This morning we’re taking a look at one of the attributes of God that we depend on every moment, every day, but that we often forget about. We don’t often think of mercy, and its connection to service. We think of mercy at Christmas, or when one of those ads come on tv showing a clean well fed actor holding up a dirty, hungry child for our examination, to see if there is any compassion or mercy left in us. As I was thinking about our text, and mercy, the image that came to mind was a scene from the movie Gladiator, when Maximus spares the life of another gladiator he has just defeated. The scene is full of tension, when the emperor turns his thumb down to indicate that Maximus is to kill the defeated man, Maximus defies the emperor, and spares the man. Powerful image. Mercy, sparing the man who deserved death, sparing the man who expected it.

We’ve been slowly making our way through the Psalms of the Ascent; the psalms the Jewish pilgrims traveling toward Jerusalem would have sung, are recorded as having sung along the way. They would travel through strange lands where other peoples worship false gods in the hills, they traveled through lands where God was not worshipped at all. They traveled to worship, they worshipped as they traveled on the road ever upwards, up to Jerusalem, and then once in Jerusalem, up to the top of Mount Zion where the Temple was. Theirs was a trek of worship, lives lived before God, to His glory. It is in this vein, of lives lived before God, that we come to Psalm 123. It is a short Psalm, but one that for me clearly spells out the attitude of a worshipper of Yahweh, a worshipper of God. It is a song that speaks of God’s mercy, of our need for mercy before God’s throne.

I lift up my eyes to you,
to you whose throne is in heaven.
2 As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
till he shows us his mercy.
3 Have mercy on us, O LORD, have mercy on us,
for we have endured much contempt.
4 We have endured much ridicule from the proud,
much contempt from the arrogant.

Let’s pray.

Just 4 verses long, but they speak out of pain longing for mercy. Mercy for those who are looking up to the throne, mercy from the Master of all, from the creator. Even though we are guilty, we seek mercy. Even though we expect to die, we ask for mercy. You know, the Psalms weren’t written as a step by step guide book to peace and safety within God. They are instead a piece of the whole history of interaction with God; they are a moment in time when a particular expression of faith rises to the surface. They have been described as a snapshot. King David, who wrote many psalms, wrote them in the midst of his darkest hours, times when he was in physical or spiritual danger, and he wrote psalms that were triumphant, full of love and life. But they aren’t necessarily a rule book, or a guide book, but a word picture of one place along the road of discipleship, one place on that upward road of faith that we all try to walk, one step at a time, pule, pule, as we were taught on Kilimanjaro, slowly slowly as we head up the road of faith taking us ever closer to God, but into ever more precarious places.

Mercy, our acknowledgment of our need for mercy begins with an upward look. For the Jews, a look up was a look into the unknown. It was a look into the blue sky by day, into the black sky dotted with the stars at night. We are a little further along in our knowledge of what’s up there, we know why the sky is blue during the day (it has to do with light wavelengths). We are also more knowledgeable about our galaxy and our universe. We know those dots of light at night aren’t right up there, but are millions and millions of miles away, distances so far that they stretch our minds just to think about them. When we look up into the night sky and see the majesty of the stars, and try to imagine the distances and space up there, and then imagine the God, the Creator who made all that happen simply by His word, we cry out for mercy. We are in need of mercy from that Creator, from that God who is righteous and all-powerful, everything we aren’t. We have offended God through our actions and thoughts, and then sometimes when we look up, we get a glimpse of the wonder of this universe, and through that a glimpse at the God who created it all. The road of discipleship, of committing our lives to God often begins for us, as with the psalmist with a look up.

I lift up my eyes to you,
to you whose throne is in heaven.

The writers of the Old Testament weren’t astronomers; they were theologians. They looked up and saw heaven. They saw the God they worshipped enthroned in the heavens, over all the earth, not in it or on it. They looked up and saw the who God loved them, they looked up and saw the God who they had offended by their actions, they looked up and saw the righteous God who needed to be appeased, they looked up, and saw their need for mercy. As should we. We too look up. We look up from the ground and see what God has made, we look up and see the cross. We look up and recognize our position as beneath God; we are the creature and Him the Creator.
We are the servants, the children, the sinners, and Him the Master, the Righteous One, the Faithful One, the God who is above all because He created all. Our God does not wait on us hand and foot, awaiting us like a lapdog the next time we pay Him attention; He is enthroned above the Heavens. God is not our entertainment or our final answer on appeal to the problems we have created through our disobedience and selfishness. Look up sometime, and see clearly your relationship to God. He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, but is not for our use or abuse. He is God, not someone to be toyed with. Look up to the heavens, up to His throne.

Look up and see the God of Creation, but see also the God of Calvary on the cross, look and see the God of Easter morning, resurrected and new, waiting for us to trust in Him. Too often we cheapen God thinking that His will is an extension of ours. We think what we want is what He should do, when really, if we thought about it at all, that is the sort of God we really wouldn’t want at all. We want, we need a God who is over us, who understands us and our needs better than we do; if we figured out how to use God we would immediately manipulate our way into better and easier ways of living. No, we worship and we want a real God, the God who is in charge, the God we submit to, the God we commit our lives to because of His total commitment to us on the cross. Look up, and see that God. He is waiting for us to look up.

