Good morning. Today, we are starting a series that is going to take us at least three or four weeks into September. It is called The Psalms of Ascents. If you are not familiar with The Psalms of Ascents, they can be found in the book of Psalms, and they are comprised of 15 Psalms, those from about 120 to about 134. These Psalms were sometimes called songs and were believed to be recited or sung by the Jewish people as they made their pilgrimages toward Jerusalem to celebrate three great festivals: the Festival of Passover, the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Tabernacles. The reason they are called The Psalms of Ascents is because Jerusalem is at a higher elevation. That is why when you read your Bible it says they went up to Jerusalem and down from Jerusalem because really Jerusalem was at a higher elevation. So the pilgrims making the journey to Jerusalem would gradually ascend in elevation until they reached the temple of God. So we know these psalms were sung by pilgrim people on their way to Jerusalem. Down through history, people began to see these Psalms of Ascents as not just songs but really a metaphor for the spiritual life. Someone ascends up to God. As people that are trying to be disciples of Jesus Christ, we talked about ordinary people trying to live everyday life like Jesus, we too can embrace them as really songs we can sing on our journey towards Christ likeness. They are very helpful. They are good guides. We need some sort of comfort. We need some sort of encouragement as we travel along the road of discipleship. Just as it was difficult for the Jewish people to make that long trek up towards Jerusalem, the physical trek, it is difficult for disciples, for Christians, to stay steadfast and to keep moving forward. In spite of discouragement and depression and the desire to sometimes throw in the towel. We all experience that sometimes when we are going through that journey of faith and the journey of discipleship. The Psalms not only provide comfort for the Jewish people, but they also provide comfort and encouragement for us and help us to press on towards that prize, as Paul would speak of the prize.
These Psalms of Ascents really comprise about 15 Psalms. They go from 120 to 134, but for the sake of time, we are going to limit it to probably five or six of those Psalms, and we are going to go into a deeper study in the fall by the end of September. As a side note, during these sermons, I am going to be relying heavily on the wisdom of a man named Eugene Peterson. He wrote the paraphrase of the Bible that we use a lot called The Message. He also wrote a book called The Long Obedience in the Same Direction. It is a book about discipleship, but it is based on these Psalms of Ascent. If you are looking for any more summer reading and you are looking for a devotional, I recommend it. It is a pretty good devotional especially if you want to get deeper into all the Psalms of Ascent. I also would recommend that if you go through these Psalms you might consider actually memorizing a Psalm or a portion of the Psalm. They are really pretty short. A good one to start on would actually be Psalm 121 that we will be looking at next week. It is a nice short Psalm, but it provides a lot of comfort. It is good to have in your arsenal of scripture that you can pull out when you are feeling frustration and discouraged. Next week, we will be looking at Psalm 121.
But today, we want to look at Psalm 120. If you want to follow along in the Bible or I also have it on the screen. Follow it. Read along. Close your eyes and listen. Whatever you decide, but I am going to read through it. (Scripture read here). Now if you are like me and you read a Psalm, you say this is kind of a depressing Psalm. It is bookended by distress and war. In between you have talk of lying lips and deceitful tongue. You would think that if these are songs that were sung on the way to a festival, they would be very uplifting and exciting. I don’t know about you, but when we go on vacation like Ocean City or Myrtle Beach, sometimes we sing travel songs. I tend to sing the songs and everybody else closes their ears. I like listening to the Beach Boys or the Beatles and I just like singing along. You would expect that if these songs would be something that was sung on the way to a festival that it would be festive, but instead it kind of starts off with a bit of a downer. He says “I call on the Lord in my distress, and he answers me. Save me, LORD, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues.” We don’t know a lot about this author, but we can tell by the Psalm that he was kind of down. He was feeling awful. He was in a bad place. He was surrounded by people’s lying lips and deceitful tongues. That is a sad place to be, and we really can only speculate as far as who or what he is talking about when he talks about these people. Some suggest maybe he has a problem with some relationships. Friends or relatives that were once very close and now they have turned on him. Maybe they are spreading gossip or something like that. Others suspect that maybe he is involved in some sort of a court case where people are bringing false witnesses against him. I am going to suggest that he is just fed up with the culture that he is living in. Living in a culture that embraces idols and promotes a false philosophy that if you live a certain way that will lead you to the good life. He is tired of the lies of culture. Whatever the case, he cries out. If you have ever read through the Psalms, you know that calling out to God or crying out to God is a very common theme through the Psalms. It is okay. It is nice to read that. It gives us permission to complain a little bit. Psalm 142:1-2 says it best. He says “I cry to the Lord; I lift my voice to the Lord for mercy. I pour out my complaint before him; before him I tell my trouble.” It is nice because you feel like if David or whoever wrote some of these Psalms can cry out and complain to God then maybe it is okay to for me to complain to God.
