Sermon Text: Psalm 130
Date: December 7, 2025
Event: The Second Sunday in Advent, Year A

Psalm 130 (EHV)

A song of the ascents.
1Out of the depths I have called to you, O LORD.
2Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive to the sound of my cry for mercy.
3If you, LORD, kept a record of guilt,
O Lord, who could stand?
4But with you there is pardon,
so you are feared.
5I wait for the LORD. My soul waits,
and in his word I have put my hope.
6My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
7Israel, wait confidently for the LORD, because
with the LORD there is mercy.
With him there is abundant redemption.
8So he himself will redeem Israel from all its guilt.

Wait for the Lord

Almost every parent of small children knows that this time of year can be taxing. Sure, there’s a lot to do, so many tasks to check off the list, but often for the children, there’s one thing and one thing only in view: those Christmas presents. I know that in my own childhood, I was continually looking for ways to convince my parents to make early Christmas presents a thing because it was tough to wait. That rarely went very far, despite the great reasons I had for implementing something!

No, this season offers many learning opportunities, and patience is a big one. There’s a lot of looking forward, anticipating, hoping, and … waiting. No matter how exciting things are, no matter how much you’re looking forward to them, you can’t force December 25 to come any sooner than the calendar and clock tell us it will arrive (and for overwhelmed adults, sadly, we can’t delay its arrival either).

But what a tremendous picture of our Advent focus! Advent is all about waiting—whether we are putting ourselves in the shoes of Old Testament believers waiting and longing for the arrival of God’s salvation in the Messiah, or considering our situation as New Testament believers waiting and longing not for a holiday or other temporary joy and reprieve, but the permanent rest that will come.

Psalm 130 is a psalm about trusting God’s promises and waiting patiently for them to come to fruition. As you can see in the heading, this psalm is one of the “songs of ascent.” The songs of ascent were used by people traveling to Jerusalem for worship. No matter where you were coming from, you always spoke about going “up” to Jerusalem because of the hill on which it is built. We might think of pilgrims making a long trek on foot from their homes in the diaspora to reach this center of worship, or those making a shorter trek from nearby Judea and eventually Galilee. The songs of ascent typically center the traveler on the trip and the worship, and specifically the care that God brings to them in both.

Psalm 130 is very focused on the spiritual preparation the worshiper should invest in before coming to the temple, to be ready to hear the word and promises of God with a well-grounded, well-centered heart.

The psalm writer begins with what seems like a dreadful situation: Out of the depths I have called to you, O LORD. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the sound of my cry for mercy. When the psalm writer describes himself as calling from the depths, this is a spiritual condition rather than a physical one. He’s not fallen into a hole or been thrown in prison. He’s in a very low place; low because of his sin. Perhaps David’s description of the torture of his guilt from elsewhere in the psalms comes to mind, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away as I groaned all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me” (Psalm 32:3-4). You and I both know what it is to feel guilty over the wrong things we have done or the good things we have neglected. Describing that state as “the depths” seems pretty appropriate.

One feature we should pay attention to in this section of Scripture is the psalmist’s subtle shifts in the name for God he uses throughout. When you see the name “LORD” in all capital letters in our psalm, that is God’s unique name (likely pronounced “Yahweh” in Hebrew). This name expresses his covenant grace, his love for his people, and most clearly his forgiveness. When you see the name “Lord” with regular letters, that’s a different name in Hebrew (pronounced “Adonai”). It’s a respectful name, but rather than carrying the force of God’s love and mercy, it describes the fact that God is above us and that we are accountable to him. While I probably wouldn’t advocate for this in a published English translation, it might be a helpful shorthand in our minds to substitute the word “Savior” for the all-capitals “LORD,” and to substitute the word “Master” for the regularly-lettered “Lord.”

So, his initial plea from the depths is to his Savior, to his God of covenant grace. The only way he’ll be heard is if God looks on him with mercy and love. But addressing God as “Master” in verse two, “Lord, hear my voice” acknowledges that God is under no obligation to pay attention to him. He’s asking him to, but God, being higher than us, and more to the point, God being the one whom we’ve sinned against, doesn’t need to do anything for us—save for the fact that he’s promised to.

He goes on to note that this guilt and sin, this disaster of a rebellious life against God, is the universal human condition in our fallen state. If you, LORD, kept a record of guilt, O Lord, who could stand? The answer? No one. But it is the God of covenant grace who doesn’t follow this hypothetical situation, who doesn’t keep a record of our guilt and sins. If he did so, we could never stand before the God to whom we are accountable.

Verse four is really the central verse of this psalm, not just in the number of lines of text, but even more so in thought. For the first three verses, the psalm writer has been coming to God from a state of guilt and shame over his sin. He knows that God owes him nothing, but he also knows what God has promised to him—pardon! And this verse really underscores the notion that to “fear God” is typically not to be afraid of him but to stand in awe of him and revere him. God’s pardon, his forgiveness, is the motivation for this fear in the psalmist’s eyes. Surely God’s forgiveness is not a reason to cower and hide from God, but it is the reason to be amazed at him and thank him!

This hope isn’t just some crazy fiction that we’ve created, hoping in vain for a merciful God to save us. No, this is exactly what he’s promised. And the psalm writer points us to where our confidence ought to be, not in ourselves or what we want to happen, but in what God has specifically told us he’s going to do: I wait for the LORD. My soul waits, and in his word I have put my hope. His Word is our confidence because that is the flawless, inerrant record of his promises. We can be certain that there will be pardon for all of our sins because that’s what God promised and—unlike us—he never breaks a promise.

Think back to a point when time just seemed to drag. It was probably because you were really anticipating something that was about to happen. Maybe the end of the school day or the workday meant big, exciting plans, but it felt like the clock wasn't cooperating. That’s a taste of what the psalm writer means when he says, “My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.” Think about what eager anticipation the night watchman would have in ancient days. They had to stand guard when there were no electric lights. Oil lamps and candles only shed their light so far. How close the enemy could get to the city walls under the cover of darkness! If the watchmen lost focus, it could be disastrous. So how welcome those first rays of light would be in the early morning—either because they made the watching job so much easier or because they meant this overnight shift was over, and the pressure was off.

That’s the kind of eager anticipation we have for God’s arrival. This life is sometimes like the night watch that feels like it’ll never end or the school or work day that seems to go on forever. We drag ourselves through this muck of this life, and it seems like it might never change. But we know it will, because our King and Judge will return. We wait for him with that eager expectation.

You don’t need to be afraid of God as judge because you know him as your Savior: Israel, wait confidently for the LORD, because with the LORD there is mercy. With him there is abundant redemption. Jesus himself, the one who gave his life as the payment for every single one of your sins, is your judge. Imagine walking into a courtroom where the judge had done everything he could to make sure you would walk out of there released and free. Imagine if you knew exactly what the verdict was going to be—and it was good for you! What a difference that would make! How greatly your nerves would be settled, where in a different situation they would probably be on edge!

This is our confidence before God: He himself will redeem Israel from all its guilt. Do not be afraid, dear Christian, because your Savior, the LORD, has loved you and forgiven you. Be confident, dear Christian, not in yourself but in our Savior who lived and died to save you from your sin. Wait patiently, dear Christian, for the return of our Savior and Judge, who will publicly announce that we are not guilty of any sin because he himself took them all away. Rejoice, dear Christian, for the Lord has heard your cry for mercy and has saved you.

Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to look with eager anticipation for your return! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria