Christ is Risen, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8

Easter Sunday, 2013

Shiloh Lutheran Church 

I heard Benedict Groeschel tell of attending an Easter sunrise service. The setting was beautiful, at the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean, almost the ideal place to celebrate the Resurrection. But when the pastor stood up to preach, he began with these words: “It doesn’t matter whether or not Jesus truly rose from the dead.” It doesn’t matter whether or not the Resurrection really happened. This is similar to something I read from an Easter sermon a few years ago: “O my dearly beloved people, you must understand why the disciples were huddled together in the upper room, why they did not believe the women who returned with the joyous news that Jesus, our Brother and Friend, was no longer dead, but in a very real sense alive once more. It was because they, like all of us, were afraid of what was new, of God’s revelation of God’s new work among us of which we are always frightened because we, imprisoned in old prejudices, old comforts, and old conceptions of reality, naturally draw back. God wants us to reach out for the gift that God has prepared for us, to be born again, to arise from the captivity of the living death we so easily come to love, and to follow Jesus, who, in the deepest and realest sense, rose from the dead to bring us the new life we celebrate on this wonderful Easter morning” (quoted by S.M. Hutchins in Touchstone, April 2001, p. 8). It may not be true, but it’s such a wonderful thing anyway. Is this the message of Easter, that by accepting a new conception of reality we’ll be able to see that Christ is, in a very real sense, alive? Is that what makes this a “wonderful Easter morning?” Is that what we’re celebrating today?

Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15 were prompted by problems in the church at Corinth. Most of them, in the earlier part of the letter, were related to order and unity, but now he’s concerned that some among them were undermining the doctrine of the resurrection. He says, in verse 12: “But tell me this--since we preach that Christ arose from the dead, why are some of you saying there will be no resurrection of the dead? For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either.” They weren’t attacking the resurrection of Christ directly, but by denying that the dead are going to be raised, they were undermining Christ’s resurrection as well. They were moving in a direction which would eventually lead them to deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Or, maybe they would continue to use the words, but empty them of meaning, like the preacher I quoted a few minutes ago.

Paul’s understanding of the resurrection is just the opposite of what this preacher was saying. First, he makes it clear that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is not something new and novel. It is not “God’s new work among us,” but the fulfillment of all God has been doing since the Fall. This is why Paul stresses, twice, these words “according to the Scriptures.” He had been accused of sectarianism, of preaching a new, novel message. He’d been accused of leading people away from the hope of Israel, and he responded, over and over again, that he was not preaching a new message, but only a mystery which had been kept hidden until God chose to reveal it.

Paul told the Jews in Rome, when he arrived there as a prisoner: “It is because of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain” (Acts 28:20). He is bound because of the “hope of Israel,” not because of “God’s new work among us.” Christ’s death and resurrection is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham that in his seed all nations on earth would be blessed. The gospel is the fulfillment of God’s great purpose of redemption through the ages.

The second thing to notice here is that the resurrection of Jesus is not based on a new “conception of reality.” To say that Jesus “in the deepest and realest sense, rose from the dead” is to say that He did not rise from the dead at all. Paul assumes here that Jesus’ resurrection took place in real history. If we had been there on Easter morning, we could have seen Him. We could have walked into the tomb and seen that the stone had been rolled aside. We could have seen the grave clothes lying empty in the tomb, and we could have walked over and touched them. Paul isn’t talking here about a special category of religious truth. He’s not talking about a visionary experience that the disciples had, which persuaded them that Jesus “in the deepest sense” was truly alive. They had seen Him and interacted with Him over a significant period of time.

Christ died and was buried. As far as the disciples were concerned, it was all over at that point. All their hopes about Him had been dashed to the ground. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus expressed their feelings about what had happened: “[Jesus of Nazareth] was a prophet who did wonderful miracles. He was a mighty teacher, highly regarded by both God and all the people. But our leading priests and other religious leaders arrested him and handed him over to be condemned to death, and they crucified him. We had thought he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel” (Luke 24:19-21). “We had thought.” But His death destroyed all that. The disciples had given up hope. They had no expectation that He was going to rise from the dead. It was all over.

But then something happened which completely changed them. These disciples who, immediately after the crucifixion were hiding out because of their fear of the Jewish leaders, were soon preaching boldly and facing death because of their certainty of the resurrection. What made the change? Do we really think they persuaded themselves to adopt a “new conception of reality” which then enabled them to convince themselves that Jesus was, “in a very real sense,” alive? No, their view was the same as Paul’s: “if Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless.... and if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless, and you are still under condemnation for your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ have perished! And if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world” (1 Corinthians 15:14, 17-20). Without the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, there is no gospel to preach. Our faith is useless.

This is why Paul puts so much emphasis on the number of eyewitnesses who saw Jesus. He was raised, and then “he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living....” What’s his point here? Most of these eyewitnesses were still living when he wrote this letter. If the readers were in doubt about Paul’s words, they could easily speak to some of these five hundred who saw the risen Christ. And Paul himself speaks as an eyewitness. The Lord had appeared to him, not in a vision, but in the flesh. The resurrection of Christ had the support of a very large number of eyewitnesses. Anyone in doubt could go to these people and question them.

The third thing to notice here is that the resurrection of Jesus leads to more than a new perspective, free from our old prejudices and old conceptions of reality. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead changes everything. By raising Him from the dead, God set His seal of approval on Jesus’ death “for our sins.” Paul is listing things which are “of first importance,” and he begins with this: “that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.”

There’s a great picture of what this means in the book of Leviticus. Leviticus is one of those books where people often get bogged down in their attempts to read the Bible, because it’s full of details about the Old Testament sacrificial system. But all these things look forward to Christ, and they’ve been perfectly fulfilled in Him. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would choose two goats. One of them would be sacrificed, and its blood sprinkled in the most holy place, to atone for the sins of the people. But the other goat was kept alive. Here are the instructions about the second goat: “he [the priest] is to lay both of his hands on the goat’s head and confess over it all the sins and rebellion of the Israelites. In this way, he will lay the people’s sins on the head of the goat; then he will send it out into the wilderness, led by a man chosen for this task. After the man sets it free in the wilderness, the goat will carry all the people’s sins upon itself into a desolate land” (Leviticus 16:21-22). The first goat gives us a picture of sin being paid for, and the second (which is called the scapegoat) gives us a picture of our sins being carried far away “into a desolate land.” This is what the Psalmist has in mind when he says “He has removed our rebellious acts as far away from us as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12). He’s sent them far away, into a desolate land.

One of the main points of the letter to the Hebrews is that everything in the Old Testament sacrificial system points forward to Christ: “The old system in the law of Moses was only a shadow of the things to come, not the reality of the good things Christ has done for us. The sacrifices under the old system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship.... But our High Priest offered himself to God as one sacrifice for sins, good for all time. Then he sat down at the place of highest honor at God’s right hand” (Hebrews 10:1, 12). Our sin, the crushing load of debt we owed to God because of our rebellion, has been crossed out and carried into a desolate land, as far as east is from west.

Because Christ is risen from the dead, everything is different. When people talk about living in the power of the resurrection, often it’s clear that they’re thinking of something very dramatic, something that makes them feel good. But many times God carries us through periods of darkness and we’re not even aware of it. The thing that matters is not how strong we feel, but the reality of God’s strength. We don’t always feel resurrection power surging within us. William Cowper struggled with debilitating depression for most of his life. He was a friend of John Newton, the former slave trader who wrote the hymn, “Amazing Grace.” Cowper hungered for more of God, but he was often overwhelmed with a sense of his own weakness. We catch something of this in these lines:
O for a closer walk with God,

a calm and heav’nly frame,
a light to shine upon the road
that leads me to the Lamb.

But he also experienced God’s grace in the midst of his weakness. Listen to these lines that he wrote:

Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings; it is the Lord, who rises with healing in his wings: When comforts are declining, he grants the soul again a season of clear shining, to cheer it after rain. In holy contemplation we sweetly then pursue the theme of God’s salvation, and find it ever new; set free from present sorrow, we cheerfully can say, “Let the unknown tomorrow bring with it what it may.”

William Cowper spent much of his life in darkness. He was plagued by fears and doubts over his salvation; more than once he was institutionalized after trying to take his life. But sometimes the light of the Lord took him by surprise and refreshed him and freed him from present sorrow, not because he persuaded himself to look at things differently, but because the risen Lord came to him in his need. But even in the darkest times, even in the times when he didn’t experience any immediate relief, the Lord kept him, and now he is in that place where there is no more sorrow or fear, and where the Lord’s presence is never hidden from him. Now he’s freed forever from the power and presence of sin, and his sense of the Lord’s presence is never clouded. If you’re discouraged and overwhelmed with a sense of your own weakness, take heart. Christ is risen. He will do what you cannot do for yourself. He is truly risen and is at the right hand of God the Father, interceding for us. The One who paid in full the debt for our sin is now living and interceding for us and has promised to be with us until the end.

As we celebrate the resurrection this morning, let’s remind ourselves of why we’re here. We’re here because God included us in this great work that He’s been carrying on since the Fall. We get caught up in the pressures of daily life, and we so easily lose sight of this. Does life sometimes seem like an intolerable burden to you? Do you sometimes lose your sense of purpose and wonder whether it’s all worth it? Take comfort in the certainty that Jesus is risen from the dead, and that if you belong to Him you are, right now, seated with Him in the heavenly places. You’ve been made part of something bigger than yourself, something beyond your wildest dreams. Jesus is risen from the dead, and we are risen with Him to new life. We’re here, also, because of our certain hope of a future resurrection. Often we don’t feel exhilarated with a sense of God’s presence, but we can rejoice in hope of sharing the glory of God, because “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). Whatever is happening at the moment, even if we go through terrible times of darkness, like William Cowper, we know that we are going to spend eternity in His presence, where there is no more suffering, or sorrow or death, and where He will wipe away all tears from our eyes. Christ is risen, and we will also rise from the dead with Him. And we’re here this morning because Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead. We who were enemies have been reconciled to God, and we now have free access into His presence. When you feel weighted down with a load of guilt, when you feel unworthy to lift your eyes to heaven, remind yourself that Jesus died for our sins and is risen from the dead. Your sin has been carried far away, into a desolate land. Persuading ourselves that Jesus is “in a very real sense alive” is nothing but a psychological trick, and it will fail us in the end. It’s unbelief trying to pretend that it still believes “in a very real way.” What we need to know is the truth, and the truth is that Christ is truly risen from the dead. May God grant us a deeper realization of this truth.

