The Path of Forgiveness Psalms Worship In The Real World Confession (Psalm 130 September 29, 2013) It is incredible what sin does to the emotional, physical and spiritual state of believers. I stress that I am talking about believers here. Yes sin can have terrible consequences on the mental and physical state of unbelievers but believers have a heightened sense of sin. When I was unsaved to my shame I enjoyed much of my sin and most of it didn t bother me too much. But when the Spirit of God opened my eyes to who I was and the holiness of God that all changed. Now when I sin it eats away at me and I know if you love the Lord, then sin eats away at you. When we sin when we are really struggling spiritually it affects every facet of our lives. We can lie awake at night ashamed and wondering how we could act like this. Some wonder if they are even saved. At times we sweat, we dry retch, we feel the weight of the world, we don t eat. At these moments, all we want is for God to heal us, forgive us, restore to us the joy of our salvation. If you have been a Christian any length of time chances are that you ve been there. Do Christians get depressed? You bet. Do Christians despair? Yeah. The world can only offer therapy and drugs.
But as a child of God we have so much more. Our gracious, loving heavenly Father knows we have these times and He does not want His children to stay in that state. So he has provided a pathway to restore us to wash us clean to bring back our joy and the peace of righteousness. There are many places in the Word of God that describe this pathway to forgiveness but chances are that in the midst of this struggle the place most of us turn is to the Psalms. The Psalms describe life in the real world. Fallen man struggling to live in a fallen world. Many of the Psalms have elements of Intercession. But seven Psalms focus mainly on our sin and how to find forgiveness. These are known as the Psalms of Confession or the Penitential Psalms. I am talking about Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143. Probably the best known Penitential Psalm is Psalm 51 the Psalm David wrote after his sin with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah. Also well known is Psalm 32 another penitential Psalm of David. I suspect that Psalm 51 is probably the Psalm that most Christians turn to when they find themselves mired in sin and under the conviction of God. Tradition tells us that the early church recited this Psalm at the end of the daily morning service of the church because they knew sin was such a big part of the lives of men. But, this morning I want to look at one of the less well known penitential Psalms Psalm 130. There is a lot of debate about who wrote this Psalm and when. What we do know is that it was classed as a Song of Ascents these are a group of fifteen Psalms Psalms 120-134. Why Ascents? It has been suggested that they were sung by worshippers as they ascended to Jerusalem for the three great feasts or perhaps by the priests as they ascended the steps to minister at the Temple. But what I want you to see this morning is that this Psalm lays out for us The Path of Forgiveness. Here is that path:
The Groan of Forgiveness The Grace of Forgiveness The Guarantee of Forgiveness The Ground of Forgiveness This Psalm consists of four pairs of verses and each pair makes one point. We begin with: The Groan of Forgiveness Look with me at Psalm 130 verses 1 and 2: Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! Have you ever been in the depths? I have. Most of us have. It is a dark place. At times we are brought low by circumstances death, illness, war. Psalms speaks to this in the Psalms of Lament we will look at one of these next week. But the depths spoken of here are because of personal sin. Sin is not something that happens and we just move on. Sin affects every part of our lives emotional, physical, relational. Sin disrupts our relationship with the Lord. Sin causes marriage trouble or interpersonal strife. Sin can cause physical consequences drunk driving leading to injury, promiscuity leading to AIDS.
Sin destroys our joy and peace. This besetting sin can flow from so many areas of our lives. Greed. Lust. Anger. Selfishness. Spiritual malaise. At times we end up in the depths from longstanding sin. Sometimes it is new sin. Sometimes it is sin that grows slowly in its strength. Regardless the day comes and you realize you are in the depths and it is killing you. And often even godly Christians just try and soldier on. I could not tell you how many times a Christian in this church has fallen into sin and they have come to us or we have gone to them and they tell us that knew they were struggling but they didn t get help. You ask why not? It usually centres on shame and pride. You feel so dirty before God. You have let Him down so many times. You feel you don t deserve forgiveness. Often there is an element of pride as well. You think you will finally get on top of it and then no one else needs to know. Here is one of my favourites I didn't say anything because everyone else in the church has it so together I didn t want to look like the only one struggling. Let me be really clear there is no one in this church who has it even close to together. We are all struggling. We all have our time in the depths. Shame and pride. Not good enough reasons to delay getting right with God. God cares about us He knows the hairs on your head He sent Christ to die for you He wants you to get right with Him. He knows sin is a part of life in a fallen world and that is why He gave us the pathway to forgiveness. I wonder how anyone can read the Bible and not realize that the godliest of men and women struggle with sin. One of the things I am most thankful for in Scripture is its realistic description of the lives of the children of God. It does not paper over their sin. Scripture lets us know that even the godliest of men and women fail, sin and commit acts that are horrendous. Consider a few of these heroes of the faith.
