Out of the Depths

O Lord, our Rock, You’re our Redeemer. We pray that all of our days, all of our hours, might bring glory to Your name, even now in the preaching and the hearing and as we move out in the living out of Your Word, God, would You bring glory to Your name. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

Good evening. Grateful that you are able to be hear with us this evening. If you’re just joining us for the first time tonight, or perhaps maybe the first time in a while, I’m glad that you’re here. Just a bit of a reminder, we’re working through in our evening services, we’re working through a series, walking through the Psalms of Ascent, the Psalms of Ascent. It’s a series we actually started back in September, which I think was just a couple of weeks before Lowe’s started putting out their Christmas stock, so if that helps to orient you at all. It’s been a little bit of time.

Back in September we started this series with Psalm 120. Kevin preached that first sermon. As he said then, that title, that term, that phrase, Psalms of Ascent, most would agree these psalms were pilgrimage psalms, psalms that the Israelites would sing and use in their pilgrim journey up towards Jerusalem, towards the holy city, for the annual feast days there. It’s sort of a hymn list of sorts that God’s people would use as they traveled in their pilgrimage journey home to God’s city.

You can see then the natural application for us ourselves as spiritual pilgrims on the way home to be with God in God’s city. These psalms then serve as wonderful reminders to us. They instruct us in crucial things, things that we need to know, things that we need to remember and rehearse and remind ourselves of, to live by and be encouraged by. Things that we need to sing and celebrate as we travel along the way.

It’s in that context, then, tonight that we’re actually looking as Psalm 130, looking together at Psalm 130. So if you haven’t had a chance to do so already, please turn in your Bibles to Psalm 130. If you don’t have a Bible with you, I encourage you to take one out of the pew in front of you and flip your way there. If you don’t have a Bible of your own, we’d encourage you to, invite you to take this one with you as a gift. We’d love for you to do just that. We’re looking at Psalm 130.

Psalm 130 is a psalm for sinners. It’s a psalm for sinners. That means that it’s a psalm for every single person in this room tonight. It’s one of what have been traditionally referred to as penitential psalms, as a psalm of sorrow and of repentance from sin. It’s a psalm, therefore, of turning, and not just of turning from sin, but of course by way of repentance turning to God, from sin to God. It’s a wonderful psalm.

Martin Luther certainly thought so. It’s hard to find a commentator who doesn’t note that this was one of those psalms that Martin Luther particularly treasured. He said it was one of what he called the Pauline psalms because of its emphasis on sin and our guilt, and yet the free and full offer of God’s grace and forgiveness for our sins.

I think we could say that it’s a Pauline psalm really because it’s a Gospel psalm. It’s a Gospel psalm and as such it meets us in all the ways that the Gospel meets us. It meets us in the distress of our sin in the depths as it were, and it gives us words by which we might cry out to God from those depths. It gives us a path to follow that leads us out of those depths and into the blessing of forgiveness and hope with God.

James Boice describes it like this. He says in this sense Psalm 130 is itself a literal song of ascents, for it climbs from the abyss of depression to the heights, the high ground, of steadfast love. So it’s a literal song of ascents.

That’s what we’ll do tonight. We’ll kind of follow that path, as it were, along Psalm 130, this path of ascent, along the four stanzas as they appear there in your Bible as we consider first of all the psalmist’s cry in that first stanza, one and two, then the psalmist’s confidence in the second stanza, then third his craving, and finally his call. His cry, his confidence, his craving, and his call.

So look with me then at Psalm 130 as we read it together and we’ll consider then his cry from the depths that he found himself in in verses 1 and 2, but Psalm 130, this is the Word of God. A Songs of Ascents.

“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!

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with You there is forgiveness,
that You may be feared.

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.

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.”

The psalm opens with the psalmist, the writer here, he tells us he’s in the depths, he’s crying out from the depths. In the ancient Hebrew world, the depths, the sea, ocean, symbolized danger, a source of distress, even of despair. It was both a real source of those things and actually also a way of articulating that experience of fear and distress.