God Our Protector, Psalm 125

Very early in my Christian life, I became concerned about the problem of perseverance. I was conscious of my own weakness, and I knew that Satan would put many snares in my path to destroy my faith. One of the verses in Amazing Grace says: “Through many dangers toils and snares I have already come.” At that point in my Christian life I was aware that these dangers toils and snares lay ahead of me, rather than behind me. I wanted to follow the Lord faithfully to the end, but I felt overwhelmed by the possibility of falling away. Robert Robinson, in his hymn, "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing," was aware of this same possibility when he wrote "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love." He had lived a notoriously sinful life until he was converted under the ministry of George Whitefield. He then went on to become a preacher, and wrote a number of books and hymns. But later on in his life he turned away.

When I was in High School, I had three friends who were serious Christians. I wasn't a believer at the time, but they made an impression on me. They were different in a way that I respected, and they seemed to know something about fellowship with God. I became a Christian about a year after I graduated, and, since I didn't have many models to look to, I often thought about these three and found encouragement from their example. (I had left the area by this time and couldn't speak to them personally). Today, none of them are following the Lord; all three have turned away, for one reason or another.

A little over a year after I became a Christian, I turned away for about 8 months or so and tried desperately to erase the reality of God’s presence from my memory. But everywhere I turned, I found Him relentlessly pursuing me, and finally, early in 1976, I bowed before His lordship and have not turned away since that time. But for the first few years after that experience I was really fearful of the possibility of falling away again. I had seen, from experience, that I was “prone to wander,” and I was constantly on my guard against the danger. Eugene Peterson tells about growing up in the church with an acute awareness of the danger of backsliding: “Backslider was a basic word in the religious vocabulary that I learned as I grew up. Exempla were on display throughout the town: people who had made a commitment of faith to our Lord, were active in our little church and who lost their footing on the ascent to Christ and backslid.... Backsliding was everywhere and always an ominous possibility. Warnings were frequent and the sad consequences on public display. The mood was anxious and worried. I was taught to take my spiritual temperature every day, or at least every week; if it was not exactly ‘normal,’ there was general panic. I got the feeling that backsliding was not something you did, it happened to you. It was an accident that intruded on the unwary or an attack that involved the undefended” (A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, pp. 79-80). That’s a pretty accurate description of the way I looked at backsliding in the first few years of my Christian life.

The author of Psalm 125 sees things very differently. The life of faith is not something precarious. It’s not like “walking a tightrope without a safety net.” It’s more like sitting in a fortress (Peterson, p. 80). “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.” The psalmist is surrounded by difficulties and dangers. His pilgrimage has not been easy, and at times he’s been reduced to despair. But he’s not worried about whether his strength will hold out or whether he’ll accidentally get knocked off the path. “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.”

The focus of Psalm 124 is on the Lord’s faithfulness in the past. He’s looking back and rejoicing in God’s deliverance from trouble. “If the Lord had not been on our side... when men attacked us, when their anger flared against us, they would have swallowed us alive.... Praise be to the Lord, who has not let us be torn by their teeth.... Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” He’s learned from experience that God is faithful. The focus in Psalm 125 is on God’s faithfulness in the future. Knowing that God has cared for us in the past doesn’t help unless we’re assured that He will continue to watch over us in the future. Unless we have some assurance that God won’t change His mind about us and decide that maybe we just aren’t worth all the trouble, we’re going to be plagued by uncertainty and insecurity. We’ll be constantly taking our spiritual pulse and wondering whether our strength will hold out until the end.

First, notice that the psalmist is confident about the future because of God’s relationship with His people: “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forevermore.” The source of his confidence doesn’t rest in himself. He’s confident, not because he hopes that maybe he’ll be able to hang on till the end. He’s confident because he knows that God is hanging onto him.

Part of the problem early in my Christian life was that I was aware of the necessity of perseverance. I knew, without a doubt, that perseverance in faith is a necessary part of our salvation. The New Testament has very stern warnings for those who commit apostasy, who turn finally and completely away from the Lord. In speaking about the end times, Jesus says: “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24: 12-13). Paul says, in writing to the Colossians: “But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation–if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel” (Colossians 1:22–23). And the letter to the Hebrews, written to people who were on the verge of turning away, is full of warnings about the consequences of turning our backs on the only hope of salvation. He warns them and exhorts them to remain faithful, as in this passage: “We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised” (Hebrews 6:11-12). I had read all these verses and more, and I was very much aware of my own weakness. But I thought it all depended on me. I thought God would protect me as long as I trusted Him to do so, but it was possible that I might someday find myself unable to trust in Him. What would happen to me then? God had been protecting me, but He had done so because of my faith, and if my faith failed in the future all would be lost. I was depending on God in a sense, but His protection was only available if I was aware of, and trusting in, Him. Ultimately, my faith was the most important thing in my long-term survival as a Christian.

If it depends on us, of course we’re not going to have much confidence. We’re weak, and fickle. We make new resolutions at the beginning of the year, but most of them don’t survive for even a month. The psalmist has made a good start, and he’s learned from painful experience that God is faithful to His people. But he’s also aware that God will be faithful to him in the future, that “God surrounds his people both now and forevermore.” He doesn’t say: “God surrounds his people, as long as their faith is strong.” Sometimes their faith is weak. Sometimes they feel abandoned, and aren’t even aware of His protection. Sometimes they completely lose hope.

I’m glad Psalm 88 is in the Bible. In many of the Psalms, the author begins by crying out in distress and need, but most of the time his hope is restored by the end of the Psalm. But not always. Psalm 88 begins: “O Lord, the God who saves me, day and night I cry out before you. May my prayer come before you; turn your ear and hear my cry. For my soul is full of trouble and my life draws near the grave” (vv. 1-3). The psalmist cries out repeatedly, but he seems to find no sense of comfort. Here he is, near the end of the psalm: “But I cry to you for help, O Lord; in the morning my prayer comes before you. Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me?” (vv. 13-14). God seems distant, even though the psalmist is crying out to Him and is in desperate need. And then the psalm ends with these words: “You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend” (v. 18). The psalmist is in despair, and he is crying out to God, but he finds no comfort. Everything around him is dark and hopeless. Sometimes life is like that, in this fallen world. God doesn’t always respond on our timetable. But even in those dark times, it’s true that “God surrounds his people, both now and forevermore.” The thing that sets God’s people apart is not that they always feel good about things; it’s not that we’re always overflowing with hope. Sometimes we become overwhelmed and lose sight of the truth about ourselves in Christ. But God is among us, even when we’re unable to perceive His presence. And because He surrounds us, we cannot be shaken.

The next thing to notice here, in verse 3, is that God places limits on the bad things that happen to us. “The scepter of the wicked will not remain over the land allotted to the righteous.” This psalm was probably written sometime after the captivity in Babylon. The people were taken captive for 70 years, and a remnant returned after Babylon was overthrown. But they were under foreign domination from this point on (apart from a very brief interlude during the Maccabean period). The “scepter of the wicked” was over their land. God had permitted His people to be ruled by pagan nations. But the author is saying that this will not always be true. God has set a time limit on the rule of wicked people.

In setting a boundary on evil, God is preserving His people: “for then the righteous might use their hands to do evil.” Without this certainty that God is one day going to set things right, that He is going to create a just and perfect world, God’s people might be tempted to take matters into their own hands. They might be tempted to do evil, in the hopes of somehow making things better, at least for awhile. Some of the worst atrocities in history have been committed by people who were trying to create a more just society. What happened? Were they intent on evil from the beginning? No, they earnestly desired to create a better world, but they ran into the problem of human sinfulness. They found that most people really don’t care about justice, as long as their needs are being met. So, in order to create a more perfect society, the revolutionaries decided to kill off those in power. Society needed to be purged of their evil influence. But as they carried this out, the revolutionaries found themselves corrupted and twisted. They became worse than the tyrants they replaced. Most revolutions in the past century promised to help the poor and oppressed, but in reality they have only resulted in worse oppression as the new leaders have become corrupted by power and violence. In setting a limit on evil, God is protecting His people from starting down this road; “for then the righteous might use their hands to do evil.” God assures us that the scepter of the wicked will not remain.

In describing the dark times before His return, Jesus said this: “For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now–and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened” (Matthew 24:21-22). For the sake of His people, God will not permit those days to continue; He’s placed a limit on those evil days. And God also prevents us from being tempted beyond our ability to endure: “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). God is protecting us. Evil is both temporary and limited.

Often it’s not limited as much as we’d like. Several years ago I heard a testimony from a woman who had been a missionary in Africa. She had been there for some years, when a movement rose up to overthrow the government. But in addition to fighting the government, they were committing atrocities against foreigners. She said she prayed during that time and told the Lord that she was prepared to lay down her life for Him, but that she couldn’t endure it if they raped her. But that’s what happened, and she was able to testify later that she was aware of God’s presence strengthening and protecting her, even though her worst fears were being realized. And she was able to testify to the reality of God’s grace and love in the midst of horrible outward circumstances. “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.” Evil is temporary and limited, and He strengthens us to bear the evil which we are called to endure.

God preserves us and keeps us. But there’s always a danger of presumption. There are those who hear a message like this and say, “it doesn’t matter what I do. God will protect and keep me.” Does this psalm give us grounds for carelessness in our spiritual lives? Will God keep us in the faith no matter what we do? Look at verses 4-5. The psalmist prays that God will “do good... to those who are good, to those who are upright in heart. But those who turn to crooked ways the Lord will banish with the evildoers.” He’s praying for God to protect and preserve those who are seeking to follow Him, but he’s also assured that God will remove those who are intent on apostasy. They will be banished with the evildoers.

There are people who make a profession of faith, enter into the life of the church and make considerable progress, but then something happens and they turn away and never return. A friend of mine had a seminary teacher that he really admired. He was a competent New Testament scholar. But he also had a strong emphasis on the importance of godly living, and he really stood out on the seminary faculty, where some of the teachers seemed more intent on academic ability than spiritual maturity. I met him once and was impressed with him. But he decided to walk away from the faith. He left his wife and children behind, moved in with another woman and became a Buddhist. As far as I know he’s never returned.

