Download Audio: 05-31-2009-Sermon
Just a few mornings ago, Laurie shared with me that while she was busy with some laundry Erin came to ask her a question. “Mommy, how to you spell ‘slippery’?” Laurie stopped her work and wrote slippery on the paper that Erin had brought to her, thinking little of it. Well, when Laurie finished in the Utility room and walked through the kitchen she discovered what Erin was up to…
She had spilled her milk in the kitchen floor. But instead of wiping it up, she had put some towels down on top of the milk and placed a most helpful sign below it reading ‘slippery.’ Erin turned four this past week and her third year and episodes like that certainly lighten up the huge task of parenting.
Erin sincerely meant to be as helpful as possible to her mother and all who would travel through our kitchen that day. Thinking about that episode reminds me that we all need help as we travel through our lives. There are many dangers in the world that could cause us to slip and fall at any minute, and we need to help each other to avoid the dangers around us. Our efforts, as a church, are designed to provide just such help in a spiritual way.
At the same time, our efforts are often very limited. I am reminded almost daily that I am an exceedingly limited person, and the help that I can offer to my family and to my friends is minimal. I pray that my ability to help others spiritually will grow, but the good news is that there is One who is much greater than any of us and His ability to help His people is unlimited. Our God is great and powerful, and He can help us like no other.
We all stand in need of the help of the Almighty. None of us can avoid the slippery spots of sin as we tread the Christian path. Psalm 120 introduces us to the kind of help God gives His people. This Psalm gleams with insight into what it means to live the Christian life.
It is important to recognize that Psalm 120 introduces a series of Psalms known as the “Songs of Ascent.” These fifteen Psalms (Psalms 120-134) seem to have been sung by the Israelites as they made their way up to Jerusalem for the three major annual feasts [Passover, Pentecost, and the Day of Atonement]. As they were ascending to Jerusalem for their feasts, they would sing these Psalms as reminders of God’s help for them.
As we mediate on the Songs of Ascent and the 120th Psalm in particular, we are reminded that God’s help for the Christian is immense and praiseworthy. God’s help is immense for living in this world, and God’s help is immense for leaving this world. Those are the two headings we want to explore; God’s help for living in this world and leaving this world. As we do, we must remember that all the help we will ever need in life was given to us when God Himself came from His world into our world in the Person of His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus came, lived, died, rose again, and now reigns in heaven to give us all the help we will ever need to live the Christian life.
I. God gives help for living in this world (1-4).
David begins this Psalm by acknowledging his need for help and extolling the help that God gave him. The word “distress” speaks of trouble, adversity, and affliction. David, just like every Christian, lived his life through trouble, adversity, and affliction. We all have some measure of trouble in our lives this morning; some more than others, but we all have trouble; trouble with a particular sin, like worry; trouble with our bodies; like bursitis; trouble in relationships; like marital conflict.
But what do you do when you have trouble? Really, now, what do you do when you find yourself face to face with some trouble? It seems to me that when we face trouble our options are limited; we can check out (with drugs or entertainment), we can pig out with food or alcohol), or we can drop out (simply fail to meet responsibilities) maybe quit our job or leave our marriage.
But David had another response, we could say, he called out. He called out to the Lord in his trouble. And he could joyfully say that “the Lord answered me and delivered me”. What a testimony? The Lord is real. He is present. He answers the prayers of those who trust in Him, and He delivers them.
O to know God as David knew God. Our translations capitalize LORD here to signify the covenant name of God, Yahweh or Jehovah. This reminds us that God is the existing one. He is. He is our God and answers and delivers. When the day of adversity finds you, when trouble is upon you like an angry bear, when affliction would drag you into the pit of despair, don’t check out, don’t pig out, don’t drop out, call out to the living God who is found in Jesus Christ.
“The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble” (Psalm 9:9). Call out to Him by faith in His Son for He gives help for living in this fallen world filled with so much pain. God gives help for living in the world, not living above, somehow immune to its fallen state. Call out to Him through prayer. Find others who will pray with you, and He will be found.