Of course, today we’ve developed somewhat superior technologies to navigating the water, ways of traversing the waters and exploring them, either over or even under the depths. Yet, quite honestly, I don’t know about you, but I know that honestly for myself I still can get anxious when I think about the depths of the sea. I know the beach well enough and of itself as long as I’m not further in than maybe my waist, I can see my feet and the sun is shining and there’s plenty of people also out on the beach, especially surrounding me for fodder in case sharks might get too in close up to me. I want some buffer people there.

Rachel and I were on a trip recently down to Charleston, had a couple of days down there, and one evening we had the chance to get out on the beach, it was still warm at the time. We were kind of walking the beach, it was a beautiful sunset that evening, just glorious. You know how it can be out on the beach with the sun going down, getting bigger as it descends behind the water, and there’s other people kind of walking the beach. It was just glorious. We’re walking alongside, just the two of us, it was a great, a great moment.

So I had this great thought. I turned to her and I said, “You know, sometimes at times I get to thinking about what it would be like to be lost out on the ocean, and you’re kind of floating out there in the water and the depths and the sun’s going down and then it gets all dark, just how scary and eerie and awful it would be if you’re just floating there in the depths, in the dark of the sea, just waiting, wondering when the sun is coming back up, when there will be some light to see anything by. Sometimes I just, I think about that. It’s awfully scary, you know, to think about.”

And before any of the husbands are out here jotting this down as something good to say to your wife on a romantic walk on the beach, I can tell you that Rachel just kind of turned to me and looked strange like and just said, “You’re weird.” That’s probably true.

But it’s sort of scary to think about. I mean, the depths, the dark. I don’t like deep, dark water. The depths are a way of communicating being overwhelmed, overcome, distressed, in despair, maybe even undone.

In general, of course, that could describe all kinds of distress that we experience in this life, broken, fallen, impacted as it is by sin, and perhaps that’s partly in view, but here it seems clear, especially as we move on through the psalm, that with this psalm what is primarily in view, the primary source of distress in the psalmist’s mind, is actually his own sin. It’s his own sin distressing him.

Now I wonder if you’ve been there. I know that I have. Maybe for some of us we’re there tonight and there’s an awareness of your sin. Maybe in some general sense, maybe in a particular way, a particular sin has overwhelmed you with a sense of guilt, distressed by the possible consequences, drowning in a sense of shame, disoriented in how it’s impacting your relationship with God. Have you been in the depths? Are you there now?

What do we do when we encounter the distresses of sin, when we find ourselves in the depths? Well, we might do any number of things. We often do, perhaps. We often might try to deny it. You just turn a blind eye to our sin. Just try to forget about it, just stiffen up and just try to ignore that it’s even there, try to deny it.

Or we might try to disguise it, maybe we try to disguise our sin through artfully comparing ourselves to others. You know, I shouldn’t feel so bad. Aren’t most people my age doing things like this? Or, I shouldn’t worry so much, at least I’m not doing that, or I’m not as bad as so-and-so. We might try to disguise it.

Deny it, disguise. We might try to distract ourselves through any number of options. Give us the opportunity just to try to escape and forget about our sin, maybe entertainment, sports, food. Perhaps even work or family, serving, scrolling through our devices.

Or perhaps we may just try to dull our spiritual sensitivities. We cut ourselves off from those things that would incite a spiritual awareness. Maybe that’s spiritual disciplines in our life, or maybe that’s the people and the places that tend to make us more spiritually aware.

Truth is, there’s all kinds of ways of trying to deal with the symptoms of sin. The problem is those kinds of things never truly work. They might diminish some of the symptoms of sin that we’re experiencing, but they don’t do anything about the source itself.

Derek Kidner says, poignantly commenting on these verses helpfully, what’s clear here is that self-help is no answer to the depths of distress, however useful it may be in the shallows of self-pity.

That’s worth repeating. What’s clear here is that self-help is no answer to the depths of distress, however useful that might be in the shallows of self-pity.

That’s where the psalmist is so helpful in that he shows us the way, shows us the way of dealing with those kinds of depths. He doesn’t deny it, he doesn’t disguise it, he doesn’t try to dull his sensitivities, or distract himself. He lets himself feel the weight. He lets himself feel the reality of his sin, and that leads him to something. It leads him to cry out. He lets the depths lead him to cry out.