Abraham a moonworshipper who tended to take matters into his own hands. When a famine hits the land and his faith fails leading him to head to Egypt it is there that he lies about his wife and puts her purity and the seed line at risk. He leaves Egypt a rich man with silver, gold, livestock and Egyptian slaves. One of those slaves is Hagar. His faith fails again he sleeps with Hagar to produce a son. That son is the worldly Ishmael who follows the way of his mother s people the Egyptians not the way of Abraham s God. Then there is Lot. Righteous Lot. Lot who is offered his choice of the land. He looks out over the plain of the Jordan and to him it looked great and he said I ll take it. He moved near Sodom, then into Sodom, become a leader in Sodom, absorbed the values of Sodom, offered his daughters to the mob and slept with his own daughters. Of course there is Jacob. The deceiver. The liar. The one who favours a son to the point of destroying his family. He was a failure as a father. Judah who took as his friend a Canaanite man and who married a Canaanite woman. Judah who failed to raise his sons in the faith. Who became caught up in the sexual practices of the Canaanites and slept with his daughter-in-law thinking that she was a prostitute. Then we meet men like David a man after God s own heart. This man who knew God s word chose to violate it. He committed adultery and covered up his sin through murder which affected his family and the nation. Solomon who married pagan wives and tolerated their idolatry. I could go on but you get the point. There is none who is righteous not even one. We are all sinners and we have all been there in the depths. We should call out to God as soon as we begin the slide into the depths. Shame and pride often delay the groan the cry the plea for mercy till we can bear it no more. Finally, we do call out to the Lord. Non-Christians do this as well. But their plea is more of a: God, if you are there stop the pain get me out of this jam let me win the lotto and I will worship you. For the Christian it is a different plea: God be merciful to me a thoroughly undeserving sinner.
We know we deserve nothing. We have sinned against a holy God. We have sinned against our family, our friends, our witness. And it hurts. The Psalms describe so well the pain our sin causes us before we finally call out to God. Here are some of my favourite descriptions from the Psalms of what it is like to be under the conviction of sin. Psalm 6:2 3: Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled. Psalm 32:3 4: When I kept silent [about my sin], my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Psalm 38:1 10: O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath! For your arrows have sunk into me, and your hand has come down on me. There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness, I am utterly bowed down and prostrate; all the day I go about mourning. For my sides are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart. O Lord, all my longing is before you; my sighing is not hidden from you. My heart throbs; my strength fails me, and the light of my eyes it also has gone from me. Psalm 102:3 17: For my days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace. My heart is struck down like grass and has withered; I forget to eat my bread. Because of my loud groaning my bones cling to my flesh. I am like a desert owl of the wilderness, like an owl of the waste places; I lie awake; I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop. We read these descriptions and they resonate with us. Some of us know this pain all too well. Others have only experienced a milder taste. This pain tells us we can t do anything to stop it and it reminds us there is a place to turn:
Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! Instinctively we realize that there is only one place to turn. We call out to our gracious heavenly Father. Again and again Scripture shows us men and women who reach the end of their tether and finally cry out to God. Jacob running away from Esau and returning to face Esau finally prays to God. David after his sin with Bathsheba. Jonah running away from the presence of the Lord but finds himself in the belly of the whale. Finally, he calls out to God from the depths. In 2 Corinthians 1 Paul says he received the sentence of death but that just made him rely on God who raises the dead. It may take us a while to get there, but Scripture repeatedly tells us that it is right and proper to turn to God when we reach the end of the line. In the Lord s prayer Jesus told us to reach out to our heavenly Father: Pray like this: Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. (Matthew 6:12 13) Remember the words of David in Psalm 51: Against you [God], [against] you only, have I sinned. Ultimately all sin is sin against God. Ultimately, the sin that counts is our sin against the Lord. Remember when Joseph s brothers came to him. They had betrayed him and sold him into slavery. Now they came and asked him for forgiveness. Then in Genesis 50:19 Joseph said to them, Do not fear for am I in the place of God? It is not wrong that they came asking Joseph to forgive them they should do that. But if Joseph simply said I forgive you the relationship with Joseph is restored but they would have missed that their relationship with the Lord was still in tatters. That is the one you have to restore if you want to come out of the depths. Brothers and sisters when we are struggling often we don t want to reach out to God. It is hard to confess our sin and humble ourselves.
