"Lord Have Mercy" Psalm 123 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Let me invite you now to open your Bibles to Psalm 123.

Psalm 123.

And so where you know where we're going this summer.

This morning we'll look at Psalm 123.

Next week we'll have our guest speakers with us.

And then after that, we're going to start a series this summer in the book of Jonah.

A fish story for summer.

There's probably some good title there that I haven't thought of yet.

But for this morning, Psalm 123.

This is a song of a sense.

Let me read it for us as we turn our eyes towards the Lord Jesus Christ in his written word this morning.

Psalm 123.

A song of a sense.

To you I lift up my eyes.

O you who are enthroned in the heavens.

Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to Yahweh our God until he has mercy upon us.

Have mercy on us, O Yahweh.

Have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt.

Our soul has had more than enough of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.

This is the word of God.

This summer, obviously, we are doing a construction project that will make it more comfortable for us to worship.

We will have air conditioning and heating and sound treatment and things like that.

Nothing, you know, too fancy, but enough to keep you from sweating out in the worship center.

The flip side of that though is that for a few months worship is going to be a little bit more difficult, you could say.

A little bit more crowded, perhaps.

And you know, just those normal kind of trials, not your normal routine.

I mean, the most significant trial of all, if you want to relate to the persecuted church, is this there is no coffee this summer.

No coffee.

And so we're asking you to go to worship, to trek here like pilgrims, having brought your own coffee beforehand.

I don't know how we'll survive as a church, but I think we'll we'll find a way.

That's the occasion for this psalm, Psalm 123.

It's one of the Psalms of Ascent from Psalm 120 through 134.

And these psalms are written to be sung by the Israelites in the Old Testament period as they journeyed from around the world to Jerusalem for the purpose of worshiping.

This was not an easy journey.

There was no highways back then, there was no expressways, there was no airplanes, trains, cars.

It would take days, weeks to make the journey in some cases.

These Psalms of Ascent were compiled during the exile.

In other words, when Israel was kicked out of Jerusalem, kicked out of the promised land, sent around the diaspora, scattered through Babylon, scattered into Egypt, modern day Egypt, and even Sudan and through Saudi Arabia and modern day Iraq and Syria and Lebanon and up into Turkey and even some into the to what's modern-day Italy and Greece.

They were scattered everywhere.

And they would make it a point to journey back to Jerusalem.

A wealthy Jew would try to do this once a year.

Now they didn't do this during the immediate exile.

They had to wait until Ezra had led the return, was rubal, and then Nehemiah had begun to build the wall, and they were able to establish a temple there built by a Haggai and dedicated by him.

And once that had happened, they were able to come every year then to Jerusalem.

That was the goal.

But again, it was a journey fraught with peril and difficulty and with persecution.

In many cases, the nations they were leaving were not exactly stoked that all the Jews were leaving to go worship their God in Jerusalem.

The Jews, remember, they dressed differently.

This is the era when the Jews started wearing black to demonstrate their mourning about the exile.

They dressed differently, they talked differently, a different language, they acted differently, they ate differently.

Everything was different about them, and now they're doing a caravan across the Greek Empire into Jerusalem to worship at their temple.

There were those that persecuted them, they were those that viewed them as easy prey.

And so these psalms, many of them, are written with this idea of difficulty going to worship.

These songs that I'll be memorized.

They'd be sung.

You of your family perhaps have your own songs that you sing on car trips.

I won't ask you to sing any of them now.

Some perhaps songs you say, stop singing those, or I will pull this car over.

We will not go to Disney World.

If you sing that song one more time, we're done.

These psalms are written to be sung by the families on the way to worship.

And this one in particular is about the difficulty of gathering together with God's people for worship.

And so that's why I chose this psalm on this first day of our construction.

Let me give you an outline this morning to carry us through it.

Three truths to sustain us through difficult worship.

Three truths that will sustain us through difficult worship.

And of course I'm making light of it.

Of course, I'm not really comparing not having coffee and having to sit, you know, in chairs instead of nice cushioned pews to the actual persecuted church.

I mean that, of course, to make light of it a little bit.

But I hope with that context it brings the truths of this psalm out in a more immediate way to your hearts.

Because some of you, I'm sure, do face real persecution for your faith.

Some of you, and in our country, persecution for your faith does not look like people throwing rocks at you.

In our country, persecution looks like derision.

