Sermon Podcast
Guilt Free Living (Video)
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Well, good morning, CCC. My name is Ethan Pierce, and I am the student ministry's interim director here at Cookalico Community Church. I'm filling in for the summer to work with our students, and it's absolutely one of my favorite things to do. Now, for some of these who don't know me, you might be thinking to yourself, wow, Matt, you got some of your hair back, my gosh, that's crazy. But no, I am just filling in just for the summer. But I love to work with students, it's one of my favorite things to do. In fact, over the course of the summer, I've gotten to take several students to camp. We've gotten to go to Harvey Cedars a couple of times, and we had our fair share of exciting times while we were there. Now, I love students, I love working with students, and I love students so much that I, myself, and still a student at Liberty University. I'm going into my senior year of my undergraduate degree as a history major. And when I got this opportunity to preach, when I was told that I was coming up here to talk about the Psalms of Ascenta, I couldn't help myself. I thought I have to talk about someone from history. So our story today is about an end by the name of Martin Luther. Now, he was born in Germany in the late 1400s, and some of you might be thinking, wow, he was around a really long time before he fought for civil rights. But that is, in fact, a different Martin Luther, I'm sorry to disappoint you. No, this Martin Luther we're talking about today was the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. Now, the Protestant Reformation was a time of great tumult and upheaval in the Catholic Church and that time of the 14, 1500s. It was a time when, in the eyes of the Reformers, that the Catholic Church had really lost its way. They had become corrupt, they become a moral. But in the late 1400s, on the eve of the Reformation, the Catholic Church was the only church available in Western Christendom. And they had come to revolve around what we as historians and theologians like to call an economy of salvation by works. Now, this meant that salvation was largely dependent on the way that a Christian responded to the grace of God. Now, a person could respond in obedience and with good works, and thereby get himself closer to God from that grace. He could get closer to God. And by contrast, if you were to sin or respond with disobedience to that grace, you could drive yourself further from God. And when somebody did sin, when somebody did act in disobedience to God, they had to purge that sin from their body. They had to do acts of penance or acts of punishment. So they could atone for the sin and then become closer again to God. And this included acts of confession, pilgrimages, indulgences, and sometimes acts of extreme self-punishment. And it created a culture where good works were the basis of one's salvation. Now, Catholic monks were the ones who took this proposition most seriously. They made their entire life's work to move away from society and live in small isolated brotherhoods, where they would dedicate themselves to lives of prayer, piety, and penance. They would separate themselves completely from society so they could get as close to God as possible. And it's in 1506 when we find our man, Martin Luther, joining an Augustinian monastery. He was going to become a monk. And during this time, he became obsessed with his own salvation and the state of his soul. He made it his mission to make himself right before God because he thought that being apart from him scared him to death. He was constantly in a state of penance. He would eat very little food, and the food that he did eat was oftentimes really bland. It's like an act of self-punishment. And he would go on these fasts that could sometimes last weeks. He would get himself very, very sick. And it would be made worse that he would go up into the towers of the monastery and sleep on the cold stone floor with no blankets, no pillow, no mattress, oftentimes no clothes. He would make himself as miserable as possible he slept. And he would make him really, really sick. And sometimes when he was in acts of extreme penicence, in times of extreme guilt or repentance, he would sleep naked out in the snow. I know, it's kind of weird. And sometimes he would actually whip himself, physically tear his body apart as an act of penance. And his priests tended to start to not like him very much because he would come to confession basically every other day and confess his sins to his priests. And sometimes these could last for one to two hours because he would just lay out every single minuscule thought, things that we wouldn't even think of. He would lay it all out before the priest. And then when he was finished up, he would get up from his position and walk towards the door. And he'd almost make it out the door. And a thought would cross his mind, or he would remember something he forgot. And he would just have to turn right back around and go back to confession. He had to make sure that he was right before God. He was obsessed with his standing before God. He was plagued by the guilt of the things he had done to offend God. He made it his day in and day out mission to answer the question. In light of what I have done, how can I merit acceptance with God? Now in the eyes of some of us, and likely the other monks, Luther seemed to be the man that was doing everything right. He was confessing every minuscule sin and doing extreme penance to make sure that he was right before God. And in this economy of salvation by works, in this culture of workspace salvation, he seemed to be the one to be most secure with God. He seemed to be the one