If you would please take out your Bible and turn to the 130th psalm, Psalm 130. While you're turning there, there are some gentlemen who are going through the congregation and handing out the handout for tonight. If this looks familiar, it should. This is just a continuation of our congregational focus with the different emphasis, emphasis?

With the emphasis we have each quarter, and then also each month as we go through the psalms of ascent. Thank you. So this is the most updated of those for the coming month of August so you'll have that and you can refer back to it. John did such a good job reading Psalm 130, I thought, you know what, I'll just go ahead and preach out of that.

No he did do a good job with that and that is the psalm that we are considering for the month of August, but the first weekend in August we'll have our gospel meeting and so we're going to do that just a little bit early. Do it a week ahead of time so that you can be thinking about that as we go into next month.

And our focus there as we consider these Psalms of ascent in our year of ascent. As we're glad to go into the house of the Lord. If you're visiting with us, we're grateful for your presence but even if you're not, if you're a member here, let's just quickly review what we've been thinking about and talking about.

Again, we are sojourners in the world, and Psalm 120 tells us that. We find refuge in the Lord, and so we enter the city or the house of the Lord, the place where we come together to worship Him with gladness. And we're using this image of the people of God coming to Jerusalem and singing these psalms of ascent as they were going up together to the temple to worship God.

That's the image that we're trying to capture in our own lives and in our own worship. That we are all sojourners in this world. This world is not our home and where we find refuge and direction and hope and peace and promise. And if that dichotomy is right in our mind, if we realize this world is not our home, but the Lord is where our hope is found, then our worship is going to be different.

And our attitude is going to be different. And our lives are going to be different. And so we've had a different emphasis each quarter. In the second quarter we talked about the refuge of God's direction while in the world. Last month we talked about quarter three, the refuge of God's promises while in the world.

And we talked about this idea of praying God's promises, if you remember, that we can rely on God's promises. And so we talked about that idea with Psalm 129, and our emphasis for this month was on the hope that those promises give us. That we can find hope because of those promises. But in Psalm 130, I want us to think about this idea.

that we wait in trusting hope for the abundant redemption from God. And so just as we had hope in those promises, we can take it a step further and have trust that God will fulfill what it is that He has said He is going to do. And Psalm 130 really emphasizes to us the need for this kind of trust as we consider what God has promised.

So read this Psalm with me, if you would. Psalm 130. Beginning in verse 1, the psalmist said, says, 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 Oh 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 Of all the psalms of ascent.

This is the one that starts the lowest and thus is the greatest climb You And perhaps of all the Psalms of ascent, this is the one that has the highest exaltation at the top. So let's consider for a few moments tonight Psalm 130 and how we should wait in trusting hope for abundant redemption from God.

He begins there in verses 1 and 2 talking about, Out of the depths I have cried to you, O Lord. Out of the depths. This is a common image in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. There are all kinds of depths that we might consider. Out of these deep and dark and scary places. These, these places that are called the depths or the pit.

We think about the depths of the canyon bottom down in the mire. The depth of the ocean, far beneath the waves, the depth of the pit in which we might fall. But for me, when I think about depth, I think about Carlsbad Caverns. Has anybody been to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico? Many of you have. At its deepest point, Carlsbad Caverns is over 1, 600 feet deep below the surface of the ground, making it one of the deepest cave systems in the world.

But just that number, 1, 600 feet, maybe doesn't mean a whole lot to us. So, so just very quickly, I want you to imagine going down into the depths of Carlsbad Caverns. If you've been there, it's easy to imagine. If not, you've got the pictures on the screen behind me. So you see this open mouth of the cavern, and there are, there's this switchback that is going down into that mouth.

And you go down a little further into the mouth, and you see there is even more darkness down below. We went for the first time when I was 10 years old. We went on this great trip where we went to Carlsbad, and White Sands and Petrified Forest, and Meteor Crater, and then the Grand Canyon was kind of like the grand finale.

It was an awesome trip for a 10 year old, let me tell you. And I remember walking down this path. I remember it so vividly. As you went down, and down, and down, and down into the darkness. And then, once you kind of get down into the actual mouth of the cave, you can look back up, and you can see the path that you have walked down, and you can see the light up above.

And of course, there's artificial lighting, but as you get further away from the mouth of the cave, you Further away from the mouth of the cave, the light becomes less and less. Finally, you get down to where it is a little more even, and you can see all that you have climbed, all the way down here, as you've gone down and down and down.

