We've been much in prayer for the last number of years for this conference. And from the moment that Matt Kingswood agreed to be our conference speaker, we have been praying very much for him, that God would guide him and help him in his preparation, that he would have a real sense of God's presence as he prepares these talks for us. And as we study Psalm 130 this week, our prayer is that God's word would speak greatly to our lives, that it would affect our lives, that we would leave here with our relationship with God having grown much, striving to do more and more for him. We pray especially that glory may be brought to God through what we do this week. And so I would invite Matt now to come forward. You're very welcome. It's a real pleasure and delight to be with you here this week on the Gold Coast at the International Conference. I do want to say, though, at the outset, before I say anything else, just that I had no hand at all in the arrangement of these flags behind me. I noticed that right away. That was none of my doing. But I'm very thankful to the organizing committee and to all of you for the warm and gracious welcome that we've received here, that I've received and my family with me, Tara and the girls. It's a real honor to be here. I count it an honor to serve Christ as I serve you by speaking to you from God's word this week. I want to thank the committee for all their meticulous and helpful organization. It's just been a great conference already so far. Perhaps just a word of explanation before we begin and then we're going to sing and then read God's word together. Word of explanation or concern even a little bit. I hope that my accent or lack of accent or any North American figures of speech don't unnecessarily distract from our times together here at the conference. I'm reading the memoirs of Condoleezza Rice. who was a former national security advisor and Secretary of State under George W. Bush. She once said after sitting in on some British parliamentary debates, there is something about the accent and the beautiful way the British use what is purported to be our common language. They just sound so impressive. So I apologize for that at the outset. And I just hope that none of the North American sayings cause any confusion. I can just imagine in one of the talks telling a story about one of my daughters and an illustration and perhaps saying, she was mad about her flat. And to many of you, you would be thinking she was wildly enthusiastic about her apartment. Whereas I would have meant to say she was very upset about her punctured tire. So if there's any confusion about any illustration at all, please come up and speak to me afterward. We're gonna begin by standing together and singing from Psalm 69, and I hope that the connection to this morning's address will be obvious. So I won't say much other than just to remind you what Mark reminded us of yesterday with regard to Psalm 40. That these Psalms written in the experience of the original writer, as he's carried along by the Holy Spirit, point to and speak of Christ. and we need to see Christ in these Psalms. And after having seen Christ and trusting in Him, then return to our own personal experience. And as that's true of Psalm 40, it's very much true as well of Psalm 69. And so we'll sing verses 1 and 2, and 10 to 13, and the tune will be 164. So Psalm 69, 1 and 2, 10 to 13, and then we will pray together. Psalm 69 to the tune 164, let's stand together as we praise God. ♪ O God, for auld lang syne ♪ ♪ Come in upon my soul ♪ ♪ I sing in my heart no fool could comply ♪ ♪ And thought he overthrew me ♪ My body wearies me. My throat is parched. My eyesight fails. Why, Lord, I wake to see. Lord, my prayer is unto you. God answer me in your great love, with your salvation true. and safe from singing may. From water's deep deliver me from foes who do me hay. over flow, nor let these swallow me. I love great thee, though there ever be this mouthful. Let us pray. Oh, great and glorious Lord God Almighty, our Father in heaven, we come to you, we pray to you in the name of the Lord Jesus, the Christ. And we thank you for the new and living way that we have to your throne of grace, that we would find mercy and grace and timely help. Father, we thank you for your good providence over our lives for Christ's sake. that as we have risen again this morning, we were met with your new morning mercies today. And Father, we pray that you continue to be merciful to us now as we sit under your word. We pray that you would send your spirit to open eyes and ears and hearts. Lord, break the hard-hearted and bind up the broken-hearted in the gospel. Send forth your light and send forth your truth, Father, for our good and for your glory. We pray, Father, that as you know the hearts of all those gathered here, that the Holy Spirit would be the minister here and bring that word that he wants caused to be written to each one of us with conviction and power, but how we pray also with the comfort the blessing of the good news of forgiveness and righteousness and life in Jesus Christ. Father, you are the true and living God and your word is true. It's the word of eternal life. Father, we pray that you would bless now our time together with your word open before us for your name's sake. In Christ we pray, amen. Please be seated. And as you take your seats, let's open God's Word together this morning to Psalm 130. Psalm 130. I'll read the entire Psalm this morning, although our focus will be particularly on the first verse, and in fact, really just the first part of the first verse. I think it'll take a little bit of time for us to get up to speed together here in this psalm. The first address may be, I think, probably the lengthiest of all of the addresses this week. But we pray that as we look, hear the whole psalm, and look particularly at this first verse, that the Lord would bless us in his word. Psalm 130. Beginning at verse one, this is the inspired and inerrant and infallible word of God. Out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness. Therefore, you are feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning. More than watchmen wait for the morning. