"A Pilgrim's Hope" - Psalm 130

Pastor Brian leads us through the final sermon in the Songs of Ascents

Transcript

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Make melody to our God on the lyre. He covers for the reading of the word, the word of the one and only true God. We're standing in reverence because this is the word of God. Psalm 130. Out of the depths I have cried to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than the watchman for the morning. Indeed, more than the watchman for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord. For with the Lord there is loving kindness, and with him is abundant redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. This is the word of Lord. The word of the Lord. You may be seated. Brian, may please come preach it to us.

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What a joy it is to open up the Psalms once again in the Psalm of Ascents. It is a great privilege. Thank you for the opportunity. Father, we ask you to lead and guide us. Be exalted in this time. Be glorified. We ask you that you would change us. Edify us, encourage us, strengthen us, convict us. Cause us to be Christ-like all the more through our time of worship now. We pray all this in the name of Christ. Amen. Ask you a question. What comes to your mind when you sing to the Lord? I know sometimes that can be various things. But maybe when you're singing psalms like this one, the Psalm of Ascent that we've been looking at over the last four weeks. We've been looking at different Psalms of Ascent and Ascent, and it's been a joy to look into what the Lord would have for us in this. But what comes to your mind when you think about these things? Psalms that remind us of the Lord's constant, providential, his protection, his compassion, his care for us? What comes to your mind? Martin Luther, a reformer from the 1500s, loved this particular psalm that we're going to look at today. He called it one of his four favorite psalms. I don't know about you, but out of 150, that's tough to narrow down. If you know anything about Martin Luther's life, you would know that, at least in part, as to why he loved this particular psalm in such a way. Earlier in his life, Martin Luther was a man that was continually plagued with the knowledge of not being good enough for the Lord as he was serving in the Roman Catholic Church as a monk. He was tormented day and night with the thought that God was going to reject him and cast him into hell because he wasn't sorry enough. Wasn't sorry enough for his sin. So he used to lay prostrate on the ground for hours at a time, days at a time, in deep conviction for his sin, but finding no solace in his religion. It wasn't until the Lord opened his eyes to Romans 1.17 that his crying out to the Lord was met with hope. A passage says, For in it, talking about the gospel, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, and here was the key for him, but the righteous man shall live by faith. Until he understood this, until he really understood the grace of God, what we may now call the doctrines of grace, or the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the absolute wonders of the salvation that comes to us through no effort, no works of our own. It wasn't until then that he could get up from that prone position with the hope of eternity and the joy of knowing the forgiveness of sins. So I can understand why he loved this psalm. Out of the depths I've cried to you, O Lord. So when you sing to the Lord, when you sing songs of praise, when you sing the Psalms like this, what comes to your mind? It's natural and easy for all of us to focus in on self, isn't it? So easy to do. I know it is for me. And if you listen to a lot of the Christian radio station songs with an ear for who the song is about, you realize that many, if not most, are speaking of songs of us, kind of self-focused. Now, don't get me wrong, it's okay, and we we need to sing of what the Lord does for us daily and who we are and what we have in Him day after day, but it cannot consume our singing in praise. God in his glorious magnificence and attributes and power, that should be what consumes most of our time in praise through song. Think about how great thou art. We love to sing. Great song. Praise to the Lord the Almighty. Behold our God. Rejoice. The Lord is King. Those are great songs. Again, we should sing songs that speak of what we've gained. I mean, I couldn't imagine not singing and can it be? Love that song. But God needs to be the central focus, the main character, the object of the majority of our singing, the theme of our lyrics, if you will, just like this psalm here today. The psalmist is wrestling, he's struggling, it's tough for him, and there's things going on, and he talks about different things, but really it's about the Lord. And that is in large part why Martin Luther loved this song. Just listen for a moment at what is written here, if I weave through here. Okay, ready? If you, who's the you, God, if you, Lord, should mark iniquities. He says, There is forgiveness with you. That you may be feared. I wait for the Lord. In his word I find hope. My soul waits for you. Hope in the Lord, O Israel. For with the Lord there is loving kindness. With him is abundant redemption. He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. What's this psalm about? It's about him. It's about our Lord. Therefore, what we find in life is that our hope, any hope that the Christian has comes from the need for him to be glorified. It's an overarching principle. I love