What should we make of a story like that, and how should it influence us? I don’t know what was going on in this man’s heart at the moment when he finally decided to walk away from God, but I do know that it didn’t happen all at once. My friend said, looking back, that he could see signs that the man was headed in that direction. A former pastor of mine once said: “There are no blowouts in the Christian life, only slow leaks.” This man had been walking away from God for a long time before it became evident in his outward behavior.

It’s not easy to walk away from God. We all have times when we are dry spiritually, when we have no desire to read the Bible or pray. But God keeps us during those times. Apostasy isn’t something that just happens to us while we’re not paying attention. I turned away for 8 months in 1975, and it just about killed me. I did everything I knew to keep God out of my conscious awareness, but in early 1976, I came to the end of myself and turned back to the Lord. He doesn’t make it easy on us when we try to run from Him. Francis Thompson was an opium addict in London in the late 1800's, and he wrote a poem called “The Hound of Heaven,” describing his efforts to flee from God and God’s insistent pursuit of him. He says “I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him....” He describes, at great length, fleeing from “those strong Feet that followed, followed after.” But there’s a constant awareness, throughout the poem, that God is pursuing him: “But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat–and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet–‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’” God wouldn’t let him go, and everything that he tried, in his attempts to drown the voice of God, ended up betraying him, so that at the end he found himself defeated and joyfully reconciled to this One who had lovingly pursued him.

It’s not easy to walk away from God. My experience was very much like that of Francis Thompson (although it didn’t last as long). Here’s what Eugene Peterson says: “it is not possible to drift unconsciously from faith to perdition. We wander like lost sheep, true; but he is a faithful shepherd who pursues us relentlessly. We have our ups and downs, zealously believing one day and gloomily doubting the next, but he is faithful. We break our promises, but he doesn’t break his. Discipleship is not a contract in which if we break our part of the agreement he is free to break his; it is a covenant in which he establishes the conditions and guarantees the results. Certainly, you may quit if you wish. You may say no to God. It’s a free faith. You may choose the crooked way. He will not keep you against your will. But it is not the kind of thing you fall into by chance or slip into by ignorance. Defection requires a deliberate sustained and determined act of rejection” (A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, pp. 85-86).

The two extremes are presumption and paranoia. To those who presumptuously live careless lives, expecting that God will keep His end of the bargain no matter what, the answer is: “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God” (Hebrews 3:12). Presumption is one of the signs of a “sinful, unbelieving heart.” If you are guilty of this sort of attitude, the proper response is to cry out to God for mercy, and to ask Him to replace your sinful, unbelieving heart with a heart that bows before His lordship and longs to please Him in all things.

But to those who are fearful, the message is: “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever.” The Christian life is not like walking a tightrope, living constantly with the threat of falling to one side or the other. We fail, yes. We sin and rebel. But God has called us by His name; He has set His unchanging love upon us, and He has taken it upon Himself to bring us safely to His eternal kingdom. We set out on pilgrimage because He called us. But He doesn’t leave us on our own. He has promised to walk with us, even though at times we’re not aware of His presence.

Are you unsettled by some of the people who’ve traveled on pilgrimage toward God’s kingdom and then have turned away? Are you aware of your own weakness, so that at times you cry out, with Richard Robertson, “prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love”? Don’t be afraid. Cultivate a relationship with God. Seek to know Him and walk with Him, until you can’t bear the thought of being separated from His presence. This is the safest, surest way to avoid the extremes of presumption and paranoia.

Peter says something along these lines in his second letter. “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:3-11). May God strengthen us all to seek Him and to continue seeking Him until that day when He welcomes us into His glorious presence.

Rescued by God, Psalm 124

In January of 1982, I helped drive a bus from Amman, Jordan to Brussels, Belgium. George Verwer had just completed a tour of the Middle East in his bus and had flown back to England, leaving the bus in Jordan. The driver and I had worked together in India, so the OM leaders asked if I would fly down and help with the driving. The trip was pretty straightforward, except that we were under strict instructions not to travel at night in Damascus. We were to cross the border into Syria in the evening then spend the night there at the border. Then we could travel through Damascus in the morning, when it was more safe.

The people in Syria were more heavily armed than anywhere I’ve ever been. There were soldiers everywhere, but many of the civilians also carried guns. Shortly after we left Damascus, as we started up a long hill I saw a Mercedes parked on the side of the road, and two men with machine guns. They weren’t soldiers, and there was no one else in sight. As we approached them, they stepped into the street to stop us, but then after they had looked us over they stepped aside and let us go.

I don’t quite know what to make of that. Were they looking for someone specific? Were we in any real danger when they stepped into the street? Were they bandits, who intended to rob us, but then the Lord restrained them? I don’t know. I do know that many people drive into a situation like that and don’t come through it. It’s possible that they just weren’t interested in harming us, or it’s possible that the Lord intervened and came to our rescue. Often it’s like that. Often, when God rescues us from danger, it’s not clear to us in the end how serious the danger was. Once it’s past, we legitimately wonder whether things were really as bad as what we’d imagined.

In Psalm 124, the psalmist is looking back on a time when God came to the rescue of His people, but in this case there’s no doubt about the danger. They would have been destroyed if the Lord had not been with them. In Psalm 121, the psalmist is assured of God’s protection. He finds himself in trouble, threatened by the hazards of his pilgrimage, and he looks desperately to the hills, asking where his help is going to come from. And he concludes: “my help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” He knows it’s true, and he’s able to reassure himself because of who God is: “the maker of heaven and earth.” But in Psalm 124, he’s experienced God’s deliverance. In Psalm 121 he knew that God would care for him on his pilgrimage, but now he’s experienced it. He can look back on a time when it seemed that all was lost, that there was no hope of survival, and then God intervened. His experience has confirmed what he already knew about God. What he had believed by faith, he now knows from experience.

The psalmist has had a close call. He had set out on pilgrimage, and at the beginning maybe he hoped his problems would be over. Maybe he hoped that in traveling to Jerusalem he would be protected from problems and difficulties. But very early in his journey he learned that this is not the way God usually works. Right from the beginning, he’s been looking to the Lord to protect him. But things have just gotten worse. It’s one thing to encounter troubles and difficulties, but it’s another to know that without the Lord’s intervention you’ll be destroyed. His experience was like Paul’s time in Asia: “I think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and completely overwhelmed, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we learned not to rely on ourselves, but on God who can raise the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9, New Living Translation). I don’t know whether we were in serious danger in Syria. But the psalmist is not in doubt, nor is the apostle Paul. “If the Lord had not been on our side.... when people rose up against us, they would have swallowed us alive” (vv. 1-3a, NLT).

The psalmist uses two images to illustrate the seriousness of the situation. Eugene Peterson has a good description: “The people were in danger of being swallowed up alive; and they were in danger of being drowned by a flood. The first picture is of an enormous dragon or sea monster. Nobody has ever seen a dragon, but everybody (especially children) knows they exist. Dragons are projections of our fears, horrible constructions of all that might hurt us. A dragon is total evil. A peasant confronted by a magnificent dragon is completely outclassed. There is no escape: the dragon’s thick skin, fiery mouth, lashing serpentine tail, and insatiable greed and lust sign an immediate doom. The second picture, that of the flood, is a picture of sudden disaster. In the Middle East, watercourses which have eroded the countryside are all interconnected by an intricate, gravitational system. A sudden storm fills these little gullies with water, they feed into one another, and in a very few minutes a torrential flash flood is produced. Persons who live in these desert areas are endangered during the rainy season by such unannounced catastrophes. There is no escaping. One minute you are well and happy and making plans for the future; the next minute the entire world is disarranged by the catastrophe” (A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, pp. 69-70).

We don’t know who these enemies were. Israel was a small country surrounded by larger, more powerful nations, and they were frequently in danger of being overwhelmed. Apart from God’s intervention, they clearly had little chance for long-term survival. During Hezekiah’s reign, the king of Assyria threatened the people of Judah. Assyria was a powerful empire, and, humanly speaking, Judah wouldn’t have a chance against their military strength. They would have been “swallowed up alive.” The Assyrian king’s personal representative sent this message to Hezekiah: “I’ll tell you what! My master, the king of Assyria, will strike a bargain with you. If you can find two thousand horsemen in your entire army, he will give you two thousand horses for them to ride on! With your tiny army, how can you think of challenging even the weakest contingent of my master’s troops, even with the help of Egypt’s chariots and horsemen?” (Isaiah 36:8-9, NLT). Hezekiah and the people of Judah are completely outnumbered and outclassed. Even the thought of fighting such an army is unthinkable. But Hezekiah goes up to the Lord’s temple and prays: “O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, you are enthroned between the mighty cherubim! You alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You alone created the heavens and the earth. Listen to me, O Lord, and hear! Open your eyes, O Lord, and see! Listen to Sennacherib’s words of defiance against the living God” (Isaiah 37:16-17). And God comes to their rescue by putting to death 185,000 Assyrian troops in the middle of the night. So Hezekiah was able to say, with conviction, “if the Lord had not been on our side when men attacked us..., they would have swallowed us alive.” The psalmist may be looking back on a situation like this, where the whole nation is threatened, or it may be that his small band of pilgrims was in danger.

The people of God have had a close call, but God has intervened and come to their rescue. God “has not let us be torn by their teeth.” It was close, and at some point in the process, they probably wondered if it was all over. They could have said, with Paul, “We were crushed and completely overwhelmed, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die.” God didn’t keep things from reaching that point. He didn’t keep them out of trouble. But He did come to their rescue. He kept them from being torn by the dragon’s teeth. And He enabled them to escape the trap. The psalmist is referring here to a trap that was used for birds. It was made of two wooden frames, each covered with a net and joined together on one side, so they could be opened like a book. The snare laid flat on the ground, and when a bird came and took the bait, the two frames would spring shut, like jaws. There’s a reference to this kind of trap in the book of Amos: “Does a bird ever get caught in a trap that has no bait? Does a trap ever spring shut when there’s nothing there to catch?” (Amos 3:5, NLT). These snares were destroyed by breaking the frames. So the picture here is that they have been caught in the snare. God hasn’t kept them from being trapped, but He has enabled them to escape: “We have escaped like a bird out of the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped.” Eugene Peterson says this: “The psalmist is not a person talking about the good life, how God has kept him out of all difficulty. This person has gone through the worst–the dragon’s mouth, the flood’s torrent–and finds himself intact. He was not abandoned but helped. The final strength is not in the dragon or in the flood but in ‘the Lord who was on our side’” (p. 70).