Do you notice to whom it is that he’s crying? He’s crying out to God.

I know that this is a Sunday evening crowd so most of us are very familiar, maybe you’ve read this psalm, this particular psalm, before so it may not shock us to see that, but it might should shock us to notice here that we see sin and its consequences actually leading this psalmist to God. He’s calling to God. He’s thrown about by his own, not somebody else’s, he’s thrown about by his own sin and his response is, “I know, I’ll go to God.” It’s a cry to God. It’s a cry for God to hear, “O Lord, hear my voice.” And it’s a cry for mercy, “Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy.”

This is not a petition for justice. There are psalms, there are Bible prayers, that are, but this is not one of them. This is not a petition for justice. This is a plea for mercy.

Have you prayed this way to God? I wonder if it encourages us tonight to see such a prayer from the psalmist preserved for us in God’s Word, to be reminded that this psalm was not digitally downloaded somehow directly out of heaven into our Bibles. Of course none of them were, but it’s important for us to remember that this psalm was written down by a person, by another real, living worshiper of God, articulating his experience.

It was written, this was written down by somebody. We don’t his name, but it was written down by somebody that at some point if we’re in Christ we will meet him, join him, in heaven. Yet, while he was here on earth, he shared our experience with sin and he wrote about it. He wrote it down. God kept it here for you and me that we might follow suit, so that when we find ourselves in the depths like this man was, that we, too, might be encouraged and know we ought to cry out to God. O Lord, hear my voice, give attention to my pleas for mercy, and we might emulate the psalmist’s cry.

It’s the psalmist’s cry. Notice here that while the psalmist is not presumptive in his cry, he is confident.

Look at verses 3 and 4. See the psalmist’s confidence because that’s actually the “why” behind the “what.” That’s the “why” behind the crying out to God. Why does the psalmist do that when God hates sin? He certainly knew that. Why would his sin send him straight to God? Why not like our first parents in the garden, why not run and hide? Just try to wait it out. Maybe hope God doesn’t notice. Or just, you know, I’m just going to give up on being close to God altogether.

Why go to God? Because of who God is. Because the psalmist knows, because he’s confident that with God, that with this God, there is forgiveness.

Verse 3: If You should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?

It’s a rhetorical question, acknowledging the truth we see reflected in all of Scripture, but made explicitly clear in places like Romans 3:23 – for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All have. This is a psalm for sinners. So it’s a psalm for everybody.

It acknowledges that God is right in His judgment. The psalmist doesn’t dispute the case here. He doesn’t try to argue that he, or anyone else for that matter, should be able to stand in God’s presence on our own merit. Our sins are disqualifying. Without forgiven, without our sins being dealt with somehow, who could stand? The answer is no one.

The psalmist has confidence or he wouldn’t be coming to God. But it’s not a confidence that’s rooted in himself. It’s a confidence that’s rooted in God, in who God is. If you should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But…

Isn’t that one word so wonderful in Scripture? What a wonderful word to come next… But. Just that there’s any word that comes next, that that wasn’t the last word for us… But with You there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.

Praise God that with Him there is forgiveness.

In his commentary on the Psalms, James Boice notes four things to observe in these two verses about God’s forgiveness. I think they’re helpful and worth repeating here this evening for our encouragement, so I just want to share them briefly with you, and I’ll comment just briefly on these.

First of all, notice here that God’s forgiveness is inclusive. God’s forgiveness is inclusive. With you, there is forgiveness. Period. You notice there’s no asterisk in your Bible there, there’s no fine print to attend to.

I am, right now, the only one in my family that I know of, my family or my extended family or maybe even my extended family’s extended family, that doesn’t wear glasses or contacts, so maybe I’ve avoided some kind of genetic curse, but maybe not. I’m starting to notice that as I get, as my age gets a little more refined, that my eyes are getting a little less so and I’m having a harder time reading. You get where you’re like trying to find the right zone where you can see it more clearly. Some of you know that experience. I’m finding, one of the things I’m finding that’s harder to do is to read the fine print, and yet you know what they say about fine print. You better make sure you read it, the fine print.

