the one hundred and twenty-third number of Psalms, Psalms 123 in its entirety, a song of a sense. To you I lift up my eyes old to 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 mage servant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God till He has mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, well we have had more than enough of contempt and our soul has had more than enough of the scorn of those who are at ease of the contempt of the proud. They God richly bless both the reading and the hearing of his holy word. Now this song is one of the songs of Ascent and we've mentioned before that songs of Ascent which actually begins with the hundred and twentyth number of Psalms all the way through the one hundred and thirty-fourth. These were sung by the portion that portion of the covenant community that lived outside of Jerusalem and so as they journeyed towards the holy city on those designated feast days and holy days. These songs were part of what they sang as they journeyed. Now it is worth noting because of the wording, some of the wording here as well as in other portions of some of the Ascent Psalms, it is worth noting or pointing out that the city of Jerusalem itself was located in what is known as hill country. It was it was it was located now in fact some would call it a mountain but that would be a bit of a stretch but it was located in hill country and the temple itself when Solomon later built the temple it was built on the hill called Zion and for this reason this elevated status or this elevated location of both the city of Jerusalem and the temple itself what that meant was as they journeyed at various points on their their journey they could actually see the city and the temple long before they entered it. If anyone I know it's it's little difficult here in a place where you don't have mountains to imagine mountains or hill tops being far away but but if anyone has seen pictures of the Hollywood sign on television and in Los Angeles the Hollywood sign and the Hollywood sign on a clear day can be seen from miles away in fact on a rare clear day in Los Angeles it can be so clear at various points in the city that you would think man in five minutes I can get there but in actuality it's much further away. So long before the pilgrims actually entered into the city of Jerusalem they were able to see it lifted up and for this reason you can you can see how some of the songs or some of the songs of a set capture the visual city and everything that it represented the vision of the temple and everything that it represented it sort of reminded them it sort of gave them a glimpse of the end of the journey even before they got to the journey so therefore some of the the songs they use this elevated setting of the city as a poetic expression of the spiritual strength that was available to the people of God as they as and not only in the temple but in the very instruments of worship in the elevation of the city and in the elevation of the temple this is captured particularly in the one hundred and twenty-first number of Psalms which is the second of the Psalms of a cent in verse one where the writer says I will lift up my eyes to the hills from wince cometh my help says the old King James I love that rendering of it I will lift up my eyes to the hills from wince cometh my help also looking Psalms 125 verses one and two and it captures that same sense of a poetic expression of the spiritual strength and resource of God's people located in the temple and in the elements of the temple as well as in Zion itself Psalms 125 verses one and two it says those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion which cannot be moved for but abides forever and the mountain surrounds Jerusalem so the Lord surrounds his people from this time fourth and forever more and again what the Psalmist is doing is using the physical situation of the city and poetically expressing how this demonstrates or illustrates God as being the strength of his people God and his people being strengthened because of what God has provided for them so therefore this physical construction of the city this elevated status of the city as the pilgrims were journeying into the holy city for the express purpose of worshiping it sets before them the object of God himself and all that he has provided but of course God for God's people the greatest resource that God gives to his covenant people is God himself and so the temple was the house of God that was the way it was it was called the house of God and and the house of God and in that sense the hill of Zion symbolize the visible place of God's reign the visible place of God's reign always think of my great grandfather who was a farmer in Arkansas and I remember as a little boy he I hang out sometimes they're in the summer and and all week long he was he'd get in his wagon literally a wagon drawn by a horse and he'd have his overalls on and and he was just going to work the fields and he was a small man but very strong and and I'd always see him with his his shirts lead rolled up and you could see his forearms and and he was just a stout man and then on Sunday when it came Sunday he didn't have his overalls on he had on his suit I say well Papa why why why you why you dressed up and he simply said because we go into the Kings house you see going to the Kings house and that's what God's people are able they are reminded of and you can see them on their road to Jerusalem and they see the elevated city and they can see the temple and they are reminded that they're going to the Kings house and so therefore meeting in Zion meeting in Jerusalem was equivalent as they saw it it was equivalent with being with God himself so you notice in verse two of Psalms 121 he the the writer says in verse one he says I will look to the hills from whence come at my help but in verse two he says my help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth Psalms 123 takes it a step further and says you can see this in verse one it says instead of saying I will look to the hills in verse one of Psalms 123 it says to you I lift up my eyes oh Lord oh you who are enthroned in the heavens now brothers and sisters what I would argue is that Jerusalem earthly Jerusalem and even Mount Zion itself is equivalent for us to God's promises of the gospel and so the earthly Jerusalem was really symptomatic of the kingdom of God in the heavenly Jerusalem but more important I would argue that the content of this song finds its fullest expression in our embrace of the person and work of Christ as being the city as well as being the temple of God through whom we have our two whom we have access and through whom we receive blessings from the Lord so before we look at the Psalm itself I