And often we think my sin is too great, I have lived in sin too long. God won t listen. The Psalmist knows this but notice that the Plea of Forgiveness then leads to: The Grace of Forgiveness Verses 3 and 4. Notice that the Psalmist s first thought is of the impossibility of forgiveness. How could God forgive a wretch like me? Forgiveness does seem impossible. This thought stands in stark contrast to the religions and wisdom of the world. They rely on merit. I am good enough. I have done enough. I am worthy enough. The Psalmist knows that is folly. Look at verse 3: If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? This is a rhetorical question. No one could stand. Psalm 14:2 3: The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one. No matter how you cut it no one can stand. God has a standard perfection and no one man, woman or child is anywhere near perfect. You could live for eighty years and in all that time nearly 30,000 days you only need to sin once one flash of lust, one flash of anger and you are lost forever. But just losing it once or a few times that isn t reality. Here is the reality. You and I we are constant sin factories. If God was marking iniquities if God was keeping tally the tally against Craig Lloyd would be immense. I constantly sin in thought, action, deed, or even by my inaction. In fact I suspect I sin in my sleep through dreams of greed, lust, anger, selfishness. On the final day when the voluminous libraries of books listing my sins are opened there I will find all the big sins I knew about all the obvious sins I forgot about all
the small sins that barely registered and countless sins against a holy God I never knew or imagined I committed. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? Not me. Not you. No one. We would be buried under enormous weight of our iniquities. This leaves us with two hopes. The first is that God grades on a curve and we are in the good half. Here is what that would mean. How many times a day do you think you sin before a holy God? Ten, twenty, a hundred times, a thousand times? Lets be generous. Lets say you are pretty godly only a hundred sins a day. That is approaching 3,000,000 sins in your lifetime. Now, let me be frank here I suspect the real mark is much, much higher but we ll give us the benefit of the doubt. I suspect that only 3,000,000 sins in a lifetime would well and truly put us in in the good part of the curve. But in truth that is not saying much. Imagine coming before a holy God and saying yes I am a constant sin factory but I am not the worst doesn t that count for something? It is like taking the twenty greatest serial killers in history ranking them and saying I guess by comparison the better ten aren t such bad guys. Romans 3:23: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, But the news gets worse. Our God is holy. He is a consuming fire. Habakkuk 1:13 says of God: You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong. Just one of those 3,000,000 sins would condemn you to hell. One sin makes you a sinner and Romans 6:23: For the wages of sin is death. If you are hoping that God will grade on the curve and overlook your mountain of sin that is a forlorn hope. But there is one final hope. That this holy God is also gracious.
And the Psalmist knows both that this is his only hope and that God is indeed a God of grace. Verse 4: But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. Our sins disqualify us. Our sins mean we cannot stand. Our only hope is the forgiveness of sins based purely on the grace of God. The Old Testament talks a lot about forgiveness but that forgiveness involved the sacrificial system and the shedding of blood. But there was genuine forgiveness for the child of God. Listen to these Psalms. Psalm 51:7 9: Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. And one of my favourites Psalm 103:10 12: He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. If God dealt with us according to our sins if He counted our iniquities against us we would be incinerated on the spot and find ourselves in conscious torment forever. Instead our gracious Father removes our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west. East and west never meet our sins are forgiven forever. Now we live on this side of the cross. We know that the grace of God does not work through the ground of the blood of bulls and goats. The ground of grace is the cross of Christ. Hebrews 10:4 10: For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Forgiveness is offered by the grace of God based on the death of Christ.
