SPEAKER_00: I need to apologize for my voice.
SPEAKER_00: I am at the end of a severe cold and trying to make it through this day with my voice.
SPEAKER_00: I was so kind and so gracious that I gave my wife a Mother's Day gift of a sick child at home.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to make it through this morning in as much voice as I possibly can.
SPEAKER_00: A couple of weeks ago, Pastor Scott began a short series that I'm going to continue for a few months on the Sundays that we celebrate the Lord's table together.
SPEAKER_00: That series is Grace in the Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: We began that short series by learning about the grace of God's righteousness from Psalm 143.
SPEAKER_00: This morning I would like you to turn with me to Psalm 130 as we look at the grace of God's redemption, another appropriate theme to approach the Lord's table with a little bit later.
SPEAKER_00: The grace of God's redemption from Psalm 130.
SPEAKER_00: We do not know who wrote this Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: It's an unnamed author.
SPEAKER_00: But it begins as a song of assents.
SPEAKER_00: The Psalmist says, Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_00: O Lord, hear my voice.
SPEAKER_00: Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy.
SPEAKER_00: If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
SPEAKER_00: But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared.
SPEAKER_00: I wait for the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: My soul waits, and in his word I hope.
SPEAKER_00: My soul waits for the Lord, more than watchman for the morning.
SPEAKER_00: More than watchman for the morning.
SPEAKER_00: O Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption, and he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Grace has often been defined as unmerited favor.
SPEAKER_00: Unmerited meaning it hasn't been earned.
SPEAKER_00: It's not deserved because of work accomplished.
SPEAKER_00: Theologically, it refers to the work of God of giving people something they did not earn or deserve.
SPEAKER_00: The grace of redemption then means that God gives redemption to those who did not deserve it, who have not earned it.
SPEAKER_00: Now you can see from verse 7 why we would look to this particular psalm to see God's gracious redemption.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7 refers to his plentiful redemption.
SPEAKER_00: The word translated redemption in this psalm means ransom.
SPEAKER_00: It's often used in the Old Testament in reference to people being ransomed from an enemy, a payment being made to release them from bondage.
SPEAKER_00: But this is a very unique and special use of the word ransom.
SPEAKER_00: It's special because it is the only time in the Old Testament where it is used to refer to a ransom from sin.
SPEAKER_00: As it is in verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: A ransom is a payment made to release people from bondage, and in this case, God releases people from bondage to sin entirely by his grace.
SPEAKER_00: But that's the end of the psalm.
SPEAKER_00: We can't conclude much about the end of the psalm without seeing what takes place throughout the Psalm.
SPEAKER_00: So as we return to the beginning, we begin to see that it is a psalm of ascent, meaning it was a pilgrim song sung by travelers on their way to Jerusalem for a religious holiday.
SPEAKER_00: Possibly a Passover holiday or something like it.
SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem in geography sits in a higher level.
SPEAKER_00: It sits on a mountaintop, higher than the surrounding areas.
SPEAKER_00: And so travelers would walk the dusty trails, the roads leading along the carved landscape for many miles, traveling up, ascending into the city.
SPEAKER_00: People would sing this song as they walked the dusty roads to Jerusalem to worship at the temple.
SPEAKER_00: They would sing as they anticipated offering sacrifices at the temple in hopes of atonement, seeking atonement for their sin.
SPEAKER_00: Each step took them closer to the temple, and it was a step that took them up, up as it were, to God's holy presence, where they would need to deal with their sin.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps that is why the first of four stanzas in this song begins with the cry of the condemned.
SPEAKER_00: O Lord, hear my voice, let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy.
SPEAKER_00: That sounds like the cry of someone facing condemnation, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: If all we had were that section, those two verses, we might attribute it to someone who was arrested for committing a crime.
SPEAKER_00: We can imagine it coming from the lips of a prisoner.
SPEAKER_00: That last statement in verse 2 seems to point in that direction.
SPEAKER_00: My pleas for mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Sounds like someone who has been convicted of a crime and is standing before a judge waiting to receive their sentence.
SPEAKER_00: It's the cry of a guilty person.
SPEAKER_00: But this is not guilt for a crime as we would normally think of it.
SPEAKER_00: This is not guilt from petty theft or burglary, not the crime of exceeding the speed limit or having a parking ticket or running a red light or even something more egregious like rape or murder.
SPEAKER_00: This is the crime of sin, or as R.C.
SPEAKER_00: Sproull once called it, cosmic treason.
unknown: R.
SPEAKER_00: C.
SPEAKER_00: Spro went on to define sin in this way.
SPEAKER_00: When people violate the laws of men in a serious way, we speak of their actions not merely as misdemeanors, but in the final analysis as crimes.