what Martin Luther said. He said this psalm was very Pauline. By Pauline, he's meaning the Apostle Paul. Kind of sounds like something he would write. Sounds like it would be from the pen of Paul himself. Now we know that Paul didn't write this, since Paul didn't live for hundreds of years until after this was written. But if we listen carefully to what Luther is saying, what he is saying is something that we need to get right off the bat in the studying of this psalm. This psalm is singing about something that was accomplished on the cross. You hear that? This psalm is about the good news. This psalm is a gospel psalm. It is to be sung by pilgrims anticipating the gospel's hope. Person and work of Jesus, our Messiah. And so, therefore, as we look at it, we must see it from where we stand as a gospel song for us who are pilgrims as well, on a journey. As I mentioned last week, we've got to remember this is not our home, brothers and sisters, if you're in Christ. We're only here for a short, short, short, short while. And then we enter a new land, a new home, a perfect abode with Christ, a heavenly, holy home where sin cannot enter. I love what C.S. Lewis says. He says, this life is like the page to the book. That's all it is. It's just the cover, if you will. It's just the cover. And then there's the rest. This life is a mist. And so we've got to see ourselves as pilgrims. And so as we study this psalm, we also have to notice in that there's an ascending gospel nature to it. We see Israel's hope, and therefore we see our hope. And I think it's interesting that I think this psalm displays a Christian's life almost to a T in a life that's been transformed by the gospel. So as we go through this, we're going to note that. We're going to note the ascending nature of it in its gospel proclamation, as it's fitly titled Psalm of Ascent. Upward. Onward and upward, we could say. And so, just so you understand, over the last three weeks, we've studied some psalms that help us in our times of trial and difficulty. As I mentioned when we first jumped into this, there's lots of things going on, and many of you know full well. Lots of trials. They can be numerous and really overwhelming, can't they? Those trials that come to you. Well, there's another kind of trial and difficulty that we endure, which can also feel totally overwhelming to us at times. This Psalm is one of the seven Psalms of Ascent that speak of the difficulties of being down in the depths in light of the sin that plagues us. So we need to be comforted in that as well. The difficulties in this life don't end with car accidents and sickness and death. The difficulties in this life come from a result of the fall, sin entering in. And oftentimes, day by day, our difficulties come because we may have sin in our lives. Especially before we come to be saved and we're transformed. And so as we look at this psalm in light of that, we're going to see these four pieces that you have on your handout, I think, in the bulletin. The first one in this gospel-flavored song, if you will, is we're going to cry out to the Lord for help, like the psalmist. Second, we see that we all need to understand there's such a thing as a deep conviction of sin and it's good. Third, he recognizes that in light of all of that, there's hope only in God. There's only one hope. And then fourth, we'll see that the psalmist is calling his people to find that hope in God alone. The psalm is so wonderful, it points us to Christ. So let's start with what we see him starting with, the psalmist, in his cry for help from the Lord. He says, out of the depths, I'm crying. It's like he's in the deepest part of the darkest ocean. He's sunk down. He's in despair. He's in the Mariana's trench of spiritual depression. There is nothing in his life, nothing in his own strength that he can do about his current condition. Nothing. What's this all about? Is this a despair about the condition of his life in terms of the suffering he's enduring at maybe the hands of a wicked king or an oppressive government as our minds may automatically go to? Is he in despair about the present state of affairs in the world and how it's affecting him? Is he poor? Is he hungry? Is he sick? I don't think it's any of those things. This Psalm reminds me of the prophet Jonah. Jonah was brought very low by the Lord because he was confronted with what? His sin. He ends up in the belly of the fish and he's forced to really have a mirror in front of him the whole time. Kind of gross, but uh he's looking at his own sin in the face, if you will. He's forced to reckon with the fact that he's rebelled and he's run from God. He's devastated and he's brought low. So that his only choice is to cry out to the Lord. Have you ever been there? Have you ever been at the bottom? You ever felt like you just hit the floor? Like there's not room enough for you to fall one inch lower. Have you been in a spot in your life where you think that the next moment is gonna be your demise if things don't start looking up? Or you've been so low, maybe for a long time, and you feel as though you just have nowhere to turn. Have you been there? I hope so. I hope so. I hope that this is familiar to you in some way. No, I'm not sick and twisted. Not at least in this. I'm not saying this just because I've been there and I want you to be there as well. Everybody's low looks differently. But if you've had that experience and you can say right now that you're in Christ, that you're his, you're a Christian, then I say, praise God for that time in the depths. Maybe you