Psalm 120
Over the next few months we are going to be looking at a series of Psalms during the sermon time. I have been heavily influenced in this series by a Pastor and writer named Eugene Peterson. Many of his ideas will make their way into these sermons as we head toward Easter. The Psalms we are going to look at are a series of Psalms called the Psalms of Ascent-numbers 120-135. They are the songs the Jewish pilgrims would sing on their travels to Jerusalem. Every good Jew was required to visit Jerusalem several times a year in order to making offerings, to have an animal sacrificed in their place; to celebrate feasts. And those rituals of worship could only be made at the Temple in Jerusalem. Because the Temple no longer exists, and cannot be rebuilt without a major war, present day Jews no longer make blood sacrifices.
The Jews had been spread all
over the Middle East, primarily because of the Babylonian captivity, but there
were trade and business reasons as well. And these Jews that were spread out all
of the Middle East, called the Diaspora, would travel to Jerusalem to offer
sacrifices. And as they traveled in caravans, coming to Jerusalem and up on
Mount Zion where Jerusalem is located, they would sing songs. These songs they
would sing were written down and we call them the Psalms of Ascent. They are
called Psalms of Ascent because Jerusalem sits on Mount Zion, which is higher
than the surrounding areas. Literally people would have to ascend to go to the
Temple, to go to where God was. Some are songs of frustration, some are songs
of fear, some of deep trust in God. But they all are real and express deep
feelings of those traveling toward God, those in a foreign land heading up to
the Temple where God dwelt specially deep in Holy of Holies.
In a deep sense, we too are traveling toward God. We are on a journey, and we too travel through strange, foreign lands. I’ve heard many people say they are on a journey, but to say that doesn’t imply a destination. It just means we’re traveling, and everyone does that, Christian or not. We Christians are on a specific journey, journeying toward God. Perhaps a better word to describe us is ‘pilgrim’. We are making a pilgrimage toward home. This place, this world, is not our home. We are resident aliens, journeying toward God in the midst of a culture that stands against us, in the midst of neighbors who don’t understand us and our devotion to Jesus, we live with co-workers who politely think we’re a bit nuts. We are very much like the Jews who traveled through foreign lands to Jerusalem, to the Temple, to God.
The first Psalm is 120. Listen
to the first psalm of Ascent.
I call on the LORD in my distress,
and he answers me.
2 Save me, O LORD, from lying lips
and
from deceitful tongues.
3 What will he do to you,
and what more besides, O deceitful tongue?
4 He will punish you with a warrior’s sharp arrows,
with
burning coals of the broom tree.
5 Woe to me that I dwell in Meshech,
that I live among the tents of Kedar!
6 Too long have I lived
among those who hate peace.
7 I am a man of peace;
but
when I speak, they are for war.[1]
Let’s pray.
As I said, we will be going through the Psalms of the
Ascent as we head toward Easter. One at a time, taking a look at what the
ancient Israelites sang as they traveled on their way toward God, toward
Jerusalem, going up to Mount Zion. I have always liked the Psalms; they are
real. Sometimes the Israelites would yell at God, sometimes the Psalms are
triumphant because of what God has done, sometimes they are deep reminders that
despite the present circumstances, God has not forgotten about us. I like the
Psalms because very often they say what I want to say to God. The Psalms
illustrate a real relationship with God where not everything is rosy, where not
everything is fine and dandy. There are real doubts expressed, real
frustrations, real feelings of disappointment and being let down. Andy yet, all
of this is in the Bible. What I want you to hear is that God wants a real
relationship with us; He wants to hear our doubts and meet them, He wants to
hear our frustrations and respond. God is real, and wants a real, not a fake,
relationship with us. You know people with whom we have a fake relationship;
the co-worker or the neighbor, where we greet each other and never fail to
pretend as though we are listening to them, and we pretend that they are
listening when we talk. Don’t do that with God. He’s not interested in a fake
relationship. Psalms illustrate what a real relationship with God is like; I
like them very much.
