Sermon Tone Analysis
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Intro
We’re continuing on in our series through the Psalms of Ascent.
We come today to a Psalm that is a favorite of the likes of Luther, Calvin, Augustine, Owen and Bunyan.
An all star cast list of saints who have clung to this Psalm.
This is known as a Penitential Psalm.
It is a Psalm of confession and repentance.
This is a Psalm of waiting hope.
No one really likes to wait right?
I’ll never forget February, 1, 2021
That’s the day we welcomed Samuel into the world.
Here’s how that day started.
Hannah wakes me up at 3AM and tells me she thinks she may be starting to go into labor but isnt sure.
She tells me to go to back to sleep.
So how do you think that went for me?
Exactly!
So from there we wait until 8AM when the mid-wives are in to see how far along Hannah is.
That’s when my day of waiting started.
This is in the hight of COVID so of course I am not allowed in to the Doctors office.
I sit in the car trying to read, sweating, praying.
Then here comes Hannah in a wheel chair, I am thinking oh my goodness is he here?!
That’s when they tell me her water broke and we need to go to the hospital but first on the way we need to go get clary sage essential oils.
Wait what?!
We get to the hospital, we get in a room, and the contractions start.
I am thinking any min know we’re gonna be meeting lil Sammy.
This was around 11.
Y’all it wasn't until almost 8:30 that night that the little booger showed up.
Waiting.
No one likes to wait, and yet life is full of waiting.
Waiting on that Amazon package.
Waiting on answers to your questions.
Waiting on traffic lights.
Waiting for the end of your work shift.
Waiting on medical results.
Waiting.
Psalm 130 is a psalm about waiting.
As we mentioned earlier it is one of the psalms of hope, and yet it almost begins as a psalm of trouble.
The psalmist is crying out to the Lord from a place of deep pain and distress.
Last week we looked at Psalm 129 which was all about persevering through pain.
Now we come to Psalm 130 which is all about waiting on the Lord.
But the focus is not on waiting through the pain.
It is about waiting in hope.
Here is our big idea today, Our hope is in the Lord who saves
So let’s jump in this Psalm and see first the Psalmist challenge to hope starts with
I. Cry to Lord for Mercy (1-4)
Psalm 130:1–4 (ESV)
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.
Out of the depths
The Psalmist is in a low place.
This Psalm starts in a place of brokenness.
He feels completely overwhelmed and bogged down.
The depths here represent when you hit rock bottom and you realize you can’t fix this on your own.
Eugene Peterson even translates this verse in The Message:
“Help God – the bottom has fallen out of my life!”
Whether the problem is financial, or illness or relational you are in a place of deep and personal pain.
This is often where our sinful ambition takes us.
It leads us to a place of despair and brokenness
This call of distress shows up all throughout the scriptures.
It is the cry of someone who realizes how far down they’ve gone.
Have you found yourself in a broken place like this?
Beat down and at rock bottom.
Where do you turn when you are in those moments?
To you to fleeting comforts, something to numb you.
Do you fall into despair?
Corrie Ten Boom, who wrote The Hiding Place, was sent to a Nazi concentration camp during World War II Germany for hiding Jews in her home.
I love what she has to say:
“There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.”
_Corrie Ten Boom
Coram Deo that’s what you need to remember when the bottom falls out in your life.
God is still there.
When you cry out to him from the depths, he will hear you.
The Psalmist teaches us here that it is in the moments we should call out to God
If God kept a record of sins...
It’s in verse 3 we get an idea of what has led the Psalmist into this place of despair.
Psalm 130:3 (ESV)
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
The Psalmist is in a place of guilt for sins they’ve committed.
If God is keeping a record of your life who thinks they could stand before a Holy God?
The answer is no one.
Romans 3:19 (ESV)
Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
Romans 3:23 (ESV)
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
All of us stand before a holy God guilty of deep sin and rebellion
How should we deal with guilt?
This is an important question because every human being tries to deal with it.
Some people choose denial.
They refuse to believe that they're guilty of anything.
Others choose rationalization.
They may admit they're guilty, but they blame it on something or someone parents, teachers, government, culture, or genes.
Another wrong option is relativization.
Those who choose this response point out that others are guilty also and that their guilt then isn't so bad
Have you ever played these games?
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