say, Pastor, have you gone mad? He says right off the bat, he's in the depths of despair. The psalmist is essentially saying he's broken and devastated. He's crying out to the Lord. Oh, yes, dear Christian. What a great place to be. Oh, what a great place to be. He's seen the Lord's holiness. He's seen the beauty of God's perfect law, the wonders of God's matchless perfection. His view of God has been enlarged and magnified, and it has caused his heart to be in great anguish. What a wonderful place to be. We as Christians will go to the Lord many times in despair and anguish. Oh Lord, help! Help! My relationship is broken. My country's falling fast. My money's all gone. My freedoms seem like they're being eroded. My loved one has passed away. They're so sick. I'm in despair. We do that a lot, don't we? And it's good. It's a good thing to do. But how many times, how many times have you gone before the Lord like the psalmist and said, Oh God, you're so holy. And I'm sinful. I'm in despair right now over that white lie. I'm in despair over that gossip session I participated in. I'm in despair over this lust that plagues me. I'm in utter despair over the sin I commit against you and you only. How many times have you done that? When we study the rest of this psalm, we realize that the psalmist is broken, he's devastated, he's lower than he's ever been before, primarily because he's been struck by the wickedness of his own sin. What I'm trying to tell you, Christian, is that this psalmist is in a great place. Not permanently, of course. This leads us to our second point, his deep conviction of sin. You see, the psalmist is right now, he's just penetrated, he's simply penetrated to the heart at the profundity of his sin. That's the backdrop of the word death here. When he says, out of the depths I cry to you. It's profundus. That's the word he's using. It is what it means is profound despair. Why? Why is he in this low, terribly low place? Because he has compared God's holy character and law with his own life. He's humiliated. He's ashamed and depressed. Not because his 401k has been depleted. Not because he got caught red-handed. Not because his country is in trouble, not because he's physically sick, not because somebody hasn't done their job, not because his spouse is tough to be around, but because he's been faced with his own sin. And so again, I say, praise God for being brought low in that way. Because it is far, listen to this, it is far better to be undone in the face of your sin than it is to be consumed by the wrath of God. I just pray all of us take sin that seriously, like the psalmist. I worry that in our modern evangelical culture, there's a softening to the devastation of sin. Think about it. Why are there hurricanes? Why is there fighting? Why are there wars? Why are there all these things? It's because of sin that entered in. It is devastating, brothers and sisters. We call it a mistake today, don't we? Like turning the wrong way. We may call it a character flaw. We say, it's just the way I was raised. It's just my package, God gets me. I worry. I worry for American Christians that are bombarded with that kind of language. Isn't that what the Bible says? I worry that if you're here this morning and you haven't yet found that your own individual sin is worth despairing over, do you know his grace? You see, God's grace is magnified as we understand depravity. I think if we think that we're just okay or good enough or better than others, then grace is cheap. Grace is nice and but not completely necessary. But if we are struck like the psalmist, just out of the depths of my sin, then we are brought low to then be able to see that grace is absolutely majestic. It is a hundred percent needed, it is a wonder to behold, it is something to sing about, it is something we will be rejoicing over for an eternity. Grace is magnified as sin is confessed and seen for what it is: rebellion against the God of the universe. And so that place of despair, the reason I say he's in a good spot is because that place of despair becomes a place of joy as grace is known. Verse 2 Lord, hear my voice, please. What a prayer. What a prayer. I'm crying out to you, God, of the depths. I'm a pilgrim. I need you, please. Hear me. I have no hope without you. Hear me, be attentive to my supplications, please. The psalmist knows without a shadow of a doubt, there is nowhere else to look for help. If you don't hear me, if you don't save me, there's nowhere else to turn. And he's right, we only have one place to turn, don't we? Listen to Psalm 116. I love this. Psalm 116. I love the Lord because he hears my voice and my supplications, because he's inclined his ear to me. Therefore I shall call upon him as long as I live. The cords of death encompass me, and the terrors of Sheol came upon me. I found distress and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the Lord. O Lord, I beseech you. Save my life. It is our great privilege to be able to call upon the Lord and even be heard. Lord, hear my voice. He hears you. It's amazing. I mean, think about it. I'm a sinner. I have turned my back on God more times than I care to count. I have done absolutely vile things. I am I have been his enemy before Christ. I still sin today. I've rebelled against my creator. This last week. The sovereign creator of all things who is not like us, in fact, could have, and by all rights, should have zapped me into oblivion for this. Yet he hears my cries for help. He hears my repentance. He's the one who draws it out of me and draws me to himself.