Brothers and sisters, friends, we can be so thankful that there is no fine print here in Psalm 130. There are no qualifications. No excluding clauses or conditions. God’s forgiveness just is. It sets no limits, not in quality or quantity. There are not certain sins that God will forgive and others that he won’t. There’s not a quota, not a limit, a certain number of times that He will forgive a genuinely repentant sinner seeking God’s mercy and grace. God’s forgiveness is inclusive.

Boice notes that is for now. God’s forgiveness is now, for now. With You, there is forgiveness. Highlights literally that, the Hebrew literally reads “with You forgiveness.” So quoting Boice here: You do not have to work for it or earn it. You could never earn it anyway. But there is forgiveness now, at this very moment, and it is for you, whoever you may be, wherever you are, and whatever you’ve done. God’s forgiveness is inclusive. It’s for now and it is for those who want it.

You see this inclusive and immediate forgiveness is not given to everyone, but only to those who recognize that they need it, those who want it and those who in faith through Christ ask God for it.

I’ve just got to stop there just briefly and I just want to ask tonight, is it possible that you’re here tonight and you’ve never asked God for that kind of forgiveness? But that you know that you need it. You know that you want it. Only true forgiveness from God can provide peace of conscience, a way out of the depths, a quieted soul before God. Let me just say, friend, if you’re here and that’s you, I am so thankful that you’re here tonight to hear this, because this psalm is assuring you that you can have that very thing and you can have it right now. You can have this kind of peace with God, because in His love and mercy God the Father sent God the Son, Jesus Christ, who came willingly. He lived perfectly. He gave Himself fully and freely to satisfy the demands of God’s justice for sin so that this kind of forgiveness can be freely and fully offered and freely and fully received with confidence by us.

So God’s forgiveness is inclusive. It is for now, it is for those who want it ___ clear here in the text, Boice highlights this as well, though it leads to godly living. See it there – with You there is forgiveness that You may be feared.

It seems a little bit ironic, or at least it feels that way. Doesn’t forgiveness lead to getting run over? Or at least maybe to repeat offenses? When does forgiveness lead to being feared? The psalmist tells us with God it does, at least it should. When you really know that you need it, and when you’re truly grateful that you have received it.

It’s important, of course, to note here that this fear is not cowering in some anticipation of harm. We’re talking about forgiveness here. No, it’s reverence, it’s awe, it’s a recognition of God’s worth and beauty and awesome justice and power, and yet also the glory of His love and mercy and forgiveness that leads to true adoration and love of God and a desire not to repeat those same offenses, those same sins again. Scripture is abundantly clear that God’s forgiveness should not lead to spiritual laxity, but entirely the opposite.

Of course we’re going to continue to struggle with temptations. We’re going to continue to give in to sin as long as Jesus tarries to return or until we go to be with him, and yet God’s forgiveness should lead to a true, renewed desire not to do so. It’s a little bit looser of a translation than we find here in the ESV, but the old NIV captures that sense well, perhaps – but with You there is forgiveness so that we can with reverence serve You.

No doubt that was the psalmist’s experience; it was certainly his confidence. But we see here in the next stanza that God was not only the source of his confidence in seeking forgiveness, actually God in seeking forgiveness was his true desire. His real craving. We see the psalmist’s craving.

Look at 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.

I wonder if you can sense here the building expectation, the sense of ascending in the repetition now, that we’re on the rise now, that the psalmist is past being preoccupied with his sin and distress and he’s on to straining his eyes for God, because that’s what he truly desires.

Friends, you see tonight here that forgiveness as wonderful and as majestic and as beautiful as it is, is really just clearing the way for what the psalmist really longs for, that is for God Himself.

Again, Derek Kidner says, “It is the Lord Himself, not simply escape from punishment, the writes longs for.”

There may be a sense here in which he’s looking for, a sense of confirmation, or a sense of assurance, of His forgiveness, or maybe a renewed sense of fellowship, a renewed sense of that intimacy with God, but while forgiveness is immediate, sometimes those feelings or that sense of fellowship may follow. Maybe that the psalmist is looking for God to meet him and the needs of the consequences in the distress that sin has created in his life, most especially his own. Maybe all of those, but what’s clear is that he’s waiting and that he is waiting for God.