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love, and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of our God stands forever. Amen. Well, as you know, we'll be focusing, Lord willing, this week on Psalm 130. We know that all of Scripture is breathed out of the mouth of God and is profitable to us. Wherever we could turn in the Word of God, we could be confident of its truth and its relevance and its usefulness. And particularly, as we would open anywhere in the Psalter, we could multiply testimonies of the practical ministry of God's Spirit through the Psalms. J. Gresham Machen in his letters written during World War I to his mother said at one point, I'm reading the Psalms in a French Bible. The Psalms are the best reading in general for army life. They seem to just fit the needs of the soul. He wrote as a soldier, but we're all fighting the good fight of faith. And so we turn to the Psalms and we turn to Psalm 130 this week in particular. When Martin Luther died and his body was being taken from Eisleben to Wittenberg, a service was held midway in the church of Luther's friend, Justice Jonas. And Psalm 130 was selected by the minister and thousands wept as they sang. Along with Psalm 51, it was Psalm 130. that was one of Luther's favorite gospel songs. Psalm 130 was sung in 1525 at the burial of Frederick the Wise, who was the friend and protector of Martin Luther. In 1681, the last song sung in Strasbourg Cathedral before the annexation by France of that city was Psalm 130. In 1725, Jonathan Edwards was so sick on a trip home that he had to stay in a town for three months. And he writes, in this sickness, God was pleased to visit me with the sweet influences of his spirit through the words of Psalm 130. And John Owen, who wrote a magisterial work on Psalm 130, it's in volume six of his collected writings, speaks of a time when he was brought to the very mouth of the grave and oppressed with horror and darkness. He says he was graciously relieved in his spirit by a powerful application of Psalm 130. But friends, before Owen or Edwards or Luther, This psalm writer himself wrote of his own experience. And as he was carried along by the Holy Spirit, we now as believers in our day have these precious, inspired, and infallible words which have blessed God's people in every generation. And I trust will be a blessing to us this week. Octavius Winslow. who has a series of sermons on this psalm, said, suffice that it forms one of the richest and unfolds one of the most spiritual and instructive chapters in the Psalter. As such, it reflects the lights and shadows, the depths and heights of the Christian life as more or less vividly portrayed in every believer's history. Tremendous commendations of this particular psalm by the people of God. But you know, contrary to all that, as you hear those references, you may have wondered about or even questioned this year's conference theme and subject matter when you first saw it. The depths? We're going to a conference and the theme is going to be the depths? I don't want to think about the depths. I was planning on having a good time at the conference. What a downer this is going to be. I want to come to a conference and have happy thoughts. Let's have a conference about the abundant life. Is this preacher going to address us the way some parents traumatically teach their children to swim by immediately throwing us into the deep end? Well, don't go looking for John Donnelly or any other of the committee about the conference theme. It was my choice. But I'm trusting that above my fallible choices, in the sovereignty and providence of God, from all eternity, God has a plan for this week and a purpose for these messages in your life and in mine. And the choice of Psalm 130 has been confirmed to me wonderfully already in the many conversations that I've had with you already in just the few days that we've been here. That Psalm 130 meets us where we are. And I was almost overwhelmed last night by God's confirmation in his providence in hearing Alanna's talk. And how point after point reflected If you look at your program, the subject matter of each day of our conference as we go through Psalm 130, the depths, prayer, waiting on God, it's all here as it was in Alanna's experience. Why choose a psalm that begins in the depths? Well, for those of you who know what it is to be in the depths, Those of you who in your life have already navigated profoundly dark providences, you don't need to be convinced. You already know the suitability and the sympathetic help of Psalm 130. For others, the depths may be where you are just now in your life, even as you come to this conference. Perhaps your personal circumstances may be known to others, people close to you, brothers and sisters in your congregation may be aware of your situation. Maybe they've encouraged you to come here and somehow you've mustered the strength and the courage to be with other people even as you've been very much tempted just to remain alone. Well, in God's providence, here is a word from heaven. that reaches down to the lowest places of personal experience. You may be in the depths presently, and it may be that others know about it, or it may be that although you know that all too well, no one else does. Proverbs 14, 13 says, even in laughter, the heart may ache. You know, you meet someone here and they say, how are you? And we often just quickly respond, fine. Perhaps the United Kingdom or Australia or France or Japan or Mexico is the same as Canada. Everyone is fine. Everyone's fine. And everything's great. We see the smiling exterior and the public face, but that may be a false face. It may be a false face because we are too proud or too embarrassed to let other people know. But it may be a brave face. You're not a grumbler or a complainer. But underneath, like the nine-tenths of an iceberg, lies the hidden heartache and the struggle of many different kinds. Man looks at the outward appearance, but God sees the heart, and if that's you this morning, he has Psalm 130 for you, even if only you and he know it. Do you know, there may be other people here this