Psalms 123 Lift Your Eyes

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan, where we are growing in faith, community, and service. This is a sermon series on the Psalms of Ascent by Pastor Don Filsack. Let's listen in.

Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here, and if you can come on in, we're ready to get started. So you can find your seats and jump in here. I'm glad that you're here. I'm glad that you've taken time out of what probably has been a busy week for you to gather together with God's people, and when we gather together on Sunday morning, there's a couple of things that I think we ought to recognize, and I'm hopeful that we recognize in our gathering, and that is that we are not alone in this walk of faith.

We're not alone. That we have an opportunity to gather together, and just looking around this room and seeing that others have gathered together with you, that we don't stand alone, and sometimes in our culture, sometimes in your workplace, sometimes in your neighborhood, sometimes in your school, wherever you're at, you can feel alone, right?

And so one of the benefits of gathering together with God's people is that recognition that we are not alone, and secondly, as a dependence kind of issue, we need each other. We actually have been created relationally, and we need other people around us to sharpen us, hold us accountable, guide us, direct us, even just to encourage us, to cry with us, to celebrate with us, all of those things.

And then equally, lastly, quite obviously, is that others need you. Others need you to be there for them, and that's a part of that, a component of this gathering together. And we do recognize that Sunday morning, we're a larger group, and so we have small groups that meet during the week, intentionally smaller groups for the purpose of trying to dig deeper into each other's lives and work through, you know, some are studying various things, and the study isn't the main point, but the main point is relationship and those connections where you can be growing deeper in faith, community, and service with each other.

I hope that you're mindful of those things this morning, that in our gathering that there's a valuable accountability, valuable relationship, and all of that. Be sure to fill out the connection card that you received.

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I do want to make sure that you guys understand that over the course of the last year or so, a couple of years, we've been working towards being pretty frugal with the general fund, and so money that does, some people have asked me this question, and I only say it because I'm beginning the question, is money that I give, if it goes above and beyond the budget in the general fund, does that eventually get rolled into the building fund?

And the answer is, it doesn't get rolled in there, but it's definitely part of the balance that we're keeping in place to eventually build. And so when I say we've got roughly $300 ,000 in the bank currently saved towards that building, not all of that is in the expansion fund.

Some of that is in just surplus in the general fund that's held there. Some of you that are numbers people, that matters. Some of you are kind of like, just kind of glazed over for a second there, so come back.

To me here.

This morning, we come to one of the shortest of the 15 Psalms of Ascent. It's only four verses, and so some of you are looking at the clock going, maybe we get out earlier. Well, good luck with that, we'll try, we'll see how that works.

All 15 of these Psalms I've mentioned before were used like a playlist. So just picture a playlist on your iDevice or whatever, some of you use different devices, but you've got a song playlist that you put a selection of songs into for a specific purpose, like think of a Christmas playlist.

Some of you maybe have a summer playlist, songs that you like to listen to in the summertime or whatever, those really drab, you know, melancholy songs for winter here in Michigan, whatever. But many of us use playlists, and this was a playlist that was used in ancient Israel, a list of songs, a collection called the Songs of Ascent, the Songs of the Journey.

They were pilgrim songs for those who would take the annual pilgrimage, generally, usually, all Jews would take at least once a year, take a trip up to Jerusalem for the Passover, they would take sacrifices with them, gather together, centered around the temple of God, worshiping Him, and so these 15 songs were just that.

And this is a short one that we're looking at, but I want to point out that poetry has the ability, these are all poems, they're all songs, Hebrew poetry is a little bit different, you'll notice that they don't rhyme when we translate them.

Hebrew poetry used a lot of symbolism, just like ours does, metaphor, things like that. Repetition is a key signature of Hebrew poetry, so there's repetition involved, one line repeating another line, and that kind of thing for emphasis.

But poetry packs a lot of power and emotion in just a few words. And so I hope that as we come to these four verses in Psalm 123, that we recognize them as the very words of God expressed through human emotion.

Now we know that as we come to God's word, at least I hope that you understand, that these are God's word to us, and when you read, you know, Ephesians, you're like, man, this is a word from God, or you read the book of Genesis, this is God-given history, He's explaining it to us, but then we get to the Psalms, and it can get a little confusing in our minds, like, how many of you have ever read a Psalm, and you're like, man, that sounds a lot like a whole lot of human emotion in there?

Have you ever felt that way when you're reading the Psalms? And yet, I want to point out that God does not just use human language to convey truth to us, but God uses human emotion to convey truth to us.

So the Psalms in that sense are, it's accurate to see the human emotion in there, but to recognize that God is communicating, even in the undercurrents of the emotion that we experience and see as we're reading the Psalms, that He's trying to tell us something, even in the way that things are said.