SPEAKER_00: In the same regard, our actions of rebellion and transgressions of the law of God are not seen by him as mere misdemeanors, rather, they are felonious.
SPEAKER_00: They are criminal in their impact.
SPEAKER_00: If we take the reality of sin seriously in our lives, we see that we commit crimes against a holy God and against his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Our crimes are not virtues, they are vices, and any transgression of a holy God is vicious by definition.
SPEAKER_00: Then RC makes this summary and conclusion.
SPEAKER_00: It is not until we understand who God is that we gain any real understanding of the seriousness of our sin.
SPEAKER_00: But when God's character is made clear to us and we are able to measure our actions, not in relative terms with respect to other humans, but in absolute terms with respect to God, his character and his law, it is then that we begin to be awakened to the egregious character of our rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: Not until we take God seriously, he says, will we ever take sin seriously.
SPEAKER_00: But if we acknowledge the righteous character of God, then we, like the saints of old, will cover our mouths with our hands and repent in dust and ashes.
SPEAKER_00: That's the psalmist.
SPEAKER_00: He comes crying, and his cry comes from the heart of one who is fully aware of his sin before a holy God.
SPEAKER_00: Someone who is aware that he deserves judgment, and yet he has hope.
SPEAKER_00: He has hope.
SPEAKER_00: Not hope in his own work or in his own effort or in his own goodness, because none of those are effective at appeasing a righteous God.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he hopes in God's mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Now mercy is not the same as God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: Grace is giving what is not earned or deserved.
SPEAKER_00: Mercy is not giving what is deserved or what is earned.
SPEAKER_00: For example, mercy is when our children deliberately disobey and we refrain from carrying out the discipline that they earned in their disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: That is mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Mercy is when you do something wrong at work that costs the business money in some way, but your employer refrains from disciplining you.
SPEAKER_00: You've earned some sort of discipline, but it is not given.
SPEAKER_00: That is mercy.
SPEAKER_00: This unnamed sinner cries out to God for mercy.
SPEAKER_00: He knows that he deserves judgment.
SPEAKER_00: He knows that he deserves wrath, but he asks for that to be toned down or to be not given at all.
SPEAKER_00: And that cry comes from an understanding of who God is.
SPEAKER_00: Why do I say that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, throughout this psalm, there is an alternating pattern of terms for God.
SPEAKER_00: In your Bible, you might see the word Lord every once in a while in all capital letters, and then other times in lowercase letters.
SPEAKER_00: The first term is always capitalized, meaning it refers to the personal covenant name of God, Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: That illustrates that this psalmist has a relationship with his God, with his covenant God.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh is his God.
SPEAKER_00: The second term is Kiros, for Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It's a term of supremacy, of power, of authority, of rule.
SPEAKER_00: He alternates back and forth between those terms because he knows that Kirios is a powerful God, powerful to judge his sin, but he cries out to Yahweh, his covenant God, to hear him in the depths of his brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: He's not crying out to two different gods.
SPEAKER_00: He's crying out to the same God approaching him from different directions.
SPEAKER_00: This is not only the cry of the condemned, it's the cry of the broken and the contrite.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist knows.
SPEAKER_00: He knows that God will not despise a broken and a contrite heart, and that's why he cries out from the depths of his sinfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, the word for depths here is the same word that Jonah uses when he describes his being tossed over the side of the ship in the Mediterranean Sea, and he sinks down, and he goes down to the very roots of the mountains, and he says the depths closed in around him.
SPEAKER_00: So you can get a sense of how the psalmist feels then, based off of that.
SPEAKER_00: That's how he feels about his sin.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the point to which we all must come if we are to seek mercy for our sin.
SPEAKER_00: This ought to be the cry of each one of us, pleading that our God would hear our cries for mercy, and this cry is necessary because of the next stanza describing the justice of the judge.
SPEAKER_00: Verse three.
SPEAKER_00: But with you there is forgiveness that you might be feared.
SPEAKER_00: If the covenant God were to keep track of our sins, if if he had a stand beside his throne that had a pen and a paper, and every time I sinned or you sinned, he he wrote it down in a list, keeping track of every single one of them.
SPEAKER_00: I appreciated Charles Spurgeon including a quotation in his treasury of David.
SPEAKER_00: And this pastor said, Suppose God, seated on his throne of inflexible righteousness, suppose him taking notes with a pen in his hand of the transgressions which are proven against us.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing is omitted.
SPEAKER_00: Every sin is marked down with its peculiar aggravations.
SPEAKER_00: There is no possibility of escape from the deserved condemnation.
SPEAKER_00: The evidence against us is clear, it is copious, and it is overwhelming.
SPEAKER_00: A thousandth part of it is sufficient to determine our doom.