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Wow.

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You ever think about that? From the deepest, darkest depths, my cries and pleas for mercy are heard in the highest heavens. Verse three. If you, Lord, if you would mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? The answer is obvious, isn't it? No one. Once we have understood the nature of our rebellion, the anger of our sin toward God, only then can we truly plead for forgiveness. Who can stand before Him? No one on their own merits. Doesn't matter if you fed five million people. I don't care if you've mowed a thousand elderly widows' lawns. I don't care if you spend each waking moment volunteering at the shelter or the food bank. There is no one who can stand before God on their own merits. There is no one besides Christ who has perfectly obeyed the Father's will. No one could stand. Therefore, third part, there is hope in God. There is hope in God, praise the Lord. And so out of the sorrow of sinfulness comes the relief of God's mercy, we find. After all I just said about the sinfulness of humanity, which includes us all, it's not just us on TV or in the jail cells, it's all of us. But after saying all of that, never forget. Please never forget to remember there is forgiveness, no matter what. And in this part, I want to quickly identify three things about God's forgiveness. First, there is forgiveness in no other name. Only in Christ are we forgiven. He is the way, the truth, and the life. Who goes to the Father? Who goes to the Father? Is it through this avenue or this avenue? It is only through who? Jesus. Nobody goes to the Father except through Christ. And so just cast out all that stuff that bombards you day in and day out, I know. Those eternally condemning thoughts that think or that tell you there's many roads to heaven. There's not. There is one road to heaven and it is paved in Christ's atoning blood. To say there is another way or many ways is absolute absurdity. That line of thinking is more absurd than saying if I were to head north from here right now where I'm at, I'm going to get to Burns in three hours. Kind of stupid to say, isn't it? That's like saying there's another way to heaven, but even more so. There is forgiveness in Christ alone. There is heavenly dwelling in Christ alone. We need to be cautious to remember this, not just in voice, but in practice. The more secular our world and our country becomes, the greater the need we will have to stand firm on the foundation of Christ alone. As has been said, contramundum, a Latin phrase meaning here I stand, I can do no other, has been said before. There is forgiveness in no other name. None. Not through Jehovah's Witness, not through Mormonism, not through the Islamic faith, not through Hinduism, Buddhism, not science, not even the Catholic faith, if it isn't Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone, found in the scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone. That's how it works. Let me ask you this: what other religion stands on the blood of God's own Son? Completely. What other religion is a religion of grace and not works? Those are your answers. It is Christ alone that there is forgiveness. The psalmist finds comfort in this as he thinks of who is coming, abundant redemption. He's not arrogant, he's just simply telling the truth as somebody who's been in the depths and is now being raised up and out by the grace of God. He is singing of this beauty as he is confronted with sin, of which he's also singing about. Now, this, by the way, should comfort us in any trial we have. There is forgiveness and hope in the Lord. There is eternal life, even if cancer comes. We have forgiveness in Christ no matter what, even if a hurricane or an earthquake or a tornado comes. Fires, pandemics, famines, financial ruin. Or especially a realization of sin. No matter what. Since there is forgiveness in Christ, in Christ alone, there is cause to rejoice through the pain and the tears. Him alone. Second, there is forgiveness in the Lord. Therefore, here's the thing: we can stand, can't we? The previous verse asked the question: who can stand before the Lord if he were to count iniquities? The answer is Christ. This is time for the kids. Give the Sunday school answer. Jesus, right? It is. It's all about Jesus. Christ stood as the perfect spotless lamb in our place. Christ stood before Pilate. Christ stood before the Jewish religious leaders without backing down. Christ stood before the evil one in the desert. Christ held fast as he remained steadfast on the cross as his Father pours out his wrath on him. Christ is the sure and steady