Good morning. Good to see you all again. I missed you last week. Good to be back. Please turn to Psalm 130, and we will begin looking at this psalm as we have opportunity, verse by verse. And today I'm going to read the whole psalm, though we will just be giving our attention to the first two verses. A song of a sense. 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 waits, and in his word, I do hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning. Yes, more than those who watch for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord. For with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is abundant redemption, and he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Amen. This is God's word. Well, as we've done with Psalm 51 and Psalm 32, I want to take some time to consider each of the verses in this psalm. It is considered to be a penitential psalm, like those other two psalms. And when we say a penitential psalm, we mean a psalm of confession, where a believer cries out to God and says, forgive me of my sins, be merciful to me, God, and restore me. And all of these psalms have a similar pattern to them. They begin in this situation where the psalmist is very concerned about his situation. There's an anguish about sin, but it always moves to joy. Peace, mercy of God applied to the believer. It's always this pattern that we see, and that's why I wanted to read the whole psalm this morning, is because we begin with the psalmist in the depths. But how do we end? This confidence, God shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. That's the pattern that we see in this psalm. So we need to see that very positive statement of faith that the psalm concludes with. But let's give our attention to verse one, where the psalmist says, out of the depths, I have cried to you, O Lord. What exactly are these depths that the psalmist is referring to? Well, he doesn't tell us exactly. There's a great variety of possibilities. You can think of all different kinds of difficulties or afflictions that could be applied to such term as being in the depths. There's all different kinds of outward afflictions. There can be illness, there can be war, there can be famine, there can be poverty, etc. And all of these outward difficulties of life can make us feel like we are in either the depths of the sea or in some deep pit that we want to get out of. However, I do think a primary focus of the psalm is the fact that it is his sin that has brought him into the depths that he is experiencing, particularly because we come to his sense of concern in verse 3 when he says, if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand? That seems to be prominent among his concerns. No doubt, a lot of these things mix together in our experience. Sometimes there's our sin, there's the outward affliction, there's the sins of others, and it all gets mixed together and it just feels like we are in the depths. Sometimes we need to separate out what is what, but it can be difficult to do so. And so he feels that he is in the depths. And my assumption with Psalm 130 is that these are the words of a believer. We know that because of the words of faith in verse seven, Oh Israel, hope in the Lord for with the Lord there is mercy and with him is abundant redemption. So this is a man that believes in the gospel. He's a man that believes in the redemption of God, but he still feels that he is in the depths. So how is it that sin makes us feel that we are in the depths? Imagine just as a picture that you're in a 500 foot deep pit. It's dark. You have no ladder. You have no rope. You have no way to get up out of that very deep pit. Sin can make us feel that we are in such a situation. Sin is a very destructive thing. It destroys joy. It destroys human life. It destroys relationships. It divides homes. brings about all different kinds of consequences. It damages our conscience. It can make us fearful of God's judgment. Even even if we have the promises of the gospel, we can still at times fear that perhaps that can be an experience that we have. And the psalmist is aware of this reality in verse three when he says, If you should mark iniquities, Oh, Lord, who could stand? So he hates this position that he is in. He does not want to be in the depths anymore. William Plumer puts it this way as he thinks about this language. He says, we never have so good of cause for a distress of mind as when we find sin defiling us and dragging us into deep places. No man ever hated sin or dreaded sin excessively. You can't hate sin too much. Every sigh ingrown from earth or hell, every cry, every distress of conscience is the fruit of sin. Sin has digged every grave, built every prison, even hell itself. This is how we should hate sin. We should see it as the depths of which we want to have nothing to do with. Now, if the believer makes this heart cry, if the believer says, get me out of the depths, Lord, I do not want to be in this place anymore. What about the person that isn't very concerned about sin? The person that doesn't really care. What about the person that sees sin as just a little thing? Relatively small offense in the grand scheme of things, not to be too concerned over such a thing as sin. Let me put it this way. It should concern you if your sin doesn't concern you. If you hear the psalmist and he says, out of the depths I cry to you, oh Lord, and you think, what is the big deal? This guy's crying so intensely. Why is he so concerned about that? If you have a brother or a sister before you and they are crying out to God over their sin, don't diminish that. Don't say, you're making too big of a deal out of that. That is the heart cry of a believer under the conviction of the Holy Spirit saying, I want to have nothing to do with this anymore. Lord, have mercy upon me. Deliver me from this sin. It is a good sign when you are concerned about your sin as the psalmist was. And so as we think about the position that we should should feel about our sins, we should see it as the depths. Well, let us remember the confidence that this psalm gives us. We've read the whole psalm, but look at verse four. He says, there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared. So the psalmist, he does feel that he's in the depths. He's crying out for God's mercy, but he is also confident that God is going to forgive him. And so no matter how deeply we have plunged into the depths of sin, no matter how deep the pit is that we have dug for ourselves, God's grace is sufficient to redeem you from it. Perhaps you remember the words of Corrie ten Boom. She had this classic statement that she made, and she made it in the context of a Nazi concentration camp, seeing the depths of human depravity like perhaps none of us have ever seen up close. And what did she say? There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still. And in essence, what she was saying is what Romans 5 says when it says that where sin abounded, grace abounded so much more. And so the confidence that we have as we come to confess our sins this morning is you may be feeling that you're in the depths. I don't know how deep the pit is. You have some experience of that pit. But I'm here to tell you that God's grace is sufficient to forgive you of all of those sins and to deliver you from it. He is sufficient to redeem us from the pit. So brothers and sisters, let us confess our sins now to our merciful heavenly father. Our merciful father in heaven, we thank you that with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. And we thank you that in Christ we are your children, we are adopted into your family, we are heirs of eternal life and recipients of your favor. And we do acknowledge today that we have sinned against you in our words, in our actions, and even in our thoughts. And we know that apart from your grace to deliver us from these things that we are without hope, we would stay in the depths were it not for your mercy to bring us out of them. And so we are grateful and confident in the promise of verse seven, that with you, there is abundant redemption, redemption sufficient to save all of the saints who draw near through Christ. And so we ask for your forgiveness and we now take a moment to confess our own sins to the Lord.