want to turn your attention to Hebrews chapter 10 or chapter 12 in Hebrews chapter 12 very familiar passage and it sort of sets our sight on what the content and substance of of real worship is on this side of heaven and I'll begin in verse 22 and this is what this is true of New Testament worship what the writer says here is true of everyone who worships the Lord in spirit and in truth but you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God the heavenly Jerusalem and to a measurable angels or innumerable angels in feastal gathering and to the assembly of the first born who are enrolled in heaven and the God and to God the judge of all and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel what I want to do this morning is look at this description as it were of worshiping God in Jerusalem or this anticipation of worshiping God in Jerusalem as the pilgrims headed to the holy city on the holy days designated by God I want to transfer that because the substance and fulfillment of it is in the person and work of Christ so that when we worship as a writer of Hebrew says we are coming to Mount Zion when we worship we are coming to the God who meets us in the person and blood of Jesus Christ that being the case I want to look at three things in particular from this passage as it relates to our worship and the first thing is this first consideration is that a significant part of our worship is the recognition of both the transcendence and the imminence of God a significant part of our worship is the recognition of the transcendence and by transcendence what we mean is that which is beyond so our worship of God is us touching bases with that which is beyond our ordinary experience it speaks in essence to the otherness of God we are gathering to worship the transcendent God who is greater than those that worship him and he is greater than anything and other than anything else in the whole created order you can imagine that as the pilgrims were journeying towards Jerusalem and they saw the house of the Lord sort of hanging above everything else it was a reminder that he is indeed other and certainly the psalmist captures this when he says you O Lord are enthroned not in that hill you are enthroned in heaven and so therefore this transcendence I think one of the things that is missing in much of contemporary worship is that we make it too mundane people often say well you know we if you were at a ball game you would be this but you know how mundane a ball game is a ball game whatever it is whatever sport it is even for people who worship football it is still a mundane experience you're not meeting with the God of creation when you go to a concert you're not experiencing the eternal breaking into the temporal there's something transcendent going on here and so when when when the writer sets his sight on on the holy city he has reminded that I'm going to something that is others something that is transcendent brothers and sisters I think we've lost that sense of transcendence people don't have and I don't want to be overly critical I think this is incumbent upon all of us sometimes we get so so used to going to church that is so much on our calendar that we forget what my great grandfather remembered anytime we got the the dark the the door of the church coming into the presence of the king you left home this morning were you thinking about were you so busy wondering oh if I'm from on time that you forgot where you're going you're headed to the place with the creator of the universe the transcendent other chooses to meet with us the significant part of worship is to recognize that God is inviting us into his presence and so it's transcendent because it connects us to the otherness of God but it's imminent also and by imminent it transcendence means God's otherness then imminent means his closeness and here is the beauty and here is the depth of Christian worship that the God who is so transcendent and by the way you know one of the most significant buildings architectural structures in all of Jerusalem was the temple it was massive but yet when the Lord allowed Solomon to build it he didn't even say we say that the earth is his footstool you know what the Lord says about the temple you built a place for me to hang my name you built a house for my name God can't fit in our buildings but the other God the transcendent God condescends to make himself to draw himself near to those who could never draw near to him see a significant part of worship is the recognition both of the transcendence and the imminence of God and so for the writer of this song he acknowledges that the hill place is a reminder this exhausted location where the temple is is a reminder that we are going up and God is coming down and if Christian worship still captures both the transcendence and the imminence of God then certainly that is no better and there's no better place to capture that than in the person of Jesus Christ you read in John chapter 1 in beginning was the word and the word was God and the word was with God and there was nothing made that was not made by him so pause for a moment and what does that tell us that tells us that when God that the word first off is not just a verbal expression what is meant by word or logos the Greek logos in that passage what is meant by word is something more is something different than when you and I speak words the word in that passage is eternal and the word in that passage is divine and the word in that passage is not only divine and eternal but is the source of everything that exists that word is distinct from the person of the father and what it does for us is it puts it puts Genesis 1 in a whole different light oftentimes we think of it this way that in the beginning God said let there be and we think that his word we call it the fiat his word just create something out of nothing so his words if I were to say let there be light and in the same way that God in light just came we think that's how God created but this changes things doesn't it what this means is that when God said in the beginning let there be there was another eternal being that made it so and that eternal being is the eternal son of God and the eternal son of God hears that hears the transcendence he is not hears before all things he is the source of all things and he sustains all things but yet in John's gospel we get this statement of imminence he says and the word who is eternal and eternally other was made flesh and dwelt amongst us transcendence becoming imminent and so when we come to worship God when we come and gather in this place we are gathering to meet and worship the great other who has condescended into something that can be seen and touched brothers and sisters I think sometimes we