And the message of Psalm 123 is a message that I need. It's been beneficial to me to see this, and sometimes it's as if I feel like God picks out a sermon series for me, and you guys just listen in, and I don't know if you guys are gaining benefit from it, but I know that I am, and so sometimes it just feels like, well, I needed that, and I'm trying to convey some sense of that to you, hoping that something of that rubs off on you as well.

Yeah, I would say, you know, Psalm 123, as I read it and studied it this week, kind of rocked my world in a good way, like just helped me to just re-snap into focus of lifting my eyes to God, and this Psalm particularly addresses our dependence upon God for mercy, coming to our great Creator, coming to the One who sits on the throne of heaven, and coming to Him for specifically the word mercy.

This Psalm addresses the reality that we need to turn to God in times of distress. But more than that, it addresses the way that we turn to God, the heart behind it, and again, we get into some of the emotional language of that.

We are to seek from, it basically tells us what we are to seek from God when we are set about by relational hardships and difficulties, and then also what heart attitude we should have in those times where we feel like we've had more than enough, and I would guess that some of you in this room maybe are right up against the, I've had enough, like I'm fed up to here with whatever it might be.

Some of us, maybe it's just winter, I'm up to here with winter, like just get the spring and the flowers up out of the ground or whatever, but there's a variety and a host of different things that you can say.

I've had more than enough, I'm fed up, and the Psalm writer actually says that in, basically in Hebrew terms, I'm fed up, I've had enough, okay, and it might sound like something like we kind of go, wrestle with that, like can we say that, can you say that to God?

We'll talk about that as we dig through this. So let's turn to Psalm 123 and listen to the emotion of a person who is coming before their God for help. And if you don't have a Bible, please do me a favor and just raise your hand if you don't have a Bible or access to it on a device, raise your hand and one of these guys will bring you a Bible, Mark, there's somebody over here, yeah, there you go.

And then you can take a Bible with you if you want, there are some on the table back there at the end of the service if you don't have one. I know that it can be kind of, I didn't bring a Bible and I don't want to raise my hand and tell everybody.

So, but follow along as we read Psalm 123, four verses, pretty short, and yet equally powerful, the very words of God to us this morning, Recast Church. Psalm 123, a song of a sense. To you I lift my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens, behold, as the eyes of a servant look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant 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, 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. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning.

Father, I rejoice that you are a God who listens. You are available for us in our time of desperation, in our time of trouble. Father, you are certainly a rock that we can turn to for stability in the midst of life's storms and difficulties.

And yet there are times in our lives where we feel fed up, we feel frustrated, we feel like we are being bent to the breaking point. Father, I pray that you would calm the anxiety of your people here this morning.

Father, that you would allow us to hear fresh words from you, and through the interaction with this text, and through the interaction with these songs that we're about to sing, Father, that we would be transformed and changed.

Father, that we would recognize you as not just a resource that we can turn to, but as the source of all mercy, the place that we turn to and the place that we look for all good blessings. Father, as we lift up our voices before you, I thank you for the congregation, I thank you for this assembly that has gathered together and the opportunity that we have to praise you together.

Father, I pray that our hearts would be encouraged, that our emotions would be engaged as we have an opportunity to sing these songs to you, our Redeemer, our Lord and our Savior.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you a lot to these guys for leading us in worship. I'm grateful for them. I love that song. That's every preacher's prayer is that the Lord would speak through them on Sunday morning, and so I love that song just before I get up to preach.

Would encourage you to have the Bible open in front of you. I mean, that's really our hope for hearing from God, is from the Word of God, and so that's Psalm 123.

Is this thing live?

Are you guys hearing it through the speakers? Yeah, it's good?

Okay.

I couldn't quite tell there for just a second. I'm going to start off with a question, and just to think this through, I mean, we just got done praying, and so you kind of know what you were doing while we were praying, but what do you do with your eyes?

What do you do with your eyes when you pray? What are you doing with your eyes? Do you close them tight, and then work hard to make sure that your mind doesn't wander? Okay? Do you look around at others to make sure that their eyes are closed?

It's always a perennial thing at my dinner table, right?

The kid's kind of, oh, she had her eyes open.

Well, then you did too, okay? So that's hypocrisy right there. You know what I'm talking about. So what do you do with your eyes? Are there ever moments where you lift your eyes to the heavens as if to hope that you might catch a glimpse of God Himself?

The songwriter in our text lifts up his eyes to the Almighty, to God Himself. And I would suggest to you that closed eyes are no more pious or acceptable to God than opening our eyes while we pray, opening seeking eyes, looking for Him, looking after Him.

I think we've been acclimated to some degree from our childhood to our adulthood that you close your eyes during prayer to minimize distractions. That's a good idea if you find yourself routinely and regularly distracted, but I do find that I think we do it more out of course of habit than anything without much thought given to it.

And here, again, the songwriter lifts his eyes to the heavens. To be quite personal, when my eyes are closed, I have a tendency to be more distracted than when my eyes are open.