to do everything right and to be most secure in his salvation. But that isn't how he felt. Now he understood the righteousness of God, and he felt extreme guilt for his sin. He tried to do everything right, but he was racked with anxiety about his salvation and his standing before God. He said himself that he was captive to the word of God. He felt like he was imprisoned by what God had to say. And there was a shame there that shook him to his very core. And try as he might to merit it, he kept falling short. And he never felt like he warranted forgiveness. His guilt made him feel distant from God. He was a man who loathed himself. And though he seemed to be doing everything right, he was at his absolute lowest. He was at rock bottom. Have you ever felt like you're at rock bottom? Now every time I read about this chapter in Luther's life, I can't help but feel for him. You know, I see bits of myself in his story. Now I'm not nearly as pious as Luther. I've never slept naked out in the slow. And I'm sure you haven't either. I'm sure none of you have slept naked in the snow. And if you have, please do not tell me about that. I appreciate that. But I've certainly felt how Luther felt. There are times in my life where I feel as though the things that I have done have pushed me very far away from God. I felt that tension, that angst, that guilt. And maybe you felt this way too. What was the last time that you felt guilt like that? Maybe it's when you dissipate your parents. They put some trust in you and then you violated that trust. And now there's a scar, there's a rift in that relationship based on what you've done. Maybe that's when we're with a co-worker or a family member. Maybe something that you've done has caused yourself to separate themselves. There's a rift there that's pulling itself apart and you've had to separate yourself from that situation or they've pulled themselves away from you because there's something that just can't heal right now. We call ourselves idiots for falling into these same traps. We hate the kind of person that can't measure up, the kind of person that falls into the same sin over and over again, the same addiction, the same vice. We call ourselves useless, stupid, waste of space, trash. This guilt and shame makes us feel worthless in the eyes of God and the eyes of ourselves. And usually this guilt pushes us to the same conclusion. I have to make this right. But for many of us, we just don't feel as if there's a way to even do that. And even if there is, we don't feel like we ourselves are capable of making it right. And this guilt runs deep because we recognize that there's nothing we can do to make this right. What do we do with this kind of guilt? What do we do with this kind of shame? What do we do with this weight? Now luckily, we're not the first people to have ever felt this and we certainly would not be the last. And time and time again, scripture shows us that there is hope. So if we can turn in our Bibles to Psalm 130, that is a psalm we're going to be talking about today. Now this psalm is a psalm in our series, Psalms of ascent, which if you've been with us in previous weeks or you're just catching up with us, these are psalms that pilgrims who would be making their way to Jerusalem would sing as they went because they would have to make their way to Jerusalem for several holidays or different festivals or ceremonies that would have to do. These are pilgrimages. Just think of this like a playlist of songs that they would sing in root to Jerusalem. And Psalm 130 is one of those psalms. Now if you're looking in the Bibles in the seat back in front of you, it's located on page 502 or you can follow along in your personal Bible or on the Bible app. Now for the past couple of weeks, we've all been reading these psalms together and this psalms only eight verses, it's not super long. So I think we are going to read this one together. What of the depths I cry to you, Lord, Lord, hear my voice, let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand. But with you, there is forgiveness so that we can with reverence serve you. I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in His word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning. Yes, more than watchmen for the morning. Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for the Lord is unfailing love and with Him there is full redemption. He Himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. Now we're going to bounce around in this passage a little bit. If you're familiar with the way that Mike Pierce preaches, he tends to bounce around a lot. And unfortunately for some of you who are not fond of that style, he is my dad and the apple does not far, all far from the proverbial tree. So buckle up. We are going to be bouncing around a little bit. But I do want to start with verse one. Because the song starts out by saying where he is. He says out of the depths I cry to you, Lord, he starts by saying where he is. He is in the depths. And I really want to talk about what does this mean? What does it mean when we're in the depths? So for those of you who are not fans of history or students of history or maybe even geography, the Israelites were not exactly fans of water. Most of Israel looks like this. It's very rocky. It's very desertous terrain. Not a whole lot of water. In fact, Jerusalem is very unique in the sense that it is one of the only ancient cities that's not built directly on a river or on a coastline. So whenever water is mentioned, whenever the depths are mentioned, it's oftentimes a place that we feel danger, chaos, a distance. It's a place where someone needs rescue. It's a place where there is distant from all forms of safety and land. It's oftentimes