let's routine drown out the splendor and the honor and the awesomeness coming together in the very presence of the other God the God who is greater than notice how the writer captures this he says that when we worship we encounter the God who is enthroned not in the building he is enthroned in the heavens that's we're not conjuring him up there's so many in fact right now the 11 o'clock hour somebody trying to conjure him up God is doing and when he calls us into his presence that's why I think preachers we're not cheerleaders we're only telling folk what is they either are in awe of it or not but here's what I'm telling you that when we gather what we're doing is we are meeting at the command of the creator and sustainer of the universe and God is stopping by the person of his son to meet with us it's interesting that in this particular song some have suggested that this is a post-exileic song because of what we see in verse 4 you see in verse 4 it references it says that our souls has had more than enough of the scorn of those who are at ease in other words our souls have been troubled by what we have experienced horizontally now they say that this is possibly written during the after the period of the exile because of the reality of no longer having national Israel what it was before the exile seeing the city itself in ruins and occupied by people who were not descendants of Abraham those being surrounded by people that were not worshippers of the true and only God now I have argued that if we many people try to make the case for America being a Christian nation which we are not if you really want to make a comparison to what the church is the church is like Israel before the fall or while they were in Egyptian bondage or we can see it as Joseph in Egypt before the bondage or the church is like Israel returned to the land during the period of the exile which means we will be under rules that are not necessarily Christian that's one of the reasons brothers and sisters when we come to the transcendent place there is no place in our sanctuary for an American flag there is no place our no the sanctuary of God is not crowned with either an R or a D the sanctuary of God is one it is governed it's the reminder that everything that is experienced horizontally is not under the control of Babylon is not under control of Rome but Rome and Babylon itself are under the sovereign rule and authority of the king who dwells who's thrown is in heaven therefore our worship experience it helps us because it it it it helps us in it it helps and heals us from everything that we experience and encounter in our horizontal experiences we're going to deal with this a little more tonight but understand this that the church's responsibility in the world is not to heal the government we can't it can't be healed the church's responsibility in the world is to heal those who are governed and to bring them to the knowledge of the king who is greater than the king the king of kings and so notice what it says that that we've had enough and isn't that's that's the sad thing when we politicize our churches haven't we had enough of the talking heads haven't we had enough of the Twitter feeds haven't we have enough you says come come here let me give you something that your favorite news feed can't give you come here and those wounds that you've experienced horizontally they can only be healed by Zion haven't we had enough is that what he says a worship experience ought to be other because we are in the presence of the other so worship the significant part of worship is that it is both transcendent and it is imminent the God who his other has condescended to meet with us and that's good news there's the second thing that we see in this passage and that is the knowledge the knowledge of the transcendent God is communicated to us through means or through the means that he is appointed for us reminds us of our true place in this world in other words the as the knowledge of the transcendent God through the means that he is appointed as that is communicated to us it puts us in our place it helps us to see who we truly are and what we truly are and what we truly are brothers and sisters is we are servants dependent servants on the king whose throne is in glory that's what what this reminds us of look at the way it's expressed here in verse in verse two he says that as the servants or behold as the eyes of the servants look to the hand of their master as the eye of the maid look to the hands of our mistress in other words the master that the servant knows that he's a servant and knows that he exists for the will of the master sometimes we get sidetracked and sometimes our our horizontal dealings make us forget who we are I think that's one of the things that's communicated in worship that has God as our bell hop we come into the the Lord's house and because we pray for five minutes or because we lifted our hands at the right point of the song we think that God is at our back and call so some people come to church not because they are trying to worship the one who is exhausted above all things but some folk are coming to church because life got hard and they have a divine shopping list or laundry list of stuff for the great other to do isn't that what happens when we crash and burn isn't that what happens when we go our own way and we rebel against the things that we have been raised with and then all of a sudden we hit some snags in the rose well I guess I should start going back to church and what we're doing is okay or now that you got my attention go ahead and fix me and now do what I want or what you want or what I want you to do and here's what happens one of the things one of the Psalms by the way one of the Psalms of a cent that I find interesting is the 120 second where it's a because it's written by David and what David says in verse one of Psalms 122 he says I was glad when they said unto me come and let us go to the house of the Lord the king the king of Israel needed to be in the presence of the king of glory because the only thing that can fuel and define him is to recognize that all earthly kings are but servants and so in this particular verse what we see is that as we are as the transcendent God communicates his his imminence to us through his appointed means than what that does is it puts us in our place so that we know that we are servants but we are willing servants we are loving servants Paul says that even though we have been said free as Jesus says in John's gospel he who the sun sets free is free indeed but we are free to be the bond servants of Jesus Christ so we haven't really understood our worship where we haven't understood God properly through worship until we are brought into his presence and