question. The obvious answer is: “no one”! If we were actually judged on our deeds and on the content of our character, we would be completely and totally without help and without hope in the world. The slightest sin is enough to poison the entire life. There is no “minimum acceptable level” of sin that can be present before a holy God. And so we see that this is the complete and total truth - if Yahweh should make mark of our iniquities, if he should keep records of them in his books, then we would have no hope of standing before him. Every single human being would only ever stand condemned. After all, as the apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 3.10:

Romans 3:10 ESV

10 as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;

This is one of those times where we must be grateful that the passage does not simply end! How wonderful it is that the Bible deals directly with the state of our souls, that it does not pull punches when it comes to describing the conditions of our hearts, but it still offers hope! For even though we could not possibly stand before Yahweh as a result of our iniquities, there is forgiveness available from the one who has been wronged. And why is forgiveness available? Specifically so that Yahweh might be revered.

Let’s stop and think about that idea for a moment. When we think about forgiveness in our own lives, we maybe have a slightly tilted view of what it is for. In our own sinfulness we can withhold forgiveness from others because we know that holding it back can cause them pain, especially if they are truly remorseful and repentant. How many times have we made a conscious decision to withhold forgiveness just so we can watch someone stew in their own guilt for a little while longer? I don’t think any of us would like to admit it, but we probably do it more often than we think. The sinfulness and the selfishness of withholding forgiveness come up in even more stark relief when we consider our own heart attitudes in light of the attitude of God. If there ever is anyone who would be justified in withholding forgiveness from someone, it would be God! Unlike the rest of us, he has never sinned against us, he has never wronged us, he has never done anything that would ever require any kind of forgiveness! And because of his infinite holiness, anything that we do that transgresses that holiness deserves to be met with condemnation and scorn. But that is not what God does for us. Instead of demanding satisfaction, he offers mercy if we repent. His grace truly is grace - there is no possible claim that we have against him, there is nothing that we can look to in order to demand that he forgive us. And yet, out of his great mercy, he does so anyway.

And Psalm 130.4 tells us why: so that he may be feared. It ultimately tells us that mercy is in God’s character. As Paul says in Romans 2:4 “God’s kindness is meant to lead [us] to repentance.”

So we see that the first four verses of Psalm 130 spell out two of the very truths that we saw in the five solas that we discussed at the beginning of the sermon - first, that our salvation is of grace alone. Like the psalmist, we come to God crying from the depths of our sin. We are separated so far from him because of our nature that we cannot even truly approach him for fear of his holiness. We can only acknowledge that God has every right to condemn us as sinners, to cast us into outer darkness, and to have nothing to do with us any more because we have demonstrated ourselves unworthy. And yet, in the midst of it all is forgiveness - hope that we might be reconciled to him. And why? That he might be praised. For his majesty and glory to increase. Forgiveness isn’t to pacify our own tortured consciences (although that is a wonderful side benefit of forgiveness!) but is instead to display the glory of God who has reconciled ruined sinners to himself. Our salvation is indeed by grace alone and is indeed for the glory of God alone!

Our Need for Faith

So how are we to take hold of this grace that God has offered us? What must we do in order to be saved? Psalm 130.5-6 help illuminate that for us:

Psalm 130:5–6 ESV

5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; 6 my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.

First and foremost, we wait on the action of God. Notice how many times we see the word “wait” in these two verses. Twice in verse 5, and again in verse 6. In fact, the word translated “hope” in verse 5 comes from a different root word, but could also reasonably be translated as wait! It is important for us to recognize this, because it serves to underline the point that has been already made in the first 4 verses of the psalm - that this salvation is entirely of grace. There is nothing that we can do, nothing that we can bring, no action that we can take that will endear ourselves to God. The only thing that we can do is wait for Yahweh to act, and hope in the promises that he has given us.

Friends, have you ever had to just want and trust that something would happen? I remember when I first started working I had been sent to an offshore platform in Italy to help with the commissioning of the platform. It was one of those open ended business trips - when I asked my boss when I should book the return tickets for he said “Just get a one-way - we’ll let you know when you’re able to come home.” I ended up spending 6 weeks offshore, working 16 hours a day, getting just a single day off in the midst of all of it. I remember watching the hours, the days, and eventually the weeks tick away until the call finally came that it was time to go home. I knew that it would eventually come, I trusted that I would eventually be able to leave, but I didn’t know when it was going to happen.