What is unique about Psalm 120 is that it implies answered prayer. It says “I call on the Lord in my distress, and he answers me.” That gives you the indication that maybe he has some history with God. In the past he has called up prayers to God and God not only heard the prayers, but he actually answered the prayers. That is why he is comfortable going in again and asking him for things. Crying out to God. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get in a place with my prayers where I am not sure that God even hears them, let alone answers them. This passage gives us assurance that he does hear you and he does answer. Many of you, if you go back through your lives and trace back through journal entry or thoughts, you would probably see that God did indeed answer a lot of your prayers. The issue is not whether God answers prayers or not. The issue is that many of us have short memories. We pray for something, God answers it, and we forget about it. We don’t know exactly how God is going to answer someone’s cry, but we do know that the psalmist is certain that in that process of answering, he is going to deal very sternly with the enemy, the lying people with lying tongues. “What will he do to you, and what more besides, you deceitful tongue? He will punish you with a warrior’s sharp arrows, with burning coals of the broom tree.” The ideas of arrows and burning coals are interesting because throughout the Old Testament, sometimes evil words or deceitful words were associated with arrows or with fire. We see it back in the book of Proverbs where the writer writes “A scoundrel plots evil, and his speech is like a scorching fire.” We also see in the book of Jeremiah 9:8 he says “Their tongue is a deadly arrow. It speaks with deceit.” When this writer uses the words “He will punish you with a warrior’s sharp arrows, with burning coals of the broom tree,” he is basically letting people know that they are going to get their due. The same arrows and the same burning fire that came off their lips, God is going to turn around and he is going to use those arrows and charcoal against them. Those arrows are going to be sharp and the coal is going to be hot. I did a little study on the broom tree. I had never heard of it. It is a tree that has a lot of thorns and thick roots. It is used for kindling because it burns for a long time and is extremely hot. The Psalms is saying what goes around comes around. The Psalms have assurance that the prayers will in some sense be answered.
In the meantime, he has to endure living in a very hostile environment. He goes on to say “Woe to me that I dwell in Meshek, that I live among the tents of Kedar!” I don’t know about you, but when I come across this type of stuff, I think I have no idea where these places are. I barely know where Beaver Falls and New Kensington are let alone Meshek and the tents of Kedar. With a little research, and that is why it is helpful to have a study Bible of some sort, you learn that Meshek was one of the original tribes that was spoken about in Genesis. They ended up around the Black Sea, the southern part of Russia. They were a tribe who were basically known as barbarians. Then when he refers to the tents of Kedar what he is talking about is a group of Arab tribesman who travel around in tents and wreak havoc wherever they go. He is not being literal when he says he dwells in Meshek and lives among the tents of Kedar. He couldn’t because they are thousands of miles apart. He is using a metaphor to describe the current hostile situation that he lives in. When I told this verse to Debbie, she said I can relate to that especially this time of year because I am a Cleveland Browns fan and I have to dwell in the midst of Steeler Nation. All kidding aside, he is saying I am just not quite at home. I don’t like being in this environment because it is a very rough, hostile environment that is full of dissension and full of war and full of division. He goes on to suggest that he is a man of peace. He says “Too long I have lived among those who hate peace. I am a man of peace; but when I speak, they are for war.” The actual literal translation of this varies little. It says “I peace” or “I am peace.” It is the idea that this person lives for what is the Hebrew word Shalom. Shalom is a word that is a Jewish greeting. It generally means peace, but it is not just peace in the sense that you are free from some sort of external conflict. It is the inner peace. It is an inner wholeness. It is an inner sense of well-being. It was very difficult to live in the midst of all this war, dissension, lying, and deceitful tongues because he was a person of peace. Peace that I think most people desire.