morning, and all this seems somewhat academic or theoretical. Mercifully, you have known little of what could be genuinely called the depths in your life, but please don't tune out. You don't know what you may be facing in the future. As Alanna reminded us last night, God not only responds to our circumstances in his word, he prepares us for future circumstances by his word and spirit. What might the future hold for you or for me? We don't know what a day will bring and we are commanded not to worry about tomorrow. But as I thought about this conference, not to be too pessimistic, but it is not uncommon for depths to follow heights. You think of Elijah in the Old Testament or even our Lord Jesus in the New that right after his baptism, the heights of his baptism, the voice of his father from heaven, what comes immediately after? The temptation in the wilderness. Hugh Martin in speaking of the transfiguration and of Gethsemane said, thus high privileges prepare for sore trials. He added the encouragement that it was not amidst the glory and the radiance of the holy mount, but amidst the darkness and anguish of the garden and the desertion of the cross that redemption was achieved and sealed. And so I trust for us all Psalm 130 will be a blessing because this Psalm itself is the special scriptural stairway in the gospel out of the depths. You know, in Habakkuk 3.19, the prophet says, the sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go on to the heights. But to go on to the heights means that he was presently not on the heights. And likewise, Psalm 130 is written from another place, another experience out of the depths. And so we must begin where the psalm begins, the Christian in the depths. Just briefly by way of context, Psalm 130 is one of the 15 songs of ascent in the scripture. or in the King James Version, degrees is the word. Psalms 120 through 134, and ascents or degrees, literally the word means steps or stairs. If you are looking for another book to read, you could pick up O. Palmer Robertson's The Flow of the Psalms. where he does a wonderful, interesting job of looking for that organizational structure of the whole Psalter and how the Psalms of Ascent would fit in to that Psalter structure. But here we're in this subsection of the Psalter, the Songs of Ascents. And there have been various explanations of that term given throughout history. a song of degrees or a song of ascent. Some would say that it speaks of the excellency of the content, that the content is very high or exalted. Others say that it may refer to the tune and that it's to be sung with a lifted up loud voice or that the song reaches a climax in development. Scholars tell us that these songs were sung from the 15 steps in one part of the temple courts, sung going up from the exile in Babylon, and sung going up to the three annual feasts in Jerusalem. And we see that in the other Psalms of Ascent, Psalm 122, verse 4. That is where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, to praise the name of the Lord according to the statute given to Israel. And an ascending psalm is applicable to all Christians then. As we go onward and upward in our heavenly calling, pilgrims and strangers here on our way to the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, these psalms as well as psalms of degrees or ascents Along with the rest of God's Word, encourage us to a lifting up of our eyes and our thoughts to Christ. I lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? Psalm 121, Psalm 123, I lift up my eyes to you, whose throne is in heaven. Paul reminds us and commands us in Colossians 3.1, since then you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above. where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. So here we have this psalm of degrees or ascents, which lifts us. But this Psalm 130 as a particular specific song of ascents, vividly reminds us of the place where the ascent begins. And within this psalm, there is a very clear ascent, a progression upward, isn't there? This psalm, as one writer said, is marked by a steady upward progression, depth, prayer, conviction, light, hope, waiting, watching, longing, confidence, assurance, happiness, and joy. Psalm 130, a song of a sense, but we're met at the outset with the depths. And so we see first here, we need to see and consider first experiencing the depths. Experiencing the depths. What are the depths here that are spoken of in Psalm 130? Well, first we should say what they are. This isn't a reference to purgatory, as Roman interpreters and theologians would encourage us to see. And I don't think, at least primarily, it's the depths, as Chrysostom would have suggested, internal religion versus merely external religion. The lips versus the heart. We need to go to the depths, though we do. John Owen says that this word depths was commonly used for valleys, literal valleys, or deep places, especially deep waters, especially deep waters. And that can be literal in the scripture, but often it's metaphorical or figurative. Owen says, valleys and deep places, because of their darkness and solitariness, are accounted places of horror, helplessness, and trouble, and so can be used to describe the state or condition of a person's soul when difficulties and pressures are attended with fear, horror, danger, or trouble. The depths. some of the young people here. I didn't know how old the young people would be. You're not little children, but you probably still like to go swimming. Have you ever gone swimming in a big pool or a lake that has a deep end or a lake that gets deeper? What happens the deeper you go? Have you ever tried to go as deep as you can possibly go? What happens the deeper you go when you're diving? Well, you know it gets colder, it gets darker, and you probably notice, because for me it's what makes me come back up again, it gets more painful the deeper you go. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation, the word depths here is the word bathus. It gives us our English word bathysphere, which is a special kind of submarine. A bathysphere is a kind of submarine that goes particularly deep. It goes down deep. and the outside water pressure increases with depth so that the stresses on the hull increase with depth. Every 10 meters or 33 feet of depth puts another atmosphere, that's a unit of measurement, one bar, 14.7 psi, 100 kilopascals of pressure on the hull. So at 300 meters the hull is withstanding 30 atmospheres. 3,000 kilopascals of pressure. And eventually submarines reach what is called crush depth or collapse depth. Modern nuclear attack submarines like the American Seawolf class have a collapse depth of 730 meters. Pressure. You know, when Jesus spoke about the tribulations of life in John 16, 33, for example, the word there for trouble or tribulation literally means crushing pressure, crushing circumstances. Like the pressure in deep water, so too in these personal depths. The deeper you go, the greater the pressure, the greater the pain. And so you see the aptness of this imagery. Depths are dark and difficult and even dangerous places. Out of the depths. You know, we might begin by noting that our Western culture as a whole, in many ways, is in the depths. In North America, the suicide rate every year goes higher and higher and higher. The US National Institute of Health recently said that 11% of Americans over the age of 12 are taking antidepressants. 11%. In the face of the epidemic of school shootings, One parent in Massachusetts visited a kindergarten classroom her child was set to attend when she noticed something that has been called in an article a sick sign of the times. In that classroom, beside a chart of the ABCs, hung a poster with the words of a song that the children were to learn set to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. But these were the words. Lock down, lock down, lock the door. Shut the lights off, say no more. Go behind the desk and hide. Wait until it's safe inside. Lock down, lock down, it's all done. Now it's time to have some fun. The depths. There's a Christian couple in Canada, maybe you saw it in the news, who had their foster children removed from their home because they refused to tell those children that the Easter Bunny was real. And they took their children away. In Toronto schools, teachers are forced to attend sensitivity training. for L-G-G-B-D-T-T-T-I-Q-Q-A-A-P-P training. Or from a more local writer to our conference recently, it's a statistic often quoted in the UK. In any given year, one in four of us will experience some kind of mental health struggle. We have an epidemic on our hands. Already, mental illness is the most common cause of work absence in Britain. And globally, it constitutes the largest single source of world economic burden, $2.5 trillion per year. If you aren't struggling with mental illness, someone close to you is. Our societies are arguably in the depths. But this psalm is more personal. It is the experience and cry of an I rather than a we. Perhaps we could suggest that the loneliness of the singular cry is a factor at play as well in the depths. As we think of experiencing the depths, first we must understand that it is not uncommon for believers to be in the depths. Being in the depths is not an argument against the salvation of a person or evidence against the love of God for his people. John 11 1, now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Martha. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, Lord, the one you love is sick. And both were true. David Brainerd, the missionary to the Indians in New England on the 16th of December in 1744 wrote, I was so overwhelmed with depression that I knew not how to live. I longed for death exceedingly. My soul was sunk in deep waters. And isn't it really not merely the possibility of the depths for a believer, but the inevitability of them. We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God, they said. In this world you will have trouble, Jesus said. Wasn't it Amy Carmichael who was right to ask, hast thou no scar? no hidden scar on foot or side or hand, no wound, no scar. Yet as the master shall the servant be, can he have followed far who has no wound, no scar. Derek Thomas, who many of you know, said, when you don't sing the Psalms, you never sing things like Psalm 130. There are no hymns quite like this. The words are some of the most plaintive, melancholy, dark, at least to begin with, words anywhere found in the Psalter. And if we never sing these blue notes, if we never sing in the minor key, then we create a false impression of what the Christian life actually looks like, because we sing one thing, but we feel another. Little wonder, I think. said Derek Thomas, that we produce Christians who need therapy. I mean that seriously. Little wonder that we produce Christians who don't know how to tie their experience to their worship of God, because unless we're singing in sincerity the darker sides, the somber sides, the blue notes, then I suspect we're creating for ourselves spiritual and psychological problems. for the very nature of our Christian lives and the way that we live them. Beloved, the Psalms often speak of the depths. We sang from Psalm 69, I sink in the miry depths. I have come into deep waters, the floods engulf me. Or Psalm 18, he reached down from on high and took hold of me. He drew me out of deep waters. In Psalm 42, calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls. All your waves and breakers have swept over me. We see it in the songs. We see it in the saints, the life and times of Jeremiah. Jeremiah 38. So they took Jeremiah and they put him into the cistern of Malkijah, the king's son, which was in the courtyard of the guard. They lowered Jeremiah by ropes into the cistern. It had no water in it, only mud. And Jeremiah sank down into the mud. The depths, literal and metaphorical. or your mind is probably already gone, boys and girls, young people too, Jonah. Jonah. Read Jonah in Psalm 130, side by side. You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas, and the current swirled about me. All your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, I have been banished from your sight. Experiencing the depths, Believers experiencing the depths. Charles Spurgeon, and I saw Spurgeon's Sorrows on