Again, that can be, I think, for us an encouragement here tonight, that the psalmist here shares what many of us have ourselves experienced, perhaps what some of us are experiencing even here tonight. How often our life with God involves waiting. A life of repentance, a life of dependence, is a life in part of learning, of learning to wait, and also learning to hope. Learning to wait and learning to hope, because you need to notice here that the tone of these verses is not one of waiting in despair, but waiting in optimism, waiting in expectation. There’s an expectant longing here that leads to looking like watchmen for the morning, he says.

I’ve never been a night guard on watch. I don’t know if that comes as a surprise. Sentinel on duty, kind of manning his post, standing out there in the depths of the night, no doubt tired. Perhaps he’s alone. He’s scanning the horizon for any possible signs of an enemy. He’s probably also looking for any signs of the sun, you know, those first rays to come up, reminding him that the morning is coming, that others might soon join him, that relief from his night shift was arriving.

I haven’t had that kind of experience, but I can imagine, I don’t know if this is close or not, but something that might be sort of like that, I can remember when we had Ellie. She was our firstborn. When we had her we would be up in the middle of the night. Rachel was up nursing and I’d be up, I don’t know why I was up, actually, all that much, I just, for support, maybe I was a young husband, eager for some brownie points, maybe I was changing diapers, I don’t know. I think I was there, though, because I can remember feeling very lonely in the middle of the night. We were exhausted.

Maybe some of you are there right now, just sitting there waiting for that sun to come up and some movement in the neighborhood to tell you that not everybody had died in the night. People still live around you. People, you know, lights coming on, somebody coming out on their driveway to pick up the newspaper or to warm up their car. Some signs of life, some signs of fellowship, some signs of the sun… You’re looking, longing for that sun to creep up over the horizon. Sometimes it felt like that kind of morning would never come, like the first light of the sun is never actually going to crack over the horizon.

Yet here’s something I never actually thought. Though it might have seemed like forever, I never actually had the real thought, “Well, maybe it’s just not going to happen this time. I mean, maybe the sun just isn’t coming up today.”

No, we don’t think that no matter how long the night might feel. We don’t think ever maybe this time it’s just not going to happen. I think that’s part of the choice of metaphor here for the psalmist, because sometimes the night seems to stretch on forever, but of course we know that it won’t. The sun always comes up. Every single day you’ve been alive, the sun has come up. The night always ends.

So it is with God. It may involve waiting, but God will surely come. He will draw us close. He will meet us, He will deliver.

What gives the psalmist that kind of confidence? He says it’s the Word of God, verse 5: In His Word I hope.

It’s the self-revelation of God that comes to us through His Word, where He discloses Himself, where He reveals who He is and what He’s like. This is not some unique, kind of personal, insider secret that was given to the psalmist alone. No, he’s trusting and waiting and hoping by faith, resting in the Word, the promises of God, just like we are called to. The Word we have here in front of us. In fact, this very psalm that he’s writing is now part of that Word, that self-revelation of God, telling us what He’s like, what we can also be confident about, what we can expect with Him, and what we should hope for.

So it’s no wonder with that in mind then that even though, even as the psalmist turns now from his own experience to commend that very same hope to those around him, to Israel, we see there in the last verses, 7 and 8, the psalmist’s call: O Israel, you, too, you, too, hope in the Lord! Hope in the Lord. For with the Lord is steadfast love, and with plentiful redemption. And He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

You see, the psalmist has become a herald now for the hope that he has found. It’s what God intends to happen for all of us as we come to know and to love and to cherish Him and the life, the freedom, the forgiveness that we find in Him, that we would then turn and be about commending Him to others, certainly those without that hope currently, those who are currently on the outside of the community of faith.

But notice here that it’s not just to those outside the Church that the psalmist is calling, or outside of God’s people. He’s calling to Israel. He’s commending to Israel, to God’s people, hope in the Lord. And by extension, he’s calling to us. Through this psalm he’s calling to us, he’s calling to you, he’s calling to me, to join him in his hope, in his confidence, in his trusting, even in his waiting.

He can do so with confidence because that is who God is. This is who God is. Not like our parents, sometimes, I’m sure not me, but maybe there are parents where you just hope you catch them at the right moment, you know, just at a right time, that either the game went well or in a good mood, they’re feeling particularly generous. Not like that.

