Psalm 120
Hello, today is Saturday, the
4th of April, 2020. Tomorrow will be the third Sunday
since our church has been able to worship together. Tomorrow
is Palm Sunday, which is normally one of our most exciting Sundays,
along with the next week, which is Easter. We usually celebrate
the Lord’s Supper the first Sunday of each month, and so we’ve already
missed two Sundays, and our third Sunday will be a special Sunday
that we’ll all certainly miss. We definitely miss meeting each
week. God calls us to meet in the Lord’s
house on the Lord’s day with the Lord’s people and to keep
the Lord’s ordinances. And so we can’t gather. It’s
not safe. We want to keep one another healthy.
We don’t want to spread disease. We want to keep others from becoming
sick and we want to prevent the loss of life. We do see the Lord’s
hand during this time. We’re more aware of the precious
nature of life. Many have turned their hearts
toward home. They’re eating dinner together. I see people taking
walks in the park together. We also have to see the Lord’s
hand. This is a sort of exile. God’s people can’t be together
in God’s house. It’s a famine on the word of
God through the preaching of the word. It’s a fasting from
the Lord’s supper. And I hope, it’s my prayer, that
God is bringing his people to their knees. Over the last many
weeks, particularly to those of you who are able to access
the internet, we’ve sent out many resources, lots of Bible
studies, sermons, articles, and various things that have popped
up as good resources to meet your spiritual needs during this
time. I want us to understand something
that I don’t think many do understand, and that’s this. You cannot replace
the gathered worship, the gathered corporate worship of God’s people. There’s sort of an oxymoron floating
around, and that oxymoron is this, online worship. Many churches that said negative
things about online worship have just jumped right in. I don’t
think they all believe it replaces gathered corporate worship, but
we seem to think it does. But we cannot replace gathered
worship. We cannot replace the Lord’s
house, the Lord’s day with the Lord’s people and the Lord’s
ordinances. So it’s my prayer for you, and
it’s certainly the longing of my heart, that it will not be
long before life will return to normal and we can worship
together again. When I was a college student,
we were required to attend chapel every Tuesday, every Thursday.
We had a punch card to ensure that you got your days in the
chapel in. One particular chapel I remember
very well, we had an older lady speak to us who was from Bulgaria,
and she had endured one of the Holocaust camps. And she remembers
a time where they did not have a Bible in the camp, but they
had a scrap of a piece of a Bible. And they would pass that scrap
of the Bible around to various Christians in the camp. And as
they passed it around, they would each memorize it and treasure
that little scrap of God’s word. And her challenge to us, this
was 25 years or so ago, her challenge to us was this, you have a whole
Bible. Do you treasure it like we did
that little scrap? And I wonder how many of us now
that we’re missing the Lord’s Day, how many of us treasure
it with all that we have. Over the last couple weeks, it’s
been about two and a half weeks since I’ve had what I would call
regular ministry of going to see people, going to visit people,
studying and preparing for sermons and those sorts of things. I’ve
used this time as sort of my summer study leave to accomplish
some projects. Every summer for about two weeks,
I take some time away. We have a preacher come in and
fill the pulpit for me. Usually, I take my family to
visit kinfolks in Tennessee, and I take about two weeks to
do administrative projects, planning projects, writing projects, and
studying for upcoming sermon series. And that’s what I’ve
been doing the last couple weeks. Of course, like many of you,
we’ve cleaned out every closet. I’ve organized my tools, we’ve
done yard work. The only thing not getting taken
care of is this scruffy beard. It can’t go to the barbershop
and so it’ll probably look like a mountain man in a few weeks.