the back book table, another great read. Spurgeon could say to his congregation, I am the subject of depressions of spirit so fearful that I hope none of you ever get to such extremes of wretchedness as I go to. experiencing the depths in the Christian life. But as we see the experience of the depths, we need to dig deeper and explain the depths. Explaining the depths. Much of popular professing Christianity has little interest or use for depths in a Christian's life and experience. Only your own lack of faith would be to blame if you are not riding the crest of the wave of personal health and wealth. But God is wiser than man in dealing with his children. As Andrew reminded us so helpfully yesterday, God chooses his own teachers. God is perfectly holy, sovereign, and wise. Psalm 36 says, thy judgments are like a great deep. Winslow said, the Christian life is torturous and checkered in its course. The royal path to glory is a divine mosaic paved with stones of diverse lines. Today it is a depth almost soundless, tomorrow a height almost scaleless. Our lives are filled with highs and lows, and both have their temptations, and both have their blessings. God is sovereign and wise in ordaining both. From Psalm 95, we see that God's providence mirrors his creation. In his hands are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. That's true in creation, it's true in providence as well. How are we to understand these depths? How are we to explain these depths? What are they? How do they come to us? How do we explain them? Owen is very particular in his explanation, as you'd expect, and he speaks of generally two types of depths, external and internal. And of course, those are both related. We are created body and soul, and what affects one part of us can and often does affect the other. How do we explain these depths? What are they? What causes the pressure, the darkness, the pain? Well, first, they are the common troubles of life in a fallen, sin-cursed world. God created Adam and Eve on the heights. He created them in knowledge and righteousness and holiness and put them in a perfect place. And it was the heights. What do we call Adam's sin? Boys and girls, it's the fall. And it's the fall from a height into sin. And the effects and consequences of Adam's first sin surround us and affect us in many ways. This fallen world is filled with all kinds of difficult situations, dangerous circumstances. We are subject to physical issues and injuries. You have to have your ankle fused together, the bones fused together so that you come to a conference and have to have your leg propped up in a cast for the whole week. Disabilities, illnesses, conditions of all kinds. There are seasons of life in a fallen world that may contribute to experiencing the depths. There are struggles that are often encountered in the changes of life, the changes for a young person, a teenager, an adolescence. I remember those days. There were times as a young man when I would go for weeks and I'd cry every day. And sometimes I didn't even know why. The changes of life, young people, seasons later on in life, and the challenges that come with getting older. You know, Robin Mark struck a chord with me, literally and figuratively, when he sang, men of a certain age are weary. Everything rolls along. Nothing has changed for 30 years now. It's the same old song. Apathy for your anger. Compromise replaced your rage. Things you once stood for, now you stay seated. Men of a certain age. Men of a certain age are grumpy. Nothing has turned out right. All of those things you hoped to accomplish seem to be set aside. Where is that great adventure? How can I turn the page? Rub it all out and start all over. men of a certain age. The challenges of seasons of life in a fallen world. For both young and old, our bodies are breaking down. Outwardly, we're wasting away in all kinds of ways. And we could add here the depths of concern we have, not only as we experience these things, but for others and their physical condition. The sympathy we have for others, or perhaps you're a caregiver, to someone who's struggling in this way. And it's brought you into the depths, and ultimately the death of loved ones can be involved. You can spend months in the hospital with a newborn, and you're in the depths. You can be taking care of aging parents, and you can be in the depths with these physical concerns, but we are not just bodies, are we? There's also the mental, the emotional, the spiritual part of life to consider. And I think between the external and the internal, that is the boy line between the shallow end and the deep end. Spurgeon said, the mind can descend far lower than the body, for in it there are bottomless pits. The flesh can bear only a certain amount of wounds and no more. But the soul can bleed in 10,000 ways and die over and over again each hour. Older writers spoke of melancholy, the depths of melancholy. Check out Archibald Alexander and thoughts on religious experience in his section on melancholy. One vivid contemporary chronicle of being in the depths comes from a man named Les Murray, who has been called the leading Australian poet of his generation. And according to one biographer, Murray, having moved back to his hometown, gave a reading at his high school, and a classmate reminded him of the nicknames they used to call him. That night, Murray fell emotionally off a cliff and went downhill from there. It had its roots in childhood. There was a genetic component, ungrieved losses and current stressors, but it all happened very quickly. Murray described it in his memoir, Killing the Black Dog. memoir, a memoir of depression. Listen to what he said. Every day I had a season of helpless, bottomless misery in which I would lie curled in a fetal position on the sofa with tears leaking from my eyes, my brain boiling with a confusion of stuff not worth calling thought or imagery. It was more like shredded mental kelp. marinated in pure pain. Murray describes what he calls the 4 a.m. show, the pre-dawn darkness in which you wake and lie sleepless till dawn, your troubles and terrors ripping into you with a gusto allowed them by