God knows how huge your sins are. God knows you continue to sin. God knows you have let Him down and will let Him down. But He loves you anyway. He sent Christ while we were yet sinners. And to thoroughly undeserving wretches like me He offers forgiveness. But there is one other point in this verse. Look again at verse 4: But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. Why that you may be feared? Why not that you may be loved or worshipped or praised? Surely forgiveness of sin should make us love God and worship Him not fear Him? Yes we should love Him and worship Him for this but it should also cause us to fear Him. We have to be very careful when we deal with confession, repentance and forgiveness. Sometimes our heart and our motive can be wrong. We want the pain to stop. We want assurance of our salvation. But we don t want to do whatever it takes to deal with our sin. Listen again to Psalm 103:11 12: He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. The forgiveness offered is for those who fear the Lord. Listen to Psalm 128:1: Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways! Jesus said we are to fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Jesus said we are better off cutting off our arm or gouging out our eye than sinning and being cast into hell. When our motive for repentance is that we have failed a holy God when we fear God then we want to walk in His ways and not return to our sin. There is a godly grief that leads to a repentance that leads to life. We walk in his ways. There is a worldly grief that leads to a repentance that leads to death. You soon return to your sin.
Listen to the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 7:9 10: I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. I am not saying that Christians never return to their sin. But they hate their sin. They want to do whatever it takes to turn from their sin. The truly want to walk in holiness. But there is a false repentance merely being sorry we got found out, wanting the pain to stop, wanting our reputations to be preserved but not doing whatever it takes to get right with God. Worldly grief only covers over our behaviour for a time and then like a dog returning to its vomit we sin again. But the true forgiveness is marked by a fear of the Lord and a desire to walk in His ways. But here is the good news. God promises forgiveness. 1 John 1:9: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we are serious. If we use the spiritual disciplines to get right with God and walk in His ways then we can know we are forgiven. But there is another step along the path of forgiveness. The Guarantee of Forgiveness Verses 5 and 6: I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. Follow the thought here. You sin you experience true godly grief. You cry out to God for mercy. How do you know you are forgiven? There is no blaring of a trumpet you don t glow there is no angelic pronouncement: Craig Lloyd your repentance is true your sin is forgiven. So what do you do? In His Word I hope.
You trust the guarantee given in the Word of God that your sins are washed away and you wait for the day when the Lord says this one is clean I have redeemed Him. And it is not just for that particular sin it is every sin you ever commit how do you know you are forgiven? As children of God our sins are forgiven but we still live in fallen world we still sin. But we believe the day is coming when the cleansing of God will finally destroy all sin in us. In Jeremiah 31 the prophet is telling of the new covenant that God will bring to pass. And in verse 34 He says the day will come when: I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. You want a guarantee that your sins are forgiven. Paul gives it in Colossians 2:13 14: And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. When the Romans crucified a criminal they nailed a list of their crimes to their cross so all could see what happens when you defy Rome. Of course when Jesus was tried He was found to have committed no crime. Pilate declared I have found in Him no guilt deserving death. And so Mark 15:26 tells us what they nailed to His cross: And the inscription of the charge against him read, The King of the Jews. That was His only crime King of the Jews. But not you and me. Our list of sins is enormous, repeated, horrific. We stand with Paul we are the chief of sinners. But because of the cross our record of debt mine yours all in Christ the record of every sin that stands against us or will stand against us is cancelled or as some translations rightly put it are destroyed how? by nailing them to the cross. Every sin is nailed to the cross and we bear them no more.
Now the only way we know this is by faith in the promises of God. We walk by faith. We stand on the promises of God. And this is such a great promise. Think of your list of sins. Book after book, shelf after shelf. Library after library of your sins. Picture yourself there at Calvary. Your incredibly long, shameful list. Your crimes. Your sins against God. Not just the ones you have committed but the ones you will commit. You nail them to the cross where the Lord of glory is dying. He who knew no sin became sin for us. He paid our penalty. And written across every sin on your list past, present and future are the words Forgiven! Paid in full by the blood of Christ. This is the hope, the promise of the Word of God. This is the hope of every child of God. But to see the tangible reality of this at the Great White Throne that is yet future for that our soul waits. But, that day will come. Notice verse 6: My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. There is debate as to whether this is military watchmen guarding the city until morning or Levitical priests waiting for the sun to rise so they can make the morning offering. Either way it doesn t matter. The point is that they wait for the sun to come up and you know what it does come up. Morning follows night. But even more certain is that the day of redemption follows this day of life in a fallen world. The day when God will declare to all creation that He has washed us clean will most certainly come. His word proclaims it. His Son s death assures it. It is our hope. God forgives us now and the full effects of that cleansing are coming. His Word tells us so.