But one of the great blessings over these last few weeks is
in preparation for the next psalm in our series for Sunday evenings. On Sunday evenings, the last
four years, we have studied the psalms one by one. On March 15th,
we studied Psalm 119. And so on March 22nd, we were
to pick up in our study of the Psalms with Psalm 120. And so we would have done what
we normally have done with the Psalms. We would have finished
our stretch of 25, which would have ended at Psalm 125. And
I would have done a series for the summer in the New Testament,
and then we would have picked up with Psalm 126, maybe in the
fall. But since Psalm 120 is the beginning of what are called
the Psalms of Ascent, the Psalms of Ascent, which I’ll explain
more of in just a moment, are Psalms 120 to 134. I’ve taken
some time these last few weeks to study these 15 Psalms, and
I want to present them to you one by one over the next several
videos and give you an opportunity to dig into God’s Word with me
in the Psalms of Ascent. I think you’ll see in a few moments
as we get into an overview why they are such a blessing. And so let me begin with this
overview of the Psalms of Ascent. The Psalms of Ascent are Psalms
120 to Psalms 134. If you’ve not been accustomed
to studying the Psalms, if you’ve not been with us on Sunday evenings
over the last several years, the Psalms are a wonderful source
of strength and joy in the Scriptures. About 20 years ago when I started
seminary, one of the books we were required to buy was a Psalter. I wondered why for a New Testament
course I was buying a book of singable psalms. I quickly found
out why. We would study and sing a psalm
every day that we had class. And that continued on throughout
all Bible courses. And what a wonderful, life-changing
exercise that was for me to not only study the psalms, but to
sing the psalms. I have many of them hidden in
my heart better because of that experience. But the Psalms will
come alive as you study them. And I hope this study of the
Psalms of Ascent will come alive in your life and in this particular
stretch where we aren’t able to be together, we aren’t able
to worship together, and we are suffering from great spiritual
battles and struggles. But the Psalms of Ascent, Psalms
120 to 134, are found in Book 5 of the Psalms. If you’re unfamiliar
with the structure of the Psalms, broken up into five books. Books
one, two, three, four, and five. And so the Psalms of Ascent are
found in book five. Each of these psalms can stand
alone. Each of these psalms were written by individuals. They
were written by individuals and meant something to them. David
wrote Four of them, Solomon wrote one, and 10 of the 15 Psalms
of Ascent are anonymous. But each of these Psalms, standing
alone, meant something to the writer, something to the first
readers. But there were also historical
contexts where these Psalms were either used or they were the
expression of joy, sorrow, pain, crying out for help in a certain
event of the psalmist’s life. These psalms also have liturgical
use, therefore use in worship, use in worshiping God and in
the temple. But in 2020, you might ask, what’s
an old dusty psalm have for us? Many of you know that in 2018,
our church purchased a new hymnal. We were long overdue for some
new hymn books. The old ones were reaching some
age, but we also wanted to select a hymnal that reflected the theology
of our ministry, the theology of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian
Church. And so the Trinity Psalter hymnal
was newly released. And in that new Psalter hymnal,
you’ll find at least one, sometimes several, opportunities to sing
all 150 psalms. And then after the 150 psalms,
it picks up with several hundred wonderful hymns, hymns we know,
hymns we don’t know. And so these last two years,
we’ve been singing the psalms a little more, but we’ve also
been stretching ourselves and learning new hymns. Some of you
have probably sung Psalms in your life and just didn’t know
it. Many of Isaac Watt’s hymns are paraphrases of wonderful
Psalms. And so there are all kinds of
uses for the Psalms. What are the Psalms of Ascent?
Well, as I mentioned before, they are Psalms 120 to Psalm
134. The Psalms of Ascent are often
called the Little Psalter. They’re called Pilgrim Psalms.