It looks like lack of opportunities at work.

It looks like being glossed over.

It looks like intimidation.

It looks like contempt.

And that's exactly what they were encountering in Psalm 123.

In order to understand the psalm, you really do have to start at the ends, which sounds counterintuitive to us.

If you're reading this for the first time, you think the end of it can't possibly be the key to understanding it.

But understand that the Israelites, they had this memorized.

You know, in the way that we have our national anthem memorized.

You know, you're not surprised at the end of the national anthem, the flag is still there, right?

I mean, you know it's coming.

The flag will still be there.

The Israelites that sing this song know what it's about.

They know that this is a song about people heaping contempt on them for how they worship.

And that's where you see the word contempt in verse 3.

We have had more than enough of contempt.

A variation of the word is used in the middle of verse 4.

We've had more than enough of the scorn of those who are at ease.

In other words, people that are flippant, idol worshipers, that can't even say that they have a God in heaven.

They make their own God and can worship him in the comfort of their own living room, they're heaping scorn on the Israelites as they're journeying to a temple where they say God is worshipped, of the contempt of the proud.

Perhaps you're familiar with that kind of contempt.

Those in the world who stick their noses up at you and view Christian ethics and Christian morality as backwards, as disqualifying.

That's the word contempt that they heap upon you.

Well, the Israelites had this in spades.

The word contempt is carefully chosen.

The Hebrew word is buzz, and I remember it because it's this idea of being buzzed down, of chopped down, being despised.

It's translated elsewhere in the Psalms as despised.

The nations despise God.

People despise believers.

That's the same word here.

Only here it's translated contempt.

It's uh uses a noun here.

The people knew they were the objects of scorn and ridicule.

They had a very real hardship in worshiping.

And their hardship was not the distance to Jerusalem, their hardship was the scorn of those around them.

Their hardship was the ridicule, the contempt.

It was in some cases, it felt like it was too much to bear.

And you can get that language with here in verse 4.

Our soul has had more than enough.

In other words, our soul is having a hard time holding this up.

We've maxed out on the bench press here.

We cannot lift up any more contempt, and it keeps getting piled on.

And only it's not our arms that are holding it, it's our soul, and our soul feels weighed down by this contempt.

The affliction on the way to worship is piled up.

And now they sing this song.

And they sing a song, and you have to ask yourself: if you're being persecuted, if you're being ridiculed, if people are heaping contempt on you, and your response is a song, why?

What is in that song?

Who's the song for?

It's not for them, like the persecutors, it's for the singers, those who are being persecuted.

It's to remind them of these basic truths.

And so, what truths are helpful to remember when people are persecuting or showing derision or when you're experiencing difficulty in worship?

What are some truths that are helpful to remember at that moment?

Well, the first is simply this: that God is sovereign.

The first truth is that God is sovereign.

And that's where the psalm begins.

To you I lift up my eyes.

O you who are enthroned in the heavens.

The point here is that the worshiper is looking up to a God who is looking down.

If God is not enthroned in the heavens, then there would be no point in looking up to him.

If God was simply an idol in your house, you would look at him.

You wouldn't look up to the heavens.

And it's interesting for me to think of the Jews singing this while they're going to the temple.

They're making a trek to the temple.

And the temple's elevated.

Jerusalem is up there, and so in the sense their eyes are up, but you get the point that they're not looking up to the temple.

They're not looking up to Jerusalem, they're looking beyond Jerusalem.

They're looking beyond the temple.

They're looking all the way to heaven.

That's where their help comes from.

You think earlier in the Psalms of Ascent, they began with the psalmist saying, I lift my eyes up to the mountains, which is the source of attack.

That's where the animals are and the villains are.

And you ask yourself, looking at the mountains, where is my help coming from?

My help doesn't come from the mountains.

My help comes from you, Yahweh.

Where is God?

He is enthroned in the heavens.

Now, what does it mean?

It says here in verse 1 that God is enthroned in the heavens.

It means that he is the king there.

That's his royal room.

When a king was enthroned, he would have, there would be pomp and circumstance.

Not far off from the American idea of a presidential inauguration.

There's people turn out, and the, I won't tell you how many people, but some people turn out to watch it.

And the the military bands play, and it's a it's a festive occasion.

And that's what happens when a king is enthroned.

There's music and there's dancing and there's sacrifice and there's worship.