David readily acknowledged that much of his trouble was caused by godless people. Deliver me from “lying lips” and a “deceitful tongue” he said. In verses 3-4, David acknowledged that slanderers would someday be punished with God’s judgment. God’s judgment would be like a glowing coal in a sharp arrow piercing deeply and burning hot for a long time. The wood of “the broom tree” was known to produce a hot fire and coals that would burn for a very long time. Some wrote of making a tire with the wood of a broom trip while on a journey and returning a year later to find it still smoldering.
So, God helps us to endure being slandered by others, being hurt by other people by remembering that God’s judgment against sin is piercing and burns forever. This serves to temper our own judgment of others and softens our hearts to hope that they can find mercy as we have.
One of the great Old Testament stories reminds us of God’s way of delivering His people. The ungodly Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar ordered everyone in his kingdom to bow down and worship his great golden image. Three godly Hebrew young men, remembering the first two commandments, could not engage in this worship. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, as we know them, were threatened to be punished by being thrown into the fiery furnace, heated to seven times its normal temperature.
Yet, they said to the king, “”O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up” (Daniel 3:16-17).
That is the kind of faith that we too must have as we serve the same God in our day. Whether we live or die, whether we prosper or suffer, we will bow down to no other gods, but the Living God, the true God. He is able to deliver us, but even if He allows us to be consumed, yet we will worship Him.
Of course, it was in the furnace that the three Hebrews walked with the Son of God. Nebuchadnezzar witnessed this to his own amazement. Friends, even if we walk through the fires of affliction, we can rise up from them without so much as the stench of smoke upon us when we walk with the Savior. Walking with Christ is all the help we need as we walk through our troubles. God ruled over Nebuchadnezzar with His sovereign and powerful hand, and God rules over those who would trouble us as well.
I can’t but notice that the word “deliver” in verse 2 means to “snatch away” or “to rescue.” It is true that God will not always snatch us away from our trouble in this life. God does not always take away our multiple sclerosis. God does not always make our marriage easy. Usually, God gives us strength and grace to endure great hardship in a way that pleases Him, that is to say, we learn to have patience and joy even through our hardships. This is the normal operation of God.
But someday God will quite literally “snatch away” His people. This is the very idea of what will happen when Christ returns. He will snatch us away from this world and into the next. Until He does that, He gives us help for living in this world. When He does that, He will give us help for leaving this world.
II. God gives help for leaving this world (5-7).
As we move down to verses 5-7, we find David looking upon himself as a sojourner. Notice verse 5. The sojourn means “to live as a resident alien, not as a native born citizen” Meschech and Kedar were literal places in the ancient world, but David probably used the names of these places figuratively. These were places known to be inhabited by violent and immoral people who did not worship the true and living God. It would be akin to us saying something like “we live among barbarians.” David viewed himself as a stranger in the world, traveling through this world
When Laurie and I met several years ago, she was concluding her Master’s work at Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth. Her thesis related to ministering to Refugees. She had not only researched this field of ministry but had labored in it while she studied in Fort Worth. Along with her mother, I was blessed to travel with Laurie down to Fort Worth for her graduation.
While we were there, we visited a refugee family whom Laurie had actually served while a student at Southwestern. Walid was an Iraqi man who had gained asylum in the United States after being imprisoned and tortured by the government of Sadam Hussein. He had come to America with his Syrian born wife Fahima. Laurie spent time in their home teaching them English as a Second Language. We sat on the floor of their apartment that evening and ate a delicious traditional meal.
As we did, my eyes were slowly opened to some things. For one thing, I discovered that Laurie displayed much more compassion and courage than me by going into those places and ministering to such people. Those are but two qualities I admire in Laurie, and I thank God that He has given me such a lovely wife from whom I can learn so much.
But my eyes were also opened to reality that in urban areas, like Fort Worth, thousands of people live among us not as citizens but as refugees. Walid and Fahima are perfect examples of what it means to live as sojourners. David learned to live as a sojourner though he was not one literally. Jesus lived as a sojourner though He never left His native land.
God gives us help to live as sojourners though we may never leave our native land. The Bible tells us that our true “citizenship is in heaven” (Phi 3:20). What this means is that, as believers, we are a spiritual people. Yes, we live in this world, but we know that we are destined to leave it. We will spend eternity with Christ on the New Earth. Therefore, this life is temporary, it is passing away, and we must not love it too much.
