We'll be in Psalm 130 this evening as we continue our journey through the Psalms of Ascent. I appreciate the Stauffer brothers up here tonight. I say that because I have been with their nephew all week. At the Wilds of New England, their nephew was one of the ones helping run the sound board, and I saw his little name tag. It said Stauffer. I said, do you have grandparents that are missionaries in India? He said, yeah. I said, then you're related. I know exactly who your family is. So I just gave him a hard time the whole week long just because, no, he was wonderful and we're so thankful for him. As you're turning back to the Psalms, let me just kind of, maybe you can think about this for a moment. I'll put it on the screen so you can kind of dwell on it. What is your favorite Psalm? I'm certain you have one. If you've been a Christian for any length of time, you're no doubt quite familiar with the Psalms, and maybe you have more than one favorite psalm. Maybe you even have, and you're allowed to do this, you can change your mind on which one is your favorite. It may just depend on the season of life you're in. We hear the Psalms referenced often, and for good reason. And we hear them not just referenced in the church, for good reason. We often find themselves even leaking their way into secular society and even into the culture's fabric. And there's a reason for that. Within the Psalm book, we find much of our own experience repeated back to us. If you're struggling, you can go to the Psalms. You wanna rejoice, you can go to Psalms. I mean, there is a whole gamut of emotions just conveyed right there in the Psalms. But for a Christian, the Psalms are far more than a book of comforts and colloquialisms. They really are, aren't they? Anyone who has been saved for any period of time has found the book of Psalms a place to go, and in it to find a wellspring for life. And we go to the Psalms for all manners and stations in life. We go to the Psalms when we are hurting. We go to the Psalms and we are confused. We go to the Psalms and we're searching for answers. We go to the Psalms and we are upset that things aren't happening. And in truth, the Psalms are really God's inspired record that express the full gamut of what it means to be human in a fallen planet. So what is your favorite Psalm? I'd imagine if we were to pass a microphone aground, there'd be a lot of different answers to that question. There may be some similarity and some overlap. And I would imagine there'd also be one Psalm that would probably be mentioned. And that would be the one we're turning to tonight, Psalm 130. And Psalm 130 is such a Psalm that kind of rises to a lot of people's minds when they think about their favorite Psalm. And for centuries, Psalm 130 has been a favorite Psalm of believers because in it, we find the deep and relinquishing truth of God's redemptive love for lost sinners. And if you're a believer tonight, Psalm 130 is for you, to teach us that you are never beyond God's reach. Here's what it says in Psalm 130, beginning at verse one. Out of the depths I have cried unto thee, O Lord, Lord, hear my voice. Let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who should stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waited for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning. I say more than they that watch for the morning. Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption. He shall redeem Israel from all iniquities. It was John Bunyan who wrote the famous Pilgrim's Progress. I hope at some point in your life, if you haven't yet, you read Pilgrim's Progress. He opened his book with these words. As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and it laid me down in that place to sleep, and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face turned from his house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and I saw him open the book and read therein. And as he read, he wept and trembled. And not being able longer to contain, he break out with a lamentable cry, saying, what shall I do? And with that, Bunyan allegorized for the rest of that book the Christian walk. And the allegory really speaks to us. We understand what he's getting at. We understand what the burden was on his back. That burden was the burden of sin. And we understand that the book that he was reading in this allegory is the Bible, and the house that he's turning his back on was turning his back to the world and its philosophies. And so Pilgrim's Progress recounts every pilgrim's journey. I always think that the allegories are easy to discover because John Bunyan, while creative in his writing, was not creative in his titles. Christian was a Christian, and all of those kind of things. But Psalm 130 begins much like Pilgrim's Progress. In fact, those first few verses, the psalmist is clearly weighed down, if you will, with a burden on his back. He's weighed down with the burden of sin. And even as Bunyan's pilgrim is going to be loosed from his burden of sin, even so, as you continue to read the psalm, the psalmist will be loosed from his burden as well. In verse four, there is forgiveness with thee. Let Israel, verse seven, now hope in the Lord, for with him there is mercy, and with him there is plenteous redemption. And so Psalm 130 is a singing testimony of forgiveness. And he sings this testimony as his soul is redeemed by his God. And he was at one point floundering under the weight and burden of sin. He now