You know, as a 39 year old, I might think to myself, now I've got to go back up all of those steps. As a 10 year old, I didn't think that. I just thought, well, I can still see the light, and as long as I can still see the light, I can walk out of this place. But it's interesting to me, as you continue going down, there is a famous spot in Carlsbad Caverns that is called the Bottomless Pit.

It is another 140 feet down from the floor of that particular opening, or that particular cave, from the ceiling to the bottom of this pit in the Liberty Dome, it's 370 feet. It is called the bottomless pit because you can take a powerful, powerful flashlight, you can shine the light down into the pit, and you can't see anything.

The light just kind of dissipates into the darkness. And if you go there with a tour guide, occasionally they'll throw something down into the pit, and you watch it fall, and you listen, and you listen, and you listen, and it's deep enough that you can't hear anything hit the bottom. When the psalmist talks about going down into the depths, this is what I imagine.

A place where no light reaches. A place where sound cannot be heard. A place where there is no path to the light where you can walk your way. Out of those kinds of depths, I must wait for salvation. I must wait for the rope to be lowered down for me to grab it and to pull it, to be pulled up by someone else.

And yes, like the psalmist, I have to cry out. Yes, I must grab the rope, but I cannot save myself out of these kinds of depths. You know, earlier I could look to the light and say, yeah, I can save myself, I can get out of this. It's a low place, it's a, it's deep down, but I can still climb my way out. But if I'm in these kinds of depths, I need somebody to help me.

I can't do it on my own. What is this kind of depth? Well, maybe we can talk about all of the different ways that this image is used in the Bible. You know, adversaries, I'm surrounded on every side. Or sickness, I've got physical sickness and I feel like I'm in the depths. Maybe it's stress. It's pain, emotional pain of various types of betrayal.

Maybe it's loss, loss of a loved one, and we find ourselves in that depth. All of those are deep depths of pain and sorrow. But there are no lower, deeper, or darker depth than when we find ourselves in sin. Isn't that what he says? Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.

Verse 3. If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? Lord, if you kept a running list of everything that I've ever done wrong over the entirety of my entire life, and you just threw that book at me, who could stand before that kind of guilt over sin? I think about these movies, you know, where somebody is finds themselves in one of these old world prisons, like Count of Monte Cristo or something like that, and there's the guy that's just marking the wall, right?

And he's just marking the wall for every day, and after years and years and years, you look around at the at the walls of, of the cell, and, and they're just covered with these check marks for all of the days that the person has been there. What would it look like? What would this room look like if God were to mark all of our iniquities?

All of our sins, there's a mark made for each one on the walls, well, walls wouldn't be enough, and the ceiling, the floor, and the furniture. What about just for my own sin?

You know, sometimes I think we think of ourselves as pretty good people, and we are. And maybe it's easy to forget that one sin would leave us condemned before God. And I have committed far more than one sin. It is out of that kind of depth that we cry out to the Lord because we cannot stand before Him on the basis of our own faithfulness, on the basis of our own works.

We must stand before Him empty. We must stand before Him acknowledging our sin. Verse 4, But there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared. That realization is powerful, that this is the reality for all of us, that we find ourselves in sin, and it is only in God that there is forgiveness that is offered.

That image of the depths of sin is found a number of other places, but if you'll turn back to Psalm 69, the 69th Psalm, we see this image used again. Psalm 69, beginning in verse 1, it sounds fairly similar to Psalm 130, but there's a little more Explanation to the image. Psalm 69, beginning in verse 1, a psalm of David.

David says, Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. You think about waters coming up to your neck. That's, that's a bad feeling, isn't it? Especially if you can't go any higher than what you are. I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I have come into deep waters where the floods overflow me.

All of those things kind of make us feel a little nervous, anxious, right? To think about being in water up to our neck, of sinking down into the deep mire, down into the mud. When I was growing up, the area FFA convention was always in Amarillo, Texas. And there's Palladura Canyon just south of there. And one of the things that we would always do is we'd go down into the canyon and spend like half a day there.

That was kind of part of the reward of getting to go on the trip. And one of the things that we loved to do through the years, we did this three or four times, is we would go down to where there was this little river that runs through Palladura Canyon. And there were always a few places kind of where the river had used to be, or maybe where it had flooded a little bit, where there was this really thick, wet mud.

And you could go up on these little bluffs, and maybe it was like six feet down, something like that. And you could jump off the little bluff into the mud. And we would always see who it was who could go down in the deepest, you know. And so maybe you, you get up to above the knee, maybe you get up to your waist.

