Anticipating Worship: A Sanctuary From Evil
Psalms 120
April 3, 2022
Tonight we begin a new segment in the book of Psalms
And it is one of great interest to us.
If you notice the heading of the next 14 Psalms (120-134) They are all referred to as
“A Song of Ascents”
What we have here is a compilation of Psalms
Which were specifically arranged and grouped together.
These were NOT all written at the same time,
Or perhaps even for the same initial purpose.
For example
• 4 of these Psalms are written by David.
• One of them is written by Solomon.
• And they other 9 have no specific author attributed to them.
These were 14 various Psalms written out of the specific trials and circumstances of various Psalmists as they walked through life.
But what happened, even under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
Is that these 14 were compiled and grouped together and each labeled as “A Song of Ascents”
Those specific authors may not have realized at the time
How the Lord would use their Psalm,
But this was what the Lord had in mind when He inspired them to write.
“A Song of Ascents” refers to songs that were sung by Jewish travelers as they were headed up to Jerusalem.
There were 3 feasts in Israel where all men were commanded to go to Jerusalem for celebration.
• The Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover)
• The Feast of Weeks (Pentecost)
• The Feast of Booths
Some may have been traveling IN CARAVANS,
Some may have been traveling ALONE.
These 14 songs were those grouped as the hymn book
For those who were headed to worship.
• They are songs of anticipation.
• They are songs that focus primarily on the joy of gathering with the saints to worship God.
For us, they provide a tremendous time of analyzing
The joys and benefits and blessings of corporate worship.
There are many things in our wicked culture
That cause the church to have to hold fast and stand her ground.
• We think of the rise of false prophets…
• We think of social immorality like gay marriage…
• We think of doctrinal purity like the incarnation or substitutionary atonement…
These are places where the church must drive her stake in the ground
And stand without compromise in the world.
But another battleground area that has sort of sneaked in
IS THE ISSUE OF CORPORATE WORSHIP.
It used to be that our culture sought a certainly LEVEL OF MORALITY.
• And so it was a “good” or “right” thing to do for a person to “go to church”.
• Slowly that sort of weaned out to just going on Easter or Christmas.
• It didn’t hurt that the culture generally stayed away from scheduling things on Sundays and Wednesdays.
• People also weren’t so easily united by internet and social media and church was, if nothing else, a good place just to see people and know what was going on.
But of course our culture has shifted.
• Church attendance is no longer socially expected.
• There is very little culture peer pressure to go to church.
• There is plenty of competing busyness or entertainment to help justify not gathering with the saints.
And even in our day we are still learning the extent of the damage that the recent COVID lockdowns did to physical church attendance in our land.
(I’m thankful that you were undeterred through such times and that our physical church attendance remained practically unaffected)
But, the point is that in general church attendance
Is not on the upswing, but on the decline.
Now, we know that this is a sin.
Hebrews 10:23-25 “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”
• We know that assembling together IS A COMMAND for the mutual benefit of the church
And yet it is a command that is WIDELY OVERLOOKED in our world today.
I’m even reminded of the recent interview done by Andy Stanley when he emphatically stated the Bible does not command us to physically gather together.
And so now as much as ever, God’s people need to be reminded,
Not only of the mandate to gather, but also of the benefit.
It should be enough to say that God commands us to gather.
But it is a blessing to us to know that we are also given
A group of Psalms like this which spell out for us the benefit.
Over the next 14 Psalms we will see various blessings and benefits of taking that journey up to the temple of God where we gather with the saints in corporate worship of our great God.
So we’re going to talk about anticipating worship.
I’m excited to learn and I hope you are too.
TONIGHT We meet an unknown Psalmist who by his own admonition
Sojourns “in Mesheck” and dwells “among the tents of Kedar”
• “Mesheck” was in Asia Minor
• “tents of Kedar” references a nomadic Arab tribe.
A Jew who lived in a foreign land among a nomadic tribe of pagans.
His struggle there is real, but on this day his relief is found
In the fact that he is headed to Jerusalem to worship.
So let’s work our way through this Psalm together tonight.
I would start by just having you look at verse 1
“In my trouble I cried to the LORD, And He answered me.”
One of the things that immediately jumps out to us is that
VERSE 1 IS IN THE PAST TENSE.
He is telling you of an event that occurred at some point in his past.
• He is telling you of a time when he was in “trouble”
• And he “cried to the LORD” and God “answered” him.
You’ll see his trouble in a moment,
But first let’s still marvel at the fact that
The God of the universe heard him and “answered” him.
Hearing is a miracle.
Psalms 135:15-17 “The idols of the nations are but silver and gold, The work of man’s hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; They have eyes, but they do not see; They have ears, but they do not hear, Nor is there any breath at all in their mouths.”