He’s had a close call, and the Lord has intervened and come to his rescue. His experience has deepened and reinforced what he already knew. He ends this psalm with the same words that are in Psalm 121. In that psalm, the author had looked around and cried out: “I lift up my eyes to the hills–where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” And at the end of Psalm 124, after God’s rescue from a close call, he concludes: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” He’s not saying anything new, but his faith has been deepened and confirmed by experience.

Several years ago, Annie was talking to Leoda Buckwalter, who had been a missionary in India. Leoda was born in India, and she worked there for nearly 50 years. Annie asked her if it becomes easier to trust God when you get older. And Leoda replied that no, it doesn’t become easier. There are always new tests and trials of our faith. But then Leoda went on to say that she did have a lifetime of seeing God at work, of experiencing His help over and over again, and that this experience helped her to continue trusting God in each new situation. Her faith had been confirmed and deepened by experience. She had experienced God’s faithfulness for a lifetime; she knew, in a way that she couldn’t have known in her youth, that God is faithful.

There’s a tendency, in our culture today, to downplay the value of experience. Our culture idealizes youth, and devalues the experience that only comes with age. In the 70's George Burns recorded a song called “I wish I was eighteen again.” It was written from the perspective of an old man looking back and reminiscing about all the things he can’t do anymore. And, of course, if this life is all there is the song makes sense. But from a Christian perspective, the song has it all backwards. This world is not our home. We’re on a pilgrimage to our true home, the New Jerusalem. Where we’re going is better than anywhere we’ve yet been–so much better that it’s beyond our powers of description–so why would we want to go back? Have you ever watched films of climbers on Mt. Everest? Struggling with the lack of oxygen at that high altitude, they just put one step in front of the other and trudge up the mountain. I’ve never heard of a climber near the top of Everest saying to the others, “hey, that last 5000 feet has really been fun. Let’s slide down so we can do it all again before we get to the top!” Wanting to go back to the beginning in our Christian lives is like that; it would only take us further away from our goal.

One of the leaders in the 18th century revival in England said near the end of his life, “I’ve lived long enough to experience the things I’ve been preaching about all my life.” But we only gain that kind of experience by seeing God at work over the course of a lifetime. There are things that we just can’t know at the beginning of our Christian lives. We may hear about them and take hold of them by faith, but as we experience God’s care over a lifetime we find our faith strengthened and confirmed. We knew that God had promised to care for His people, but we’ve seen His faithfulness over and over again, and looking back at all He has done we are encouraged to continue trusting Him.

We need to be careful, though. This doesn’t mean that God will always rescue us in the way we’d like Him to. And it doesn’t mean that He’ll enable us, in the end, to accomplish everything we want. It’s easy to identify God’s purposes with our own hopes and dreams. It’s tempting to assume that when God helps us we’ll be successful at what whatever He leads us to do. But this may not be so. Paul was much more successful, by worldly standards, before he became a Christian. He says in Philippians: "If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more...." He then goes on to describe his former way of life as a Pharisee, and then says: "But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ" (Philippians 3:4, 7). Becoming a Christian did not cause Paul to prosper outwardly. Going on pilgrimage didn’t turn the psalmist into a great success story. God came to his rescue, but things continued to go wrong during his pilgrimage, and no doubt some things were never worked out to his satisfaction.

I am an admirer of the Puritans. They stood for godliness and a heartfelt commitment to the Lord in every area of life, and they did so during very difficult times. J.I. Packer says this about the long‑term success of their ministry: "The Puritans lost, more or less, every public battle that they fought. Those who stayed in England did not change the Church of England as they hoped to do, nor did they revive more than a minority of its adherents, and eventually they were driven out of Anglicanism by calculated pressure on their consciences. Those who crossed the Atlantic failed to establish New Jerusalem in New England; for the first fifty years their little colonies barely survived. They hung on by the skin of their teeth. But the moral and spiritual victories that the Puritans won by keeping sweet, peaceful, patient, obedient, and hopeful under sustained and seemingly intolerable pressures and frustrations give them a place of high honour in the believers' hall of fame, where Hebrews 11 is the first gallery." (A Quest for Godliness, p.23) They were faithful, but they were not successful in accomplishing their outward goals. They remind us, as Hebrews 11 does, that it is dangerous to assume that if we’re faithful, God will enable us to accomplish our goals, that He’ll work things out in a way that pleases us.

Living as pilgrims in this world involves taking a longer-term view of things. It involves getting to know God, giving Him the priority He deserves in our lives. Notice how much God is at the center in this psalm. “If the Lord had not been on our side... if the Lord had not been on our side” (vv. 1-2). “Praise be to the Lord” (v. 6). And “Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth” (v. 8). The sort of experience reflected in this psalm doesn’t just happen automatically. Our faith isn’t established and strengthened just by living a long time. It’s as we walk with God over a lifetime, cultivating an awareness of His priorities, that we find ourselves strengthened and established in the faith.

A major part of developing a longer term view of things is cultivating a growing familiarity with God’s Word. I often appalled at what a small priority God’s Word has in our lives. If you’re not doing any kind of systematic Bible reading right now, make it your goal to read through the New Testament by the end of the year. Or, if you have a bit more time, look up Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s Bible Reading Plan on the Internet. Another possibility is the One Year Bible. It has daily readings arranged to take you through the whole Bible in a year. It’s also a good idea to choose one short portion each day to spend more time with; read it several times, think about what it means and how it applies to your life; then pray over it. Whatever you do, make it your aim to cultivate an increasing awareness of God’s Word. It’s in Scripture that we see God revealing Himself, rescuing His people over and over again, despite their unworthiness.

But notice, also, that all the pronouns in this psalm are plural. “If the Lord had not been on our side.” “We have escaped.... Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” The psalmist isn’t standing on his own; he’s walking in company with God’s people. We need the support of one another. God has not called us to do this alone, but to walk with Him as part of a church. When we encounter difficulties, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and lose our perspective. It’s like we’re in a fog and we can’t see clearly to get ourselves out. At those times especially, we need one another. It’s often through one another that God comes to our rescue. The book of Hebrews is addressed to people who were in difficulties and were on the verge of turning away. The author of that letter urges them to continue supporting one another: “Without wavering, let us hold tightly to the hope we say we have, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Think of ways to encourage one another to outbursts of love and good deeds. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near” (Hebrews 10:23-25, NLT). Entering into the life of the church is an important part of walking with God over a lifetime. We’re on pilgrimage together.

We’re going to encounter difficulties along the way. Sometimes we won’t be sure whether God came to our rescue or whether the trouble was really insignificant in the first place, as in my opening example. But there will be times when the problems threaten to destroy us; there will be times when life seems too hard to bear. As we continue on, looking to God and crying out to Him for help, we will find ourselves developing a longer-term view of things, recognizing that we are strangers and pilgrims in this world, that we are headed for a place where everything will be made right, where God will dwell in our midst, and where He will wipe away all tears from our eyes. We’re not looking at the bright side of everything, we’re looking toward the bright reality that lies in our future. “We speak our words of praise in a world that is hellish; we sing our songs of victory in a world where things get messy; we live our joy among people who neither understand nor encourage us. But the content of our lives is God, not man. We are not scavenging in the dark alleys of the world, poking in its garbage cans for a bare subsistence. We are traveling in the light, toward God who is rich in mercy and strong to save. It is Christ, not culture, that defines our lives. It is the help we experience, not the hazards we risk, that shape our lives” (Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience, p. 75). As we continue on our pilgrimage, the most significant thing is not our weakness, but the certainty of God’s faithfulness and strength. God has shown Himself to be faithful. We are weak, but “our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

Looking for Mercy in a Merciless World, Psalm 123

As we continue in the Psalms of Ascent, we need to remind ourselves that these are Pilgrim Songs. The most likely explanation of this series of Psalms is that they were sung by pilgrims on their ascent to Jerusalem. The people of Israel were expected to travel to Jerusalem three times each year, to worship at the Temple, and on their journey they would sing these psalms. This pilgrimage to Jerusalem is a good picture of the Christian life. Just as they were on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, we are on pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem, our true home. Our whole life in Christ is a pilgrimage, which is why John Bunyan entitled his allegory of the Christian life The Pilgrim’s Progress.  We’ve seen this emphasis in the New Testament as well. This world is not our true home. We’re traveling through, on our way to the Eternal City. Here’s just one example from the book of Hebrews. The author is talking about some of the great heroes of the faith, and he says this: “All these faithful ones died without receiving what God had promised them, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed the promises of God. They agreed that they were no more than foreigners and nomads here on earth. And obviously people who talk like that are looking forward to a country they can call their own. If they had meant the country the came from, they would have found a way to go back. But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a heavenly city for them” (Hebrews 11:13-16, New Living Translation).

The first psalm in the series, Psalm 120, is a song for starting out. We begin with a realization that this world is not what we had hoped. It’s full of lies and deceit and violence. It’s a place where the wicked prosper, where bullies usually don’t get what they deserve, where the strong take advantage of the weak. We begin our pilgrimage crying out in despair: “Woe to me that I dwell in Meshech, that I live among the tents of Kedar! Too long have I lived among those who hate peace.” This world is not a benign place, so we cry out to God and begin our pilgrimage toward that better place which He has promised. But almost immediately, we encounter problems, so in Psalm 121 we find the psalmist crying out to God for help, and remembering that no matter what difficulties he has to face, his help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. In Psalm 122, we’re reminded of the purpose of the pilgrimage. It’s not adventure, or self-fulfillment or anything that revolves around ourselves. In our self-oriented, narcissistic culture, we need this reminder. The purpose of the pilgrimage is worship. The psalmist is excited about being in Jerusalem, but the focus is not Jerusalem in itself, but “the house of the Lord.” He’s going there to offer something to God.