rejoices that he has been forgiveness. But as you read the Psalm, you come to learn an important truth. No matter how deep you are in guilt, no matter how big that burden is on your back, God's grace can still reach you. Psalm 130 is particularly special because it's the very heart of the Christian gospel. It points out the faith unto salvation that is represented in both of the Testaments. Before the first words of the New Testament were ever written, God already had a redemptive plan. And it is wonderfully evident in Psalm 130 that the Old Testament believers understood that redemptive plan enough to sing about it, enough to write about it. Let me ask you, do you know, do you know today what it's like to have God reach out and save you? There are four stanzas of two verses each in this psalm. It makes it easy to divide. And each stanza kind of has a different tone. Each stanza appears to be brighter than the last, and so the psalm moves from the depths to the heights by degrees. It starts with a depressing note, a burden, and it ends with a rejoicing note, you have been forgiven. And it's pretty easy to divide by stanzas of two. Verses one and two, we find that God's grace will reach you when you cry out to him for mercy. And verse one and two expresses something of the sinner's problem. What you hear right away in the Psalm is a desperate plea. Read again, verse one. Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who should stand? This is a lamentable position to be in. It's a plea for help from someone who is mired in the gloom of guilt. And he feels like he is drowning in the depths. This allegory is not so much then a burden on his back as it is water over your head. And he's crying out. And this is, in verse 1, immediately a desperate cry. Before we can exegete verse 1, unfortunately we have to backtrack through church history and pull out all of the bad interpretations. Because unfortunately, medieval Roman Catholicism ripped this psalm out of context and continued to do so for centuries, and even up to this day. In fact, in Roman Catholic liturgy, Psalm 130 is used as a prayer for the souls of people in purgatory. In fact, I was reading and recounted one preacher that said, and noted, and noted it in his notes, and it was obviously a newer note, and I was like, I was curious. He said, you can go to the App Store and you can find it, and I did, and I found it. There's an app you can download called Catholic Meditations on Purgatory. I don't recommend you download the app. But the promo for the app says, central to the app is Psalm 130. De profundis, I know I didn't say that right, a traditional penitential psalm. And de profundis means in the Latin, out of the depths, which is the opening words of this psalm. And to this day, Catholic priests intone this psalm in Latin as a prayer for dead in purgatory. Is that what is being taught in Psalm 130? I came across this 450-year-old comment by Solomon Gesner. You probably don't hear his name often. He was an early Lutheran commentator who lived one generation after Martin Luther, before Lutheranism went into liberalism. And Gesner wrote a commentary on the Psalms entitled Disquisitions on the Psalter. And here's what he had to say about Psalm 130 in a time when Catholicism was rampant. And so he wrote in that time, and he said this, quote, this psalm has been perverted to the most disgraceful abuse in the popedom that it should be mumbled in the lowest voices by slow bellies in the sepulcher vigils for their liberation of souls from purgatory. I think he was pretty fired up when he was writing those. He continues, as if the psalm were here treating of the dead when he has not even spoken a word about them. But leaving the buffooneries of the papists, we will rather consider the true meaning and use of this psalm. And then he continues to write about the psalm. Martin Luther himself loved this psalm, Psalm 130. He rejected the use of the psalm within Catholicism naturally, the prayer for the dead. And instead, he embraced it as a perfect expression of his own struggle with the fruits of human fallenness. And Luther even wrote a hymn based on Psalm 130. In German, it's called, and I'm going to butcher this one, Aus Teufel Nacht. Someone else that speaks German can correct me on that pronunciation. We don't sing this hymn of Luther's really anymore. I haven't heard it sung. Here's what he said. From the depths of woe, there he is, quoting Psalm 130, I raise to thee a voice of lamentation. Lord, turn a gracious ear to me and hear my supplication. If thou iniquities dost mark, our secret sins and misdeeds dark, oh, who shall stand before thee? He is just absolutely putting to lyric what Psalm 130 has to say. And so with an understanding that throughout church history there has been a misuse and abuse of Psalm 130, what is Psalm 130 even saying? And it's clear right away from the outset that this is a desperate cry. The psalmist, in his despair, is despairing because of some sin or sins that he has committed. And the guilt of his failure is weighing heavily upon him, and that is what has thrust him into the depths of despair. It reminds me of even penitent at that point Jonah, who literally would pray in the depths in his despair. Think about it for just a moment. Have you ever considered the depths of your own depravity? Romans 7 verse 24, Paul writes as he considers his depths, and says, oh, wretched man that I am. That's who I am. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? That is the whole point of this Psalm. It shows that the way up begins all the way at the bottom. You have to be desperate to recognize your own plight. And this is a discerning cry as well, verse two. This is a very different cry than the other cries that we heard in the Psalms of ascent as we've traipsed them. This is not like Psalm 120 or Psalm 129, which is a cry of someone afflicted by wicked enemies on the outside. Those two Psalms were particular about someone mistreating them, and those are particular in those contexts. This Psalm, however, is a cry very different. This psalm is really not even like Psalm 117, which cries out, Hear a just cause, O Lord, attend to my cry. Instead, this is a discerning cry. This is a cry of someone who knows he has brought trouble on himself by his own sinful choices. It is his own guilt that has brought him into the depths where he is. The psalmist is not unlike the prodigal son. who had to come to the end of his rope and realize that his choices had sunk him into the desperate plight that he was in. Remember the prodigal son said in Luke 15, and he was longing to be fed with the food that the pigs ate. Remember that? And he said, no one gave me anything. But when he came to himself, he had to come to himself. He had to realize, I put myself here. But when we have brought to our senses, when we have come to the consequences of our own sin, it's a dismal awakening. No soul could ever sink into a darker or more distressing position than to look themselves in a mirror and say, the problem is me. It's where we have to begin. If we're ever gonna find hope, we have to know that hope doesn't come from our sin-darkened souls. That's exactly where Pilgrim's Progress begin as we started. And I think that's why that allegory is a page turner, because from the moment it begins, we recognize, yeah, I know what it's like to live with a burden and read about that burden, and then with a lamentable cry, say, I am a broken sinner before a holy God. God's grace will reach you, but it will reach you when you cry out for him for mercy. God is not remote, as David remarked. If I make my bed in hell, behold, you're there. Number two, God's grace will reach you when you conclude then that you are doomed, in verses three and four. And as he contemplates his guilt, the psalmist realizes the utter hopelessness of his situation. The psalmist is saying that God's forgiveness leads to fear because without it you are truly lost. He says without forgiveness, if you don't have forgiveness in your life, you are doomed. It's like the old country preacher who'd say, imagine if you will, that I put all your sins on the whiteboard up here. Who would want me to write down all your sins for everybody to see? Of course, everybody would say, no, I don't really want that up there. I'd rather keep that private. Well, in verse three, the psalmist is saying that if the Lord were to tally up, write them all down, all your sins and hold you accountable for each one that you'd done, your whiteboard wouldn't glimmer, would it? It says in verse three, if thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? To paraphrase, if the Lord kept a careful record of sins, no one would be able to stand before him. My friends, do you realize this? Do you recognize this? Do you recognize that God knows everything? There's no possible way for you to stand before a sovereign God of the universe and pretend for a moment that you haven't committed sins. And often those who do not know God assume that everything will be okay on judgment day because I'm basically a good person. But add up the list for just this past month of sins, if you're willing and humble enough to do that. let alone over your own lifetime. And you must also include in your list every thought, because God saw that, in addition to every word and every deed. And remember to count not only the sins of commission, but also those of omission, meaning the things you didn't do, but you should. How are you doing so far? And as you do a tally of your own life, you realize how wicked you are. Have you loved God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength all of the time? Have you loved your neighbor as yourself with no hint of selfishness or anger once in your life? Have you cut down any pride, lust, or greed in your life? Have you been faithful to God in your prayer to him and your reading of his word? I could keep going, but I think you get the idea. If you add up all your sins, you wouldn't stand a chance in the presence of God, and that's what he's saying in verse three. Matthew 12 verse 36 says, every idle word that men shall speak they will give an account thereof in the day of judgment. Luke 12 verse 2 and 3 says, nothing is covered up that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known. Hebrews 4 verse 13 says, no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we will give an account. Ecclesiastes 12 verse 14 says, God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil. You get the point? God keeps a record. And without God's forgiveness, you are doomed, but with God's forgiveness, you are brought to, interestingly, fear. The word but in verse four is one of the great contrasts in scripture. It's a contrast. In the beginning he says, now if he tallied it up, O Lord, who should stand? That's a rhetorical question. You should know the answer. No one can stand if it was tallied up. There is forgiveness