We wait on that day with eager anticipation and because of the guarantee of the Lord. Here is the final step on the path of forgiveness. The Ground of Forgiveness Verses 7 and 8: O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Basically, the ground of our forgiveness is the Lord. Our hope is in the Lord. He does what we cannot. Any other ground any other hope and we are lost. If we try and trust in ourselves our righteousness our ability to overcome and live holy we will fail miserably because If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But our God is gracious. With Him there is steadfast love and plentiful redemption. This is our one ground of forgiveness. He will redeem us from our iniquities. Brothers and sisters we have all been there in the depths. We feel ashamed. We feel we have let God down. Our sins seem so mountainous before a holy God. And we wonder. How could God forgive me? I have had so many chances! I am a Christian I should do better.
I wouldn t forgive me why should God? Sometimes we wonder does God regret sending Jesus for such pathetic saints as us? But God is not like us. He is a perfect heavenly Father. He knows our weaknesses and struggles and loves us anyway. He is not surprised that we sin that is why He provided the way of escape from sin and the path to forgive sin. He wants to restore to us the joy of our salvation. He knows the deplorable things we have done and He loved us anyway and nailed them to the cross. When men nailed Jesus to the cross He cried Father forgive them. That is our God. He will not abandon us to the depths. God knew exactly how sinful and weak we are. God knew we would fail and fail again. He is there with us in our weakness. He hurts when we are in the depths. And He sent Jesus. He does not regret that. That was the plan from eternity past. The plan is to take deplorable failures wash them renew them and make them into co-heirs with Christ. We will not always be sinful, weak failures. As surely as the sun will rise the day will come when we will become all God intends us to be in Christ perfect, without blemish, holy. Brothers and sisters how wonderful that our gracious God sees us in the depths amid the pain and the hurt. And when we cry out He hears us. And because of the grace of God and the cross of Christ the Lord washes us clean. Though our sins are sick, deplorable and too many to number He makes us whiter than snow. He restores us. He gives back the joy of salvation to us. He is like the Father of the Prodigal son waiting for us to come to Him. And when we do He cries rejoice for what was lost is found. That is our God. Psalm 51:7 12: Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. What a God we have!
The Path of Forgiveness (Psalm 130 September 29, 2013) Main Point: Our God is gracious and forgives His children when they call out to Him. Read Psalm 130 What effects can sin have on us emotionally, physically and spiritually? Is there a difference between the effects of sin on believers and unbelievers? When you sin what places in the word of God bring you comfort? Why do so many find comfort in the Psalms? What is it like to be in the depths due to sin? Read Psalm 6:2 3, Psalm 32:3 4, Psalm 38:1 10, Psalm 102:3 17. How realistic do you find these descriptions? Why do so many Christians wait until the are at the end of their tether before turning to the Lord for help? Why do so many Christians think no one else sins like them or as deeply as them? Discuss some of the sin in the lives of the Biblical saints? Why did the Bible include these examples? What is the difference between the Christian and non-christian cry to God? If God measured our sins why would no one stand? Do you agree that we are sin factories or not? Why does God not grade on a curve? What is the only hope we have for forgiveness? Why can we place our hope here? Why does the Psalmist say But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared? How does 2 Corinthians 7:9 10 help us understand false repentance by those who do not fear Him?
Why do Christians who fear the Lord still sin? What is the difference then between those who fear the Lord and those who do not it both still sin after repenting? What is the role of verses 5 and 6 in this Psalm? What is the Psalmist waiting for? How certain is it that it will come to pass? What does Col. 2:13-14 tell us about the certainty of forgiveness and the basis of forgiveness? What is the Psalmists ground of forgiveness? Why do we struggle to think God might forgive us? The fact is He knew who He was saving before the foundation of the world how does this change the way you think of God? What are the joys of knowing we are forgiven?