There was one big guy, Dustin was his name. He was 6'6 big old guy offensive lineman. And I remember him jumping. And with all of that weight, he ended up going down, like, up to the middle of his chest. Go And he's this big, strong, burly guy, and you can see his arms like this, and he starts to get out of that mud, and he can't.

And it took four of us other high school boys to finally pull him out of that mire, out of that mud. Do you ever feel that way with sin? I am, and I can't get out of it. I need somebody to pull me out, and that's what God is offering. Verse three, I am weary with my crying, my throat is dry, my eyes fail while I wait, For my God, very similar language, and we'll talk about that more here in just a moment.

Verse 13, drop down. But as for me, my prayer is to you, oh Lord, in the acceptable time, oh God, in the multitude of your mercy, hear me in the truth of your salvation. Deliver me out of the mire and let me not sink. Let me be delivered from those who hate me and out of the deep waters. Let not the over, the flood water overflow me, nor let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut its mouth on me.

He's down in those depths. Hear me, O Lord, for your lovingkindness is good. Turn to me according to the multitude of your tender mercies, and do not hide your face from your servant, for I am in trouble. Hear me speedily. Draw near to my soul and redeem it. Deliver me because of my enemies. This is the kind of poor in spirit, to use the words of Jesus, attitude that is required to be saved.

If we are going to be saved by God, we must come to the realization that we are not going to save ourselves. And we have to cry out to the Lord in desperation because we realize that there is nowhere else to turn. If we want to come out of the depths, it must be because we have cried out to the Lord from those depths.

And if you're there, in Psalm 130, again, notice he says, But there is forgiveness with you, that you may be If this was going to be a fill in the blank, and you saw this idea of the forgiveness that was in the Lord, that you may be blank, what word would you put next? I don't know about you, but I don't think Feared would be the word that I would choose first and foremost.

Maybe loved, or praised, or whatever the case might be. But that's not what the psalmist says. But there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared. And I think what this really does for us is it helps us to define biblical, godly fear. In a better way than maybe sometimes we have in our mind, Spurgeon says of this passage, none fear the Lord, like those who have experienced his forgiving love.

This kind of fear is a respect and reverence for God because of what he can do and who he is. And yes, we fear the Lord because of his judgment, because of his power, because of his majesty, because of his authority as we talked about this morning. But when we realize how merciful God is When we realize that He can forgive any sin, that should cause us, in absolute awe, to revere and respect and fear Him.

And it is this kind of fear that is the beginning of knowledge. It is this kind of fear that is the beginning of a relationship with God. When we respect Him because He is the only one who has the power to forgive. To forgive. So from this death there is hope. If we call on the Lord as we saw there in verse one, and if we wait for him as we will read in verses five and six, he is the only one who can hear us and save us.

Keep reading verses five and six. 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.

We're not very good at waiting.

I think that's revealed even in the way we talk about things. If there's something good that's coming, what do we say? I can't wait, right? I can't wait for this to happen. How much longer? Let's make a countdown until the day that this thing that we're looking forward to is going to happen. We have that on our phones and on our calendars.

I can't wait for something good. If it's something bad, we have the same attitude. I just can't wait to get this over with. What's taking so long? I can't stand to wait. And we do everything in our power, I think, as a society, not to wait. We live in the Netflix era. Gone are the days when you had to wait until your show comes on at a specific time, on a specific day, and then wait a week or more for the next episode.

Even reruns, that was the case. Now you can binge the entire season, the entire show. But even Netflix started with waiting. They, they just discontinued this not too long ago, but originally Netflix was, you went on the net, and you ordered a DVD, and that DVD was mailed to you, and you had to wait for it to arrive.

No more. No waiting. And all of this not waiting in our society I think gives us a false sense of control over everything in our lives. We don't like to wait because waiting implies that I'm no longer in control of what's happening. We struggle with things that we cannot do ourselves, that we can't manipulate, that we can't rush.

We're, we're put out when something's not on Amazon Prime and it's going to take more than two days to get here. And there are things that we must wait on, where we have to trust in something beyond our own control. Biblically, of course, waiting is so much more than sitting around and doing nothing, but it is something where we realize we are not fully in control.

It is humble trust and reliance on God. I think it's helpful just like feared is kind of defined by, by the way it's used in this psalm. I think waiting for the Lord is somewhat defined by the way it's used in this psalm as well. I, I like some of the paraphrases and how they translate this verse. The New Living Translation translates it this way.