with thee. And this stands in correlation to Paul's New Testament declaration when he says, but God who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us in Ephesians chapter two, that but, that contrast that Paul uses. But you might have expected with that contrast to read, but there is forgiveness with you that you might be loved. That would have been something you may have expected to read, but that's not what this verse reads. This verse reads, but there is forgiveness with you that you might be feared. What is he saying? When you stand before God condemned with the rope around your neck and God pardons your sins, you then weep for joy, but you still fear the God that was your judge. And you fear God because you know that he had every reason to condemn you, but he didn't. You do not fear his punishment now, you've been forgiven. But you do fear him because you know that he rightly could have cast you into hell for eternity. Let me ask you, do you have a holy horror at the thought of displeasing the God who forgave you? You should. Proverbs 8 verse 13 puts it this way. The fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil. The psalmist puts it this way in Psalm 36 verse one. Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart. In other words, it is sown into the wicked person his transgressions. Why? Answer, there is no fear of God before his eyes. There should be a sanctified apprehension of God's majesty. It should cause you to recoil at the very notion of trifling with God or taking His mercy for granted. Romans 6 would ask it this way in question form, what shall we say? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? You remember Paul's answer? God forbid This is the kind of fear is a holy horror at the thought of God's displeasure. It's the spirit that lies in the heart of a truly reverenced heart for God. The fear is rooted in the fact that we know the gravity of sin, we know what we really deserve, and it motivates our hearts walk and our expressions of worship. Fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil. Transgressions, I said in Psalm 36, verse 1, speaks to the wicked deep in his heart. There is no fear before his eyes. Romans 6, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. If there's one thing that may be lacking in churches today, it may be a true fear of God. I think it is something that's lacking, quite frankly. We would rather celebrate ourselves than reverence our God. I think that there should be times when there should be a holy hush after a song is sung, just a recognition of what we just sang about, just a meditation on what is just being revealed there. But there is a distinct and sudden change of mood that now comes in verse five. We've kind of been wallowing here. And now in verse five, there's this sudden shift in the psalm. And he notes that God's grace will reach you when you confidently trust his plan. The psalmist has gone down from sheer desperation in verse one to an almost supernatural optimism in verses five and six. And there's an urgency now to the psalmist's cries. He's eager to follow God's path. He's eager to have a right standing. And so he says in verse five, I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. And this is a crescendo of gladness as the psalmist ends. He has gone from sheer desperation in verse one to almost complete supernatural delight now in verse five. And what he says is I am urgently anticipating God's return. The psalmist isn't waiting for forgiveness here because he already obtained that in verse four. But sin always strains our fellowship and our sense of closeness with the Lord. And so the psalmist is waiting on God for that close sense of his presence. And he is waiting and hoping for a sense of intimacy with God. And he says twice for emphasis, I wait for the Lord. Again, verse six, I wait for the Lord. I love the poetic imagery of verse six. It says in verse six, My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. He says it twice to emphasize the urgency of his expectation. I wait for the Lord. The rhythm in the original Hebrew is elegant. In literal translation would be, my soul is for the Lord more than those watching for the morning, watching for the morning. You can almost hear the rhythmic repeat of what's going on. And the picture he draws out is a picture of a watchman in the final watch of the night. What he's expressing here is the eagerness of the watchman waiting for that sun to come up and his shift to be over. There are moments in life that you can't hardly contain your excitement. You just can't wait for that thing to happen. Like the first time I took my wife out on a date. You know what I'm talking about? I drove around the block like three times before I came up the courage to go up to the door and ring the doorbell. That was pretty exciting. When I finally had the ring in my pocket to ask her to marry me, and I knew it was coming, and you know, it's like burning a hole in your pocket. You think, I've got to put it on her finger before I lose it, that ring. You're just anticipating that. When she's coming down the aisle, some of you men, you remember that. You just wait. You can't wait for that. When our firstborn was born, that's such an excitement. You're just excited for that. You're eagerly waiting for that. There's all kinds of moments like that in life. There's joys. It's the goodness of God, by the way, to give us such moments. That's a good gift that God has given us. I wonder if we are just as excited, though, to see and wait for Christ. I'm just like on the edge of our seats, just anticipating. He's coming. He could come any moment. I am so ready for the Lord to come. 