Lamb Among The Wolves. Series

Lamb among the wolves.

Psalm 120 - Songs of Ascent

Picture with me with a band of pilgrims. They're people from your village, heading up the road that leads to Jerusalem. You're on your way to Passover, or perhaps the Feast of Weeks, or the Feast of Booths. There's excitement in the air -- and joy and anticipation. As you grow nearer to the Holy City, you begin to meet pilgrims from other towns and villages as their paths converge with yours on the road up to Jerusalem. These bands of pilgrims sing as they walk, and you join in -- you, and all your friends As you journey, you sing the fifteen Songs of Ascent, which all seem made for community singing, and worship. Thus, these psalms are to be sung on the way to worship. They prepare us for worship.

Psalms 120 through 134 are called the Songs of Ascent because pilgrims would sing them as they traveled the sometimes steep road ascending up to Jerusalem.

Let's begin with Psalm 120. I have already done an "Introduction to the Songs of Ascents." earlier.

What a powerful way to begin the Psalms of Ascents. Psalm 120 provides a truthful perspective that is as appropriate today as when it was written. Despite the ruthless, barbaric nature of Israel’s unrelenting enemies, the Jewish nation was sure God hears their prayers and acts.

The psalmist was greatly pained on account of the hateful slander to which he was being subjected. In his distress, he appealed to God, looking for an answer that would bring him relief. His prayer was, “deliver me” (my soul) from “lying lips” and a “deceitful tongue.” He wanted to be spared from having to continue enduring the injurious effect of vicious slander and speech designed to trap him. The deceit may have involved flattery and the feigning of friendship.

What happens when you are deceived? . Truth matters, and this world is full of liars that cause much destruction to human souls. How can you know which teachers lie and which ones tell the truth?? In our world, deceptions, cults, and false teachings are everywhere. For that reason, your ultimate hope of being saved out of this world of untruth is found in God. “Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue!”

Wicked men are characterized by a lack of interest in the truth—the truth about God, the truth about other people, and the truth about themselves. They think of themselves as righteous, and they refuse to define right and wrong by the laws of God. They suppress whatever truth is available to them (Rom. 1:18). Then, they set out to deceive others through powerful mediums such as television, film, recorded music, and college classes.. What shall be done to the false tongue? God will judge. This is the message of the fourth verse.

When a pilgrim left home to go up to the Temple, he was going to worship the God of truth. He was leaving behind the realm of men, the cradle of liars.

One of the things that is so exasperating about dealing with slanderers and liars is not the fact of conflict with them. Rather it is that they feel free to use maneuvers that the righteous are prohibited from using. They are far more flexible in their construal of facts because they don’t need to go to the library to check them.

But a true man will not even touch the weapons that the slanderers resort to so readily. A true man will not return that kind of fire, trying to blacken the character of someone who is blackened enough already.

This Psalm reminds us that the reason we are pilgrims is because the world in its present state is not our home. And we must become fed up and dissatisfied with the world around us as it is if we are to be people who long for the better world that is to come. This psalm teaches us to express our frustration and anger and sadness to God and to look to him as the one who gives us hope and strength for the journey.

Many Psalms are happy, uplifting, but this one is not. We don't know the author, but we can picture his situation. He is upset.

This is such a simple, powerful reality expressed in one verse. That when we are in distress, when we walk through trial, when we need help, which let’s just put it out there, we all need help all the time, like all the time we need help. The reality is God has made us dependent creatures. God has made us people who need help. This isn’t just a result of sin in the world, a result of the fall of man and woman. This is the way we were created from the very beginning. Before sin ever entered the world, we were created with a need for God, and a need for others.