The Journey: Psalm 130

The Journey
Hope
Psalm 130

Introduction: What do you hope for? ‘Hope’ is a word that has come to mean various things. We hope something happens, sort of like wishful thinking, “I hope the Lions win.” We hope for things that don’t seem likely to happen though we wish they would. ‘Hope’ seems like a rather weak word in our day and yet it is a powerful word in our faith. Paul writes, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13) While we often focus on love, the greatest, it is good to remember how much hope is valued.

I. The Good News of Sin
It seems that for many people hope is a rather weak thing. Hope is about the future not the present. As Paul writes, “Who hopes for what he already has?” (Romans 8:24) The problem is that many people are very content with life. That is not to say they don’t hope for things like a new car or a bigger house but materially they are quite comfortable. Hope is weak because if they don’t get what they hope or wish for they may be disappointed but life will continue.
But the psalmist is not there. The psalmist is in the depths. That image is one that most of us can relate to in some fashion. I’ve been lost deep in a jungle. I’ve been stuck in the mud. I’ve also been buried in problems that seemed unsolvable. Most of us have had situations like that in our lives.

But the psalmist is in a deep more hopeless than that. He is in a pit of sin. There is probably no more helpless feeling than when we are caught in sin. You would think when we make the decision to follow Jesus, to make the journey to God that somehow sin would not be so great a problem. Do you remember when you were baptized? You placed your faith in Jesus, stood before other Christians and confessed him as Lord and Savior and then went down into the water to be buried with him. I don’t know about you but when I came up out of the water I felt wonderful, freed, forgiven. The journey began for me many years ago in Spokane, Washington. But on my journey there have been times when I’ve been trapped again by sin. How could I have fallen so far when I was saved so wonderfully? How could Jesus forgive me again, and again, again? I think that is how the psalmist must have felt.

Sin is amazing in its power. It is not just missing the mark or breaking the law; it is a power that binds and entraps us and robs us of hope. Our society has tried to help us with sin by saying that there isn’t any sin. We are messed up by society, by our parents, by repressive religious belief. We are confused, mixed up and we just need to accept ourselves. The problem with all of this is that there is no mercy, no grace, no forgiveness, and no hope.
In one sense sin is good news and the psalmist tell us why,
If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness;
therefore you are feared. Psalms 130:3-4

God is a forgiving God and that is the good news of scripture. It amazing how often that fact becomes obscured. God wanted to forgive us so much that he was willing to become human and die to redeem us. The scripture uses many metaphors to help us understand the death and resurrection of Jesus. We ask, “Why did Jesus have to die?” Jesus gives one answer in John 12:24, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” Jesus had to die in order for a new kind of life to come into the world, a life a spiritually dead humanity could share in. With God there is forgiveness and so we fear, revere the one who blesses us in this wonderful way.

Sin is good news in that you can repent, you can turn, and you can continue on your journey. The forgiving God will give you another chance. There is no “three strikes” law that limits the number of times you can fall. Do you need another chance? Then repent and turn to God and he will give you that chance. In a world without God there is no forgiveness, no way to start over and begin a new life because there is no ‘new life’. A story goes that a leading British humanist was being interviewed on a religious program and said, "What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness. I have nobody to forgive me." Because we have a forgiving God it does not matter how deep we are stuck, how dark things may seem, we always have hope because of our God.

II. Waiting and Hoping
While hope is a blessing it is always tied to waiting and waiting is never easy. Just ask a watchman who is waiting for the sun to come up so that he can go home. People who do shift work know what I am talking about. The hours can seem to drag and last forever. I think it must have been worse for a watchman, however. There were no watches to tell him how long till the dawn, how long darkness will endure. What is true for the watchman is true for people in the depths. How long will the darkness, the oppression endure? How long must I wait for relief?

The psalmist writes, “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.” (Psalms 130:5) In his word I put my hope. Our hope is in the promises of God. The psalmist knew what God had done in the past. He knew what God had promised his people and so he could wait, maybe not always patiently but he would wait and hope. Part of our difficulty in waiting is our ignorance. If we don’t know what God has done, if we don’t know what God has promised then it is difficult to wait and hope.

“Put your hope in the Lord” the psalmist writes because his love will not fail. We look at scripture and know that this is true. It did not fail Abraham who waited and hoped for a son. It did not fail David who endured hardship and oppression waiting for God to fulfill his promise to make David king. God’s love did not fail Israel who endured 70 years of enslavement in Babylon before God restored them to their land. God’s love did not fail Jesus who went to a cross and died only to rise to life. All of these could have sung this psalm on their journey. We need to sing it also because we have hope in God whose promises, whose love, whose forgiveness will not fail.

Livonia Church of Christ: July 16, 2006