Again, James Boice writes – In other words, what the psalmist found when he confessed his sin and sought forgiveness from God was not a once in a blue moon experience, it’s something anyone can discover, for it’s based on God’s nature, which does not change. God is as forgiving now as He has ever been and He will always be the same forgiving God. Therefore, says the writer, put your hope in the Lord.

You see with God His steadfast love. That old Hebrew word for covenant faithfulness, this unbreakable commitment of God to His people for their welfare, to be their God based entirely, completely, solely on His grace alone, steadfast love, and there is plentiful redemption.

Don’t you just love that line? Not sufficient redemption, not just barely enough, not sparing, but full, plentiful, abundant redemption. He’s going to take care of it all and He will do it all at His own expense. He will redeem, that is, to ransom, deliver, set free Israel, all of God’s people, from all of their iniquities and from all their consequences. He will wipe us clean. He will wipe away every stain of sin and He will wipe away every tear from suffering.

As we’ve noted before, just think about this. If this kind of confidence, this kind of hope, could be had by this psalmist living that long before the coming of Jesus Christ, how much more than should it be ours, for those of us who live in this New Testament age as we do on this side of the coming, the living, the dying, and the rising of Christ for us?

In fact, as we move towards the close, look on more time with me at verse 8: And He, God, will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

God will do it. God will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. The early Greek translators of the Hebrew there actually translated that word as “anomia,” lawlessness. That’s how we translate it in our English versions. Keeping that in mind, then I wonder if you would, as move toward the close, flip over with me to the New Testament, to Titus. Turn to the back of the Bible, towards the back of the Bible, to Titus. Paul’s letter to Titus, chapter 2, verses 11 through 14, because I want us to see there a connection that’s been observed by some, between what the psalmist confidently anticipates as promise and what Paul joyfully celebrates in its provision, to redeem us from lawlessness.

Verse 11 through 14: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us,” here it is, “to redeem us from all lawlessness,” anomia, “and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works.”

You see, the psalmist holds out the promise, Paul highlights the provision. The grace of God has appeared in the appearing of Jesus Christ to bring us salvation, to redeem us from all lawlessness, to redeem us from all our iniquities. How did He do it? Paul tells us by giving up Himself. Jesus gave up Himself. He descended to the earth. He ascended to the cross in order that there He might offer up His very life, His very blood, in our place that we might then ascend from the depths of our sin, that we might have forgiveness and that God might provide for us through Him plentiful redemption.

I was reading this weekend a little book by Michael Reeves called Overflow. It’s a little book about how delight in who God is, specifically as a triune God, ought to produce a sense of joy and hope and excitement in us that should overflow into a life of mission. But I came across this little paragraph, it could have just as easily have found its way into a fitting response in some commentary on Psalm 130, and I just want to read it to you as we close here tonight, from Michael Reeves.

“Know this, dear friend, know this. There is more power in Christ’s blood than there is in all of your sin. Right now if there is any coldness in you, any sin unconfessed, rather than try to cover it up and hide from Christ, why not hold it out to Him? Let Him prove Himself to you right now as a gracious Redeemer and experience for yourself that this God is a gracious Savior to broken, messed up failures like you and me. When you see that that’s how loving and how good our God is, then you think if He really loves me, not the mask, but me, if there is more power in His grace than there is in my sin, what a God. Here is a God more delightful and satisfying than anything else the world offers. Here is a God worth celebrating before all of the world.”

It’s true. We started this evening by saying that in Psalm 130 this is a psalm for sinners. But it’s a great question to ask as we close – why do we have psalms for sinners in the first place? Why do we have psalms for sinners? Because, friends, these psalms, this is the Word of God. This is the revelation to us of who God is. So we have psalms for sinners tonight because, praise God, we have a God for sinners.

Let’s go and pray to Him just now. Father, we want to praise You and thank You tonight that You are indeed a God for sinners, and that in Christ You have answered every need that we might have from our sin. So would we not hold it back but bring it fully to You. God, thank You for all that You’ve done for us in Jesus. Would we worship and enjoy and celebrate and receive all that You are for Him in us tonight. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.