Even in the pagan nations, there's worship of their gods who they see is ruling through the king.

Here, Israel has no king except God.

They're ruled by others.

And yet they don't look to Babylon, the seat of their political power.

They don't look to the Greek empire, Alexander the Great, or the others who are persecuting them.

They don't look to those people.

They look beyond them, straight into heaven.

That's where their king is enthroned.

The new king and an empire back then, the new king is responsible for his people.

He's responsible for the laws of his people.

He's responsible for the protection of his people, for the taxation of his people, for justice among his people.

He is responsible for everything.

And this is where our analogy of a president breaks down, because in our political system, you know, three branches, there is enough blame to go around.

Nothing is anybody's responsibility.

Nothing is anybody's fault.

It's always somebody else on the other side of the aisle.

In the a world with a king, there is no divestment of powers.

There is no buck passing in this world.

The king never blames someone else.

The king never says, oh, I'm sorry this happened.

It was on governor so-and-so's watch.

No.

Everything is the king's responsibility.

And that's why the worshipers, they say, our king is in heaven.

He's enthroned there.

In other words, to say that God is enthroned in heaven is to say that he's sovereign.

Very different than, you know, just saying God is in heaven.

That's his sphere.

That's his geographical location, you could say.

God is located in heaven.

You find my friends on your phone, God in heaven.

But that's not the extent of this claim.

This claim isn't just where God is, it's what he's doing there.

He is sovereign.

He's ruling the world.

What would happen if you rebelled against a king in that part of the world?

I mean, it's over for you.

You'd be executed.

Maybe they would give you the formality of the nicety of a trial.

Maybe.

But you would be done.

Your family would likely be killed.

That was commonplace.

One person rebels against the king, his family would be taken out and killed also.

Or if the king is feeling benevolent, maybe they would just be exiled.

We don't have a king, but we can grasp this image because when scripture says God is enthroned in the heavens, it says he does whatever he pleases.

Psalm 29, verse 10.

Psalms 29:10

Yahweh sits enthroned above the flood.

He is enthroned forever.

Think of that language.

Yahweh is enthroned above the flood.

The floods of this earth are happening on his watch, and they don't affect his kingdom.

The floods of this earth don't erode his throne.

He is enthroned above them.

He looks down upon them.

The nations rage, but God reigns.

The world floods, but God rules.

People rebel, and God's sovereignty is not moved, challenged, or mitigated one inch.

He is on the throne over the floods.

Without a term limit, by the way.

He is enthroned right now in heaven, it says.

And he's not going anywhere.

You can't vote him out of office, which means he is reigning over us right now.

There's a section of Psalms earlier in the Psalter, Psalm 93 through 99, that are called the enthronement psalms.

They established that God is the one enthroned as their king.

Now these are psalms that perhaps they sung at the installation of a new king in Israelites' history, but the real object of them is Yahweh.

He's the sovereign, omnipotent ruler of the universe.

And this psalm here, Psalm 123, borrows language from them.

You are enthroned in heaven.

In times of trouble, listen, you have to train your minds to go to the fact that God is sovereign.

Don't make this a theological lesson.

This is supposed to be practical about how difficult life can be.

And where should your mind go when you are facing persecution or derision or contempt or scorn?

What should you think of in your mind?

You should think of the fact that God is sovereign.

Even over your persecutors, even over your persecution.

He is enthroned above the flood.

This is David's cry.

Psalms was recorded, 1 Chronicles 16, verse 31.

1 Chronicles 16:31

Yahweh reigns, let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice.

Let them say among the nations, Yahweh reigns.

The nations can persecute believers, and David's response was, So what?

God reigns over them.

This is picked up in Psalm 96, one of the enthronement psalms.

Say among the nations, Yahweh reigns.

Psalm 97, Yahweh reigns, let the earth rejoice.

Yahweh reigns, let the earth rejoice.

Psalm 99, verse 1, Yahweh reigns, let the people tremble.

Psalms 99:1

The earth will celebrate, the nations will tremble, and believers take confidence that our God is in heaven and he does whatever he pleases.

Let me give you a very, I think, important example of this applied in a believer's life, a Christian's life.

You don't need to turn there, but Acts chapter 4, the early church, they're worshiping at the steps of the temple.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

They are rounded up, they are arrested, and they are beaten for their faith, and then they are released.

Beaten and told, don't preach about Jesus anymore.