They’re called Psalms of Great Ascent or Gradual Psalms, Psalms
of Degree. They are Psalms that ascend,
they lead us up to Jerusalem, up to Zion, up to God’s house
of worship. Some traditions hold that there
are 15 because there were 15 steps at the temple, at Solomon’s
temple, and so each step was taken, a psalm was recited or
sung. Who knows? That may or may not be so. It’s
at least neat to think about. But for sure, these were the
pilgrim songs sung by those making their journey from their home
to Jerusalem for the various feasts and festivals held there
at the temple of God in Jerusalem. Our church each year goes Christmas
caroling. We usually do that the last Sunday
evening before Christmas. And we have these books that
we dig out of the choir closet and we pass these little Christmas
caroling books out. It has a dozen or better Christmas
carols in it. And we split up in groups and
we go sing to those in our church who are unable to attend worship
because of age or infirmity. And so like these Christmas caroling
books, for that special time of the year, the Psalms of Ascent,
Psalms 120 to Psalm 134. They’re like a little caroling
book, a pilgrim book, if you will. Songs to sing on the way
to worship, on the way to Jerusalem. The Psalms of Ascent have about
100 verses total. By one count, I think I saw 97 verses. And so put together, it’s not
a whole lot of passages of Scripture. I encourage you to sit down and
read them. Read them in one sitting so you can get a sense of the
Psalms of ascent. Read Psalm 120 all the way to
Psalm 134. And I think you’ll see this pattern. You’ll see a pattern of trouble
in the life of a psalmist. The next you’ll see in this pattern
is one of trust. I have troubles, but I trust
in God. And then you’ll see the highest
joy, arrival at Jerusalem, where all is well. Trouble, trust,
and then Jerusalem. And you can see that in the whole
span of the Psalms of Ascent. Read Psalm 120 all the way to
Psalm 134, and you’ll see the pattern of trouble, trust, and
then Jerusalem. There’s another way, an interesting
way I think you can read these Psalms. Read them in groups of
three. Psalm 120, 121, and 122 have the pattern of trouble,
trust, and Jerusalem. 123, 124, and 125 grouped together
in three have a theme of trouble, trust, and Jerusalem. The same
with 126, 127, and 128. And then again with 129, 130,
and 131. And then also with 132, 133, and 134, you’ll see a pattern
of trouble, trust, and Jerusalem. You’ll see the psalmist has a
difficulty or trouble. You’ll see that their trust is
in the power of Almighty God. And then you’ll see that Zion
or Jerusalem or church is the highest aim and goal. Let’s take a quick peek at an
example of this. Read Psalm 120, for example.
It says, In my distress, I called to the Lord and he answered me.
Deliver me, O Lord, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue.
What shall be given to you and what more shall be done to you,
a deceitful tongue? A warrior’s sharp arrows with
glowing coals of the broom tree. Woe to me that I sojourn in Meshach,
that I dwell among the tents of Kedar. Too long have I had
my dwelling place among those who hate peace. I am for peace,
but when I speak, they are for war. What’s the trouble? Well,
the trouble is this psalmist lives a long ways from Jerusalem. He mentions Meshach, which is
really in modern day Ukraine. It’s almost in Russia. And he
mentions Kedar, which would be a Bedouin a camp where the Bedouins
would have lived way south of Palestine in the Arabian desert. And he’s saying, I live among
pagan people in an unpeaceful place, so far away from Jerusalem
that my life stinks. And so he longs for Jerusalem.
And so you see the trouble in Psalm 120. Listen to Psalm 121. Here’s the trust. I lift up my
eyes to the hills. From where does my help come
from? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will
not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will
neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The
Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike
you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all
evil. He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going
out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore. So
we’ve heard the trouble in Psalm 120, now the trust in Psalm 121. This is probably a Psalm of a
sense you’re familiar with. Did you catch how many times
the word keep is found in this Psalm? Kind of reminds you of
the great benediction from number six. The Lord bless you and keep
you. The Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious
to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give
you peace. Now, forevermore, amen. That’s
our benediction that most worship services. And so he trusts God
because of God’s past benediction in his life, but also he trusts
him for the future. And so his hope is in God. His
hope is in God alone. And so there’s trouble, there’s
trust, but there’s also Jerusalem. Listen to the word of God from
Psalm 122. I was glad when they said to
me, let us go to the house of the Lord. Our feet have been
standing within your gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem built as a city that
is bound, bound firmly together, to which the tribes go up, to
which the tribes of the Lord go up, as was decreed for Israel,
to give thanks to the name of the Lord. Their thrones for judgment
were set, the thrones of the house of David. Pray for the
peace of Jerusalem. May they be secure who love you.
Peace be within your walls and security within your towers.
For my brothers’ and companions’ sake, I will say, peace be within
you. For the sake of the house of
the Lord our God, I will seek your good. And so there’s trouble. He lives far away from Jerusalem.
