Hope In The Lord Series

Advent is a time of tension. There is the joy and anticipation of the season and the stress and strain of trying to prepare for it, amen? But the season itself represents an historical and theological tension as well and I am going to use songs from the Jewish song book and songs from our own song book as a way to explore the tension of expectation and celebration, the despair and hope of Advent as a way of helping us to understand and appreciate the incredible way that God has reconciled these two extremes in the form of one person … Jesus Christ.

We start off with the song …or “psalm” [spell out] … 130 from the Jewish hymnal or “psalter.” Please turn to Psalm 130 and follow along. [Read Psalm 130.]

“Out of the depths, I cry to You, O LORD” (Psalm 130:1). What a powerfully graphic image, amen? What do you picture? We probably picture someone in the bottom of a deep pit crying out for help. They can’t see if there’s anybody out there and so they cry out in the hopes that some passerby or search party will hear them and come lift them out of the hole. You can almost picture the hand of God reaching down and lifting this poor soul out of the pit of his or her despair, can’t you?

But the image of verse 1 is more intense, more serious than just falling into a hole and crying out for help. The phrase or word “depths” is a metaphor or shorthand for “depths of the sea.” The author of Psalm 130 is “drowning” in despair. He is being overwhelmed by his problem or problems. Being stuck in the bottom of deep hole is pretty serious but you could possibly hold out for a few days but drowning? You need help and you need it now. The author of Psalm 130 is going down for the third time. His problem or problems are imminent and overwhelming and he needs someone to rescue him now or he’s done for.

Clearly the author is not drowning in water … he is drowning in guilt … he is drowning in remorse … he is drowning in sin. “If You, O LORD,” the author cries out, “should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3). Indeed … who could stand? A cry that has echoed through the ages. “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it,” cries the Apostle Paul. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. … Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:18-19, 24). For the Paul, the answer is Jesus Christ … but Jesus hadn’t been born, the cross hadn’t happened yet, when the author wrote this song and so he appeals directly to God who is the only one who can rescue him from his iniquities and the consequences of his sin.

He raises a question in verse 3 and then he answers it verse 4. “If You, O LORD, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?” Not him. Not me. Not you, amen? “But there is forgiveness with You, so that you may be revered” (v. 4). If verse 3 is true and no one can stand, if we are held accountable for every single sin or infraction of God’s law, then we are all doomed, amen? But there is hope. God is a forgiving God and it’s not due to any righteousness on our part but because of God’s grace and mercy and “hesed” … God’s steadfast, unshakeable love for us. That is the point of his cry in verse 1. He can’t help himself. No one can help him except God and so he cries out to God from out the depths of his despair knowing that God won’t just stand there and watch him drown in his own sin, his own iniquities, but will forgive him and rescue him because He loves him. Who here would be so cruel as to stand there and watch a loved one or even a beloved pet struggle and drown and not reach out and attempt to rescue them?

The problem is that I can’t save myself from my sin because I am the cause of my sin. I can’t rescue you from your sins and you can’t rescue me from mine. Only God can do that and the author of Psalm 130 knows that God can and will because God loves him and we know that God can and will rescue us for the same reason, amen?

The fact that we are drowning in our sin, doomed to suffer the consequences of our iniquities, coupled with the fact that God loves us and will rescue us causes us to “revere” God and trust God. We can “wait” on the Lord because we can trust God’s “hesed” … God’s steadfast, unshakeable love for us, amen? Listen carefully and think about what the psalmist is saying in verses 5 and 6. “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord.” Waiting is, in fact, an act of hope, amen? If I’ve never entered the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes then there’s no point in me waiting for them to show up at my door with confetti and a big cardboard check, am I right? Waiting is expecting something to happen that hasn’t happened yet. Remember, the psalmist is still in the “depths” … and yet, he has hope and that hope allows him to wait on the Lord in the sure and certain expectation that God will not only hear his prayer but answer it. He knows this not only intellectually but he knows this with all his heart and soul. Though he is drowning, he is absolutely certain that God can and will come to his rescue.