The true and living God is a God who hears.
But perhaps even more miraculous
Is the fact that this great GOD ANSWERS.
What manner of an eternal and omniscient God
Would feel even the slightest bit compelled to answer
The cry of but one speck of the dirt of His creation?
It just doesn’t make sense that God would answer us.
And yet He does.
Here He did.
That is remarkable.
Our Psalmist was in trouble and our God cared.
Psalms 118:5 “From my distress I called upon the LORD; The LORD answered me and set me in a large place.”
And how often have we benefited from such compassion from God.
• That even though He might not immediately pull us out of our trouble,
• Yet even still He manages to send a peace or a comfort in the midst of it that more than satisfies us.
It is a remarkable reality.
Our Psalmist is sharing testimony of when this happened for him.
Verses 2-7 tell that story.
He recounts as he walked through it in the present.
Let’s look at that moment that drove him to call on the LORD
And examine the answer the Lord gave him on that day.
3 points
#1 HIS TROUBLE
Psalms 120:2-4
The trouble of our Psalmist
Is quickly REVEALED IN THE REQUEST he made to God.
“Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips, From a deceitful tongue.”
There are a couple of ways to look at this,
And both of them are troublesome to the Christian.
One is simply that he lives in a culture that has lost its sense of truth.
It’s just a society where truth is no longer valued.
Romans 3:13 “THEIR THROAT IS AN OPEN GRAVE, WITH THEIR TONGUES THEY KEEP DECEIVING,” “THE POISON OF ASPS IS UNDER THEIR LIPS”;
It is simply the fallen human condition.
Psalms 116:11 “I said in my alarm, “All men are liars.”
Jeremiah lamented such a society.
Jeremiah 9:1-6 “Oh that my head were waters And my eyes a fountain of tears, That I might weep day and night For the slain of the daughter of my people! Oh that I had in the desert A wayfarers’ lodging place; That I might leave my people And go from them! For all of them are adulterers, An assembly of treacherous men. “They bend their tongue like their bow; Lies and not truth prevail in the land; For they proceed from evil to evil, And they do not know Me,” declares the LORD. “Let everyone be on guard against his neighbor, And do not trust any brother; Because every brother deals craftily, And every neighbor goes about as a slanderer. “Everyone deceives his neighbor And does not speak the truth, They have taught their tongue to speak lies; They weary themselves committing iniquity. “Your dwelling is in the midst of deceit; Through deceit they refuse to know Me,” declares the LORD.”
I think we can understand that type of grief today.
• We lost that whole “my word is my bond” mentality years ago.
• Politicians and lawyers have been joked about for years as liars.
But in the last couple of years we’ve even added occupations
Like journalist or even doctor to the list of people
That we no longer easily believe.
• We’ve realized that there are agendas behind everything
• And big money people who are calling the shots.
• And people all over our culture will gladly distort the truth if it means lining their
pockets.
It is a hard culture to live in
When you don’t know if you can believe anything you hear.
Even in our technological day of photoshop and CGI
We don’t even know if we can believe what our eyes see anymore.
Everything is a deception.
Everything is a distortion.
And the Psalmist is simply grieved to live in such a culture.
He wants relief for his soul.
Perhaps you remember the cry of Habakkuk:
Habakkuk 1:1-4 “The oracle which Habakkuk the prophet saw. How long, O LORD, will I call for help, And You will not hear? I cry out to You, “Violence!” Yet You do not save. Why do You make me see iniquity, And cause me to look on wickedness? Yes, destruction and violence are before me; Strife exists and contention arises. Therefore the law is ignored And justice is never upheld. For the wicked surround the righteous; Therefore justice comes out perverted.”
It could simply be the grief of a man forced to live in a society
Where there is no truth and there is no justice.
That alone is enough to make the man of God cry out for deliverance.
But it could be even more than that.
The other option is that he himself has become a victim of their slander.
It could be that he is suffering under their slander and personally feeling the sting of their faulty accusations.
• Joseph was certainly falsely accused by his brothers and Potiphar’s wife…
• Daniel was certainly falsely accused by the other wise men of Persia…
• The entire book of 2 Corinthians is written from Paul’s perspective of being slandered…
And of course this makes sense to us as well
Since we know that Satan is “the god of this world”.
We know him to be the “accuser of the brethren”.
Sometimes his accusations are true, as was the case with Joshua the high priest in the book of Zechariah, who was indeed wearying the filthy garments Satan accused him of.
Sometimes his accusations are false, as was the case with Job, when Satan said Job only served God because God was good to him.
But if Satan is a liar and the father of lies
Then it only stands to reason that his offspring in the world
Would be chips off the old block.