Psalm 122 is a mountaintop experience. The psalmist is excited about being in Jerusalem for worship. He had so much looked forward to it–“I rejoiced when I heard them say ‘let us go to the house of the Lord’”–and now that he’s arrived, it’s everything he expected. He’s not disappointed. But in the very next psalm we find him crying out again in need. It’s important to know that God doesn’t allow us to stay on the mountaintop. Much of our pilgrimage in this fallen world involves the resolution to just keep going, no matter what. When we have exhilarating experiences in worship, it’s tempting to think that we’ve turned a corner and that God is going to allow us to stay there. Somehow, it seems like the remainder of our pilgrimage should be different, that we should go from strength to strength, rejoicing all the way. We think that maybe we’ve reached a new level, and that things will go more smoothly from now on. So it often catches us by surprise when we experience let-down after a great time of worship. We need to arm ourselves with the awareness that some of the darkest times in our spiritual lives can follow immediately after God does something extraordinary in our midst. So it’s no accident that Psalm 123 follows immediately after Psalm 122.

C.S. Lewis makes a wise observation about this: “The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home” (C.S. Lewis, The Business of Heaven, p. 18). Our Father refreshes us on the journey, but we must remember that we are still on a journey. These pleasant inns which our Father gives to refresh us are only a foretaste of what’s ahead.

Right from the beginning, the psalmist has been plagued by enemies. He started out on pilgrimage because he was weary of living among pagans and barbarians. He cried out for help, in Psalm 121, because of the hazards of the journey. In Psalm 123, he’s still having trouble with enemies. He says: “we have endured much contempt. We have endured much ridicule from the proud, much contempt from the arrogant.” But it affects him differently than it has in the previous psalms. In Psalm 120, he’s weary with living among liars and violent people, and in both 120 and 121, we see him crying out for help. But in Psalm 123, he cries out for mercy. There’s a new element here: the psalmist has been humbled by his experience in the world. Enduring contempt and ridicule from others has made him aware of his own sinfulness and need for mercy.

Any experience of trauma, even when it’s relatively minor, makes us aware of our vulnerability and need. Several years ago, I was in a car accident. I was driving down Bossler Road, outside of Elizabethtown, when a woman pulled out of the Masonic Homes in front of me. The speed limit there is 45, and I wasn’t speeding, but there was no way I could avoid hitting her. Both vehicles were totaled, but no one was seriously hurt. There were several witnesses, and everyone agreed that it was not my fault. But I was amazed at the emotions I had following the accident. I was plagued with a vague feeling of guilt, that maybe I could have done something more to avoid it. And I was depressed. The accident was not my fault, and I don’t believe there was anything I could have done, but it made me aware of my own vulnerability. It made me aware of how easily it could have been my fault, and how fallible I am. It made me aware, in a strange way, of my own need for mercy. I think something like this was happening to the psalmist. He was being criticized and ridiculed unjustly. But it reminded him of his own need of mercy. It humbled him by making him aware, in a new way, of his own fallibility. No doubt he was a better person than the people who were ridiculing him, but in the presence of a holy God, how much was that really worth?

We often have illusions about ourselves, and experiences like this tend to jar us back to reality. It’s not pleasant, but God uses it to make us more aware of our need of Him. I’m sure the Corinthians weren’t pleased with Paul’s description of them: “Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of ‘the brightest and the best’ among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have–right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start–comes from God by way of Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:26-30, The Message). I’m sure they didn’t appreciate being reminded that God was using them, not because of their exceptional abilities, but to demonstrate that “God deliberately chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they wise” (New Living Translation). We habitually cultivate illusions about ourselves, and difficulties often jar us back to reality.

But the psalmist’s experience doesn’t just knock him down. Being reminded of who we are would do nothing but drive us to despair apart from God. The psalmist’s experience in this world–being criticized and ridiculed–makes him aware of his dependence on God. He’s reminded that his proper place before God is that of a servant. For awhile, in my early Christian life, I got caught up in what was called the “name it and claim it” movement. We believed that God had given His people authority to claim things in His name, and we tended to exercise this very presumptuously. Most of the things we claimed never happened, but we were convinced that if we could speak with enough faith we could do great miracles. There were many problems with this outlook, but one of my biggest concerns, looking back, is with our attitude before God. We didn’t see ourselves as servants who were dependent upon His mercy. We saw ourselves as “king’s kids,” wielding great power and authority. We were full of illusions about ourselves and our spirituality.

Notice the psalmist’s attitude before God: “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.” He sees himself as a servant, who’s completely dependent on his master. His experience in this world has jarred him back to reality, it’s removed his illusions and has given him a more realistic assessment of himself. John Calvin said that to see ourselves as slaves “implies that without the protection of God true believers have no comfort, are completely disarmed and exposed to all manner of wrongs, have neither strength nor courage to resist; in short, that their safety depends entirely upon aid derived from another” (Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. 6, pp. 80-81).

The psalmist isn’t naming it and claiming it. He’s crying out for mercy. He’s desperately aware of his need. It’s not comfortable to be in this position. We’d like to be able to depend on ourselves, or at least have a list of things we can do. We’d like the security of knowing that if we fulfill all the right conditions, God will do what we want Him to do. Simply crying out to God, and waiting on Him “till he shows us his mercy” feels too vulnerable. What if He doesn’t come to our rescue? So we find ways to avoid being in this position, to avoid feeling so helpless.

Legalism is one of our main tools for doing this. It provides us with something to do, with clear guidelines for success. It gives us a sense of security. Legalism seeks to provide a set of rules that we can follow to be pleasing to God. Most of the time these rules focus on outward things, things that are really peripheral to the life of the Spirit. During the 1970's, a friend of mine worked on an OM team with two young men from a very conservative Bible college and one man who had been working with drug addicts. The man who’d been working with addicts had long hair, past his shoulders, and my friend said the other two had a really difficult time accepting him as a brother in Christ. Surely there must be something wrong with his spirituality; just look at him. A Christian reporter from America once traveled to England to interview C.S. Lewis. When he returned, he said something like this: “he drinks and smokes, but I still think he’s a Christian.” Lewis didn’t fit his usual criteria for accepting someone as a brother in Christ, but it seemed impossible to deny his godliness. So he had to make an adjustment, at least in Lewis’ case. The problem with this sort of legalism is that it causes us to trust in ourselves. It undermines our awareness that we are the ones in need of mercy. It causes us to think like the Pharisee, who prayed “I thank you, God, that I am not a sinner like everyone else, especially like that tax collector over there! For I never cheat, I don’t sin, I don’t commit adultery” (Luke 18:11, New Living Translation). The psalmist is suffering unjustly, but his suffering has made him aware of his own need. It’s reminded him that he also is in need of mercy.

It’s surprising that he doesn’t cry out for help here. Clearly he’s in need of help, and no doubt he’s hoping that God will come to his rescue. It would be perfectly appropriate for him to ask for help. But what he prays for is mercy. This is a step beyond the prayer for help that we see in Psalm 121. It’s humbling to realize our helplessness. We prefer to be self-sufficient, to not depend on others. But when we cry out for help, we’re only admitting our own weakness. When we cry out for mercy, we’re saying more than that. We’re saying that we really don’t deserve God’s help. Crying out for mercy means asking for something we don’t deserve, something we can’t claim. It means asking for one thing, when we really deserve something else.

It’s interesting to see how Paul’s understanding of himself changed over the years. Early in his ministry, we find him referring to himself as the “least of the apostles” (1 Corinthians 15). A little later on, in writing to the Ephesians, he describes the great privilege of being entrusted with the ministry of preaching to the Gentiles. He says: “Just think! Though I did nothing to deserve it, and though I am the least deserving Christian there is, I was chosen for this special joy of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ” (Ephesians 3:8, NLT). He sees himself as “the least deserving Christian there is.” But then, near the end of his life, he says this in his first letter to Timothy: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners–of whom I am the worst” (1 Timothy 1:15). This has been the experience of God’s people throughout the centuries: the more they know of God, the more aware they are of their need of mercy. This is what happens to us on our pilgrimage. We start out with a sense of disgust at the condition of the world, but as we continue on our journey we become more and more aware that the problem is within us, and we find ourselves crying out with Paul: “Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin?” (Romans 7:24, NLT).

We’re on a pilgrimage through this world, and we’re sure to encounter trouble along the way. It’s not that we’ve done something wrong, or that God is not taking care of us. We live in a fallen world, and trouble goes with the territory. Bill Bryson has a great book about Australia. I’ve never been to Australia, but my sister-in-law, who died a few years ago, was from there. One of the OM leaders who had a major impact on my life, and who really helped me begin to accept the responsibility of leadership, was Australian, and so was my advisor at Temple University. So I feel some sense of connection with that country. Bill Bryson loves it there, but he also gives a very sobering description of some of the hazards one encounters traveling in Australia: “It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world’s ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures–the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish–are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. Pick up an innocuous cone shell from a Queensland beach, as innocent tourists are all too wont to do, and you will discover that the little fellow inside is not just astoundingly swift and testy but exceedingly venomous. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It’s a tough place” (In a Sunburned Country, p. 6). Life in this world is full of hazards. The psalmist was distressed by ridicule and contempt that he received from others. But there are plenty of other things that cause us to cry out in distress. Trauma, even when it’s relatively minor, makes us aware of our vulnerability and need.

What’s important is our response to such things. What do you do when troubles come your way? Do you lash out in anger? Do you become overwhelmed with despair, thinking that God has abandoned you? I’m not thinking so much about our initial feelings when things go wrong. It’s natural that we feel overwhelmed at such times. I’ve often quoted these words by Abraham Kuyper, the former prime minister of Holland and founder of the Free University of Amsterdam: “When for the first time... the cross with its full weight is laid upon our shoulders, the first effect is that it makes us numb and dazed and causes all knowledge of God to be lost.” That’s just what happens to us when we come face to face with our own mortality and the mortality of those we love. But what do we do later, after the dust has settled? Do we cry out to God, or do we turn away from Him in anger and bitterness?

Any kind of trauma makes us feel vulnerable, but being treated with contempt, enduring ridicule, attacks our pride in a special way. What do you do when people say unkind things about you? Do you lash out at them? Or do you just think, over and over, of all the things you’d like to say to them? Being criticized unjustly can be absolutely shattering to our self-confidence, and we naturally grasp for anything to restore our sense of equilibrium. It’s difficult even when the criticism is coming from people who genuinely care about us. But in the psalmist’s case, his critics are out to destroy.

But God is able to turn these things around to our profit. Thomas a Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ, said this: “It is good that we have sometimes some troubles and crosses.... It is good that we be sometimes contradicted, and that men think ill or inadequately; and this, although we do and intend well. These things help often to the attaining of humility, and defend us from vainglory: for then we are more inclined to seek God for our inward witness, when outwardly we be contemned by men, and when there is no credit given unto us.... When a good man is afflicted, tempted, or troubled with evil thoughts; then he understandeth better the great need he hath of God, without whom he perceiveth he can do nothing that is good” (“Of the Profit of Adversity”).

