"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?" - Psalms 130:1-3

Psalm 130 is described by a penitential Psalm that is a straightforward expression of repentance before God. The heading of the Psalm, "A Song of Ascents," means that it is a Psalm that was sung by the pilgrims as they made their way to Jerusalem. Jesus and his disciples made their way toward Jerusalem singing and turning to these Psalms, and in particular, Psalm 130 is a particularly favorite Psalm to many influential theologians, including John Calvin and Augustine, and is a popular hymn to us now, colloquially known as "From The Depths of Woe".

In 1738, John Wesley, when he heard this Psalm sung by a chorus in St. Paul's Cathedral in London, heard the words "if you should mark iniquities, who could stand?" He found his "heart strangely warmed" because Wesley knew he could not stand if God marked iniquities, and this Psalm was instrumental in the heart of Wesley. Wesley knew he couldn't rely on his own human merit, as he had before.

As a relatively straightforward Psalm, Psalm 130 shows us how we can make right with God even when we turned our backs on Him. And if so much of Christianity's greatest thinkers and reformers have turned to Psalm 130, why should we not do so as well?

Begg created an outline for the Psalm: in verses 1-2, the Psalmist is crying. In verses 3-4, the Psalmist is thinking. In verses 5-6, the Psalmist is waiting, and in verses 7-8, he is preaching.

The first two lines of the Psalm are pleas from the Psalmist for help from God, almost as if it was a 911 call, according to Begg. And in every 911 call, like we have to state our locations, so does the Psalmist have to state where he is to God: he is in the depths of woe. In fact, these two verses evoke Jonah in the Old Testament, the man who only cried out to God because he was in the depths, so he could bring salvation to Ninevah.

"Oh Lord, hear me, help me, save me," the Psalmist pleas to God, knowing full well that he can't save himself. The depths are a place that, quite obviously, signify pits deep within the Earth. Usually, in a pit, we can't call for anyone, but we have to just climb out of it ourselves, according to Tim Keller. When we're buried so deeply in the depths, as 33 Chilean miners were in 2013, we can't save ourselves. We need someone else to save us.

And the cry of the Psalmist of Psalm 130 is one that pleas for mercy in Psalms 130:3. "He himself is responsible for the depths he is in," these depths of shame. The Psalmist is different from the Chilean miners in that he knows he doesn't deserve rescue or mercy, but he asks for it anyways.

"He knows that any rescue will be sheer grace and unmerited mercy," Keller says. The depths require someone only as powerful as God, and for atheists and people who don't believe, these depths are all things that we know, the shame and dysfunction that we beat ourselves over time and time again. And the best way to react to our depths is to acknowledge that we can't do this ourselves, to, in the words of Keller, "cry for mercy." In our cries we are humble and admit that we are unworthy, unrighteous, and powerless.

"Mercy is completely undeserved help," Keller says. "But a call also assumes a willingness on God's part to hear, forgive, and reconcile. It is the very opposite of despair. A completely despondent person would not apply to God for salvation."

The gospel is what tells us that we are so bad and unworthy, but so loved at the same time. Verse 3 tells us "if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities...who could stand?" The verse tells us that God does not "keep score" like we do in transactional friendships and relationships that rely on the notion that "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine." The Psalmist means that no one can stand before God. Keller tells us that the teaching isn't that "everyone sins," because we all know that we aren't saints and that everyone sins. The teaching is that "everyone is lost." No person is righteous enough to enter in God's kingdom, as Paul tells us in Romans 3:10: "None is righteous, no, not one." Paul's teaching borrows from Psalms 14:3, where David's choirmaster tells us "all turned aside...there is none who does good, not even one."

"No one can pass the test of basic goodness and decency on judgment day," Keller says.

Forgiveness, however, even from God, isn't always a simple thing. Again, we think of forgiveness often as a means of keeping score and accruing debt, interest, and obligation. Like when a roommate takes our food or borrows our clothes, we often say "it's fine" and keep that in the back of our minds whenever we need a favor. "The person who wronged you continues to owe you," Keller says. "Sins create a record; they do not just vanish into the air."

And God is so mighty that if we were to abide by that metric, we would be condemned and perish on judgment day because of how mighty our sins are compared to how we do good.

Psalms 130:4 tells us this:

"But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared."

What's powerful here is that the Psalmist says there is forgiveness, not that there might be. God forgives us even though we don't deserve it. And the more we are forgiven and receive the gift of grace, the more we fear God. Fearing God has a negative connotation of being trembling and scared, but it doesn't mean that. Rather, we are humbled and overwhelmed by something so good and powerful. Fear in the Bible, defined by Keller, is "joyful awe and wonder before the transcendent greatness of who God is and what he did."

There is a paradoxical nature to being God-fearing people, that the more we receive the gifts of grace and forgiveness, the more we surrender and stop seeking out ourselves as our saviors. "When we really understand that we are forgiven, it does not lead to the loose living of independence, but to a respectful surrender to God's sovereignty." This paradox gives us both humility and confidence. And since it's not by merit, and not be us deserving grace, it is lasting and powerful.

The next couple verses of the Psalm tell us to wait for the Lord. "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits," the Psalmist tells us in Psalms 130:5. In Psalms 130:6, he says "my soul waits for the Lord,/ more than watchmen for the morning." And what is the significance of waiting? He is waiting not only for forgiveness, but for God to reappear.

Keller then extrapolates the message of waiting for God to come back to a more unconventional definition of repentance: "it is a restoration and deepening of our relationship with God." When we seek repentance, we have the assurance that we will be pardoned for our sins, and the message of waiting means we are very aware that God might not come in our lifetime or in a very long time. To repent and wait for our souls to "see" God.

And waiting happens three ways: expectantly, obediently and in community, according to Keller. We expect, no matter how bad things gets, for morning to come, the sun to always rise, and for life to go on. "This means that God will always return to a repentant soul. Always." To wait obediently means to follow God's law in the Scripture, no matter how we feel. Yes, we mess up, and we mess up a lot, but that means that having that perspective of our own sin allows us to be compassionate and loving towards others when they don't follow God's law, either. After all, who are we to judge?

Waiting in community is described in verses 7 and 8, where we seek redemption that is "plentiful" and the Psalmist addresses Israel most directly to have hope in the Lord. We seek redemption from "all his iniquities," meaning all the iniquities in our communities, and that means that we have to be a community of believers together, in one body, fearing and waiting for God.

That waiting was finished in the form of Jesus Christ dying for our sins and resurrecting from the dead, defeating death. As Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, said in Luke 1:68: "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people." It is finished, and now it is time to just surrender to the good news and work being done.