Bill Cosby tells a joke about being sick and tired. He
said his mom used to say all the time that she was sick and tired of whatever
Bill and his brothers were doing. He said the worst whopping he ever got from
his mom was when she said I’m sick and he finished ‘and tired’ before she could
get it out. Psalm 120 is for people, by people who are sick and tired of the
world. Tired of its corruption, tired of the messed up values where people work
themselves to death trying to provide for their children who just want them,
tired of watching the wicked prosper. Tired of the way things are; where good
people suffer and are cheated, where bad people can work the system to their
advantage and there is no justice. I think and hope we long for peace and love,
but the world seems so full of selfishness, people at war with one another
rather than peaceful; we long for Christmas time but suffer with the how people
are the rest of the year. We long for peace and love, but we are stuck here on
earth, with everyone and his brother seemingly trying to manipulate everything
we do, from the food we buy to what we read, from the shows we watch to how we
think and vote.
Tired. I get tired of this place; not Long Island
especially, but this whole place. Things aren’t the way they should be. And as
soon as we recognize that, we’re on our way. If we still have hope in this
world, in this place, where the next election will bring in better folks who
will make everything better; where we hope the next medical discovery will make
everything better, or the next innovative type of therapy will somehow make the
world better, then we aren’t really sick and tired of the world. If we think
the next gadget or the next cool toy, if we could only afford a (fill in your
own blank…) then life would be so much better. Life could be good then. If we
still have hope that the next something, the next whatever, will really change
the world then we aren’t sick and tired. We aren’t where we need to be.
Listen to what the Jewish pilgrims sang:
I call on the LORD in my distress,
and he answers me.
2 Save me, O LORD, from lying lips
and
from deceitful tongues.
Lying lips and deceitful tongues. Sick of people who say
one thing and do another, sick and tired of the talking heads on tv shouting at
each other like their position is the only possible right one. Sick and tired
of people not telling the truth; sick and tired of people asking for others to
cater to their whims and needs, sick and tired of this world full of people
with their lies and lying lips. Sick and tired of being told people are
basically good and everything in the world really is fine. Sick and tired of
being told we are born free and that life is just what we make of it. Sick and
tired of hearing that sin isn’t really a sin; that private sins that don’t hurt
other people are really no problem at all. Sick and tired of hearing people
pass the blame onto others without ever accepting anything but adulation and
adoration. Sick and tired of hearing people blame others, always, for the bad things
they do, for the bad situations we find ourselves in.
Sick and tired of the lies, that is how the Psalms of
Ascent start. These are not easy things to hear, and they certainly weren’t
easy to sing traveling upwards toward the Temple. But it does ring true. There
is truth in the words of being distressed at the way the world is; how far from
God it is, and really, has always been. Being sick and tired of the world is
not a new thing; it has always been the mindset of folks who are traveling
toward God, who have made it their life’s work to know God more through Christ,
who desire to see God lifted up and glorified by all, but stuck here in the
world where God is mocked and every evil desire can be catered to. It astounds
me that people still don’t get it; this world is full of lies. And we’ve bought
one if we think the next new thing is going to make life better, if the next
election will change things, if the next war will actually bring us peace.
And if we realize that we’ve bought a lie, that the next
computer or the next car or whatever doesn’t bring us joy and peace, we either
continue seeking something else to fill that void like the main character in
Death of a Salesman or we can explode in anger and disappointment that it
didn’t work out like we thought again. When are we going to figure out the lie
is a lie? That joy doesn’t come from a
can, that peace doesn’t come from having the biggest guns, that our security
doesn’t come from more police officers, that our bodies are our own and what we
do with them is fine and so forth. Think of the lies you have bought into. We
need God’s viewpoint to rescue us from the lies that we’ve bought into; that a
good time can always be had with more alcohol, deliver me from people who tell
us about life without telling us about God, who say life is fine and we’re
all-right when we clearly aren’t.
What will he do to you,
and what more besides, O deceitful tongue?
4 He will punish you with a warrior’s sharp arrows,
with
burning coals of the broom tree.