It could be that our Psalmist has felt this specific sting.
Even more than just the weight of living in a lying culture,
He may be feeling the personal sting of being lied about.
Either way, it has driven him to cry out to God
That his soul might be delivered.
“Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips, From a deceitful tongue.”
His frustration is further seen
In his sort of rhetorical question to his lying contemporaries.
(3) “What shall be given to you, and what more shall be done to you, You deceitful tongue?”
In other words: HAVE YOU GIVEN ANY THOUGHT TO WHERE YOUR LYING WILL TAKE YOU?
• Have you given any thought to the consequences of your deception?
I’ll tell you what you’re going to get:
(4) “Sharp arrows of the warrior, With the burning coals of the broom tree.”
Psalms 7:12-13 “If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword; He has bent His bow and made it ready. He has also prepared for Himself deadly weapons; He makes His arrows fiery shafts.”
In other words, if you are a liar,
God is going to shoot you with His arrow and burn you in His fire!
When we were kids we used to sing it: “Liar, liar, pants on fire”
It sounds mocking, but it’s actually biblical.
Revelation 21:7-8 “He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. “But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
Revelation 21:25-27 “In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it; and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Revelation 22:14-15 “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter by the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying.”
And certainly this will be the fate for the father of lies.
First the father of lies will be bound:
Revelation 20:1-3 “Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; and he threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time.”
And then the father of lies will be burned
Revelation 20:10 “And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”
Those who lie will one day pay for their deception.
And our Psalmist knows this.
That may have even been part of the answer which God gave him when he cried.
But you and I still know that simply knowing the future fate of liars
Doesn’t make them any easier to stomach today.
This Psalmist’s soul is troubled by them.
And he is asking God to deliver his soul
“from lying lips, From a deceitful tongue.”
That is his trouble.
#2 HIS TRAUMA
Psalms 120:5-7
Here his cry for deliverance has turned into a full force groan.
“Woe is me”
That incidentally was the same thing Isaiah said when he realized his own unclean lips, and the unclean lips of his culture before the LORD.
The Psalmist is crying the same.
“Woe is me, for I sojourn in Meshech, For I dwell among the tents of Kedar!”
• No doubt these are liars.
• No doubt these traveling gypsies are such that you cannot believe them.
• He is sick of it and he groans because of it.
The church is certainly not immune from living among such men.
When Paul wrote to Titus who had been left at Crete
That he might establish a church there, Paul wrote to him:
Titus 1:12-16 “One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” This testimony is true. For this reason reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith, not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth. To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.”
We are not of the world, but we are most certainly still in it.
And it may very well be that we live among “liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons”
Certainly that was the SENTIMENT OF OUR PSALMIST as he lived in “Meshech…among the tents of Kedar!”
And his lament continues.
(6-7) “Too long has my soul had its dwelling With those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, They are for war.”
We remember the groaning of our Lord:
Matthew 17:17 “And Jesus answered and said, “You unbelieving and perverted generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him here to Me.”
Mark 3:5 “After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.”
And we remember the groaning of those whom He has redeemed.
2 Peter 2:7-8 “and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds),”
Romans 8:23 “And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.”
In fact, this GROANING is one of the FRUITS OF REDEMPTION.
When God was going to destroy Jerusalem He first set out to seal the righteous from the judgment.
Ezekiel 9:4 “The LORD said to him, “Go through the midst of the city, even through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations which are being committed in its midst.”
And so you understand the grief.
At least I hope you understand the grief.
• I sincerely hope that the state of this world is a grievous evil to you.
• I sincerely hope that our culture makes your soul squirm.
• I sincerely hope that our society grieves your soul to its very core.
If it does not, you may have a greater problem than living among liars.
This man of God GROANS.
This man of God GRIEVES.
This man of God is traumatized as he lives in such a deceptive culture.
All he really wants is “peace”
“I am for peace” he says.
The best understanding there would be peace with God.
I just want my culture to stop being an offense to God.
Matthew 5:9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
That would be the desire of our Psalmist, to be a “peacemaker”.
However, he lives “with those who hate peace.”
“I am for peace, but when I speak, They are for war.”
• They hate his rebuke.
• They hate his correction.
• They hate his preaching.
• This culture loves deception and they want to live in it.
And he is so traumatized his only request is:
GOD GET ME OUT OF HERE.
“Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips, From a deceitful tongue.”
AND YET, WHERE IS THE ANSWER?
And yet, where do we find where God delivered?
The answer is behind the scenes.
The solution is found in the subheading of this Psalm.
This is “A Song of Ascents”
That means that as the saints of God made their pilgrimage
To worship God in His temple, they sang this song.
So what is the point?