Beaten and thrown out.

Now, how did they respond?

Do you remember?

They gathered together to pray and to worship.

They thanked God that they were considered worthy enough to suffer for Christ, but then what did they pray?

Acts 4, verse 24.

Acts 4:24

They prayed this sovereign Lord who made the heavens and the earth and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, Why did the Gentiles rage and the people plot in vain?

What they went to was a reference from Psalm 123, that God is enthroned.

That's a practical example of applying this truth in difficult worship.

It's difficult to worship God.

Remember that He is sovereign.

That should drive, that should be the tenth peg of your theology.

It should be driven down right into the sovereignty of God.

That God is enthroned in the heavens.

Every wrongdoer on the way to hell can question God's kindness towards them, I suppose, but will never be able to question his sovereignty.

He reigns over the world.

That's the first truth to remember from verse 1.

Second truth to remember in difficult worship is that we are slaves.

God is sovereign and we are slaves.

And here's an example here.

Behold, as the eyes of the servant, and that's the word Obed in Hebrew means slave, look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant, a female slave, look to the hand of her mistress, the woman she cares for, so our eyes look to Yahweh our God until he has mercy upon us.

The analogy here now is one from slavery.

And the illusion to slavery is more than passing in the psalm.

It really is the center, the sustaining, the backbone of the psalm, so to speak.

I understand that the idea of being an Old Testament, a slave in Old Testament Israel, was a far cry from the shadow slavery of the United States.

This was a, in many cases, could be a favorable thing to be a slave because you took on the social status of your owner.

You took on, you know, if you were a slave and a permanent slave, you'd be a slave for six years, and then you have a year of freedom.

At the end of your year of freedom, you could go back to your master, and if it was agreeable to him, you would be a slave until the year of Jubilee.

Could be, you know, up to up to 49 years, I suppose.

They never kept the year of Jubilee, so basically becoming a permanent slave.

And so after six years of slavery, one year of freedom, you could come back.

And if you wanted to be a lifelong slave and your master would have you, remember, they would bring a Levite in and they'd tag your ear, they drive a hole through your ear, and you would declare in front of everybody, I love Yahweh and I love my master, and you would be a slave for life.

That's the imagery in the background of this.

So again, very different.

Think more Ruth and Boaz than Frederick Douglass to get this image.

And the idea here is that you as a slave now in that context, you as a servant, looking to your master for help, for protection, for your own identity.

That's why it was common in the Old Testament for the authors of the Old Testament to remind the Israelites that they were slaves in Egypt, which was bad.

And now they've been led to freedom and slavery to God.

Yahweh is their new master.

The common Old Testament name is Obed or Obadiah.

Obadiah means slave of Yahweh.

This is, of course, picked up in the New Testament.

Dulos becomes the most common New Testament title for a Christian.

We're slaves of Christ.

But here in the Old Testament, there's a reality behind this.

Listen, understand this picture.

If you were a slave in the Old Testament, you might be sent on an errand.

You might be set to go get crops from a certain city or fruit from a village or even something from the marketplace.

Maybe even water from the well.

You're doing some kind of menial task.

You're minding your own business, doing what you always do.

That's the point here.

You're on an errand and you're going to get something, and you come across somebody that has a beef, not with you, but with your master.

The one who possesses you.

They're upset at him.

You don't know this.

You have no way of knowing this.

You're not involved in your master's affairs.

You don't know whom he's wronged.

And maybe he hasn't even wronged the person.

Maybe it's a perceived slight that's not even real.

The point is, you'd have no way of knowing about it.

You're just minding your own business.

What could happen to a slave back then is the person, the person's upset at your master, he would take it out on you.

He'd throw rocks at you.

He would rob you.

He'd knock your water pitcher over.

They could beat slaves.

Some cases they'd even kill them to send a message to your master.

And so now you go back with your water pitcher broken and the money stolen from you and the fruit you're supposed to get gone, and you go back to your master.

And what do you expect when you go back to your master?

Well, it really depends upon your master.

Is he a man of integrity?

Is he going to defend you?

Or is he going to blame you?

Is he going to pass the blame?

He knows it's his fault.

He knows he wronged the person, but maybe he's going to blame you.

Or is he going to say, you know what?

This has nothing to do with you, and I will avenge you.

You don't know.

It depends entirely on the integrity of your master.

That's in the background, the very common thing they would have experienced.