anchor. He is our foundation and he will not be moved. It is Christ and his work that stands. Therefore, what human can stand? Anybody who's in Christ. Are you in Christ? On that last day, on that day when we are brought before the Lord, all of those who have found their hope, their only hope in the one and only Jesus Christ, the sovereign Lord of their life, that one will stand with certainty. Why? Because we stand in Christ. We stand on his foundation as his people. We're able to stand there because why? There is forgiveness in him. Listen to the third verse of the great song. I will not be singing it, I will be reading it. Don't worry. My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part, but the whole. How do we respond? Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul. My sin, not in part, but the whole of it. It's nailed to the cross. There's forgiveness of sins in Christ, my friends. Be amazed. Because here's the thing. The moment you're conceived, you have an appointment to stand before the Lord of the universe. The only question is, the only question you have to answer is whether or not you're going to stand with your sin, all of us are sinners, with your sin is a heap of burning coals on your head, or you stand with Christ's imputed righteousness credited to your account. Which one is it? That's there's no middle ground. It's one of the two. There is forgiveness in him, and all human beings need it to be able to be with him in heaven. A lot of people talk about heaven, the comfort of heaven, the joy of heaven. I can't look, I can't wait for heaven. Most of those people won't be there. Country songs and the like. Because heaven is a place that is reserved for Christ's people. No one is ever going to be able to stand before Christ on that day with a plea of not guilty. It's either guilty or forgiven. That's it. There's forgiveness in Christ. Have you been in the depths? Third, there is forgiveness, therefore there is fear. That's what he says. Verse 4, but there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared. I know it sounds backward to us at first. But we're not talking about a worldly fear of cowering in the corner, nor just a fear of being caught, but a fear of reverence and awe. It's a loving fear, a fear that generates within us a desire to be on our knees. Not pleading for him to spare our life, but praying for him to take over our life as someone who has a strength to do just that. You see, a saved soul, somebody who's been forgiven and knows it in the depths of his or her soul, is someone who never takes that for granted. They're not crass toward the forgiveness of sins, nor flippant toward the God and King of heaven. Theirs is a countenance of worship and adoration. If it weren't for his forgiveness, you and I would all have one decided dealing with God. If it weren't for forgiveness, it would just be a time of terror on that one day before his throne. But for those who have been forgiven, for those who fear God, we get to have daily interactions with the Lord, don't we? Daily conversation, daily help, daily sustenance, daily provision. For the one who rejects his forgiveness, there will be fear one day. But it's going to be a fear of a different sort. Do you have a reverence and awe over his compassion? Of his forgiving grace and mercy, of his great and awesome power? Your reverence and awe for the Lord will always grow as the hope of his grace is magnified in your heart and mind. As it says in verse 4, there is forgiveness with you that, or you could say so that you may be feared. Fear becomes the natural outworking of the one who clings to his forgiveness in the gospel. Do you see the progression? It's beautiful. Okay, fourth point. He calls his people to find their hope in God. Not just have a mental ascent to the understanding that there is such a thing as hope. And this becomes a natural response for the Christian. The psalmist has now resolved himself to hope in God and wait for the Lord, as we see in 5 and 6. We're going to come back to that in just a minute. But then in verse 7, he calls Israel to say have the same hope he's found. Isn't that awesome? The psalmist calls Israel the one thing. Hey guys, hope. Find hope in him. Repent, hope in the Lord. I love it. The psalmist also is an evangelist, isn't he? He loves and cares for his people. He cares so deeply for them that he's willing to tell them the truth. Do you? Do you love your fellow countrymen? Then love them with the truth of the gospel. This is a Christian's call and privilege. As we've seen in this text so far, the person who loves the Lord is the one who calls out to him from the depths. He is someone who knows the Lord