referenced in a place where you feel distant from God. Now, if we call back to the Red Sea, that was a place where the Israelites needed rescue when they were crossing the Red Sea. And if we call forward to Jonah, Jonah felt distant from God in the depths of the sea and the depths of the fish. So the depths here, when the psalmist is saying he is in the depths, he is feeling distant from God. Most who are more than that, the depths are crushing. When we move down into the depths, the deeper we get into the ocean, the pressure will build and build and build until it can crush anything that it comes across. In fact, even times, purpose-built submarines, they're supposed to go into the depths, can just get crushed. We saw an example of this last year. So these depths, there's a weight, there's a crushing pressure. And more than that, the depths are vast. They make us feel small and significant. They're far away from everything, and we just feel as if we are alone. So when the psalmist is saying he's in the depths, he's feeling distant from God. He's feeling crushed by a pressure, by a weight, and he is feeling small. He's in a hostile, turbulent, and dark place. So what's brought into this place? Why does he feel this crushing weight and this distance from God? If we jump ahead to verse 3, it says, "If you, O Lord, keep a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?" In verse 3, he's making a confession to God. He admits that he and all of creation is unworthy of approaching God. Now, we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. He here is commenting on the entire human condition, a condition in which he is lumping himself into. God is a righteous judge, and he's perfect, and he's holy. He can't even look upon iniquity, he cannot even look upon sin. And usually, when we feel guilt for our sin, we are saying, "I have to make this right, I have to correct this, I have to shape up." But what the psalmist is saying here is that there's nothing that any of us can do to shape up. If we approach God on our record, if we approach him with the things we have done and shown everything that we've ever done, we have no plea to enter but guilty. And this is pushing the psalmist into the depths because he recognizes that he can do absolutely nothing before God. Now, Luther tried to make things right. Now, he tried to purge himself of that sin. He tried to make things right before God. He knew that he couldn't approach God the way he was, and he desperately, desperately tried to make things right. But this racked him with anxiety and self-loathing because no amount of merit that came from within himself would make him worthy of approaching God, brother and sisters, if we teary until we are better, if we try to make ourselves better before going to God, we're never going to go at all because we can't. So what do we do when we're in the depths? What do we do when we recognize that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves? What do we do in this moment of panic? We can't simply clamor our way out on our own because self-help serves absolutely no help. What do we do when we're in the depths? If we skip back to verse 2, in verse 2, this psalmist is saying, "Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cries for mercy." He's crying out here. This is an admission of need, this is an admission of helplessness. He recognizes that he can't save himself. Now I wonder what exactly was on this psalmist's mind? What sin was on his mind as he was writing this? Because we don't know who this psalmist is, and this is what we call a penitential psalm. So the psalm is in a group of other psalms which deals with repentance or repentance for our sin. It's dealing with the guilt that we feel for sin. There's a couple of these, and the most famous of which is Psalm 51. And usually these penitential psalms are focused around specific sins. In Psalm 51, David is writing here about his guilt after he's stopped with Bathsheba. So there's a specific sin that we know about. When he's coming before God in that psalm, he is asking, pleading with God to blot out this transgression, to make this take this sin from him and make him right in God's sight again, to make him righteous, to make him do better next time. The psalmist here doesn't do that. He's pleading with God not to change him, not to help him do better next time. He's not trying to make himself look better because he recognizes that his entire being is sinful. He's truly at rock bottom. And it makes me think of Luther laying on that stone floor, racked with anxiety. Are you at rock bottom? What are you carrying with you? Have you felt that stone floor? Because I know that many of us loathe ourselves for the things that we've done and the guilt that we carry. And I know that some of us just feel crushed by this iniquity and this emptiness we feel inside. And the psalmist, too, is floating in the depths of his guilt. And he knows that his sin has pulled him far from God. And what is he doing? He's crying out. He's coming before the Lord with humility as he is. Not how he wishes he was. Not how he could be. He's just coming with humility and how he is and pleading for God to listen and have mercy because he recognizes the gravity of his situation. So what do we do when we're crushed by guilt? What do we do when we're crushed by our sin? At rock bottom, in the depths, the first step is to cry out and say, "Lord, I am not enough to save myself. I need rescue." But the psalmist doesn't stop there. No, this is only verse two. Now, crying out is enough. That's just the beginning. If we just cry out and we don't do anything else, that's like Michael Scott walking out of the office and saying, "I declare bankruptcy." It's not followed by