SPEAKER_00: The judge has no alternative but to pronounce the awful sentence We must die a felon's death.
SPEAKER_00: If you Yahweh should mark iniquities, Oh Kyrgios, who could stand?
SPEAKER_00: That's the realization that comes to us when we understand the seriousness of our sin before a holy God.
SPEAKER_00: There's no escaping his judgment.
SPEAKER_00: If the judge of all the earth maintains a record of my sin, I am doomed.
SPEAKER_00: There's no escaping it.
SPEAKER_00: He sits in judgment over all the earth, he sees all, he knows all.
SPEAKER_00: His power is limitless, his position is supreme.
SPEAKER_00: If he wrote down my sin and your sin as a judge executing justice, we are hopeless.
SPEAKER_00: There is no escape from his power, there is no escape from his position.
SPEAKER_00: There is only the hanging of our heads in shame, crying out for mercy, fully expecting the terrible pronouncement of justice and the pounding of the gavel.
SPEAKER_00: And then we hear these astounding words.
SPEAKER_00: You are forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: Our heads on a swivel, we we look around wondering if we heard correctly.
SPEAKER_00: Pardoned, the judge says.
SPEAKER_00: You are forgiven and pardoned.
SPEAKER_00: There is no sentence for you.
SPEAKER_00: Justice has been satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: How does one process that?
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist doesn't throw a party, he doesn't celebrate.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he says that the judge's justice ought to move the forgiven to fear that you may be feared.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Peter meant when he wrote in 1 Peter chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: If you call on him as Father who judges according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear.
SPEAKER_00: This granting of forgiveness, this pardoning act of the judge, is intended to move the sinner to worship and obedience, to awe and fear of standing before the judge ever again in that guilty way.
SPEAKER_00: This is the prayer from the heart of a sinner broken by his sin.
SPEAKER_00: He's cried out to the faithful, covenant-keeping God.
SPEAKER_00: He's acknowledged the holiness of his God.
SPEAKER_00: And once he's done that, there's nothing left to do but wait.
SPEAKER_00: That's why in verses five and six in the third stanza of the song, we see the waiting of the weary.
SPEAKER_00: And his emphasis is quite clear.
SPEAKER_00: I wait for Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: My soul waits.
SPEAKER_00: And in verse six, my soul waits.
SPEAKER_00: For what is he waiting?
SPEAKER_00: The proper question is for whom is he waiting?
SPEAKER_00: I wait for Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: My soul waits for curiosity.
SPEAKER_00: He waits to be heard by his covenant God, and he waits for the judgment of the judge.
SPEAKER_00: But more than the hearing and more than the judgment, he waits for God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist was overcome by his sin.
SPEAKER_00: He was sunk down into the depths of brokenness and sorrow over his sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so he expressed himself by crying out and humbling himself before the sovereign one.
SPEAKER_00: And now this broken child of God waits for Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: He waits like one who stood the watch of the night.
SPEAKER_00: Wearied and exhausted as he looks for the dawning of the day.
SPEAKER_00: He waits.
SPEAKER_00: But how does he wait?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he tells us that he waits with hope.
SPEAKER_00: He waits with hope.
SPEAKER_00: Specifically, hope in God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Now we aren't given a specific passage or a promise of God that he's holding on to.
SPEAKER_00: We aren't given any insight into the mind of the songwriter, but we can take some educated guesses.
SPEAKER_00: We might say that he was thinking about Psalm 86, verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: For you, Yahweh, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.
SPEAKER_00: Great place to hope.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he was thinking about Psalm 32, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed is he who calls upon you, whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever the text, whatever the passage, the psalmist looks with hope to the promises of God that were recorded in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: But he also waits with expectation.
SPEAKER_00: The word wait, verses 5 and 6, comes from the same root word as watchman.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist watches for God just as the watchmen watch for the morning.
SPEAKER_00: Watchmen watch expectantly for the morning.
SPEAKER_00: They persevere through their night watch because they know the sun will rise.
SPEAKER_00: The darkness will be dispelled, and the cold night will be chased away by the rays of the morning sun.
SPEAKER_00: Their eyes are trained on the east, watching.
SPEAKER_00: But they also watch with anticipation.
SPEAKER_00: With the sun comes rest for the watchman.
SPEAKER_00: The dawn brings release from their obligations, freedom from the boundaries of darkness, freedom from the night vigil.
SPEAKER_00: Just as the watchman watched for the morning, the sinner watches for his God to act.
SPEAKER_00: He is weary with his sin, weary from crying out.
SPEAKER_00: But he knows that his Redeemer will come.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the end of the prayer.
SPEAKER_00: For three stanzas we have heard the psalmist praying out loud, as it were, in front of the congregation about his own heart.