Clearly, those who journeyed to Jerusalem
Saw their fellowship with the saints during these feasts
As a brief respite from a culture that loved lying.
So that’s the third point:
His Trouble, His Trauma
#3 HIS TRIUMPH
Psalms 120:1
“In my trouble I cried to the LORD, And He answered me.”
THAT ANSWER,
At least to the pilgrims who would sing this song years later
Was found in the fact that God had preserved a sanctuary of worship.
Do you want to know one of the true blessings of corporate worship?
It is that when we leave the world behind to gather with the saints
We get a brief reprieve from the deception of the world.
While we are still in the process of being sanctified…
And while we are all still far from perfect…
And while we may have our moments of worldliness…
It is still true that the closest glimpse we get of heaven on earth.
And the closest we get to the sinless perfection that that place represents is when we gather with the saints.
Our assembling together for the worship of God
Should be the most honest and the most Godly
And the most holy gathering that we ever get.
And you can likely feel the relief of this pilgrim as he journeys.
• I live in a land of liars.
• I live among slanderers.
• I dwell with dishonest men.
• My soul is grieved.
• My heart is tired.
But today I journey to a gathering where truth is proclaimed.
Today I journey to a gathering where holiness is esteemed.
Today I journey to dwell among those who love peace.
Isn’t that one of the true blessings of gathering to worship?
• We gather in a place where the conversation we hear is true.
• We gather in a place where the message proclaimed is true.
• We gather in a place of peace to dwell in peace with one another.
Where else do you find that on earth?
There is a GREAT EXCITEMENT then to worship.
There is a GREAT ANTICIPATION to come and worship.
We long for this and we look forward to it.
It refuels our soul for a week in the world.
And of course, to make sure we don’t lose sight of the glory here,
IT IS ONLY POSSIBLE BECAUSE OF OUR GOD.
• All men are liars.
• The poison of asps is under every tongue.
• AND THAT INCLUDED US.
But our great God, by His own sovereign choice,
Reached down in redemption to pull a few liars out of the fire
And to cleanse them for a people of His own possession.
We are not a gathering of sinners who just don’t like to lie.
We are a gathering of those whom God has saved from their lying.
The church is God’s creation.
Matthew 16:18 “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”
1 Corinthians 3:9 “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.”
And we are an organization which is
Being washed and sanctified by the Lord.
Ephesians 5:25-26 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,”
We are those whom God has assembled.
We are a sanctuary which He has created.
And now we fellowship in truth and joy and peace.
Ephesians 4:11-16 “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”
Virtually every other organization and gathering is susceptible
And even dominated by trickery, craftiness and deceitful scheming.
But God has set the church apart as different.
He has equipped men to proclaim and teach and explain the truth.
He has filled believers with His Spirit to discern what is true.
He is growing us up into a body that builds itself up in love.
YOU CAN’T FIND THAT ANYWHERE ELSE.
No wonder we will read in a future song of ascents:
Psalms 122:1 “I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD.”
Even the trip that is taken on the road to church should be
A joyful occasion filled with anticipation and excitement.
For on this day and at this time
You are going to fellowship in a place where truth and peace reign.
On this day and at this time
You are going to dwell among those who have been redeemed from their deceitful tongue.
On this day and at this time
You are going to dwell among those who now want to edify and build up in love, not spew the words of war and destruction.
THAT IS A SANCTUARY.
THAT IS REST.
And it is one of the true blessings of physically attending worship.
• YOU CAN watch a preacher on TV or on the internet.
• YOU CAN pray in your closet.
• YOU CAN study in solitude.
And certainly all of those things have their own individual value.
But none of those things provide the joy and sanctuary
Of true fellowship among the saints.
Years ago my parents used to watch a sitcom.
The opening lyrics to the song they played to start the show went like this:
Making your way in the world today
Takes everything you’ve got
Taking a break from all your worries
Sure would help a lot
Wouldn’t you like to get away?
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they’re always glad you came
You want to be where you can see
Our troubles are all the same
You want to be where everybody knows your name
That show was about a bar named Cheers.
• And that is what the world chases.
• Some secular place where they think they can escape and find camaraderie.
And you know and I know that this is AN ILLUSION.
No bar ever provided genuine sanctuary from the troubles of the world.
The bar is nothing more than the world’s attempt
At the genuine sanctuary of the church.
THEY’LL NEVER HAVE WHAT WE HAVE.
We are a fellowship of the redeemed!
And to gather among the saints
Is a sheer joy of rest and peace and truth and love.
Of course a Sunday night crowd already knows this, and that’s one of the reasons you are here.
So take this truth and share it with someone who has FALLEN OUT OF THE HABIT of worship and remind them of the soul rest they are missing.