anything, it's just a declaration. So where do we go from here? What happens next? Now, this entire psalm, it hinges upon verse four. That's the crux of this passage. And verse four starts out by saying that, "But with you, there is forgiveness." Now, we'll get to the second half, but I just want to stop here on this first half of verse four. The psalmist here, he's recognizing that he could do nothing to save himself and make himself worthy, but then he offers good news. There's forgiveness in God. Now our modern culture sends a different message. Our modern center culture is centered around the self. There's self-help books, there's therapy sessions, there's a message in our common culture that says, "I have to love myself. I have to be shameless. I have to accept myself. I have to get rid of what's burning me, just push it aside and just let myself heal. I have to forgive myself." What the psalmist is saying here is that forgiveness doesn't lie within us. No, it lies completely outside of us. It lies only in God, because when we're focused on ourselves, when we become the metric of our own forgiveness, we become the hinge upon which we feel better. And when we look inward towards ourselves and what we are capable of in our self-help, we become the metric of our own forgiveness, we are saying, "God, I don't think I need you. I don't think I need you to forgive me, because I think I can forgive myself, thanks." This view of sin doesn't take it seriously. It says that sin is just no big deal. You can brush it aside. Forgiveness is just, "Ah, let it go." Next time, there's always next time, we got this. No. Now, when we focus on ourselves, and we're looking only inside of ourselves, we can come to two options. We can find this view where sin is no big deal, and we can just forgive ourselves, we can brush it aside, or we can arrive at the conclusion that Luther did. We're saying sin is a big deal, but I have to make this right. What can I do to get back to God? I have to clamber my way back to God, and it just leaves us with anxiety. But both of those are looking inside of ourselves. Now, the second view doesn't take sin seriously enough, and sin is a big deal. Sin drove us out of the Garden of Eden, sin that makes us far from God, and sin makes us so God can't even look upon us. Atoning for sin comes at a great cost, and the Psalmist would have understood this. Now they were required to sacrifice in the tabernacle, and it's likely that while they're moving to Jerusalem, while they're on this pilgrimage a couple times of year, this would be for a sacrifice, for a ceremony that involved a sacrifice to atone for sins in the tabernacle. And this involves blood. Forgiveness is not arbitrary. God doesn't brush our sin aside. No, it comes at a cost. Atonement comes at a cost, and that cost involves blood. And the Psalmist is admitting here that he can't and save himself. Forgiveness isn't within himself. Forgiveness is only found in God. But we, on our own, do not merit that forgiveness whatsoever. No, he recognizes the gravity of that sin, and look inside himself. When we look inside ourselves, we realize just how hopeless we are, and it pushes us into the depths. So the Psalmist here starts by crying out in the depths of his guilt, but if he stays here, he'll be crushed. He has to turn his attention from something outside of himself. So first, he cries out, "But second, your brothers and sisters, we have to change our focus." Second, we have to change our focus from my guilt to God's character, to turn completely away from what is simply inside ourselves. Now, verse four says that with you, there is forgiveness, but it goes on to say that so what we can, with reverence, serve you. Now, the Hebrew word that's used here, for serve you, the NIV translates this in a certain way that it tries to encompass what that means. With reverence, we serve you. But I think that kind of loses the gravity of the Hebrew word. The Hebrew word here that we see is fear, and you can see that sometimes in other translations, the ESV, KJB, have something like this, so that you may be feared, and this is a hard word to translate in English. It's a hard sentiment to kind of translate, but think of it like this. Think of it as the fear of a child from his father. He loves his father, and he knows that his father loves him, and he is terrified of marring that relationship by a rebellion by sin. He doesn't want to cloud that loving relationship by disappointing his father. So this fear is recognizing God's character, is recognizing that his character involves forgiveness, it involves mercy, it involves love, and it's recognizing that apart from him, we can do absolutely nothing. It's a fear of what we are apart from him, and this fear leads us to gratitude. It's a gratitude for the promise of undeserved forgiveness that pushes us to want to surrender everything as servants to the one who gave us everything. But the point is, I'm not focusing on myself. I'm focusing on God and his character, because brothers and sisters, the only thing that can rescue us from the depths is the depth of God's character. I'm going to talk more about this character in a few minutes, but I just really want to sit with this for a second, because when he's going before God and the depths, he isn't going by his own accord. No, he isn't approaching God on his own merit. He's cashing in on a promise that God made to his people because of who he is, because of his character. And what is more brothers and sisters is that God made us a promise as well in Genesis, in Exodus, in Ezekiel, in Isaiah. He made a promise to us that he would send someone who would redeem God's people, and that someone that he promised is Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, God