In a lot of ways, that is what biblical hope actually is. We’ve spoken before at King’s Church about how the biblical definition of hope is a little bit different from the way that we understand the word in our world today. When we talk about hope today, we talk about it as though it is something that is uncertain. For example, we might say “I hope it will rain today” or “I hope the weather will finally begin to feel a little bit like actual fall instead of summer” or “I hope the Yankees lose the World Series” (all things that I have said this past week, by the way). But in each of those cases we don’t know what is going to happen. It may or may not rain today. The weather might not change for a long time. The Yankees might actually win the World Series. I might want certain things to happen, but there is no guarantee that they actually will.

But that is where we see the fundamental difference between biblical hope and the hope that we talk about in everyday life. Biblical hope is deep rooted. It is faith and trust that what has been promised is going to happen and will come to pass, even if we can’t see how it is possible. It’s a little similar to the hope that I had that I would eventually get to go home from that offshore platform. I knew that I wasn’t going to be there forever, and that hope and expectation that the call would eventually come helped me to keep going and to do the work that needed to be done.

That is the attitude that we ought to have about the promises of God that we see in Scripture. There is a reason that the psalmist equates waiting on Yahweh with hoping in his word. The concepts are really one and the same. We trust God because of the promises that he has made to us. We have faith in the good plans and purposes that he has ordained for us. Ultimately, we can hope in his promises because he has proven himself to be faithful. After all, the God who brought Abraham out of Ur and made a great nation out of him in line with the promises that he made is the same God who promised to bring his people out of Egypt and to plant them in a good land. Not one good promise that he has made to his people has ever failed to come to pass. This is the God who promises us that if we repent and turn to him he will forgive us of our sins and who has provided a way for atonement to be made so that we might walk in fellowship with him. If we believe in the promises that he has given, then we are believing, waiting, hoping, and trusting in God himself.

And that, friends, is what faith is. Faith is trusting in God’s promises, believing that even though we have not yet seen the complete and total fulfillment of those promises that they will eventually come to pass. It is a deep seated trust that is rooted in an understanding of who God is - one who is faithful to his promises to the uttermost, one who will do exactly what he has said that he will do.

So it should come as no surprise then that the way that we take hold of the grace that God offers us is through faith in his promises. God has promised that he will redeem and restore. He has promised that he will forgive our sins. Remember that at this point in time we are on the before side of the incarnation. As Christians, we know that God has dealt with the problem of sin once and for all through the sacrificial atoning death of Jesus on the cross and his subsequent resurrection from the dead. But at the time that this psalm was being sung, the people of God were still operating under the temple system. In the Law there were a great number of sacrifices that one could make in order to atone for sin. At the same time, however, the fact remained that the sin would always keep coming back and would always need to continue to be atoned for. The people needed to have constant faith that the sacrifices would continue to atone for their sin. But they also needed to have faith that one day there would come a time when their sin was completed removed and atoned for. At the heart of all of these sacrifices and actions was faith - faith in the promised snake-crusher of Genesis 3, faith that one day their sins would not merely be covered over by the blood of goats and calves but that they would be utterly and completely washed away the blood of a perfect lamb.

There was still a need to wait. There was still a need to hope. There was still a need to keep faith that God would one day do all that he had promised to do. And that, ultimately, is how the people received grace. They believed and they hoped in the promises of his word.

That brings us to verse 6. I love verse 6. It paints for us a vivid picture of the city watchmen manning the ramparts in the middle of the night, looking out into the distance to ensure that the city remains safe. More than the picture though, I love what the watchmen are waiting for - they are waiting for the dawn.

That might seem a little bit strange to us (but then again, very few of us likely need to keep vigil throughout the night for our own safety!). We might actually expect that they would be waiting or watching for something different. We might think that they would be watching or waiting for reinforcements, for hope that there will be additional forces in the coming battle. Perhaps we might think that they are watching and waiting for any sign of the enemy, that they might sound the alarm and the city might be prepared for what is coming. But that is not what they are watching and waiting for - they are watching and waiting for the dawn.