There’s trust. My help is with God. And then
there’s Jerusalem, there’s Zion, there’s church. There is great
and wonderful joy. You might say it in this way,
the three fold pattern is help, I need help, I look to the hills,
to Zion, long for the house of almighty God. Most of you go
to church in your neighborhood. For me, I drive about a mile
and a half to get to First Associate Reform Presbyterian Church. Others
live closer to the church building than I do. But we have people
who drive a long ways. There’s one family that drives
from the east about 27 miles from Hillsborough. There’s another
family that drives about 37 miles from the west from Oak Ridge. I can remember a time when our
family drove 14 miles to church. We would often go on Sunday nights. Our in-laws would attend with
us in the evening. And so we piled into our family van and
it was a little trip together. But for the Israelites to go
to Jerusalem, it was a four month journey. They had to close up
shop at home. They had to walk to Jerusalem.
They had to travel on beast of burden. They had to attend the
feast or festival, and then they had to make their way home. Some
have calculated that there were over 1.2 million visitors to
Jerusalem during Passover. It’s a pretty monumental number. Jerusalem was the central place
where God was worshipped. It was the central place where
his name was housed and people could come worship him. Sometimes
I wish we had fewer. and larger churches. There seem
to be churches on every corner and there’s a lot of commonality
between them. There’s a lot of differences as well. But I wish
for the sake of unity that we had fewer and larger churches.
There would be more resources, but there would also be more
voices in worship. I don’t know if you’ve ever attended
a church with large attendance, but I remember several years
ago visiting a church in a larger city. that had thousands of people
in worship. And those thousands of people,
plus all the grand instruments in the choir, they sang. And it was quite a different
experience than a small church. But you can imagine 1.2 million
people gathered in one city. You would have to have your mail
held, your animals taken care of, your yard looked after. You
would have to save up to make a four-month journey. Someone
would have to watch your farm. But this journey to Jerusalem
was important for God’s people. In the life of Jesus, which we’ve
studied over the last year and a half or so in the book of Luke,
we saw Jesus’ boyhood trips to Jerusalem. In fact, on one trip,
he was lost. He was left behind. The family
on the way home in the journey of the pilgrims, the group of
pilgrims, they lost the little boy Jesus and had to return and
look for him. The Good Samaritan is a story where a priest Levite
and others are making their way home from Jerusalem on that road
to Jericho. And the story of the Good Samaritan
takes place after a journey from Jerusalem. But you might ask,
how is the Psalms of Ascent, how are they useful for us? How
are they useful for the Christian life? Well, let me encourage
you by reminding you of this. We are all born in Adam. We are
born sinful, we’re born with communion between ourselves and
God broken. We’ve lost fellowship with Almighty God. But when we
are rescued by Christ Jesus, we are forgiven. We are justified. God sees us as if we’ve never
sinned and he sees us as if we have always obeyed. We are filled
with the Holy Spirit. We are joined together with the
church. And we have been given all hope
as we live life in this world. But we must remember that we
do not dwell on earth forever. We are made for heaven. We are
sojourners. We are pilgrims. We are marching
to Zion. And while we are Christians and
while we are filled with the spirit, while we are forgiven
of all our sins, we still struggle with the flesh, with remaining
sin. We still struggle with the devil
and all of his evil temptations. But most of all, we struggle
with the world and the world can really get us down. The world
is full of evil. And the Christian life, dear
brothers and sisters, is a long haul journey. It’s a slow go. It’s not an instant success like
we might like. It’s not a microwave Christianity
that 30 seconds will do the trick. And so we live in this world
and by God’s grace, we should be disappointed with this world.
It wears us down. It erodes our faith. It corrupts
our Christian way of life. It is an enemy to Christianity.
And so as we consider the Psalms of Ascent, Psalms 120 to 134,
we should, like the psalmist, take our problems to God, trust
in Him, and look for Zion, look for the church. Zion is a place
of peace. Zion, or the church, is a place
where we come to be recalibrated. Just a few weeks ago, we took
one of our cars in for service. They aligned the front end so
it would drive in a straight line. They balanced the tires
so they would not shimmy and shake, but they would run smoothly.
And church or Zion is like that for us. We come out of the world
that wears us down. It erodes our faith and corrupts
our Christian way of life. And we come and renew covenant
with God. We come to be reminded of how we are to live the way
that we were made by God’s grace and by his word. And so we come
into God’s house and we see again what is good and right and true.