loved us so much. That he made a promise to us. He knew that we did not deserve forgiveness. And while we were guilty on our own accord, while we were yet still sinners, while he knew every sin, we would ever do well every way, we would ever rebel against God, everything we had ever done, he chose to make a way for us anyway. He sacrificed himself for us so that we may have hope. And a promise and a promise is Jesus. A promise is that when we approach the Father from the depths, we turn from ourselves and approach God for forgiveness we did not deserve. We are not approaching on our merit, but on the merit of Jesus because brothers and sisters, we can do nothing to save ourselves because everything has done for us already. Everything has been done for us already. Do you fully grasp how deep your need for God is? Are you focused more on your own performance, on your success, on your failure than you are on his forgiveness and grace? Are you focused more on yourself and your character or on God's character? Because we focus on not what we can do, but what God has already done and his very character, we have no choice but to worship and surrender. But where do we go from here? So the psalmist goes on, he's only halfway through the passage. What is the result of this change in focus for myself to God and his character? And when he focuses, when he changes this focus, we hear a shift in the psalmist's attitude. The next verse says, "I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope." He's more peaceful, he's more settled, and he's focusing outside himself. He is finding hope even though he is in the depths. Now in Scripture, hope and trust very much go hand in hand and they're complicated words to really get around. And they both stem from us relying on God and his character. We have hope because we trust in him. So brothers and sisters, after we cry out to God and beg him to listen and turn our focus not from ourselves, but to him and his character, the next thing we do or that we are led to is trust. I need to trust in the character of God. Now to find this hope, we trust in God first and foremost, but this has a couple of different elements that we're going to unpack, and this trust looks a few different ways. So we see two words connected here, we see hope and we see wait. So we're going to unpack hope first, right? Hope in this context is tied very much with the word trust. So where are we putting our trust? It's the first element of our trust is trust in God's character. Now in verse 7 and 8, it says, "Israel, put your hope in the Lord for the Lord there's unfailing love, and with him there's full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all of their sins." The Psalmist here is speaking of God's chesus, right? This is a Hebrew word. It's very important. It shows up time and time and time and time again in the Old Testament. This word is really, really hard to translate into English. It doesn't really have a proper equivalent, but the best way that we can summarize it for our purposes today is God's character, His covenant-keeping love, His character of covenant-keeping love or promise-keeping love, right? He made a way for us when he knew there was no way that we can make for ourselves. So we focus on God's character and not our failure. This anchors us in hope, that character of his chesed, of abundant love and mercy that just flows out of his very being. We need to trust in God's character, trust that He is love that He loves you because His character is love. In 1 John 4, it says that God is love. Do you want assurance of that character? Do you want assurance of how much He loves you? Look at the cross. In verse 7 and 8, it says with him, there's plentiful redemption and he will redeem Israel for all his iniquities. He will redeem them from all of their sins. So hope is trusting in God's redemptive and loving character. He is making things right. He will untangle the mess that I have made. And that chesed, again, it really summarizes a covenant-keeping love or a promise-keeping love. So we're putting our trust in God's character or his chesed, that means we're also putting God, or sorry, trust in God's promise. So that's the next place. That's the next element of our trust, is trust in God's promise. In verse 5, it says, "I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in His word I put my hope." Now what's another word for promise? When you give someone your word, you're giving them your what? Your promise. So he's saying here that I have hope in God's word. I have hope in the promise because of who He is, because of His character. So what does God promise us? Throughout the Old Testament, God makes many promises to His people, right? He promised Exodus. He promised redemption from slavery that He would deliver them from the land of Egypt. He promised that He would deliver the Israelites from slavery. He promised, He would deliver them to the lands that He promised to Abram and Isaac. He promised that He would claim the people of Israel for His own, and He promised that He would bring them redemption. But most importantly, He promised that He would make a way where there was no way. He promised that He would untangle the mess that I have made of my own life. And if you cry out to Him, if you come to Him humbly and not on your own merit but through the merit of Jesus Christ, through the one that He has promised, forgiveness and redemption is a promise. And this can be so hard for us to remember because sometimes in our day-to-day life, we really don't feel like we are forgiven by our friends, by our spouse, by our families, by our children, by ourselves. That guilt that hurt, it stays with us and we don't feel forgiven, it