That's just me.

My top three strengths from the Strength Finders are input, learner, ideation. Man, when I'm alone and in the quiet of my mind, there is no such thing, okay? My mind is just constantly working through ideas, constantly having conversations.

I close my eyes and that's when things get really busy. So sometimes just having the stimulus of other things going on kind of dampens that a little.

Bit.

The songwriter is obviously speaking poetically, right? He's not talking about his physical eyes, what he does with them. So I'm kind of being a little bit facetious as we start because he says, to you I lift my eyes up and it is clear that he's talking about a spiritual metaphor for where his heart is engaged, where he is turning to for his requests.

Where is his attention being focused? And it is towards God. We should be reminded of another psalm. If you were here and you've been here for this series, starting with the Psalms of Ascent, Psalm 121 began with the same similar phrase about the lifting up of eyes.

And so we remember that we're talking about pilgrim songs on a journey and in Psalm 121 it began with the traveler lifting up his eyes on the pathway and the foothills approaching Jerusalem. He lifts up his eyes and off in the distance there are the hills, the mountains, and he lifts his eyes and then asks the question, where does my help come from?

We sang that.

We sang part of that, that very psalm this morning. I lift my eyes up to the hills, where does my help come from, Psalm 121. And if you remember from that, the hills, lifting up your eyes to the hills is a metaphor for looking to those high places for the source of your help.

The high places, those hills being a place in ancient Jerusalem where there was pagan worship, where there were shrines set up to gods and goddesses, Ashtara, Baal worship happened on top of these hills and all kinds of sacrifices and evil practices.

And so as they're coming into the foothills around Jerusalem where all these practices took place, he lifts his eyes up and says, where does my help come from? Is that where I'm going to go? Am I going to go there for my help?

Am I going to go to all these other things? And so that was the start of Psalm 121. But this psalmist, now in 123, this songwriter skips altogether the temptation to look for his help from those high places.

He refuses to look to the pagan idolatry that happened on those hills, but he goes straight to the enthroned one in heaven. He starts off right away, To you I lift my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens.

It's obvious that he's speaking more than just physical eyes. But notice that there's something that has had his attention previously that he must.

Lift his eyes.

He has to pick them up from something else. Where does a traveler, you're out on a hike. You're walking, any of you who do enjoy hiking or just even just going out for a walk, where do your eyes usually rest?

Especially if it's a rough and rocky or there's a lot of roots on the trail or whatever, you're walking out at El Sabo, you watch the path in front of you. You watch your immediate surroundings, right?

You're paying attention. You hear something scamper off in the woods, what gets your attention? No other thing scampering off in the woods, right? But the things that are immediate grab your attention.

The things that are right there in front of you on the path. Sometimes you are riveted on paying attention to what's right in front of you. I'm guessing some of you I know are runners and I know that some of you have ran early in the morning like I have.

Maybe you just have a headlamp or something like that or you're running. And I'm guessing that some of you can relate to this that there have been times in my running career where I've almost stepped right in the middle of a pile of roadkill, okay?

And it's like you just kind of like come right up on it in the dark, yeah, that's a horrible vision. But nothing quite snaps your focus on where you're stepping when you come up on something.

Like that.

So yeah, the things that are immediate, the things that are right in front of you. And so you learn to quickly watch your step, pay attention to the things that are going around you. And I use that as an illustration because sometimes in our lives, the things that are handed to us feel like roadkill, right?

Some of the things that are right in our immediate circumstances are those things that stink, but they certainly grab our attention, right? They're the things that we fix our eyes on and they become all-consuming or the very focus of why we just pay attention to the temporal things that are immediately around.

Us.

But this traveler, this songwriter, takes his eyes off of his immediate surroundings and circumstances in order to look to the king. In order to pay attention to the goal. In order to pay attention to the place of true help and true assistance on his journey to the worship of God, to his place.

And as I said a few weeks ago, I believe that all of us have some places we are tempted to go to for help that are not the Almighty, that are not God. And so if it sounds like I'm repeating myself, it's only because these psalms are summarizing a journey to God.

And on all of our, I can tell you, and the songwriter is telling you, that on this journey to God, we all have a common problem. We all have a common issue on our journey in life, again, this whole journey of ascents to Jerusalem is being given as a metaphor for your life and mine.

As followers of God, we're on our way to the celestial city, on our way to the place of God, the city of peace, the new Jerusalem, our destination. But on this journey, this common problem, we have a tendency to look all over the place for help before we turn to God.

Maybe he's playing M, N, O, sometimes all the way down, X, Y, Z. Try everything else, and if all else fails, then I'll look to God. Then I'll turn to him. And these psalms are like blows of a hammer trying to lodge remembrance in our minds of God shouting from heaven to us, hey, when difficulties come to your life, look up here.