SPEAKER_00: And now in the last stanza in verses seven and eight, he turns towards those who are listening.
SPEAKER_00: He turns to us, expressing to us the hope of the humble.
SPEAKER_00: He calls on all who belong to God to put their hope in him.
SPEAKER_00: Follow me, he says, follow me and hope as I hope.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Why should we hope in Yahweh?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: Because with Yahweh there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's not a full theological exposition on the reasons to trust God.
SPEAKER_00: Instead we see two little details that are especially important to this psalmist as he humbly watches for God to act.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing he does is he calls on us to hope in God's character.
SPEAKER_00: For with Yahweh there is steadfast love.
SPEAKER_00: That is a familiar characteristic to any Hebrew believer.
SPEAKER_00: It was very familiar to them because Moses wrote of it in Exodus chapter 34, verse 6, where it says, The Lord passed before Moses and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, the God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Moses later in Numbers chapter 14 prayed a very similar prayer to what we see in Psalm 130.
SPEAKER_00: Moses said, Please pardon the iniquity of this people, the people of Israel, according to the greatness of your steadfast love, and abounding in steadfast love, just as you have forgiven this people for forty years, from Egypt until now.
SPEAKER_00: God's forgiveness bound up with his abounding steadfast love.
SPEAKER_00: But perhaps especially important to the psalmist is Psalm thirty-three, verse eighteen.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love.
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist knows that God looks on those who hope in his steadfast love.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a second detail here in Psalm 130.
SPEAKER_00: We are called to hope in God's gracious ransom, and with him is plentiful redemption.
SPEAKER_00: He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.
SPEAKER_00: It's not talking about a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: God's redemption doesn't just scratch the surface.
SPEAKER_00: It is plentiful, it is abundant.
SPEAKER_00: In his commentary on the Psalms, John Calvin wrote, God describes this redemption as plenteous, that the faithful, even when reduced to the very last extremity, may sustain themselves from the consideration that there are in the hand of God many and incredible means by which to save them.
SPEAKER_00: God's redemption, his ransom is plentiful.
SPEAKER_00: And it's because of that plentiful ransom existing in God that he will ransom all of his children from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: If the character of God and the possession of a great ransom exists, then it makes sense why we would watchfully wait for him, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: If we have come to the place of the psalmist, crying out the cry of the condemned because we are aware of our sin, and we are placing our hope in that one who has steadfast love forever and ever, and in whom exists plentiful redemption, why wouldn't we hope in him?
SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't we wait?
SPEAKER_00: The condemned cries out for mercy, but hopes in grace.
SPEAKER_00: Now God never revealed the basis of his ransoming work in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: We just see statements like this where God promises, based on his character, what he will do.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Hope in me, wait in me, and I will act in this way.
SPEAKER_00: But he never told them the underlying basis of that redemption.
SPEAKER_00: It's not until thousands of years later where we begin to see certain activities take place and recorded for us in the book of Romans these words.
SPEAKER_00: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift.
SPEAKER_00: How?
SPEAKER_00: Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward publicly displayed as a propitiation, as a satisfactory sacrifice by his blood to be received by faith.
SPEAKER_00: That's the grace of redemption.
SPEAKER_00: So even in the Psalms we see Christ.
SPEAKER_00: When we come to the cross, it wasn't an afterthought.
SPEAKER_00: Not only was it spoken of in the Psalms, it was prepared in eternity past.
SPEAKER_00: Or God said, I know you are going to cry the cry of the condemned.
SPEAKER_00: But with me there is steadfast love and plentiful redemption.
SPEAKER_00: An unknown songwriter leads us to the depths of our sin and the need for rescue from judgment for our sin.
SPEAKER_00: And he points us right to the character of God and the hope of his salvation fulfilled in the redemption that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: What a perfect way for God's people to be led into celebrating communion together.
SPEAKER_00: To not only be reminded of what Christ did in his suffering on the cross, his body being broken and his blood being shed, but of what that accomplished for the condemned, that we might be ransomed from our sin.
SPEAKER_00: Would you bow in prayer with me as the choir comes forward?
SPEAKER_00: Our Lord Jesus, we are awed and overwhelmed by your grace.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you do such a thing for wretches like us?
SPEAKER_00: We beg for mercy, we cry out for mercy, and not only do you not give us what we deserve, but you give us what we have not earned.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, what grace found in the cross of Jesus Christ, that you would give yourself to be lifted up as a sacrifice, so that all who come to you, all who look to you as the lifted up one on the tree, the condemned tree, would find life, would find hope, would find freedom from bondage to our sin.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the privilege, Lord, of as your people coming together to seek forgiveness for our sin.
SPEAKER_00: And to hear your words.
SPEAKER_00: You're forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: You are pardoned by my blood.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.