we are reminded that we are servants we talk about we talk this morning in our Sunday school class about an anthropology of view of man that is either too high or too low and I think sometimes even in sanctified religious circles we think too highly of ourselves and so we're too high we're too we think too highly of ourselves to love of the folk who sin we think too highly of ourselves but when we are summonsed into the presence of the great king whose throne is in heaven and we understand that the hills are his and he made it when we understand that we are but just that has been brought into existence by the one who is in throne in the heavens when we understand that it is his voice that calls the thunder to roll and the rain to drop when we understand whose presence we are in our net response is not that we are worthy but we are willing servants of the one who rules brothers and sisters we have not seen Christ right until we see ourselves not as his assistance but as his servants and we are the servants of God in the old cartoon way cartoon way here's what I mean back in the days when you would watch say something like Flintstones there was always there's a trope a running trope in any number of the of the loony tomb cartoons and Hannah Barbarra but especially in Flintstones I remember an episode where Barney was Barney and Fred were walking along a bridge and they saw man who had a stone and he had a stone tied to a rope and he was about to throw the stone over the bridge as if he was about to lose his life or give his life up and Fred and Barney they went and rescued him and he felt it was his obligation to become their servant well the only problem was that he was a nuisance as a servant and so they had to come up with a scheme where they allowed him to be the rescuer
so that he could save them and he could they could be in his service so that he could be let free here's what is meant where we say we are his servants the reason we recognize that we are the servants of the most high God is because the right worship of God which is through his appointed means which communicates to us that his imminent is to us through his son so therefore we understand that when the word mate was made flesh and dwelt among us then we were able to behold the grace of God and the glory of this grace and therefore we know God through the sun and we've been rescued by the sun and therefore the reason we render our lives as servants before God is because he saved us I think that's what we see in Isaiah 6 remember an Isaiah goes into the temple the year that King Isaiah was died and he saw the Lord high and lifted up and then he saw the Seraphim and they were crying out holy holy holy is the Lord and he was overwhelmed by the sight of the glory of God and remember the first thing that came out of his mouth whoa is me I am undone because I have seen the the Lord himself and I am an unclean person and I come from a people of unclean lips I don't deserve to live and what does God do he takes living coals live coals off the fire and purges that which is offensive to Isaiah and he says he purged him and then after he was purged then I and then the Lord says this now who would go for me only Isaiah in the temple who can I go to speak for me who will go and Isaiah as if he's not gonna let anybody else speak up says Lord send me out go why will he go because he came into the presence of the holy God and the holy God purged him of his sins and I would argue brothers and sisters that the degree to which we understand the magnitude of God receiving us through his son is the degree to which we will identify ourselves as being his willing servants because he who his other has received us into his presence here's a third and final thing and that is the condescension of the transcendent God through the person of his son emboldens us to petition him to now bend down and help us the work that is translated mercy that we see here in verse three because the now he says have mercy upon me O Lord I have mercy upon us O Lord and it means to bend towards notice how he has started this eye to the hills I will lift up my eyes from once coming my help and then here in 123 verse 1 I will lift up my eyes to you and as we lift up our eyes to the transcendent God who has made himself imminent in the person of his son you know what it gives us it gives us boldness to say now help us you don't ask God to help us because we deserve it we don't ask God to help us because we are are better than what we were we have the boldness to ask God to bend now towards us because we understand that everything that is necessary for life and godliness is given to us in his son and we understand that he has given us access to his name so that we can make our petitions known to him and he will hear from us don't we all have some phone calls that we just don't take in that the beauty of cell phones one of the beauties of cell phones
and sometimes we don't take them because we don't recognize the number they say well they can leave a message sometimes is because we know the name
that we don't take the call the brothers and sisters they used to say in my church when I was growing up Jesus is on the main line you can call him up and you can tell him what you need and the beauty of grace is that he looks and he knows where it's coming from he knows what you were knows what you are and he takes the call we can go to him boldly without promises of trying to do better or act better you can go to him boldly seek mercy and grace in our time of need because we go and worship the transcendent God through the eminence of his son we worship him in Mount Zion where there's blood speech more boldly than the blood of ample did you think about that when you came to worship this morning that you're coming to meet not with an elected official coming to meet the sovereign ruler of the universe because he has condescended to meet with you through his son and the blood of his son enables us to go boldly before him no matter what anyone else says even if it's true he takes the call because we are his and we've already experienced enough contempt so he brings us into his presence and heals us before he sends us back where we're going to be wounded again but he communicates to us that he's enough brothers and sisters we come high because he's come low and he helps us to shine in the midst of darkness I will lift up my eyes to you O Lord who is enthroned in the heavens and as a servant look to the hands of his master social eyes look to you have mercy O Lord upon us we've had enough contempt we've had enough scorn send us back so that we may shine with the glory of your countenance in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation let's pray our God and our Father