2 As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
till he shows us his mercy.

The first verse combined with the second paints a picture of service. It paints a picture of a servant, someone kneeling before the Master, awaiting mercy. The response to mercy is a life of service. Back in time when honor was everything, saving a man’s life meant in some ways that the saved was indebted to the life saver. This psalm talks about that same indebtedness, that our service to God, to others is a response to the mercy we have been shown. We know all the more clearly than these Jewish pilgrims the service due God; we know very well the pain and blood spilled on Calvary, on the cross that Jesus was nailed to; we know the mercy that was shown to us from that time on. We have a clearer picture of the debt incurred, and the mercy shown to us. All the more, we should have an understanding of our position as servants.

We have been working with the image of us being just like those Jewish pilgrims, making their way upward toward Jerusalem. In our journey as pilgrims, as those traveling toward home, we need to know that we are receivers of mercy, and thusly are servants.

We look up as lesser beings to a greater one, waiting our orders, not trying to give them, not trying to manipulate our way to better standing or more authority, but simply content in an attitude of service. In the same way, mercy always flows downward. Mercy flows from a teacher to a student who has turned an assignment in late, it flows from a master to a servant who has mismanaged the household, it flows from a boss to an employee who makes a mistake. Mercy flows from God to us, mercy flows down from Heaven to earth when we need it, when we ask for forgiveness. Mercy flows down to us through our Lord and Savior, it comes from His actions on the cross that cover all our mistakes, all our evil actions, all our very worst parts. Mercy, the offer of mercy comes from God to us. What grace, what a blessing that we are given not what we deserve, but we are offered instead mercy. Our response to this mercy is service, as well as the blessing to be able to announce that mercy is available to newcomers.

Have mercy on us, O LORD, have mercy on us,
for we have endured much contempt.
4 We have endured much ridicule from the proud,
much contempt from the arrogant.

God intends good for us. This is one of our basic convictions as Christians, that God intends good for us, and He will have His way in our lives. We might put up a struggle for a while, but it is not like a convict struggling against a jailer or a police officer, it is more like clay struggling against the potter. In the end, the potter will have His way with our lives. Have mercy on us does not mean “give us good stuff”. It does not mean reward our goodness, our righteousness so that all who view our lives will be struck by what a great God we have. It does not mean be nice to us because we are nice people. Have mercy on us is a recognition of the way our lives really are; that we live under grace and under mercy, it is the recognition that we live under the authority of Jesus and receive His grace and mercy all the time.

When we say we desire mercy and we look upwards, it does not mean that we expect God to stay in heaven looking down on us, but that we expect Him to show up, to enter into our lives, to get involved. Have mercy on us Lord, have mercy. Have mercy means that we live as servants who expect God to lead us, to be with us, not as servants who line up each week for a beating after listing all the bad things we’ve done. You see, we serve the greatest master ever. When this was written, and when this was sung on the road up to Jerusalem, servants and slavery were practiced. Slavery has never been good, there is always the temptation to misuse and abuse those under authority. Not only is there the temptation, but quite often the abuse of those in lower positions in society. We live in similar times. True, we no longer have actual slavery, but we are oppressed. We can be slaves to different things. We live in a country of complainers and addicts. We cannot do what we want with our money, with our lives. And we are addicted to all kinds of things; alcohol and drugs, compulsive work, pornography. We have traded one form of slavery for another. We choose, through either repenting or not, to serve those things, or serve God.

The freest people serve God, looking up for God’s mercy to come down. The freest people have the greatest master, a master who laid down His own life for their well being, in His mercy. There is some connection between mercy and service. I have covenanted to read Luke all the way through this week, and next, and probably the next week after that. But as I was reading Luke, and thinking about this sermon, I noticed in Luke 1 twice, in Mary’s song and in Zechariah’s song, mercy and service are mentioned together. Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has been mindful of the humble state of His servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me, holy is His name. His mercy extends to those who fear Him, from generation to generation.” And then Zechariah sang, “…to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.”

There is something in God that ties His mercy to our servanthood. His mercy compels as a response our gratitude, our desire to serve the God who served us first. This psalm really contains nothing about serving others; it is focused on our serving God. But it seems to me that the attitude of service, of serving God, spills over in our lives to other places where we serve others. And certainly there are other places in Scripture that focus on our service to others, that complete the picture started for us here in Psalm 123. For instance, the famous passage in John 13, starting in verse 12, “When he finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. ‘Do you understand what I have done for you?’ he asked them. ‘You call me teacher and Lord and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you should also wash one another’s feet. I have set an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.”

The Jewish pilgrims were making their way ever upwards, looking upwards, looking to serve their Master. It was and is mercy that makes it possible to transition from a life of servitude to things and stuff and anything but God, to a life of serving God. I have seen many people serving God, and serving Him well by serving others, by proclaiming His closeness and love to others, through serving the lowest people in society, the homeless, the lost and wandering on the streets of LA. And I have never heard them complain about serving God. They complain about other things, like people having the same problems over and over, they complain about the lack of funds, but I have never heard them complain that their time was wasted, that God was wasting their talents. The freest people are those who have chosen to serve God with their lives. Us pilgrims, on the road traveling up to our God, are called to be servants. Called to serve God, most often through serving others. As odd as it sounds, that is freedom. Serving the most gracious and merciful master brings freedom, brings lives of meaning.

Let’s pray.