And that's in the background of verse 2.

Behold, as a slave looks to the hand of his master, he's looking for how the master will respond with favor.

So often.

Our eyes look upon Yahweh our God.

In other words, do you see what's in the background here?

You are receiving scorn and contempt and opposition and worship.

Why?

Is it because you did anything wrong?

No.

People aren't upset at you.

They're upset at your God.

And they can't rebel against him.

They can't knock his water pitcher out of his hand.

So they go after you.

That's the point.

And the Jews understood this.

As they were singing the song on the way to Jerusalem, they were celebrating the fact that they were slaves of God.

And they're going to look to him enthroned in heaven for their protection.

This was Ezra's dilemma.

When he was sent back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, he had all the gold and the treasures.

And they said, Do you want soldiers to protect you as you go back from Babylon to Jerusalem?

And Ezra said, No, I mean, how can I tell the emperor that our God is in heaven and he protects us and then not have and then have soldiers with us, not have confidence he will protect us.

And you don't want to take that too far because later on Nehemiah is going to say, How can I say our God is in heaven and we don't put our swords in our sheath?

You know?

We're going to work on the wall with our swords because we know God fights through us.

I mean, there's there's but there's a balance there.

But understand what Psalm 123 is about.

You're being persecuted.

It's not up to you to defend yourself.

Slaves don't need to defend themselves.

It's a slave's job to go back home and to look at his master and receive kindness.

It's not the slave's job to figure out why this is going on.

It's not the slave's job to answer or to give a solution to the master or to come back and say, so you know, your neighbor is upset that you did this.

But here's what I would do if I were you.

I would do this and I would sell this field over there and then use the money to buy the guy's crops over there.

That would bring peace to the tribe, so to speak.

No, it's not your job as a slave to do that.

Your job is not to figure it out.

And I feel like this is a parent sometimes.

Deedre and I are trying to make a decision about what to do next, and the kids have all kinds of great ideas about it from the backseat.

No, I think you should actually do is you could run that errand tomorrow and move that meal to this day.

What is happening?

I'm not comparing my children to slavery.

That is not acceptable.

But that is the image that's upholding this psalm.

The slave is afflicted.

How will the master respond?

The slave is supposed to go to his master and appeal for mercy, which appeals, which goes to the third point.

First of all, God is sovereign.

Second, we're slaves.

The third truth to remember in difficult worship is that we are supplicants.

We are the ones in need here.

We're the ones who need help.

As I said, it would be wildly out of place for the slave to offer suggestions, for the slave to launch a counteroffensive.

He's an Obed down a melech, to use the Hebrew words, he's a slave, not a king.

He's in need.

The person who's being persecuted is in need.

He is in need of how would you finish that sentence?

If you're being persecuted for your faith, you are in need of what?

How would you finish that sentence?

Think about it in your head.

Because this is not an imprecatory psalm.

That's what you would expect to see here.

The nations are persecuting us, they're attacking us, they're opposing us.

So, God, go get them.

Bring them low, God.

Cut them down.

They're cutting us down.

You go cut them down, God.

Teach them a lesson.

And there are imprecatory psalms.

There are psalms where the psalmist is praying that God would bring vengeance upon his enemies.

They are in the Psalter, but this is not one of them.

It's very fascinating to me that the psalmist here does not present himself as the wronged person, even though he's being persecuted.

The psalmist presents himself as the one who is in the wrong.

He needs mercy.

He is in need.

So ask yourself if you're having a difficult time worshiping, if you feel like people are putting contempt on you, if you feel like, again, I make light of it, but if you feel like not having coffee and sitting closer to together, this is so hard.

What are you in need of?

Or if it's a real persecution.

People are actually upset with you.

They're actually doing things to you.

They're affecting you at work.

They're not returning your calls, they're taking away opportunities that should be yours because of your Christian faith that that's happening to you.

What are you in need of?

Are you in need of vengeance?

Are you in need of vindication?

Are you in need of God teaching that person a lesson over there?

No.

What you are in need of is realizing that you are the one who is in the wrong.

You are the one who needs mercy.

You're the wrong person.

You're not wrong in the situation of your persecution, of course.

They're angry at you because they're angry at God.

It's not to say that you did something wrong to cause this persecution.

That's not the point.

The point is you're looking past that.

You're looking to your relationship with God.

You are the sinner.

He is the sovereign.