How do we profit from such things when they happen? It’s often difficult for us to even pray at such times. Even when the criticism is unjust, there’s usually enough truth to undermine our sense of confidence in God’s presence. And Satan, our accuser, will use it to try and separate us from God. He’ll tell us things like: “How can you turn to God in prayer? You’re just a fake. This whole Christian life of yours is nothing but an act.” But whether the criticism is partly true or completely true, the answer is the same: we cry out to God for mercy. We are not only people who are in need of help. We are people in need of mercy. We don’t deserve help, but God, in His infinite mercy, has called us to Himself, and has invited us to turn to Him in need. He knows the worst about us, and has set His steadfast love upon us anyway. So even if the worst things they’re saying are true, we turn to Him crying out for mercy, confident that He is waiting, and that He will receive us. All our critics can do, in the end, is remind us of the truth about ourselves: we’re people in need of mercy. We can answer our accuser: “yes, you’re right. Thanks for reminding me.” Then we turn our hearts to the Lord and say: “Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us, for we have endured much contempt. We have endured much ridicule from the proud, much contempt from the arrogant.” And then we lift our eyes to the Lord and wait on Him “till he shows us his mercy.”

The Centrality of Worship, Psalm 122

In 1976, the OM ship Logos visited Naples Italy, where I was stationed in the U.S. Navy. During one of the meetings held by the Logos teams, I heard a man share about an event that transformed his life and ministry. He had been working with Operation Mobilization in India and was traveling back to Europe with several other OM’ers. They got as far as what was then Yugoslavia, to a very dangerous section of road called Suicide Strip, when a truck, traveling on the wrong side of the road, hit them head-on. Frank was asleep in the back of the van when it happened, and he woke up some time later to discover that his fiancee and three others had died in the accident.

Frank went to sleep in the van, and when he woke up his whole life had changed. He was seriously injured, his close friends and the woman he planned to marry were gone. In the months of recovery that followed, he spent much time wondering why he had been spared. What was God’s purpose in keeping him alive, when all the others had been killed? Chris Begg, one of the others in the van, was a very gifted and promising leader. He had just finished leading a successful outreach to Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India. His wife, Hilevi, had grown up in India and spoke fluent Hindi. Their ministry was really just beginning. Humanly speaking, the work of missions in India needed them. Why had they been taken, and why had he been spared?

As he wrestled with this question over the next several months, he was thinking primarily in terms of service. What special place of service did God have for him in keeping him alive? The answer that came to him was a surprising one. God’s purpose for him was worship. He had been kept alive so that he could worship God. In the years following that meeting in Naples I got to know Frank, and I worked with him in a number of different settings. But the thing that stands out in my mind when I think of this man is worship. When I think of our two years on the ship Logos, one of the first things that comes to mind is the joy of worshiping under his leadership. If I think for any length of time about the subject of worship, I invariably think about Frank. His life and ministry has been, for me, an illustration of these words from the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Or, of these words from A.W. Tozer: “Why did Christ come? In order that He might make worshipers out of rebels. We were created to worship” (Gems from Tozer, p. 13).

Psalm 120 is a song for starting out. We begin our Christian lives with a realization that this world is not what we had hoped. It’s full of lies and deceit and violence. It’s a place where the wicked prosper, where bullies usually don’t get what they deserve, where the strong take advantage of the weak. Psalm 121 assures us of God’s presence and protection on our pilgrimage. As we set out on our journey toward the New Jerusalem, we soon find ourselves in trouble and in need of help. And as we look around desperately for help, we’re reminded of God’s care and presence: “My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” Psalm 122 tells us the point of the pilgrimage. Why are they making this trip, anyway? In Old Testament times, it was a dangerous journey up to Jerusalem. Pilgrims had to travel in groups, because of the danger of bandits. Why take the risk?

This Psalm makes it clear that the purpose of the pilgrimage is worship. The psalmist is excited about being in Jerusalem, but the focus is not Jerusalem in itself, but “the house of the Lord.” At the beginning of the Psalm, he rejoices with those who said: “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” And at the end, he commits himself to seeking the prosperity of Jerusalem “for the sake of the house of the Lord.” These pilgrims are going to Jerusalem because God’s house is there. It’s the same with our pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem. We are headed there to worship. This is what we look forward to: “Now the dwelling of God is with [people], and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (Revelation 21:3). And here is a glimpse of the worship we’ll experience there: “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’ All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces and worshiped God” (Revelation 7:9-11). We make our pilgrimage in anticipation of sharing in the worship around God’s throne. Worship is central to our lives in Jesus Christ, both now and in eternity.

Notice, in verses 1-2, that gathering for worship is a source of joy to the psalmist. It’s something he looks forward to with a sense of anticipation. “When they said, ‘Let’s go to the house of God,’ my heart leapt for joy” (The Message). We too often approach corporate worship legalistically: “I have to go to church.” Or, “I’m really tired this morning, and it’s been a hard week. I haven’t missed church in a few weeks, so I can afford to stay home today.” And if we look at it this way, we often feel that we’ve done our duty for the week by coming to church on Sunday morning: “Now that’s out of the way, and I can go on to other things.” It’s true that God does command us to gather for corporate worship: “That is where the tribes go up... to praise the name of the Lord according to the statute given to Israel” (v. 4). The pilgrimage to Jerusalem was, on one level, an issue of obedience. And the same is true for us: “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing....” (Hebrews 10:25). But we read in Acts that the early Christians “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer,” and that “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people” (Acts 2:42, 46-47). Clearly there’s something more here than fulfilling a legal obligation. These people aren’t just dutifully fulfilling the law by being in church each Sunday. And the same is true for the psalmist. Going up to Jerusalem to worship was a source of joy to him. It was something he looked forward to.

Part of the problem is that we’re too busy. Our lives are cluttered with more things than we can possibly do. But that’s not the only problem. In 1978, my team traveled to a remote village in Madhya Pradesh, a large unevangelized state in the middle of India. The man who worked with us there was the only Christian in the whole area, and he was beside himself with joy at the thought of spending the day with other believers. He seldom had the opportunity to be involved in corporate worship and prayer. In 1982, when the ship Logos was in the Middle East, Annie and I felt spiritually oppressed whenever we left the ship. All of us living on the ship had a strong sense of community in that spiritually hostile environment. But here in the West, the lines between the Church and the world are often blurred. Church, for most of us, isn’t a place where we gather with God’s people after being in a draining environment that’s constantly pulling us down. Church is just one more thing we have to do. We don’t have an immediate sense that corporate worship is necessary to our spiritual survival. It is necessary to our spiritual survival, but we don’t see this as readily. We, all too often, see it as an obligation rather than a privilege.

What is the psalmist so excited about? He had looked forward to being in Jerusalem, and now that he’s there, he’s not disappointed. He says, with joy: “Our feet are standing in your gates, O Jerusalem.” Verse three is a bit puzzling, at first glance: “Jerusalem is built like a city that is closely compacted together.” When I first read those words, it paints a picture in my mind of narrow streets and crowded conditions. That’s not the sort of thing I look forward to. But the word translated “compact” is also used to describe the idea of group unity, the sense of people being united together in a common cause. Here’s one possible translation: “O Jerusalem, thou are built as the city by which brethren are united together” (The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 4, pp. 650-51). Or here’s another: “Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity with itself” (Psalter for the Christian People). The idea here is that the structure of Jerusalem visually symbolizes the unity of God’s people, and also that Jerusalem, as the center of worship, functions to unify God’s people. It’s a place where God’s people unite in worship.

When he worships in Jerusalem, he’s aware of being part of something bigger than himself. He’s one with all God’s people who gather there in His name. “That is where the tribes go up... to praise the name of the Lord.” He’s part of this company; he’s not just out on his own, seeking spiritual fulfillment. “All the people of Israel–the Lord’s people–make their pilgrimage here” (New Living Translation). He’s part of something bigger than himself, but also he’s going there to do something that doesn’t revolve around his own needs and desires. He receives much by going to worship at the Temple, but that’s not why he’s going. He’s not going there to get something. He’s going there “to praise the name of the Lord.” He’s going there to offer something to God.

Often our problem with worship is that we’re too wrapped up in ourselves. Our lives in this society revolve around consumerism, making sure we get the most for our money, making sure we get what we’re looking for. And this is appropriate when we’re doing business. But when we approach the church in this way, we’re on very dangerous ground. If our reasons for attending worship all revolve around ourselves, we’re certainly guilty of idolatry. But we’re also unable to offer praise to God as He desires. When we approach the church as consumers, we’re not here to give something, we’re expecting to receive something. And if we don’t receive it here, we’ll just move on and find it somewhere else. In the meantime, we’ll probably be in a bad mood, because we haven’t been able to find what we’re looking for. The psalmist has come to Jerusalem to give something, and he doesn’t go away disappointed. His praise is focused on God, not on himself.

The psalmist is also reminded, in Jerusalem, that he is responsible to a law outside himself: “There the thrones for judgment stand, the thrones of the house of David.” Here’s what Eugene Peterson says about this verse: “The biblical word judgment means ‘the decisive word by which God straightens things out and puts things right.’ Thrones of judgment are the places that that word is announced.... Every time we worship our minds are informed, our memories refreshed with the judgments of God, we are familiarized with what God says, what he has decided, the ways he is working out our salvation.... we want to hear what God says and what he says to us: worship is the place where our attention is centered on these personal and decisive words of God” (A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, pp. 50-51). We come to worship to offer praise, and also to submit ourselves to the authority of God’s Word.

There’s no doubt that people in our society leave churches too easily. But what about people who leave churches because they feel spiritually starved? They come to church on Sunday morning expecting, and needing, to hear God’s Word preached, and all they hear, week after week, is the pastor’s own pet ideas. I believe they’re right. They aren’t approaching the church as consumers. They recognize that hearing God’s Word preached is part of what it means to worship. We gather together to praise God, and to put ourselves under the authority of His Word. The psalmist is in Jerusalem because of God. He’s taken the dangerous journey, together with a company of other pilgrims, because he wants to worship God. And part of what that means is hearing from His Word, being refocused and reoriented by hearing the judgments of God. Without God’s Word we flounder and drift, with no sense of direction. Worship involves both speaking to God and hearing from Him.