That is a quick recap of Psalm 120. It looks like a strange passage to begin unless you consider that really it is possibly a metaphor for our spiritual walk. A metaphor for our pathway to discipleship. The reality is if you have been a Christian for some time, you know that you can have a lot of these woe-is-me-type moments. Moments where I say I do dwell in Meshek or I do dwell in the tents of Kedar where you are feeling very distressed. Feeling moments that force you to take stock of your life and realize that maybe you have to make some sort of a change. Maybe it is time to change something. You realize you can no longer tolerate this life, so you take one step forward and upward towards God. For a Christian, that begins with the right, ordinance, or sacrament, or whatever you want to call it, of baptism. Baptism as we know it, in the simplest terms, is symbolic of when we go into the water it is death to sin. When you come up out of the water it is being raised up with Christ. That is why we say buried with Christ. Raised to walk with him in this life. That is what is going on. But really what is going on is more than that. You are basically saying that I am no longer bent towards the world. I am no longer bent towards the lies of the world and what it is trying to feed me. Instead, I am trying to take the first steps towards truth. The truth that is in God. God is truth that is found through Jesus Christ. It is Jesus Christ who said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
As a side note, a lot of people have a hard time with Christianity because they see it as exclusive and nobody wants to be exclusive nowadays. But Jesus is the one that said it is exclusive. There are not many ways going up to heaven. There is one way. There is one door and it is through Jesus Christ. When we make this change or we begin to turn our back on the world and turn towards God that is understood by the basic Christian word called repentance as I have talked about many times. I am turning from this life and I am headed back towards God. I am turning away from the life that doesn’t work and I am turning to a life that does. That is really what is going on there in repentance. It is saying I don’t trust the world because the world is trying to sell me a bill of goods that offers no long-term hope. Eugene Peterson says it best when he speaks to this Psalm 120. He says “The distress that begins and ends the Psalm is the painful awakening to the no longer avoidable reality that we have been lied to. The world, in fact, is not as it has been represented to us. Things are not all right as they are, and they are not getting any better.” It is very powerful. Do you really think the world is getting better? That it is somehow going to fix itself? It isn’t going to happen. That is why people come to a point where they have to decide if they are going to continue to buy into the lies of the world or are they going to begin to focus on the truth of God. When they get that revelation whatever way it comes, for some people it comes just lying in bed at night thinking about life and death, laying under the stars, driving down the road, sitting in a bar, wherever, this revelation comes to them and they say it is time I need to make a change. I really do desire that life. It means they begin to take that first step. They turn their back on the world and they begin to walk towards God, again beginning with this idea of baptism. I really think that is why people applaud when somebody is baptized. Some of you were there last week at the Bellevue Pool. We were able to baptize one person. The people that were there gave a big round of applause. If I asked why are you applauding, I don’t think they could actually articulate, but I think in their heart they would know why because they know that person has, if they are serious about it, made a very significant decision in his or her life. A decision that says I am going to say no to the world and I am going to say yes to God. A sense that the person has finally gotten what I would call the V8-type moment. They finally got it. They finally woke up and said the world cannot fulfill its promises to me for the good life. Only God can fulfill those promises for the good life. I think instinctively people know that is kind of what is going on. There is something different, and they applaud. They don’t applaud when you go the other way when they turn back to the world. They applaud when you go towards God. That is what is happening in baptism.