There
is punishment for people who lie the big lies. That we are fine without God in
our lives; that God is burden and not a blessing, that peace and freedom should
be the highest goals of our lives rather than knowing and loving God. Woe to
the people who perpetuate the lies that people have bought into, that our value
as people comes from what we have or who we know or how we look. Woe to the
people who have bought into the lies so completely that this world actually is
their home, and when the time come for them to leave there is nowhere better
that here, with all the empty lies that support their lives. Woe to those who
have bought the lies because they have dismissed the possibility that life
really could be worth living, and living to God’s glory, not our own. Woe to
those who have bought the big lies, because it can be so hard to break through
to the truth. Woe to those who think that God is a liar when He says people
need to repent and know Him through Jesus Christ. Woe to people who believe men
are true, and God is mistaken or a liar. I despair, and pray, as should we all,
for those who think meaning comes from the biggest houses, the nicest cars, the
best friends. This place is not our home; we are on a pilgrimage through
foreign lands, traveling toward God. We’re going up towards God; or we are
milling about, confused and going after whatever is next. Think about it.
The
psalmist continues:
Woe to me that I dwell in Meshech,
that I live among the tents of Kedar!
Meshech
was a far off tribe inhabiting southern Russia; it is about as far away from
Israel as anyone knew existed. Kedar, on the other hand, was a wandering
Bedouin-type people who lived on the edges of Israel. These two together
represent the foreign, the strange and the openly hostile nature of the world.
For us it would be like saying, I wander through Afghanistan or Iran, places
with strange customs, with a predilection towards violence against us. The
language is strange, the people act completely differently than we expect…like
people who love the lie in our culture, who run from the wisdom and
responsibility of being an adult in an ever more ridiculous quest to be young
again, and young forever. We too, journey through a strange place toward God.
Because the strangeness of this world isn’t just in far off places, it is right
here with us, but because it is familiar to us, it doesn’t seem strange. We
need someone from the outside to say stop. Stop believing the lies, stop living
your life for a lie. Just stop. Repent is the world Jesus uses. Repent, Jesus
says, turn around and follow me. We have to stop thinking we can do it on our
own. We have to stop believing the lies and decide that Christ was right; in
Him we find ourselves fully, finally. Repentance is the start, but only the
start, of a long pilgrimage toward God. And there will be many times of
repentance, of realizing we’ve gotten off track and need to turn around to get
back to the path God has laid out for us. It is a long path, a long journey,
sometimes boring, often painful, occasionally exhilarating, but it always is
the right path to journey towards God. The Psalmist finishes with this:
Too long have I lived
among those who hate peace.
7 I am a man of peace;
but
when I speak, they are for war.
This whole Psalm is shocking; it is meant to throw us into reality without any preparation, without any covering up of the parts of life we don’t like to look at or think about. The truth is that this is not a safe place, and we are making this pilgrimage against the flow of the world. We travel uphill as the world travels down. We walk the hard road, not the easy one of believing the lies, and living painlessly in them. We are journeying seeking peace, and seeking to be peaceful, but in world that values that not at all. When we speak to others about peace, about repentance and peace with God, it often will not be valued, our vulnerability might be mocked, our offer to meet Jesus, their potential Lord and Savior might be all for nothing.
But we have made the decision, we have decided that God is true, and men are not. We have decided that God made us, and not we ourselves. We have decided that life is not about us being entertained or having every demand of ours met, but that we are for God, and we live to please Him, not matter what the cost. We have decided that the idols of this world are dross, they are worthless compared to the overwhelming wonder to knowing God through Jesus Christ. In repenting we have turned our backs on the world and turned toward God. We have decided the hard road is the right road, we have decided Jesus was right and telling the truth that no one comes to the Father except through Him; that He died for us and His blood covers all our sins when we ask Him to be our Lord and Savior, and that nothing else will be; not good works, not other gods or idols or the adulation of the people of this earth.
What makes a difference in our lives is the long pilgrimage, seeking God. It will shape us, it will change us, we are going to be different. And that’s okay. Life is not going to always be easy. It might be at times, and when it is, enjoy those times. But don’t count on it. Instead, we Christians count on God to show up, to watch over us, to be with us as we travel further up toward God, further up and in as C.S. Lewis would put it. The pilgrimage will shape us. The obedience it takes to keep going, to keeping praying and reading Scripture through tough times, to keep praying for others, to keep seeking God’s will for our lives makes a difference in our own lives, and it will make a difference in our families and our communities. I’m convinced of that; the pilgrimage matters. Keep pushing on up.
Let’s pray.