and he hears his voice, and he knows the Lord hears him. He is somebody who knows that he cannot stand or inherit eternal life on his own merits. He is somebody who clings to the fact there's forgiveness of sins with God. And therefore, what we come to realize is that this person is a person who is going to naturally call others to this truth as well. Think about it, if your child's running out in the freeway, what are you going to do? You've probably heard these things before. Well, your loved one may be running away from God only to be crushed by the weight of their sin one day. What are you going to do? You can't save them, but you can tell them. Hope in God. If your child's going to put their hand on a hot stove, what do you do? Maybe you're the kind of parent, like, well, we'll never do that again. But what are most of us going to do? Your family members reaching in the wrong direction. What are you going to do? Their arms are extended. They don't know where to turn. They don't know where to place their trust in. They're just doing it in something other than Christ. What are we going to do? The psalmist says, Oh Israel. Oh America. Oh neighbor. Oh co-worker. Oh family member. Oh mechanic. Oh grocer. Oh politician. Oh professor. There's hope in the Lord for you. There's loving kindness. You think you've seen loving kindness on this earth? You haven't seen anything until you've seen the Lord. You think perfect love can come from another human? You haven't seen love even if you're married and you have children. The Savior is ready to love you with a love that you've never known. Loving kindness comes even as you have hated him. Do we speak like that? Look at the end of verse 7. One of my favorite phrases in the Bible. Abundant redemption. You know what that is? That's more than you can handle. It is of such a large quantity and quality that it is so plentiful, it's just overflowing. Overflowing redemption. In him, O Israel. O America. In him, O Prairie Baptist Church, is true and lasting hope. Abundant redemption. This is a pilgrim's gospel song, isn't it? Imagine this. Imagine the hope that this produced as those travelers were singing this song on their way to Feast in Jerusalem. Looking at each other, if you will. Picture that. There's forgiveness, brothers and sisters. God is gracious. Picture yourself traveling on foot. Maybe all of all of who are in here today heading for a wonderful celebration. There's sickness, there's difficulty. We're talking about it. There's pain, there's sorrow, there's a pain of sin that in our lives that surround us, and maybe we're asking for prayer. I mean, think about a 75-person pack walking together, singing through the tears, singing of the overflowing redemption of what the gospel promises, those who are in Christ, looking at each other with joy in the pain. We sing of the forgiveness and kindness of God. What a journey we're on, my friends. What a journey. I just I want to begin to conclude our time here this morning. I notice I said begin to conclude our time here this morning by simply relishing in this hope to come. As a pilgrim on a journey speaking to other pilgrims, that's who we are, journeying to our eternal home. I just want to end our time in this pilgrim song with the hope of the Lord's salvation. And to do that, I want to talk about baseball. Okay? Follow me, please. I enjoy baseball. I enjoy watching baseball. Especially those games with significance. On occasion, my boys and I will go back and we'll try to find old playoff games to watch, even though we may know the outcome. You ever done that? We'll turn on the seventh game of the series. There's this sense of anticipation, there's excitement, especially if the home team is going to win. When I'm watching that game and the camera pans the crowd and they're all going wild, I know soon there's gonna be pandemonium as our team wins, as the batter hits the walk-off home run. It's exciting, it can be relatively thrilling to watch. You have this anticipation, and it awakens in a fan a longing, a passion. You know what's coming, and it's still gonna be great. In that moment, in that moment, I like to remind myself that there is literally no eternal value to that game. Sorry to crush your love of recreation. It will not be remembered. Maybe the attitudes of the players. But that home run will fade from our memories over the years, and it's gonna be completely lost when the Lord returns. Eternally, it means nothing. But what this Psalm does for the Christian, what this Psalm does for the one who has a hope, is that it awakens in them the most passionate longing that can come, a longing for the Lord. I wait for the Lord's redemption. I