But between the applause of baptism and hopefully the nice words that people speak about you at your funeral, there is a long, messy, yukky road of discipleship. As Eugene Peterson calls “The Long Road of Obedience in the Same Direction”. There is nobody out there applauding you for being a Christian. You get that one applause, and you might get one at the end, but in between it isn’t going to happen. It is usually just the opposite, so it is easy to become very discouraged and disheartened. We live for that applause. You get that high in baptism and two weeks later the person went completely back to their old way. That is the most frustrating thing to see as a pastor because somehow maybe they had been sold a bill of goods that as you become a Christian your life is going to become easy. As we will talk about next week in Psalm 121, it is not easy. It is probably harder. That is why we need the Psalms.
That is why we need the words of Paul. In Philippians 3:14 where people are falling from the church in droves, he says “I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Heavenward is that ascension up to God. That is where he is calling us. It is a reminder that this world isn’t our home. We can’t get too comfortable here. We are pilgrims on a journey so we constantly move forward. It is the spurring on that happens when we have moments of distress. When I have the moments that this world is not right. We need ongoing reminders of that. That keeps us pushing on. We say no to the world, and we say yes to God and move a little farther. No to the world. We say yes to God. That is what your life is like. When you step out of the baptistery, you are not stepping into a life of utopia. You are not stepping back into the paradise. No. You are stepping into a very hostile environment where you have friends and relatives and ex-spouses and everybody else that are basically lying and deceiving you. You might be taken and sued and given false accusations about something. Or maybe where you have the devil who is known as the deceiver from the very beginning of Genesis constantly shooting lies into your head. I am no good. I am never going to be anything. I can’t be a Christian. I am not good enough to be a Christian. All those lies that people just let in their heads. Or just fed up with the lies of the world. The lies that bombard us. That come to us through the computer, the media, the internet, Facebook pages, and even honestly it comes through watching the Olympics. I know some of you watch the Olympics. I watched a little bit here and there. It is disheartening to see that the Americans have been tainted because one of the gold-medal swimmers decided to lie. Decided to fabricate a story. It is very sad that somebody on national TV would tell a bold face lie and thinking he would get away with it. That young man has basically killed a lot of his endorsements and sponsors just because he told a lie. We don’t like lies when they are blatant lies and people are caught up in lying. As Christians, we should expect it because as long as we are on this earth we still dwell in Meshek. We live in the tents of Kedar.
The good thing is when we step out of the baptistery, even though the world is the same, we are different. We become not people of the world but people of peace. We have that inner shalom because we have peace with God through Jesus Christ. That is what Paul says in Romans 5:1. He says “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Think about that verse. Everybody, as much as they might not show it because they live in war and tension and lying and deceiving, I think mostly deep down is a longing for peace. That shalom of God. What better peace is there. Who else would you want to make peace with than God? It is an amazing thing. Once you grasp on to this idea that you have been given peace through Jesus Christ, it means you can live in a world in a manner of shalom. You can ignore the people that would falsely accuse you or whatever is happening to you in your home life or the courtroom or even in culture. You learn to just rise above it. You learn to endure it. Not only do you learn to endure it, you learn to celebrate it because you know when you experience those types of persecution or whatever, it is going to move you forward. I don’t have the verse up there, but I think it is in James that talks about being thankful for the persecution because it builds the character to move you forward. We can celebrate because that means when we are experiencing that, if we respond okay, God will keep pushing us forward. If we don’t simply throw in the towel, God will keep moving us forward. We know that when things get really bad and we are really struggling with whatever reason we are down. It could be lying lips. It could be grief. It could be all sorts of stuff. We don’t have to throw in the towel and just quit. We offer up a prayer. From experience we know that God hears us. More than that, we know that he answers us in his way and his time. We also know that in his timing, he will take care of the people that need to be taken care of as far as the lying lips and the deceitful tongue. Of anything God does not like it is lying lips. I could bring up scripture after scripture about that. As I thought about it, the thing about lies is when you don’t lie and you are true to a person and that person is lying, you are really not on even territory. It is really frustrating to know you are living with a habitual liar or something like that. You are not on equal ground. You are not playing fair. You can’t compete with that. God hates lying lips. In summary, this Psalm is suggesting that although we may have trouble in this world, and we are reminded in the New Testament, we can live as people of peace because of the one who was our peace, Jesus Christ. It was Jesus himself who said to his disciples “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