doesn't feel like a promise. But God kept His promise to Noah. God kept His promise to Moses. He kept His promise to Abram and Isaac. And time and time again, God kept His promise to Israel. So why wouldn't He keep His promise to you? And you may think to yourself, "Ethan, no, you don't know what I've done, dude. You don't know what kind of past I have, you don't know the things I've done, the things I carry with me, you don't know the sin or the addiction, the failure that I keep returning to again and then again and again, you don't know how bad I really am. You don't get it." And you're right, I don't. And I don't see that, but God does. God sees you in those depths and He chose to make that promise anyway. President and sisters, how do you know that you're forgiven? Because He promised. And how could I possibly merit that forgiveness, that redemption? Because of who He promised? My question to you is, do you trust in that promise? Do you trust in that promise of Him making things right? Now that promise is a promise of a plan, a plan for our redemption, and that plans often come with waiting, especially when it comes to God's promises. So here we arrive at our second word, so we talk about hope, and now we're going to talk about waiting. All right, and this waiting is concept that's heavily tied with our last trust element. You need to trust in God's plan. That plan is of redemption, as a plan for redemption, a plan that He will entangle the mess that I have made. Now in verse 6, the psalmist is saying, "My soul waits for the Lord more than a watchman for the morning." And just in case you didn't get it, he says it again, "more than a watchman for the morning." Now these watchmen are guards, right? They're waiting on us wall, usually probably in a city or a fortress of some kind, and they have a duty. They're watching out into the darkness. They're looking for signs of the enemy, any disturbance in the darkness. They're waiting for the morning. And now this is not a passive waiting. This is not them sitting idly by. No, this is an active waiting. These soldiers have a duty. They know the sun is going to come up. They are sure of that promise, right? And the sunrise, they are promised to sunrise. That sunrise brings rest, because what does that mean? The sun comes up, and they will get to rest. Their shift is over. Their master will call them back so they can go to their beds and rest. Their duty is over. Now that rest, or the sunrise, is the assurance of God and His promise that He will indeed untangle the mess we've made, that promise of redemption. And in the meantime, they have a duty, and they're confident the rest is coming. They're confident the sun will rise, but while they wait, they aren't sitting idly by no. They are actively waiting, actively scanning the horizon for signs of the enemy, disturbances in the night, and for the first signs of dawn. Now they don't know what's out in the darkness. They don't know what it will look like, but they know that it won't last forever. So what does that look like for you and I? For us, you might think of this as an expectant obedience, right? We are expecting a promise, and we wait with expected obedience. CCC, we are waiting on a promise. We know that the dawn of redemption is coming, but just like the psalmist says, and just like we see in the Watchmen, we also have a duty. We are not to sit idly by. God's plan for our lives is often dark, and we don't know exactly what the plan of redemption looks like, what each step will look like, but we trust in the character and the promises of God, and we are actively waiting, waiting with anticipation. Because there is a promise, because there is hope in forgiveness, because it has been gifted to us, we should be clamoring to surrender ourselves to the one who gave us everything. That comes from a plan, that comes from trust in a plan we can't see. I need to do the next right action, expecting that God will use my obedience in his master plan of my redemption. Now, for those of you who don't know, I'm actually a rock climber. Now, climbers oftentimes show up to a cliff with a guidebook, and this guidebook tells them that on this section of cliff, right here, this section of wall is climbable, and the anchors at the top, they will keep you safe. So if you climb up there, this is climbable, I have assurance, I've been promised that this route is climbable, there is a route here, and at the end, there are anchors that will keep me safe. And I'm drawn in with the promise of a route, of a promise of a way up the wall. But while I'm climbing, I have to be actively present in each moment. I have to be actively searching for the next hold, I have to be actively scanning, because I don't know what each hold looks like. I don't know what all the sequence of moves look like, and sometimes those holds are really far apart. Sometimes those holds are very small, sometimes they're very big, but a lot of times they're very, very small. But I have to be present in each moment, because I have been assured in the guidebook that there is a route here, and this is climbable. I just have to do the next right move in the here and now. Trusting in God's plan means taking the next right step of obedience, and trusting in his plan that he will untangle the mess that we have made. But you can't put obedience before acceptance. Now if we try to obey our way into God's forgiveness and into redemption, that's like climbing without a guidebook, that's what Luther tried to do. Now you can't trust that you have enough hand holds. You're trusting in yourself instead of putting trust in a promise of a route. You can't trust that you're not going to run out of hand holds. Do you trust in God's plan to untangle the mess that