know without a shadow of a doubt, it's gonna come fully and visibly because the Lord's word has assured me of this. Like watching a baseball game that's already been played, the Lord's redemption is already set for his people. The cost has been paid, the outcome is sure. And so I place my hope in his word, as it says in verse 5. It tells me of the Messiah. It tells me of the forgiveness of sins. It tells me there's hope. I don't hope in what may come or what I would like to have happen. I don't hope in possibilities or what-ifs. My hope is a sure foundation. My hope is made solid because it's a hope in his word. My soul waits for the Lord. It awakens my soul to watch and to wait. My soul has been tormented, stressed, and distracted. And yet, as I think through my hope, my Savior Jesus Christ, my soul finds rest. I find peace. Brothers and sisters, when you pray, when you sing praise to the Lord, what is it that strikes you and causes you to worship and ponder? For the psalmists, I can assure you, it would have been the fact that although none can stand before him on their own, he knows that there's forgiveness. There is this one who has conquered sin and death, and he's now standing triumphantly. The psalmists love to sing of this. Hope that even ends up shining all the way down into the depths of despair for the pilgrim.

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Oh Lord.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

If you should mark my iniquities, personalize that. There's no way I can stand. But there's forgiveness with you. Therefore, I'm content to wait upon the Lord's salvation since I know it's coming. I know it's coming. I know the end, like the baseball game. I know the end. And I'm waiting for it. And so I can endure each day and whatever it brings, and I can thrive in it. Because I'm expecting relief one day. I know that his comfort already is and will even more fully be mine. It will come and it will last. I find it in no other name, no other authority, but Christ alone. And so a Christian is to be like a watchman, as verse 6 speaks of. A watchman who watches the rising of the sun. One day that morning will come, brothers and sisters. It's coming. The dawn of the coming of the Lord will come one day, and the watchman, the one who is patiently waiting and watching for the Lord, will see his appearing, and amazing things are gonna happen. There will be heavenly sounds, there will be heavenly sights, heavenly events, heavenly creatures, but the central attraction will be heaven's creator, heaven's adored son. And we watchmen, we're gonna see this abundant redemption in the person of Jesus Christ. Our hope will be made sight, our longing, even our faith will be no more because he will be here. As the shining of that morning comes, we will see hope realized. We will see the Redeemer face to face if the Lord Jesus not determined. But even if he tarries until we all go home to be with him, at that day of our death, this passage still reigns just as true. And I can assure you today, I can assure you, there has never been a single person that has humbly looked for the redemption of their souls and the forgiveness of their sins and walked away disappointed because of a failure on the Lord's part. Never gonna happen. So, pilgrim, what comes to your mind when you sing of the Lord's forgiveness? What comes to your mind when you sing of Jesus? He's forgiven you. His redemption will be visible to you on the dawning of that day. So just sing it out in your life. He's worthy. Out of the depths, I've cried to you. Have you been there? Are you there now? Well no. But with him there is forgiveness. No matter what you've done, no matter who you've been, or for how long, there is abundant redemption. There is loving kindness. And so I wait for the Lord. My soul does wait. And in his word do I hope. Now that is a song for us to sing. Let's pray. Father, you are glorious. You are so kind to us. Deservedly, we are in the depths without you. And yet you find us there and you pluck us out. By your mercy, by your grace. You draw us by your kindness unto repentance and align us with your Son. In this great exchange, our sins are imputed to Christ, and the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us. How wonderful are you, great God! Cause this church to be a city set on a hill that proclaims this truth day by day. That in our gospel unity, people would desire to know more of your goodness, more of the forgiveness, more of the grace. The pride, arrogance, that we can get our things done our way would just be vanquished in all of us. And that Christ would fill all of those holes. The treasure we have in Jesus. Amen.