You need mercy.

And persecution can sometimes have the effect of taking your eyes off of that basic reality.

You get so wrapped up in wanting to be proved right that you lose sight of the fact that you're the sinner in this equation.

You don't need to be proved right.

You need mercy.

You need grace.

And that's the point in verse 2.

So our eyes look to Yahweh our God until he has mercy upon us.

I mean, what a powerful image.

You're just fixated on Yahweh, staring at him, saying, you have to give me mercy.

And the word here, it's translated mercy.

It's the word that's often translated grace, by the way.

Sometimes it's translated compassion.

It's a word in Psalm 9, verse 14, be gracious to me, O Yahweh, be gracious to me.

Psalms 9:14

That's this word here.

And I'm fine with him translating it mercy here, because the point is that you recognize you are the one who needs help.

The psalmist is confessing his own powerlessness in the face of ridicule.

He recognizes that he is the one in need of favor.

Again, conjure up the image of your mind of this caravan of people trapezing across the Greco-Roman world to the temple in Jerusalem to worship, dressed differently, acting differently, talking differently than the nations around them, and the nations around them mocking them and putting scorn on them, and they are saying behind all of this is the fact that I am the one in need of mercy.

Yeah, God can defend his own integrity, sure.

But that's not my job.

My job is to plead for mercy to me.

As a maid servant looks to her maiden's hand for mercy.

The image that comes to my mind is back when my girls were tinier, when they can fit in one arm football style, and take a bottle out.

I mean, their eyes are locked in.

Locked in.

I have a cat right now, so it could be that example.

The cat sees the cat food.

His eyes are locked in.

Those babies' eyes will follow that bottle any which way.

You can hide it behind your back.

They'll be looking at you, which they'll break their neck trying to see that thing.

Because they know that's what they need.

This is the image that your eyes are so fixed on heaven because you are you're looking at the face of your master.

You're looking to God because you need mercy more than anything else.

That's what you need.

And if God doesn't show you mercy, what's left for you?

Now, if you're unable to do that, if you're so fixed on your own vindication, your own sense of being wronged, if you're so fixed on that, you're not going to be looking for mercy.

I mean, the key to looking for mercy is to recognize that you're the sinner, to see your own wrong.

It's only a wrong person who needs mercy.

It's only a wrong person who says, God, you have to show me grace.

If you're here this morning and you say, I don't need mercy from God, I'm doing pretty much okay on myself, then the psalm won't make any sense to you.

Only when you realize that you are the sinner.

That God should pour out justice on you.

He should cut you off.

He shouldn't let you worship.

You're a sinner.

But instead, he makes a way.

And so your eyes look upon him.

There really is a war for your eyes here.

Are you looking at your persecutors or are you looking at your own deficiency?

And then up to God who can give you grace.

I remember learning to ride a motorcycle.

My dad taught me to ride a motorcycle when I was eight years old.

I have an eight-year-old right now.

I cannot imagine her on a motorcycle.

But my dad taught me when I was eight.

And I remember the first rule he told me of riding a motorcycle.

You will go where you look.

So if you want to hit something, look right at it, and you will hit it, I promise you.

And that's a hard rule to look at because when you're riding your motorcycle, especially as a little kid, and you see something, well, you see something.

How are you supposed to not see it?

And sure enough, you're looking at, like, you know, this, you're looking at the hole, looking at the hole, don't hit the hole, don't hit the hole, hit the hole.

Right now, one of my daughters on her bicycle keeps running into Deedra.

Keeps running into her.

And we go for a walk and they're biking, and she keeps running into Deedra.

And I'm trying to tell Deedra, and this is good.

It means she can't take her eyes off you.

My toe again, really?

You go where you look.

This is the principle here.

Are you looking at your own problems?

Are you looking at those who are persecuting you as the are they captivating your mind?

Are your eyes fixed on those things?

Are your eyes fixed on all those other people who are so wrong about so many things?

Your heart's gonna go that way.

Can you rest your eyes off of that and look up to heaven and say, God, I need mercy from you?

Then you're gonna have a totally different attitude about worship.

A totally different attitude about worship.

It's a desperate person who looks intently.

And notice the phrase is translated till in verse 2, and the ESV just says till.

That's this idea that you're looking for a prolonged period of time until you get mercy.

You're not gonna take your eyes off of God.