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 4 to 16 says, for the Lord himself should descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, with the trump of God. Mike Schrock will join that trumpet chorus if he has a trumpet on hand with him. Everything about that is hopeful and longing and energized and stimulating. We've missed that as well in our churches. Like we're more hopeful for, you know, the Super Bowl at times than we are for the Lord's return. Urgency. And in that urgency, we accept our responsibility, don't we? Again, the analogy of the watchman paints this picture. Why is he waiting? Well, what is he doing? Well, the watchman now is used here in a repeated phrase, just like I'm waiting is repeated twice. And so the analogy of the watchman is also meant to convey something. He has a duty, doesn't he? Watchmen aren't good watchmen with their eyes closed, by its very definition. And so he says in verse six, my soul waited for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning. I say more than they that watch for the morning. And there's a sense of duty being described here. The night watchman stays up all night to protect the encampment. This is not a time for him to doze off. There is an urgency to his orders. He must be alert. Friend, the Christian life is not a series of naps. We are watchmen awaiting for Christ's return. There may be times when the night drags on slowly and you're tired and you need to remind yourself of what you're anticipating. But you must move. You must accept that responsibility. I think sometimes we think of the Christian life almost like, you know, have you ever heard all the train songs? I grew up in church as a little one, so I've got a wealth of wonderful children's songs in my repertoire. You know, He is Able and those kind of things. Father Abraham, really deep theology in that one as well. We had one that was like about a train, I'm not going to sing it for you, and they had like the toot-toot of the horn, you know, and all that. And I'm not entirely sure what the theology was, except for to get the kids awake and alert on a Sunday morning. But honestly, I don't know if that's a very helpful analogy, because that's kind of how we view Christianity. We think of it as, well, I get on at platform eight, and I just stay on, and I get whisked on to heaven, and I don't have to do anything the rest of the time. I just get on it, platform A, accept Christ as my savior, and then I get off when we get to heaven and they tell us you can wake up from your nap. It's almost like Christianity to some is actually a really nice, comfortable, lazy boy. You put up your seat, and as long as you're there and secure, you get to heaven and you're good. But that is absolutely not Christianity, is it? Once I'm saved, I have been forgiven. I'm not going to lose that salvation, but this now motivates me. There's a fear of the Lord that motivates me to accept my responsibility to move to work, to be challenged to work. There's an urgency there. And so in review, stanza one of this precious psalm is a cry to God. Stanza two is the conclusion that we are doomed. Stanza three is a confidence that God has a plan and I get to be a part of it. In stanza four, God's grace will reach you when you commit to following his desires. And again, now notice the sudden shift, and this time the shift moves from kind of maybe a bleakness of doom and despair to rejoicing, as did the previous stanza to the next one. This time it moves from a personal perspective towards a different perspective, and this now becomes a chorus about the gospel. There's a shift in perspective. And I love the confidence in these two closing verses. And notice the sudden shift in perspective. The previous stances were peppered with first-person singular pronouns. I cry, hear my voice, my plea for mercy, I wait, my soul, I hope. There's all these singular personal pronouns. But notice how Paul, the psalmist's attentions rather, turns outward as he ends in verse seven. It turns outward and he says, Now let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. And notice what he celebrates. He celebrates two things. The psalmist here celebrates steadfast love. That's the root of gospel truth, steadfast love. And he celebrates the Lord's plenteous redemption. That's what God's steadfast love procures for his people. And by faith, he has laid hold of God's redemption. He wants the whole nation to join him. And when you have been in the depths and you have been washed with God's forgiveness, you want other people to experience the same thing. You move from the singular to everyone else. And the psalmist understood that God's grace that had been lavished on him was there for others to experience also. It hadn't lost its power, as the psalmist, or the hymn writer says. With him is plenteous redemption. And this truth rings out through scripture. Exodus 34 verse six says, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth. Psalm 103 verse eight says, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, plenteous in mercy. And so our psalmist today adds, with him is plenteous redemption, or as you might say, abundant redemption. If you truly experience the forgiveness of God and the weight lifted, you