fatigue and the disappearance of proportion. Even someone like Oscar Wilde could write a letter from the jail, Reading Jail. And later, an editor entitled that poem, De Profundis, from Psalm 130, Out of the Depths. It's interesting to read Wilde's writers, certainly not to be followed in his comments on Christ, to be sure. but we have the mental, the emotional struggle. And that can come in different ways. It can come from relationships. Relationships ended in sin or desertion or death. Or perhaps relationships never realized. Unrealized hopes of marriage or children can bring depths of sorrow. These depths, external and then particularly internal, are real and a real struggle. There are also afflictions and trials from sin and fallen sinners around us. There's our fallen world. There's also fallen sinners all around us. People and circumstances that are crushing. People around you may sin against you and plunge you into the depths. Again, we heard last night of being at the hands of a gang in Nigeria, the depths. We think of the persecuted church, Pastor Andrew Brunson, American pastor in a Turkish prison since October 2016. Lady in our congregation, after 30 years of marriage, her husband suddenly picked up and left, claiming never to have been a Christian. ever at all. And there she is in the depths. Recently a pastor told me of an experience he had in coming home from a difficult presbytery meeting and as I was preparing these messages I listened to him speak and he literally said, I came home Matt, I was in the depths. When the Diet of Augsburg was in session in 1530 it was not safe for Martin Luther to be there in person And so he had to wait at Coburg for news of the proceedings. And Luther was anxious, and he reportedly gathered the servants together, saying, come, let us, despite this evil, despite this evil, sing, aus tiefer not schrei ich zu dir, from the depths of woe I cry to you. Luther paraphrased Psalm 130. We must note Also, that in these things, surrounded by fallen sinners, we have an adversary. Jesus said to Peter, Satan desires to sift you like wheat. John Newton wrote to a young pastor, he said, have you considered what the enemy can do if he's permitted to come in like a flood? In one hour, he could raise such a storm as would put you at your wit's end. He could bring such a dark cloud over your mind as would blot out all remembrance of your past comforts, or at least prevent you from deriving the least support from them. He could not only fight against your peace, but shake the very foundations of your hope and bring you to question not only your interest in the promises, but even to doubt the most important and fundamental truths upon which your hope has been built. Be thankful, therefore, if the Lord restrains his malice. The depths of being surrounded by fallen people. But you know, in both senses, a fallen world and fallen people around us, the depths are worse when they also become the lengths. How long? How long, O Lord? The Mariana Trench in the Western Pacific is well known for its depths. It reaches a maximum known depth of 10,994 meters, but it also runs for about 2,550 kilometers. I have a good friend in Canada whose daughter was born with numerous physical handicaps and she required such a tremendous amount of care day by day. I don't know how my friend and his wife did it, but he confided in me once and he said, I can do it today, but what really, really challenges me, what I struggle with is how long? How long? It's been said that John Calvin's favorite exclamation was, domine usque quo, oh Lord, how long? But you know, friends, there's another kind of death, which especially seems to be the case here in Psalm 130. We need to go deeper yet. And it's really the experiences of Christians particularly that this applies to. There are the depths that come from living in a fallen world and being surrounded by fallen people. But then there are the depths of facing our own indwelling sin. The sight of it, the fight against it, and the times we fail and fall into it. Sometimes we find ourselves in the depths directly resulting from our own sin. We sin, and under God, the result is we are in the depths. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin, David lamented in Psalm 51 after his sin. Or think of Peter. The Lord looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him. Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times. And he went outside and wept. bitterly. But other times it's not our sin directly, is it? But God still uses the depths to further sanctify us, which we all still need. Whatever the connection is between sin and suffering, we need to be careful. not to judge others, not to look at the trouble that someone else is in and say, oh, there must be some great sin dragging that person like a weight into the depths. That's why we need the book of Job in the Bible to give us pause in our quick judgments of other people. Job was relatively blameless, but still in the end of his troubles, his depths, he himself repented in dust and ashes. And when these depths, even not the result of our own sin, bring us to depths in light of sin, this is what Owen says is a way to understand Psalm 42, deep calls unto deep. The depths of providence call for the depths of penitence. The depths of affliction, said Owen, awaken the conscience to a deep sense of sin. Well, how does that happen? How do the depths that come in all kinds of ways and for myriad reasons bring us to personal conviction? Well, when I'm in the depths, to the degree that I have been, it convicts me of my own worldliness when things are well. I can forget God when he blesses me. Poverty is slain or thousands, prosperity or tens of thousands. I'm convicted of my ingratitudes. Even when I just have the flu, I say to myself, I'll never take my health for granted again until the next day when I feel better. In the depths, we are reminded of previous blessing and so become convicted that a Christian's sins are more sinful because we've sinned against greater privilege. Perhaps being in the depths convicts me of the sin of insensitivity or a lack of compassion or prayer for others who