I mean, imagine the slave who comes home having been beaten and persecuted and comes to his master looking for mercy.

You're not going to get distracted by what's on TV behind him, you're gonna be fixated on him.

Ask yourself, are you wrong enough to need mercy?

Well, how does the psalm end?

Does the psalmist receive mercy?

I mean, it doesn't say.

Our souls had more than enough of scorn of those who are ease of the contempt of the proud, the end onto Psalm 124.

You kind of want the.

So then God gave me mercy line.

Shouldn't there be something like that?

And so then God showed up and forgave my sins, and all is well in the world.

But remember when they sang these songs?

Every year on their pilgrimage, every year.

The fact that you have a new year to sing the song kind of answers itself, doesn't it?

The fact that you have a new year to sing the song is proof enough that God shows you mercy.

Again, I think of the analogy of our own national anthem.

You're not surprised that the flag is still there at the end of the song because you've sung the song before.

But there's another reason you shouldn't be surprised.

That you're singing it anyway.

That you're an American singing that song demonstrates the fact that we won.

It's not a cliffhanger.

The psalmist here, going to Jerusalem to sing the song year after year, demonstrates the fact that God does show mercy.

Listen, a new day is new mercies.

Now, how does the song relate to our Savior Jesus Christ?

Could he have sung this song?

Would this be one of his psalms?

And I think it would.

He certainly had had enough of contempt.

Contempt was piled upon him.

He could have called down angels to deliver him, he could have called out vengeance on those who opposed him.

And there were times when he issued curses against the cities that had opposed him, but those curses took place after Jesus was crucified.

He didn't act out for his own vindication in his life.

He, like a lamb, led to the slaughter.

He was silent.

He didn't open his mouth.

He went in silence, depending upon God and God's sovereignty.

Certainly the heart of Christ was filled with sorrow.

He wept over Jerusalem when he entered it.

He was opposed, he was mocked, he was stripped.

Certainly the sentiment in this psalm is a godly sentiment, and so you'd expect it to be in the heart of Jesus Christ.

And how did Jesus respond when he was persecuted?

He went away to pray.

He went away to pray.

Up onto the mountain to pray in silence, to pray in isolation.

Repeatedly, when the disciples came and found him and said, What are you doing?

He said, Praying.

And he says, I can only do what the Father has me to do.

He was totally submissive to God's will.

I can only do what God wants me to do.

He acted this psalm out.

He lived this psalm out.

And he had never sinned.

Which puts the ball over in our court.

Knowing that we are sinners, and Jesus wasn't.

Knowing that he was mocked and ridiculed for his sin without deserving it.

We shouldn't expect ourselves to be immune from that kind of thing.

Knowing that his example was a life of devotion and prayer and integrity in the midst of persecution while trusting God.

That becomes our challenge as well.

Can you live a life trusting God, knowing that your greatest need is the forgiveness of sins?

And God grants it so freely.

God is not a stingy master here.

He gives us what we need.

He protects us and he gives us food through his word, and he gives us grace and mercy through faith in Jesus Christ.

Lord, we're grateful that you extend faith to those who ask for it.

That you extend mercy to those who are in need, that you extend grace to those who have nothing to offer.

Lord, we gather together to worship with really empty pockets.

We have nothing to bring you.

We are servants and we are in need of mercy.

We are beggars and we are in need of food.

We're slaves and we're in need of protection and provision.

And we're so thankful that you, as our Heavenly Father, give us all of those things.

Our greatest need, of course, is a Savior, and you've presented that through Jesus Christ.

The Jews journey to the synagogue year or to the temple year after year, awaiting the long-expected Messiah.

We know he's come.

He cursed the temple.

It was torn down.

There's nothing that remains of it now.

And so now we come here to a church where we're bound together, stone upon stone, believer upon believer, united together.

This is our pilgrimage, Lord.

We come here and we worship you in spirit and in truth.

We know it's foolishness to the world.

But that's okay.

We're not here for their approval.

We're here for yours.

And we know that you give it freely because you've given it to your son, and we're in Christ.

It's in his name we pray.

Amen.

You have been listening to Emmanuel with Pastor Jesse Johnson.

You can find more resources like this at IBCBA.com.

Here is a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBCBA.com.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

We're located in Northern Virginia.

And for more information about when and where we worship, check out our church website.

I hope that personally meets you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week.

Serve the Lord faithfully and share the gospel forward.