There’s something instructive that we should take from that, and it looks directly back to the concept of “hope” that we have seen from a biblical perspective. What’s the beauty of waiting for the dawn? It always comes. What a wonderful example of biblical hope! If you have ever been in a situation where everything seems hopeless in the middle of the night you know that when the first rays of dawn peek above the horizon that our perspective very often changes. Things seem hopeless and terrifying in the dark, but the light will eventually come. For the watchmen of old that meant an opportunity to rest from the potential danger, to sleep and to recover when others could see clear into the distance and ensure that no additional threats were incoming. It meant the comfort of being able to see clearly. No matter how long the night might have felt, it would eventually break, and the dawn would eventually come.

What a glorious hope that idea brings! If the watchmen were simply trust in reinforcements or being able to see the movements of the enemy, they might have a temporary sense of peace and calm, they might have more warning that something was coming or feel a little more confident that they could stand against what might come, but when they wait and hope for the dawn they know that they will see clearly.

Friends, I think you know that in a little over a week we our nation will have finished our current election and we will know who the next President of the United States is going to be. I think we’ve all be faced with the temptation to give into hyperbole and hopelessness - that is one candidate wins over another democracy in America will be lost, or Christians will be persecuted, or whatever the panic of the day might happen to be. But if we give into that kind of thinking we show what our hearts are truly trusting in. Instead of waiting on Yahweh we are trusting that our particular candidate or our particular political party is what is going to bring us hope. And friends, I can promise you this - no matter who is declared the winner next week, the sun will rise on Wednesday morning. If we trust in God’s sovereignty and we trust in his goodness, then all we must do is watch for the dawn. We do not have anything to fear, because we can hope in God himself. Above all else, trust in his word, and trust in his promises.

Another reason that I love the image of the watchmen waiting for the dawn is that the idea of dawn and the breaking of darkness is associated with the promised Redeemer. In Isaiah 9.2 we read:

Isaiah 9:2 ESV

2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.

And in John 1.4-5 we read the following:

John 1:4–5 ESV

4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Friends, it is through faith in God’s promises that we are able to take hold of the grace that God has provided for us. It’s not by anything we do, and if we put our faith in anyone else we cannot truly lay claim to it. It is “sola fide” - in faith alone - that we can lay hold of the promises of God and know that his redemption will be effective for us.

Our Need for Christ

We’ve now seen our need to hope in Yahweh, and specifically to have faith in the promises that he has made to us. But what are those promises? How has God promised that he is going to bring grace to his people? The answer to those questions comes in Psalm 130.7-8:

Psalm 130:7–8 ESV

7 O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. 8 And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

To understand the object of our faith, we need to look specifically at two words in this passage. The first is the word translated “steadfast love” in verse 7, and the second is the word translated “redeem” in verse 8.

First, the phrase “steadfast love”. This is a translation of the Hebrew word hesed, a word that is so rich and nuanced that it is incredibly difficult to fully translate. There is really no individual equivalent word in English. In its nearly 250 appearances in Scripture, it is translated in many ways: loyalty, love, kindness, steadfast love, good, mercy, favor, benevolence, pity, graciousness, proof of mercy, zeal, and desire. It’s a word that speaks to the totality of God’s love for his people - a love that cannot be summed up in a single word in English. I love how the Jesus Storybook Bible describes this word, as the “never stopping, never giving up, always and forever love of God”. Hesed is the love with which God loves his people, a love that cannot be contained, a love that displays dimensions of loyalty, kindness, goodness, mercy, favor, grace, and mercy. It is the love that is at the heart of the character of God himself, and it is this love that we see most fully and completely in the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

It is this love that we see in John 3.16, where we read, using the alternative translation that you may see as a footnote in your Bible:

John 3:16 (ESV)

16 “For this is how God loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Friends, if you want to understand the “never stopping, never giving up, always and forever love of God”, look to Jesus. If you want to understand what the Bible is saying every time it tells us about God’s steadfast love for his people, look to Jesus. For in Jesus we see the full grace and love of God revealed, the God who would not spare his only son, but gave him up as a sacrifice to atone for our sins once and for all. The steadfast love of God is a person - it is Jesus. The hesed of Yahweh became incarnate and walked among us, bringing light to our darkness and life to our dead bones. Above all, the object of our faith needs to be the steadfast love of God. The object of our faith needs to be Jesus.