suffer as much or more than I do or suffer all the time. And of course, while looking at the depths that others face can be beneficial to me, that's filled with pitfalls as well because we often compare ourselves with one another and that's not wise, 2 Corinthians says. Depths are relative to the person. Depths are relative to the person. What is a struggle for one person may pose not much difficulty or challenge for another. You know, young people, kids, I've caught myself saying to my children, impatient with their struggle as we trudge along a trail in a Canadian winter. Don't complain, kids. When I was your age, the snow was up to my waist. And then I look back. much more than comparing ourselves and our depths with one another. Even as a good compassion fostering focus that that is, we need to go deeper again. We need to consider not only experiencing the depths and explaining this, but escaping the depths. Because this theme of depths must bring us to a consideration of Christ. Not just as one of many common sufferers, or even the most pathetic sufferer among men, like Oscar Wilde calling Christ the consummate romantic poet. But we must see the uniqueness of Christ's suffering. Opalma Robertson says, the eye psalms must first be appreciated for their role in speaking for God's anointed servant, the messianic king. Remember in Lamentations chapter one, is it nothing to you all who pass by? Is any suffering like my suffering? The context of that statement, of course, is the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in the sixth century BC. If you ever listened to Handel's Messiah, you know that right in the middle, this verse from Lamentations is used to capture the suffering of the Lord. The one who said, tear down this temple and I will rebuild it in three days, referring to his body. And with Lamentations 1, 12 echoing in our ears, we read the Gospel account. Those who passed by hurled insults at Him, shaking their heads. Is it nothing to you, all who pass by? Is any suffering like my suffering, which the Lord has inflicted in the day of His fierce anger? You see, for Christ there was no greater height from which to come. and no greater depth to which to descend. Philippians 2 teaches us of the heights of glory and the depths of the suffering servant. And Christ experienced that as our substitute because depths are judgment as well in the scripture. In Ezekiel 27, you are shattered by the sea and the depths of the waters. Psalm 88, you put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavily upon me. You have overwhelmed me with all your waves. That's the sufferings of Christ. Christ went through the depths. He was baptized by the waves of sin-bearing substitution so that his people could be lifted up. Psalm 69, that we sang like Psalm 40, points to Christ. Luke 12, 50, I have a baptism to undergo. Christ was baptized in the depths of God's wrath against sin. In Revelation 9, 1, it speaks of the key to the shaft of the abyss. Abusas, the King James Version, translates it the bottomless pit. Some lakes in Ontario and Muskoka are 200 or 300 feet deep. I get nervous boating over them. I get even more nervous when I swim over them, and I let the thought come into my mind, there's nothing down here for 300 feet. That's nothing compared to Lough Morar, 1,017 feet deep in Scotland. But there's no bottom, friends, to the misery, the weeping, the sorrow, the regret, the suffering, and the punishment of hell. And that's what Christ was contemplating as he agonized in Gethsemane. That is what he descended into as he was lifted up on the cross. As the Heidelberg Catechism opens up the expression from the Apostles' Creed, he descended into hell, his inexpressible anguish, pains, terrors, and hellish agonies in which he was plunged during all his sufferings, but especially on the cross. And he did it for his people. He went to the depths to lift us up. I spent a couple of days last week with Pastor Ken Smith, who many of you know. In 1956, on June 18th, his wife, Floyd Smith, was in a boat with several other young people, along with Dawson Trotman, who was the founder of the Navigators. And on that day, when they were having lots of fun on the lake, the boat hit a wake, And the young girl on the other side of Dawson Trotman from where Floyd Smith was sitting, that young girl and Dawson Trotman were thrown into the lake. And by the time the boat could come around to see what had happened, they were able to rescue the girl. Because underneath that drowning girl, Dawson Trotman, who was deeper down in the water, was holding her up so that she could be saved. and he drowned that day. Billy Graham later said that Dawson Trotman died the way he lived, lifting others up. But how much more true of the Lord Jesus Christ who descended to the abyss on the cross to lift up his people out of hell. Out of the depths Beloved, to us today on the first day of our conference together in Psalm 130 is first and foremost a call to faith. Because apart from Christ, earthly depths are shallows compared to hell. Whatever suffering you're going through, it's nothing compared to hell. But trusting Christ, repenting toward God from a grace and spirit renewed heart, we have been brought out of the depths. Is that true of you today at this conference? Or have you been spiritually superficial? Luke 6 adds a detail to the parable of the two houses from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. They are like a man building a house who dug down deep and laid the foundation on the rock. You see, depths, by God's grace, compel us to go deep. so that the sands of self-righteousness and self-confidence can be excavated until there is nothing left but the solid rock of Christ's word and Christ's work and His forgiveness and His righteousness. That's how deep you need to go by God's grace. Tara has a friend with skin cancer. She had skin cancer diagnosed on her nose and her first doctor, her family doctor, just looked at it and scraped it off. But later it got much worse because the doctor didn't go deeply enough. The second surgeon needed to dig deep, painfully deep, but effectively deep. We need deep