To recognize that we are sojourners helps us in so many ways. We will not fear when government fails because we know that Christ presides over every human authority and will someday establish His own government over us forever. We will not buy into the gospel of sexual liberation because we know that Christ gives us more pleasure in marriage and will someday bring us to a world of infinite pleasure that will never end. We will not fret if we lose all our earthly possessions because we know God has promised to give us all we need in this life and will someday bring us to a world of eternal perfect provision.
When we look at verses 6-7, we are reminded that as sojourners we live contrary to the prevailing mood of the world around us. Notice 6-7. David was a man who had come to know God’s shalom, God’s peace. Yet, he recognized that he lived in a constant state of spiritual warfare.
Remember, dear Christian, that God has given you His peace through His Son Jesus Christ. Yet, as long as you live, you will be engaged in spiritual warfare. You will battle your own inner corruption to the day you die. You will struggle against a culture that opposes God and His way to the day you die. You will fight against Satan and His deceptions to the day you die.
God has promised to give us the whole armour of God and fight the good fight of faith. God will help you with His armour, but you must put it on. Join ranks with the people of God and battle your way through your temptations, your trials, your testing. God will help you as you do.
Notice David’s words in verse 5; “I dwell among the tents.” The word dwell means to settle down, to reside, or tabernacle. David recognized that he lived among people who were actually warring against God by refusing His covenant of peace, and he was grieved to live in a world filled with rebellion against God. If we are truly Christians, we too will be grieved as we see the sin and rebellion against God in our world. We should grieve when we see rebellion against God and the devastation that sin brings.
But we must remember, that to some degree, we too still rebel against God on a daily basis when we choose our sin over Him. Our hearts are inclined to drift away from God and toward our own corrupt desires. Therefore, we live among a people who oppose God, but we do not hate them. Rather, we recognize that we are just like them, except we have come to know the mercies of God in Christ.
Those who think that we, as evangelical Christians, pose a threat of violence against those who disagree with us are terribly mistaken. God never calls us to take the sword of steel against unbelievers. We would never physically harm another person because they disagree with our faith. Rather, we would use the sword of the Spirit to endeavor to show them the devastation of rebellion against God. We would seek by every legitimate and living means to compel every one we can to turn away from war against God and to embrace the peace of God found in Jesus Christ.
But the idea of “living among the tents of Kedar” reminds us of something else. The Apostle John wrote, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The greatest help and the greatest hope that God has given to us was sending His son to “dwell among us” to “tabernacle us” for a few years on this earth.
Jesus came and lived as a sojourner. He lived among those who lied about Him. He lived among those who opposed Him and hated Him. Jesus lived among us temporarily so that by faith in Him we would live with Him permanently. When Jesus died on the cross, He made peace between God and sinners. Jesus died because of our sin. Jesus rose again to conquer the warring rebel heart within us. Jesus lives in the heavenly realm this morning to give sufficient help for all who will call upon Him by faith.
Someday, Jesus will unite the heavenly and the earthly. Someday, Jesus will return to the earth, and He will bring all who trust in Him into that new and perfect world. This is God’s help for leaving this world. Friends, we are living here only temporarily. We are sojourners here. But when we rise with Christ, we will be citizens of that world forever.
Just a few weeks ago, I applied for my passport for the Haiti Mission Trip. I made my application at the Downtown Post Office. I filled out the paperwork, presented my birth certificate, sat as they took my picture, and paid my money. Just a few days ago, I received that passport in the mail. I remain a United States citizen, but that passport gives me legal permission to go to Haiti for a brief trip and return safely to my home, or at least I hope it does.
Now, you can only gain passports to heaven by turning from sin to trust in Jesus Christ. Jesus died to give heavenly passports to all who believe in Him. But, if you would be ready to leave this world and enter the next, then you must make application at the cross. Your particular needs may be many and varied. But, would you believe that God provided all the help you would ultimately ever need, when the Son of God died on a cross ages ago? Do you believe that? Will you believe that? If you are to find true and lasting help, then you must believe that.