And why? Because with him is “plentiful redemption”, and the promise that he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. The word translated “redeem” here carries the connotations of a ransom. It means to pay the price that is owed so that the affected party can go free. This is a promise that finds a fuller expression in Isaiah 53.10-12 where we read about Yahweh’s promised servant:

Isaiah 53:10–12 ESV

10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. 11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.

In this passage, we see that Yahweh’s suffering servant has made an offering for sin and for guilt, that he has made many to be accounted righteous, and that he has borne the sin of many. This prophecy points us to the fulfillment of this idea of plentiful redemption that Yahweh would make for his people. And the promises of Psalm 130 see even more complete fulfillment in the accounts of Jesus - that he came to be a ransom for God’s people. As Jesus himself says in Matt 20.28:

Matthew 20:28 (ESV)

28 the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Friends, it is in Christ alone that we can be ransomed for our sins and that we can see the plentiful redemption that God has promised to us. It is in Christ alone that we can see forgiveness for all of our iniquities - not just because God is merciful and gracious but also because he is just, and because he laid upon Jesus the punishment that we deserved so that we might be credited with Jesus’ perfect righteousness. If we take the psalmist at his word - that God is attentive to our pleas for mercy, that he saves forgiveness for us, that we can trust in his promises and wait on his actions, and that he will deliver steadfast love, then we can come to no other conclusion that he is at a fundamental level talking about the person and work of Jesus. It is in Jesus that we see the steadfast love of God, the love that came from heaven to seek us out and redeem us. It is in Jesus that we see how we have been redeemed from all of our iniquities through his atoning death on the cross. It is in Jesus that we can lay claim to the ultimate hope - that God is faithful to his promises, and that he has provided us with a way to be reconciled to him despite our wayward and wicked hearts.

And so with all of this we have come full circle. We have seen how from all the way back to the days of the temple, the people of God have sung of their deep need for grace, the fact that the grace that they receive is only for God’s glory, the faithful expectation that they have that he will be true to his promises and the hope that they will one day be completely and totally redeemed from all of their iniquities. And being on the far side of the incarnation we have the privilege of seeing, knowing and understanding the person and work of Jesus - that God has made manifest his love for us by giving us his one and only Son to live the life that we could not live and to die the death that we deserved so that we might be raised to life with him.

Friends, I hope that this morning has helped you to see that the truths that were recovered in the Reformation over 500 years ago were not something new. They are woven into the fabric of the faith, all the way back to the old covenant and the temple sacrifices, even in the songs that the pilgrims would have sung as they wound their way up the steps to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. And through it all rings the solas of the faith - that our salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for the glory of God alone.

Let’s pray.

Closing Prayer

Gracious God, we thank you for your Word. We thank you for the beautiful story of redemption that is woven throughout the entirety of Scripture. While we acknowledge that we cannot fully comprehend the majesty of everything that you have done and provided for us, we are grateful that you continue to guard your truth so that we might rejoice in knowing you more completely. Father, we thank you for the promises that you have given us in the Old Testament, promises that we are privileged to have seen fulfilled in your Son, Jesus. We humbly confess that we are sinners completely and utterly in need of grace. We confess that there is nothing that we can bring before you that would plead any sort of merit on our behalf. But we thank you that you are attentive to our pleas for mercy, that you have given us forgiveness for the sake of your glory. We praise you that all we need to do is trust in the promises that you have made and believe in the one who has fulfilled those promises - Jesus. We thank you that we see the fullest expression of your love and compassion for us in the fact that you did not withhold your only Son as the price of our redemption from sin. Father, we stand in awe of your mercy, your love, your compassion, your grace, and we pray that we might live our lives in light of your faithfulness towards such a faithless people each and every day. Amen.