foundations. Charles Spurgeon has a book called The Puritan Garden. He's really going through Thomas Manton on Psalm 119 and borrowing all his illustrations and then commenting on them. He said, my clearing of his house and all of his pictures and hanging them up in new frames of my own. That's how he described what he was doing. But Manton said, the Lord digs deep when he means to raise the building high. And when he would give men to know much of Christ, he first brings them out of themselves by godly sorrow. We see many low in grace, not rising like towers toward heaven, but lying low upon the earth. These have never been digged out by a deep sense of sin, nor excavated by a profound soul trouble, and hence it would not be safe to build high with so shallow a foundation. There must be deep foundations if we are to have high walls. We must be emptied of self and everything of human strength, or we shall never be filled with the love of God. O my heart, be ready to be trenched deep, if this be the necessary preparation for being built up aloft. Welcome pain and downcasting, if edification is to follow. By God's grace, friends, get to the bottom of your life before God and flee to Christ. And looking to Christ, he will lift you up. Your depths may be deep, but they are not the depths of hell. The depths we must go through are not what he went through for us. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire, and he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. Corrie ten Boom said, there is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still. Do you remember Toward the End of Pilgrim's Progress? Speaks of going through the depths. Now I further saw that betwixt them and the gate was a river, but there was no bridge to go over. And the river was very deep. And at the sight, therefore, of this river, the pilgrims were much stunned. But the man that went with them said, you must go through or you cannot come at the gate. The pilgrims then began to inquire if there was no other way to the gate, to which they answered, yes, but there hath been not any save to Enoch and Elijah. been permitted to tread that path since the foundation of the world, nor shall until the last trumpet shall sound. Then especially Christian began to despawn in their minds and look this way and that, but no way could be found by them by which they might escape the river. Then they asked the men if the waters were all of a depth. They said no, Yet they could not help them in that case, for they said, you shall find it deeper or shallower as you believe in the king of the place. Then they addressed themselves to the water, and entering, Christian began to sink. And crying out to his good friend, hopeful, he said, I sink in deep waters. The billows go over my head. All his waves go over me. Then said the other, be of good cheer, my brother. I feel the bottom. and it is good. Beloved in Christ, because of the profound work of Christ for us, we feel the bottom and it's good. Let me just briefly close as we've considered experiencing the depths, explaining the depths and escaping the depths with just a few practical ways we can extract blessings from the depths and mindful of the time we'll Go over very quickly. We need to remember first that there is no merit in our suffering. No merit in our suffering. I saw an interview with a young lady years ago who had a tongue piercing. And the interviewer asked her, why did you get your tongue pierced? And I was staggered by the depth of the young lady's answer. She didn't say because my friends were doing it. She said, I had my tongue pierced to atone for the sins of my speech. That's remarkable. As remarkable as it is sad. Because no amount of her personal suffering or piercing could deal with her sin. And whatever depths you're going to don't have any merit before God. John Flavel said, there is no merit in our depths. Though a cross without Christ never did any man any good. We have to be clear, yet thousands have been blessed by their crosses by virtue of Christ's death. Some of the rarest pearls have been found in the deepest waters, said Spurgeon. What are the blessings in the depths? Well, it keeps us from spiritual pride, humbles us, reminds us that all is of mercy and of grace. The depths remind us and convince us of a complete dependence upon Christ to wean us from ourselves and our self-sufficiency. We quickly learn in life and especially in kingdom work that we are utterly out of our depth. We're in the deep end. It helps us as well to grow in sympathy with others when we are in the depths. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion, the God of all comfort. who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. Beloved, are you in the depths now? Are you really prepared for the depths that will come in life? Because of Christ, who went to the depths. We say with the psalmist, save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sank in the miry depths where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters. The floods engulf me. But I pray to you, O Lord, in the time of your favor, in your great love, O God, answer me with your sure salvation. Rescue me from the mire. Do not let me sink. Deliver me from those who hate me, from the deep waters. Do not let the floodwaters engulf me, or the depths swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me. Answer me, O Lord, out of the goodness of your love and your great mercy. Turn to me. Let us pray. Lord God, our Father in heaven, by your word and spirit, for the sake of Christ, deliver us from a superficial life. Lord, help us to go deep, to have our hearts plowed up deep, to receive your word. Particularly, Lord, how we need this, as we look to Christ for deliverance, from sin and hell. And then in life, as we go through depths of many kinds, Lord, how we need Christ and his gospel. And the waters are up to our necks. Lord, we thank you for your word. It's true and it's trustworthy. It's sharper than a two-edged sword and it pierces to the deepest places of who we are. And by your grace, it heals. and comforts and lifts us up. We pray for that gospel blessing in Jesus name. Amen.