Notice, also, the psalmist’s attitude as he anticipates leaving Jerusalem to return home: he commits himself to pray for Jerusalem, and he exhorts others to do the same. “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” This verse is often quoted in reference to the current problems in the Middle East: “pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” It’s a good thing to pray for an end to the continual violence in the Middle East. But that isn’t what this verse is about, in the context of this Psalm. The psalmist is concerned about Jerusalem as the center of true worship: “For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your prosperity.” The place where God is worshiped today is the Church of Jesus Christ. So when we pray this Psalm, we’re not praying for the rebuilding of the Temple. We’re not taking sides in the disputes over who should have control over the Temple Mount (an important site for Jews, Christians and Muslims). When we pray this Psalm, we’re praying for the Church. As Paul says in Galatians, we belong to the New Jerusalem: “Hagar, the slave-wife, represents Mount Sinai where people first became enslaved to the law. And now Jerusalem is just like Mount Sinai in Arabia, because she and her children live in slavery. But Sarah, the free woman, represents the heavenly Jerusalem. And she is our mother” (Galatians 4:24-26, New Living Translation). Or this, from Hebrews 12: “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God” (Hebrews 12:22).

The psalmist prays that Jerusalem will experience peace and security. He uses the word “peace” three times. But he’s talking about more than the mere absence of fighting. This word, shalom, is one of the richest words in the Old Testament. It refers to the idea of wholeness, the wholeness that results when God’s will is fulfilled in us. Jesus miracles of healing and His acts of mercy were demonstrations of shalom (Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, p. 52). He also means more by this word “security” than we normally do when we use it. “It has nothing to do with insurance policies or large bank accounts or stockpiles of weapons. The root meaning is leisure–the relaxed stance of one who knows that everything is all right because God is over us, with us and for us in Jesus Christ. It is the security of being at home in a history that has a cross at its center. It is the leisure of the person who knows that every moment of our existence is at the disposal of God, lived under the mercy of God” (Peterson, p. 52). The psalmist is praying that Jerusalem will be filled with an awareness of God’s presence and blessing. He’s praying for Jerusalem as the place where God’s people go for worship, the orienting center for the worship of the true God. He’s praying that Jerusalem will continue to be a place where God’s people meet with Him.

Worship is central to our lives as Christians. It’s what we’ll be doing when we see God face to face, and it’s what He calls us to do now, throughout the course of our pilgrimage. We need to resist the activistic impulses of our culture and remind ourselves often that worship, not service, is primary. Our highest calling is to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” A.W. Tozer said this: “We’re here to be worshipers first and workers only second. We take a convert and immediately make a worker out of him. God never meant it to be so. God meant that a convert should learn to be a worshiper, and after that he can learn to be a worker. The work done by a worshiper will have eternity in it.” God has called us to Himself so that we can offer Him worship and praise throughout eternity.

Try praying this Psalm over the next week or so, and ask God to fill you with a genuine sense of joy and anticipation at the thought of gathering with His people for corporate worship. Some years ago, I was at a John Michael Talbot concert, and he said, “I hope you all pray the Psalms.” I didn’t know what he was talking about, but it sounded like a good idea. So I started. It was a struggle at first, so I bought Eugene Peterson’s translation, The Message, which really helped. The first few times, it took me several months to pray through the whole book of Psalms, and I had to keep bringing myself back to it. But as I kept coming back to it, I found the Psalms becoming more and more important to me, and now praying through the Psalms is the foundation of my prayer life. The Psalms have often been referred to as the Church’s school of prayer. Until fairly recently, this has been how most of God’s people, throughout the centuries, have learned to pray. We need to recover this practice. But it’s unfamiliar, and we’ll be tempted to give up before we’ve given it a fair chance.

Listen to this counsel from Eugene Peterson: “Believers must be aware that most of the time discipline feels dull and dead. We’re impatient if we have to wait a long time for something, especially in America. If we don’t find instant zest in a discipline, we make a negative snap judgment about it. But often what we describe as deadness, dullness, or boredom is simply our own slow waking up. We just have to live through that. Simple desire for more in our Christian lives is sufficient evidence that the life is there. Be patient and wait. It’s the Spirit’s work. We simply put ourselves in the way of the Spirit so he can work in us” (E. Peterson, Living the Message, p. 295). Don’t give up because it’s unfamiliar and uncomfortable. “Be patient and wait.... We simply put ourselves in the way of the Spirit so he can work in us.” A good place to begin is with these Psalms of Ascent. Pray through them regularly during this series. As you pray them, over and over, you’ll enter into the Psalms in a way that you can’t do by simply reading them. And you’ll find that God will be also forming these things into your life, so that you can say, from your heart, “I rejoiced when I heard them say, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’”

In Revelation we’re given glimpses into the worship before God’s throne. But we easily forget that, in Christ, we are part of that right now. Each time we gather in His name for worship, we join all those in heaven and throughout the earth who worship Him. This is what the author of Hebrews says: “You have not come to a physical mountain, to a place of flaming fire, darkness, gloom, and whirlwind, as the Israelites did at Mount Sinai when God gave them his laws. For they heard an awesome trumpet blast and a voice with a message so terrible that they begged God go stop speaking. They staggered back under God’s command: ‘If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.’ Moses himself was so frightened at the sight that he said, ‘I am terrified and trembling.’” What we’ve experienced is not so visibly and physically dramatic as that. And yet, here’s what he says about us: “No, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to thousands of angels in joyful assembly. You have come to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to the spirits of the redeemed in heaven who have now been made perfect. You have come to Jesus, the one who mediates the new covenant between God and people, and to the sprinkled blood, which graciously forgives instead of crying out for vengeance as the blood of Abel did.... Since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be destroyed, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping Him with holy fear and awe. For our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:18-24, 28-29; New Living Translation). May God stir us with a fresh realization of what we’re doing when we gather in His name for worship. Let’s worship Him in anticipation of that great day when we’ll all be gathered before His throne.

The Lord Our Helper, Psalm 121

Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory about the Christian life. Christian, the main character, is on a journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial Country. Early in the story, he persuades a man named Pliable to come along with him, and as they’re walking, Christian tells him about all the things they have to look forward to when they reach their destination. But they soon run into trouble. Bunyan says: “Now I saw in my dream, that just as they had ended this talk, they drew nigh to a very miry slough [a deep, muddy swamp], that was in the midst of the plain; and being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Despond. Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with dirt; and Christian, because of the burden that was on his back, began to sink in the mire. The said Pliable, ‘Ah, neighbour Christian, where are you now?’ ‘Truly,’ said Christian, ‘I do not know.’ At this Pliable began to be offended , and angrily said to his fellow, ‘Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill speed at our first setting out, what may we expect ‘twixt this and our journey’s end? May I get out again with my life, you shall possess the brave country alone for me.’ And with that he gave a desperate struggle or two, and got out of the mire on that side of the slough which was next to his own house: so away he went, and Christian saw him no more.”

We saw that Psalm 120 is a song for starting out. We begin our Christian lives with a realization that this world is not what we had hoped. It’s full of lies and deceit and violence. It’s a place where the wicked prosper, where bullies usually don’t get what they deserve, where the strong take advantage of the weak. We begin our pilgrimage crying out in despair: “Woe to me that I dwell in Meshech, that I live among the tents of Kedar! Too long have I lived among those who hate peace.” This world is not a benign place, so we cry out to God and begin our pilgrimage toward that better place which He has promised.

So we begin our pilgrimage, like Christian, out of the City of Destruction and toward the Celestial Country. But almost immediately we encounter problems. When I was a new Christian, I saw an evangelistic movie in which one of the most notorious characters commits his life to Christ. And as soon as he finishes praying to receive Christ, he says, “now all my problems are over.” He quickly learns that this is not the way it works, and the same is true for us. On our pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem we often find ourselves in trouble and in need of help. Our first inclination is to fall back on old ways of solving our problems, like Pliable did when he turned back and gave up the journey, and like the Psalmist does in verse one. He looks desperately around to the hills, asking where his help is coming from. John Calvin says “such is the inconstancy natural to us, that so soon as we are smitten with any fear, we turn our eyes in every direction, until faith, drawing us back from all these erratic wanderings, directs us exclusively to God” (Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. 6, p. 63). When this happens, we need this reminder–and we need to keep pulling ourselves back to it–our help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.

The first thing to notice in this Psalm is that setting out on pilgrimage puts us at risk. Verse three says “He will not let your foot slip,” and in verse 6, “the sun will not harm you by day nor the moon by night.” These are hazards travelers would have faced in ancient Palestine. “A person traveling on foot can, at any moment, step on a loose stone and sprain his ankle. A person traveling on foot, under the protracted exposure to a hot sun, can become faint with sunstroke. And a person traveling for a long distance on foot, under the pressures of fatigue and anxiety, can become emotionally ill, which was described by ancient writers as moonstroke (or by us as lunacy)” (Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, p. 35).

When we turn our backs on the world and set out to follow Jesus Christ, we often expect things to go together smoothly. We’ve been on the wrong path, and now we’re on the right one. It only makes sense that this path should be smoother. But very soon we encounter problems that are a direct result of our decision to follow Christ. If we had stayed where we were, these things wouldn’t have happened. Many people turn back at this point, like Pliable did. In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus talks about the seed that falls on rocky ground. “The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away” (Matthew 13:20-21). Jesus’ assumption here is that trouble is going to come because of the Word of God. Following Christ leads us to face problems we wouldn’t have faced otherwise.

When the Lord sent Ananias to baptize Saul the Persecutor, he said: “This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name” (Acts 9:15-16). Listen to how Paul later describes himself to the Corinthians: “It seems to me that God has put us who bear his Message on stage in a theater in which no one wants to buy a ticket. We’re something everyone stands around and stares at, like an accident in the street. We’re the Messiah’s misfits. You might be sure of yourselves, but we live in the midst of frailties and uncertainties. You might be well-thought-of by others, but we’re mostly kicked around. Much of the time we don’t have enough to eat, we wear patched and threadbare clothes, we get doors slammed in our faces, and we pick up odd jobs anywhere we can to eke out a living. When they call us names, we say, ‘God bless you.’ When they spread rumors about us, we put in a good word for them. We’re treated like garbage, potato peelings from the culture’s kitchen. And it’s not getting any better” (1 Corinthians 4:9-13, The Message). Paul was so aware of the difficulties God’s people face in this life, that he said “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Corinthians 15:19). Setting out on pilgrimage for the New Jerusalem puts us at risk.