want others to experience the same thing. John Bunyan understood this. In fact, the title of his biography was Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. That's the title of Bunyan's biography. No matter how great your sin, his redemption is abundant with plenty to spare, enough to be shared with your coworker, enough to be shared with your neighbor, your friend, your relative. If God's grace is abounding and his fields are white then unto harvest, why is it that so few of his children commit to following his desires and becoming his witnesses? As one person put it, in the midst of a generation screaming for answers, Christians are stuttering. Our results in evangelism could be described as mediocre at best. One statistic I read that was published by Michael Perot said 95% of all Christians that go to church regularly have never won a soul to Christ, 95%. 89% of all Christians would admit that they do not witness regularly during the week, 89%. Less than 2% of Christians are actually involved actively week to week in the ministry of evangelism. Those are pretty sobering statistics. No matter how great your sin, God's redemption is enough to spare to save. Do you believe that? Do you believe God saves sinners? Then why don't you share it with others? Jude 22 put it this way, some have a compassion. Some actually make a difference, he puts it. Some have compassion making a difference. And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. If you've experienced God's blessed hand of forgiveness, you should have a burning desire to share that truth with others that you come into contact with. Even tomorrow morning. And John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the main character of that book, that allegory, struggled under the weight of a burden strapped to his back. And that burden illustrated the great weight of sin that bogs us down. And we see the plane out and the intervals of others that kind of join and then fall off. And there's a whole long allegory there. But our God has a message of deliverance for all those that are trembling under the weight of their guilt. God has not left you without hope. Luke 178 says, through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the day spring on high hath visited us. And when Jesus, the day spring on high, visits you with God's tender mercy, you will know joy unspeakable that comes from having his abundant redemption applied to your soul, and your permanent record of sin has been replaced with God's grace that's lavished on your account. There is, verse four of our psalm, it's a promise, there is forgiveness with thee. Do you know what it's like to have God reach down and save you from your sins? The psalmist is saying that God's forgiveness, it leads to fear, because without it you are doomed. And these four stanzas, one upon the other, start from the depths and grow to the heights. And they should leave us with rejoicing and peace and truth and help, but also should leave us with a desire and a motivation that those in our community would come to a saving knowledge of Christ. As we conclude there, I always find it interesting. that you go through a sermon series and you just say, we're just gonna go to the next one, right on the heels of the other one, and you don't always, at least I don't, go ahead and look out and head on the calendar and see where you are on the church calendar, and here we are on the heels of a VBS week. And I gotta tell you, one of the reasons we do that is to reach the lost. I do believe that there's an application in this psalm for us, that we would say, God, would you, would you honestly, Lord, would you save souls this week, both young and old? I'm personally praying that an entire family would come to Christ. That's what I'm praying for. Mom, dad, and all the kids. Wouldn't that be exciting? That'd be such a joy. And that's the kind of depths to heights that can get a church like this excited. I think we could get excited that God can do that. And we can pray with an anticipation. Lord, you told us your fields are white unto harvest. You told us that in your word. You told us that you seek that which is lost. So Lord, we're claiming your promises back to you. Would you save a soul and would you use our ministry to give your glorious gospel to it? Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your word. for the opportunity, Lord, to study out a wonderfully common, in a good way, psalm, one that so many know and love and cherish. But Lord, it's also a challenging psalm, again, in a good way, like so many psalms are. Lord, may we run to you. If there are any in this room, Lord, that have never accepted Christ as their Savior, may today, tonight, be the time of their salvation. Lord, if there are some in this room that are saved, may they be challenged to be the kind of witness on earth that we are called to be. For those who have been forgiven much also know what it means to have that burden removed, and they should have a desire to see others saved as well. With every head bowed and every eye closed, the instruments are gonna begin to play. Just a brief hymn of invitation. Would you respond as God has spoken to your soul? Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you so much for the opportunity it is to study out your word and to have it challenging in our own hearts and minds. Lord, would you allow us to go with fresh motivation knowing what you have done for us. We pray this in your name.