I am counting on the Lord. Yes. I am counting on him. I have put my hope in his word. That's a pretty good translation for this idea of waiting. I'm counting on God. I'm trusting in him. I believe that he's gonna come through. The Net Bible translates it this way. I rely on the Lord. I rely on him with my whole being.

I wait for his assuring word. But so often what we want is we want it now, without waiting. Like, as the image he uses, the watchman waiting for morning. Now we have a phrase, a watched pot never boils, right? And the idea is, if I'm looking at it it's not gonna happen as quickly as I think it ought to happen.

I'm having to wait on something. But I ask you, thinking of those two metaphors, the watchman, you know, waiting for morning, you know, I've never been in a situation like that, probably few of us have been there, but you're put on watch, right? And there's all this stuff out in the darkness we've seen movies like this, and you're on watch seeing what's gonna come and attack.

Can you imagine being in that moment and just hoping and praying for the sun to come up and how slow it must be waiting for that sun to come up. But let me ask you, does the sun eventually come up? Can I hear your head rattle? Eventually the sun comes up. Does the pot eventually boil? Yeah, eventually it does.

It's the waiting that's the tough thing. But when it comes to God and the things of God, just like we know the sun is eventually going to come up, with God, if He is promised, we know it is going to happen. And so we count on Him, and we rely on Him, and we trust in Him as we wait. Waiting on the Lord requires a couple of things for us.

It requires, first of all, maintaining hope in God's promises. That I have a positive enough outlook to think, you know, this is still going to happen. Steph has a sweatshirt that she wears sometimes that says, What if it all works out? And I think that has to be our attitude when it comes to the Lord, right?

I am maintaining my hope in God's promises as we talked about in the last psalm, Psalm 129. But specifically to this psalm, waiting on the Lord requires maintaining faith and trust. Faith and trust in the Lord, but specifically faith and trust and hope in God's Word. That if God has said it in His Word, we can be assured that that's the way it is, and that it is going to come to pass in God's timing.

As he says there in verse 3, oh excuse me, I missed it. In verse 5, and in His Word, I do hope. I can be assured of these things because God has revealed them in His Word. I want you to turn to another famous passage about waiting. Turn to Isaiah chapter 40 for just a moment. Isaiah chapter 40.

Isaiah chapter 40

and verse 27. Isaiah chapter 40 and verse 27.

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord, and my just claim is passed over by my God? Now what was the issue here? It was a lack of trust, right? It was a lack of faith that God was going to do what it is He said He was going to do. They're making an inference from the greatness of God that has been described earlier in this chapter.

And the inference they're making is that God is just too great to care about me and what's going on in my life. And what Isaiah is saying is you're drawing the wrong conclusion. The conclusion you should be drawing is God is too great to fail. God is so great and so big that He will fulfill what it is He said He's going to do.

And so He asked these questions in verse 28. Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall.

But those who wait on the Lord Those who rely and trust on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. He says, Have you not known? Have you not heard? We might say, Have you not read in his word? That this is what God has said.

That this is who God is. And that this is what God will do. Waiting on the Lord means It requires us to maintain faith and trust in what He has said and what He has revealed. You know this. You've heard this. Do you believe it? Do you trust it to be true? Waiting is always a symbol of trust and submission.

Have you ever, you parents out there, grandparents, have you ever said to your kids, Now you just wait right here until I get back. Have you ever said that to them? Whatever the situation might be. Well, they have to trust two things. Number one, that you're going to come back. But they also have to trust, number two, that you're doing what's best for them.

That you're telling them to wait there because that's what is best for them. And so, too, with us. We must maintain our faith and trust in God to do what He has said and what He has promised. Again, waiting doesn't mean that we do nothing. We just sit around and say, okay, God, save me. It means doing the will of God while waiting on His deliverance.

Just like we think about the fateful of those who are fateful in the various captivities, especially the Babylonian captivity. I, I trust the Lord so I will rely on Him and follow His directions that He will fulfill His promise to bring us back to the promised land. I will follow His guidance, we should say to ourselves, His path and His word on the matter rather than seeking my own way.

And that connection between waiting and our faithful obedience is made explicit in a number of passages, but let me just give you one. Psalm 37, the 37th Psalm, since we're already in the Psalms, this is an easy one to turn to.

Psalm 37 and verse 34, another Psalm of David.

Notice, wait on the Lord and keep His way. Wait on the Lord and keep His way, and He shall exalt you to inherit the land. When the wicked are cut off, you shall see it. Maybe you don't see it fully yet, but if you wait on the Lord, and if you keep His way, you will see it according to His promises.