But the second thing to notice here is that God Himself promises to watch over us. The idea that God is watching over us, or guarding us, is repeated six times in these eight verses. The basic idea of the word translated “watch” is, “to exercise great care over” (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, vol. 2, p. 939). God exercises great care over us. The one watching over us, exercising great care over us, is the Maker of heaven and earth, not a created being.

Verses one and two draw a sharp contrast. The Psalmist begins: “I lift up my eyes to the hills–where does my help come from?” If you’re reading from the King James Version, this contrast isn’t there: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” It sounds like his help is coming from the hills. But all the other versions and commentators I consulted agreed with the way this is rendered in the NIV. The hills were places where sacrifices were offered to Baal. They were places of idolatry. The Psalmist is in trouble and he looks around in desperation, “where is my help going to come from?” And his first reflex is to look toward the high places, where so many in his society were turning for help.

We aren’t surrounded by high places today, but the temptation to idolatry is still there. I often hear things like: “I don’t need to go to church to worship God. I feel close to Him when I go out for a hike. I worship Him by enjoying His creation.” It’s a great thing to enjoy God’s creation, but when I hear this sort of thing I’m usually aware that the person is not really worshiping God at all. People who say these things are usually worshiping nature. But then, who do they call upon when they’re in need of help, when they’re at the end of their resources? “A look to the hills for help ends in disappointment. For all their majesty and beauty, for all their quiet strength and firmness, they are, finally, just hills” (Peterson, A Long Obedience, p. 37). We need help from the one who created those hills.

His watchful care is also constant and uninterrupted. It isn’t hindered by weakness or finiteness: “he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” The high places were mainly occupied with Baal worship. Until the deportation to Babylon, this was the main threat to the worship of God in the nation. The Psalmist here is probably making an implicit comparison between the worship of God and the worship of Baal. In 1 Kings 18, the prophet Elijah has challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest. They are to call on their god, and Elijah will pray to the God of Israel, and the one who answers with fire is the true God. After the prophets have been crying out to Baal for the whole morning, Elijah begins to taunt them: “‘Shout louder!’ he said: ‘Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.’ So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention” (1 Kings 18:27-29). Throughout the period of the Kings, Israel was constantly reverting to Baalism. It had immense popular appeal, and it often gave them ecstatic experiences. Baalism gave them exhilarating times of celebration. But Baal was an idol, not a true god, and when they came to him with their problems, “there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.” The Psalmist is saying that the Lord is there and is constantly attentive to our cries for help. He doesn’t slumber or sleep.

He also won’t lose interest in us. We may believe all the right things about God, and we may have a true perception of His infinite majesty, but if we don’t know that He cares about us, knowing something of His greatness only makes Him seem more distant and unapproachable. We need to hear what he says in vv. 7-8: “he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.” Here’s how it reads in The Message: “He guards you when you leave and when you return, he guards you now, he guards you always.” God has set His steadfast love upon us, and He is committed to caring for us over the long term. Here’s how committed God is to caring for His people: “‘Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord, who has compassion on you’” (Isaiah 54:10). God’s steadfast love and care are more stable and certain than the mountains, where so many are turning for help.

The third thing to notice in this Psalm corrects a possible misunderstanding: the promise here is not that bad things will never happen to us, but that God will accompany us and nothing will separate us from Him or from His purposes. This Psalm needs to be read in the light of the rest of Scripture. Some have been guilty of taking passages like this one and teaching that God promises to protect us from difficulties. They even take the next step and assert that when we encounter difficulties in our lives it’s because of disobedience or lack of faith. If we were really faithful as Christians, He would take care of us and prevent these things from happening.

This is what Job’s three friends thought. Job was a godly man. Everyone looked up to him and came to him for advice. But then everything started going wrong, and within a very short time all his children were killed and he lost all his wealth. He was suffering terribly, so his three friends came to comfort him. But they also came with advice. They assumed that he was being punished by God for something. Otherwise, how could these things be happening. As the book progresses, their arguments become more and more accusatory as they counsel him to repent and be reconciled to God. If Job were as righteous as everyone thought, surely God would have prevented all these horrible things from happening.

In the fall of 1977, I arrived in India after a long overland trip from Belgium. We spent a few days in Delhi, then three of us traveled to Agra (the location of the Taj Mahal) to meet some teams that were gathered at a church for a series of meetings. When we got to the church, no one was there, so we walked to a nearby restaurant to get something to eat. None of us knew how to choose a restaurant in India, and we didn’t make a good choice. During the meal I looked up at the rafters and saw a rat crawling back and forth over our heads. Two of us were careful to avoid drinking the water, but I noticed that one of the guys (a Malaysian named Tak) was drinking water very freely so I said something about it. He replied that God protects us from sickness, and we only need to trust Him. After that day we went to separate teams, but I met Tak six months later in Nepal. He had hepatitis, and a couple of us on the team caught it from him.

There are verses in the Bible which, if we let them stand by themselves, sound like they’re promising perfect health. That’s why those who preach the health and wealth gospel are able to support their teaching with some appearance of faithfulness to Scripture. In looking at a passage like this one, we not only look at it in itself, we also look at it in the light of other Scripture. It comes to us, not standing by itself. It comes to us as part of God’s Word. It comes to us as part of the book of Psalms. And the most common type of Psalm is the lament, a cry of anguish in the midst of suffering. Most of the Psalmists were suffering, and there’s no indication that their suffering is a sign of weak faith.

What is the promise here? Here’s what John Calvin says on this passage: “The sense then is, that although God’s people may be subject in common with others to the miseries of human life, yet his shadow is always at their side to shield them from thereby receiving any harm” (p. 67). Bad things happen to us, just as they do to others. We live in a fallen world. But God promises that the things that happen won’t undermine His purposes for us. Here’s Eugene Peterson: “The promise of this psalm–and both Hebrews and Christians have always read it this way–is not that we shall never stub our toes, but that no injury, no illness, no accident, no distress will have evil power over us, that is, will be able to separate us from God’s purposes in us” (A Long Obedience, p. 38). He says this a little later: “All the water in all the oceans cannot sink a ship unless it gets inside. Nor can all the trouble in the world harm us unless it gets within us. That is the promise of the psalm: ‘The Lord will keep you from all evil’.... The only serious mistake we can make when illness comes, when anxiety threatens, when conflict disturbs our relationship with others is to conclude that God has gotten bored in looking after us and has shifted his attention to a more exciting Christian, or that God has become disgusted with our meandering obedience and decided to let us fend for ourselves for awhile, or that God has gotten too busy fulfilling prophecy in the Middle East to take time now to sort out the complicated mess we have gotten ourselves into. That is the only serious mistake we can make. It is the mistake that Psalm 121 prevents: the mistake of supposing that God’s interest in us waxes and wanes in response to our spiritual temperature” (A Long Obedience, pp. 38-39). We live in a fallen world, and we are subject to the same struggles that plague everyone else here. But we have the promise that God watches over us, that He will stay with us until the end, that He will guard our souls until we see Him face to face.

Listen to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4: “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed and broken. We are perplexed, but we don’t give up and quit. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. We get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going. Through suffering, these bodies of ours constantly share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. Yes, we live under constant danger of death because we serve Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will be obvious in our dying bodies” (2 Corinthians 4:8-11, New Living Translation). His life is full of difficulties. God is with him, but that doesn’t mean God keeps him from facing problems. But in the midst of all the problems, God is faithful and is keeping him.

We need to arm ourselves with the realization that we are going to encounter problems, some of which will be directly caused by our commitment to Christ. Peter says: “So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer too” (1 Peter 4:1, New Living Translation). If we expect God to keep us from problems, our faith will be shaken when difficulties come into our lives. Our faith is shaken, because we’re trusting God for something He hasn’t promised to do. Since we’re assured in God’s Word that we will face difficulties, we can pray in advance for strength to endure them patiently when they come.

But that doesn’t turn us into fatalists or cynics. We have this assurance that the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth, is there to help us. Some translations and commentators suggest that this Psalm was sung antiphonally by groups of pilgrims, and that verses one and two were sung responsively. The result was: Question: “I lift up my eyes to the hills–where does my help come from?” Response (spoken by the leader or another group): “Your help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” Whether this is the case or not, it illustrates the fact that we can help one another in this way. When we’re in difficulties, everything gets out of perspective, and we need to hear from others these words: “Your help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

Eugene Peterson has an excellent book on the Psalms of Ascent, entitled A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Here’s how he ends his discussion of this Psalm: “Psalm 121, learned early and sung repeatedly in the walk with Christ, clearly defines the conditions under which we live out our discipleship, which, in a word, is God. Once we get this psalm in our hearts it will be impossible for us to gloomily suppose that being a Christian is an unending battle against ominous forces that at any moment may break through and overpower us. Faith is not a precarious affair of chance escape from satanic assaults. It is the solid, massive, secure experience of God who keeps all evil from getting inside us, who keeps our life, who keeps our going out and our coming in from this time forth and forevermore” (p. 41).

Hugh Latimer lived in England during the Reformation and he also was acquainted with difficulty and danger. He said this: "When I sit alone, and can have a settled assurance of the state of my soul, and know that God is mine, I can laugh at all troubles, and nothing can daunt me." Some time later, he was condemned to death at the stake by Mary Tudor (the daughter of Henry VIII). As the fire was being lit, he called out to a friend, who was suffering the same fate, "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out." He had armed himself with the expectation that he would face difficulties because of his faith. He was able to laugh at all troubles; when he faced problems he didn’t think God had deserted him. His faith was “the solid, massive, secure experience of God who keeps all evil from getting inside us, who keeps our life, who keeps our going out and our coming in from this time forth and forevermore.” He lived in hope and was able to die with a sense of joyful anticipation.

The promise of Psalm 121 is the same as the end of Romans 8: “Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or are hungry or cold or in danger or threatened with death? (Even the Scriptures say, ‘For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.) No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can’t, and life can’t. The angels can’t, and the demons can’t. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can’t keep God’s love away. Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39, New Living Translation). No matter what difficulties we’re called upon to face in our Christian lives, our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. May He strengthen us with this assurance.