you've made? Are you willing to take the next small step of obedience? Are you willing to climb on? If we trust in our own plan, we're trying to make a way outside of God's perfect plan, how could you ever trust in those hand holds? It's my challenge to you, CCC. It's a trust in the plan that the Lord has for you, and to be present in the waiting. Because once you trust in God's promise and his character, and be present for the next small step of obedience at a time, and grab each hold and be vigilant for God's plan, for redemption, trust in that plan that God has for redemption. I heard it once said that God draws us in with a promise, and he drops us into a process. That process, sorry, the promise is forgiveness, and the process is transformation. Luther believed that you have to obey to warrant God's forgiveness, but the truth is we're called to obey because we've already been forgiven. You will pull us from those depths time and time again, because his forgiveness is deep and his promise is good. And the only thing that can rescue us from the depths, brothers and sisters, is the depths of God's character, but that takes looking completely outside of ourselves. So are you in the depths? Where do you feel that overwhelming pressure? Maybe it's guilt. Maybe it's shame. Maybe it's a loathing that you have for yourself. Where does God feel distant and life feel desperate? Where do you feel like you're in the submarine, and the crushing weight is making those seams start to pop? What do I do? What do I do when I find myself there? We're in the depths. We need to reorient where we are looking. We're looking not to ourselves. We're looking to God. We need to ask ourselves some questions. Where in my life do I need to cry out to God? Where does it feel hard? Where do I need help? Furthermore, how can I change my focus from myself to God's character? Because when we focus all in here, we're not going to find a solution. We're only going to find angst and desperation. But the hope that we can find is outside of ourselves. We just have to find out how we can look outside of ourselves. How can I stop looking in here and out there? Once we focus on God's character, that will lead us to trust. That trust is in his character, in his promise, in his hessid, in his abounding love and mercy that flows out of his very character. That should push us to trust in his plan. How can I trust God to take the next step of obedience that he has for me in the perfect plan for my redemption? The reason that I chose to talk about Martin Luther today is because this song that we talked about is one of his absolute favorites. Martin Luther said that the greatest piece that he ever felt was when he realized that his salvation, his forgiveness, was completely outside of himself. Salvation comes through faith alone. There's nothing he could possibly do to warrant his own salvation. He said to have time and time again crumpled before this very song, the promise of Psalm 130. In fact, he called it one of the Pauline Psalms because it perfectly encapsures the state of our sin and the state of our being, but the good news of the gospel. There's a story from around 1530. This is after he's amongst his while he's well into the Reformation, and he said that he toiled all night, and he wrestled with guilt and sin from the night. He said that he was literally buffeted by the devil, but when the morning came, when he saw that sun come up, just as the watchmen saw the sun come up, he was reminded of the promise of Psalm 130, the promise of forgiveness, the hope of the dawn to come, and he said to those around him, he said to the people with him, he said, "Come, let us sing that Psalm out of the depths, in derision of the devil." Surely this Psalm is a treasury of comfort to all in distress, and the hope for you this morning, CCC, is that God's promise, God's character is great comfort, even in the depths when you find yourself in, because you're not going to find comfort in those depths. No, you're not going to find comfort from what's in here, you're not going to find comfort in your own merits, you're only going to find comfort in the character of God. So you're willing to turn away from what's right in here, and out to God's character, and to comfort in what is completely outside of ourselves. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for bringing these people together. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to meet here in your house and to learn about the word that you've put before us. Your word is true, is loving, it flows out of you, it is a reflection of your very nature, your very character. And that character we know is loving, that hasset is good, it is beautiful, love flows out, abundant love, abundant mercy flows out of your very character. God, when we find ourselves in the depths, we know, we understand that we can do nothing to save ourselves, we are completely incapable of making a way for ourselves, but the good news is that you have made a way for us. That means we have to cry out to you. We have to admit that we are helpless. We have to turn away from ourselves and towards you. God, I just pray that these people remember that there is great comfort in your characters, great comfort in the things that you've already done for us, things that you've promised us, and I pray that you'll remember and be able to take that next step of expectant obedience, expectant of the promise that you will make all things right, and your redemption plan is good. God, I pray that they were able to take this message out to them so we can feel emboldened to feel courageous, and this is a treasury truly of comfort. In your heavenly name we pray, amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]