If it were just on the basis of what I have done, I could not stand before God. But God offers forgiveness for those who wait on Him. And this is not the hopeless waiting of one who is unsure of what's going to happen. I'm just waiting for the axe to fall or the other shoe to drop. This is the sure waiting of one who knows it's going to happen.

Is the sun gonna come up tomorrow? Well, Lord wills. The Lord wills it will. And as sure as the sunrise in the morning is God's word. It is by that word and God's promises contained therein that I have hope in my redemption. So I can wait. An expectation that God is rich in mercy and that He is abundant in redemption.

So go back to Psalm 130 one more time. And that's the conclusion of all of this. As we have ascended out of the depths into hope and reliance and waiting on God, now we ascend to the very heights of salvation in Him. Verse 7, Oh 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. It's interesting to me that the psalmist now cries out to the rest of Israel, Oh Israel, hope in the Lord. And when we, I think when we see the redemption that is found in God, we'll be motivated to tell about what God has done for us because it is so abundant.

That phrase is really interesting to me. So powerful, that's why I put it in the title. This is a long, ungangly title. I, I know that. But. But it's the thought of what we're talking about here, that we're, we wait in trusting hope for abundant redemption from God. I think that adjective is really powerful.

Abundant, not just redemption, but abundant redemption from God. I think a lot of times we think about redemption in kind of binary terms, right? You either have redemption or you don't have redemption, and in a sense that's certainly true. But the psalmist talks of abundant redemption. Abundant redemption.

And it reminds me a lot of what Jesus offers in John chapter 10. So turn to John chapter 10. This will be our last passage for the lesson this evening. John chapter 10. Abundant redemption reminds me a lot of abundant life. And that's what Jesus talks about here in John chapter 10. If you remember in John chapter 9, Jesus heals this man who was born blind.

This man who had spent his whole life just begging. And Now all of a sudden, he can see and he can live, and he knows what the world is like. A man who has never seen before now suddenly can see because of the power of Jesus and his life is totally changed because of that. And so it's in that context that Jesus says what he does In John chapter 10, beginning in verse seven, then Jesus said to them again, most assuredly I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.

All whoever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. Now that's an allusion to the Old Testament. We think about these blessings of being able to go in and out freely finding pasture, finding the blessings that are in God.

Keep reading. Verse 10. The thief does not come except to steal, to kill, and to destroy. I have come Harold talked about this with Jesus's purpose Last Sunday, I guess it was. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. Again, sometimes we think about life in binary terms, in terms of existence.

Either you have life or you don't. Either you're alive or you're not. But biblically, the concept of life, the concept of redemption, is so much greater than that. Jesus is emphasizing this idea in this passage. We are given entrance through Christ into life, and it is a life of abundance, of abundant blessing.

Yes, we are alive physically, but now we are alive spiritually as well, and experience what real life is supposed to be, just like that blind man who was alive. He was living, but But it was not a life of abundance. And now, Jesus has opened his eyes to everything that life can be, and ought to be, and should be, and was designed by God to be.

And so too, spiritually, Jesus can open our eyes. He can bring this abundant redemption. When we come to Christ, we see things for how they really are for the first time. Life, in all of its possibilities, in all of its blessings. Yes, physically, God's providential care and the assurance of our needs. Yes, emotionally, the peace that passes all understanding and genuine joy in contentment.

Yes, we are given a life of purpose and direction. The instruction of God through His Word. A life above the mundane and meaningless frustrations of the physical and the temporal. It is life more abundantly now. And how much more in the life to come. That's what what is available to us. If we wait in trusting hope for the abundant redemption from God, from the depths of sin and despair, we have ascended to a place of abundant redemption from all our iniquities.

You see how that Psalm ends all, all our iniquities, not some, not most, all our iniquities. That is the ascent that is available to all. Who will wait? Trust, obey, and rely on the Lord. Will you do that even this evening? Will you act to take hold of the rope that God is throwing out to you in the depths?

Will you grab hold so that He might pull you up out of the depths of the sorrow of sin and into the abundant redemption that leads to eternal life? If you're not yet a Christian, won't you put off the old man of sin? Won't you go down into the watery grave of baptism? So that you might rise to walk in newness of life.

And if you're already a Christian and you are slipping, slipping back down into the depths, it is, it is never too late for you to turn back to God, to cry out to him so that he might save you. And if we can help you with either one of those things this evening, won't you come now while together we stand and while we sing.