We come to have our eyes checked. We come to have our heart re-centered
on God. We come to have our minds filled
with truth. We live life between the times,
between heaven and before heaven now. And so worship is important
for us. Ascending up to the house of
God is important. In the Old Covenant, God’s grace
was dispensed through the promises, through the prophecies, through
sacrifices. It was through the paschal lamb.
It was through circumcision. And all these things pointed
to Christ Jesus. All these things were sufficient. All these things were efficient
or efficacious for the forgiveness of sins, but they longed for
and looked for the coming of Christ. And so we who live this
side of Christ on the cross, We are fed by the preaching of
the word and the administration of the sacraments. We have the
fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ week by week in our worship and
in our preaching and in our sacraments. We have the fullness and we have
the substance. While the people of God long
to attend the feast and only were able to attend occasionally
as they could afford it or as they could make the trip to the
place where God’s name would dwell, that is Zion or Jerusalem,
We have the weekly Sabbath. We have the Lord’s Day. We have
the wonderful gift of living six days for work and six days
for recreation, but one day for rest and worship. And church
for us is always open. Church for us, I imagine for
all of us in our lifetimes, has always been available to us. We must remember that Christ,
the Great High Priest, has made satisfaction for our sins. after
having made satisfaction for our sins. When he said, it is
finished on the cross, he died. He was put in the grave, but
he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven. And
when he ascended, he gave gifts to the church. He’s given pastors
and teachers. He’s given worship, the ordinances
of the church. He communicates his grace to
us Sunday by Sunday as we gather with God’s people in God’s house
on God’s day to receive his word and to be blessed by his sacraments.
We have the great hymns and songs of the faith. We have our Psalters.
We have our Christian education. I don’t know if you think about
this, but probably in our day and time, we have the most well-educated
ministers of any era. And so we are quite privileged
to be in God’s house on God’s day with God’s people. The other advantage I think we
still have is it’s still somewhat, barely, but still somewhat a
Sabbatarian culture. Things still cycle around Sunday. That’s less and less so. And
we have no reason, no reason at all that we can’t go to church.
We’re not like China where it’s illegal or Eritrea where you’ll
likely die. Normally, when we don’t have
COVID-19 or coronavirus, We can attend church. The door is always
open. Worship is available to us. It’s
available if we travel. Each year, my family makes our
way to South Carolina for a summer vacation. We go to Tennessee
to visit family. And when we’re in both those states, we go to
a church, usually the same church each time we visit. And it’s
good to be with God’s people in God’s house on God’s day,
even when traveling. We’re so privileged and blessed. but for the sake of safety and
health. We are in a sense right now in a little bit of exile.
We’re fasting. There’s no communion of saints.
There’s no Lord’s Supper. There’s no worship. There’s no
preaching. I wonder how many of us treasure
Sunday even more. When you listen to culture and
society, even to good Christian folks, what do they treasure?
Where do they desire to go most? Oh, you hear people, they’re
planning their next Disney trip and they can’t wait. They’re
planning their next trip to Europe or to the beach or to the mountains,
or they miss church for a soccer tournament, a basketball tournament,
or this thing or that. My prayer is during this time,
we will order our lives around Sunday, that we will remember
the Sabbath day to keep it holy. And when we can return to church,
we will be ready. My prayer is also that we’ll
keep in mind those who are homebound. We’re experiencing what they
experience weekly and monthly and yearly. There’s some people
in our congregation that haven’t been to Sunday worship in years
because of their health. They are infirmed, they’re unable
to make it. And so my prayer is that we will treasure worship.
We will treasure Christ in our midst. Christ receiving the praises
of the congregation and offering them up to God in divine worship
in the heavenly places. My prayer is that we will love
Zion. We will love the church. that
we will be pilgrims and disciples, pilgrims who are making their
way to heaven, pilgrims who 52 weeks out of the year, year by
year, a lifelong habit of in God’s house, with God’s people,
on God’s day, receiving God’s grace. My hope is that we’ll
also be disciples, lifelong learners, growing into maturity. and pressing
on toward the great prize of the new heavens, the new earth,
the new Jerusalem, the great Zion that is above. Grace to
you and peace, and may this word of encouragement, this overview
of the Psalms of ascent, be of great help to you. Stay tuned
as we’ll study together Psalm 120.