Come to me. Pay attention to me.

I'm the maker of everything.

I'm the one who sits on the throne of heaven. I care for you. I am here for you. Come here first. Come and talk to me about what's going on in your life and fix your eyes on me. If you get anything from this message this morning, it's a simple application.

Simple and memorable, lift your eyes to the king.

The main point.

And if you walk away from here lifting your eyes to the king, then you've done what this text is asking of you. But I'm glad that it doesn't stop there. I mean, some of you are like hearing that, and it sounds kind of like a conclusion.

You're like, wow, that was quick.

Not quite.

You guys know me better than that. I'm excited, though, that the text doesn't just say that, right? Fix your eyes on the king or lift your eyes to the king, and that's it. Some of you, you've got some questions in your mind.

Like, look to him. In what way? How? How do I put my eyes on him? I can't even physically see him.

He's not there.

I mean, yeah, sure, I can look to the ceiling when we're praying, but I just don't see him.

There.

So what does this mean? There's some questions that we're left with in our minds. In verses 2 through 4, I'm going to spell out the attitude, the heart of one who is desperately seeking to catch a glimpse of God.

Fixing their eyes on the Almighty. The first thing that we see, we find in verse 2, that the one who lifts their eyes to God does so with humility. With humility. There's going to be five of these. Humility is the first attitude of the one who is seeking desperately after God is humility.

By use of a metaphor between slave and master and maidservant and mistress, here in verse 2, the songwriter says, we are humble before God, watching his hand. Now, there's two, there's a couple of different reasons you might watch somebody's hand.

Especially if they're your boss or they're over you or whatever. Two primary reasons would be to avoid a slap. Okay, that there's going to be some kind of retribution coming and you want to watch their hand, make sure that this thing doesn't fly, right, so you can duck.

Or to see if they will extend their hand with a gracious offering. With kindness towards you. At the end of verse 2, clearly, explicitly states that it's the latter, it's the second.

Reason.

It's not for fear of the Almighty that you watch his hand.

Watch out.

Watch out, it could swing at any moment. No, it's waiting for his hand to extend. A gracious offering, a gracious gift of mercy. You see, the psalmist lifts his eyes to the king in humility like a slave to a master.

This is a look that incorporates a correct understanding of where we stand in scope of the enthroned one in heaven. Where do we stand in regard to him? Someone who lifts their eyes to God for help is acknowledging that they are the one in the place of need.

And I love how this psalm explicitly includes men and women in this. Like a slave or a maidservant. All can approach the one who is the king over all things. And the text explicitly uses that illustration.

But I would suggest to you that as much as humility is required in our pursuit of God and our fixing our eyes on him, just an acknowledgement first and foremost that we need him, obviously the flip side of that is that pride hinders us from seeking help.

In a very practical way, we refuse to ask for help or to seek the Lord because we think we've got this one.

We think we can handle it.

We think we can handle our circumstances. So we'll try everything. Certainly everything within our power first before we come to the Lord with it. And how many of you know that sometimes it requires that God completely break us down before we lift our eyes to him?

Let's not wait until that happens. Let's go ahead and just go to him at the start of our day. Let's go to him at the start of frustration. Let's go to him at the start of difficulty in our relationships.

Go to him when we begin to recognize sin welling up in our own hearts. The sins that beset us and that capture us. Let's turn to him first. Let's lift our eyes to the king over all things. So there's humility to start with, but there's a second characteristic of those who desperately.

Seek the Lord.

That is that they know what they need from him, closely tied with humility. They know what they need from him. Not only do they come with the right attitude of humility, but they come seeking the right thing.

What is the psalmist, what is the songwriter seeking in the text?

Mercy.

Coming to God saying, I know what I need from you. A clemency from your hand. I need you to be gracious and merciful toward me. In other words, what we need to come to God for is that we don't get what we deserve.

Notice that the songwriter isn't fixing their gaze on God saying, I'm just waiting for your hand to move in justice against my enemies. I'm begging for judgment. Not, God, I'm looking to you to give me what I deserve.

You know me, you know the good that I've done. You know how I've lived my life, man. Just give me what I deserve. Do not, as your pastor I encourage you, do not ever ask God for what you deserve. Do not ask him for what you deserve.

Always to come before him saying, give me mercy.

I need mercy, mercy, mercy.

Notice that the master owes the slave nothing. The master owes the slave nothing. The maid servant deserves nothing from her mistress in the illustration. And God owes us what?

Nada. Zip. Zilch.

God owes you and me nothing. And so the thing the songwriter asks from God is mercy. And I'm certainly not suggesting that the only acceptable content to your prayer, therefore, is the word mercy. God, just give me mercy.

That's it. Certainly we see examples of other prayers like give us this day our daily bread. We see the model that Jesus gave us for prayer. And so what am I getting at here? Well, it's just simply that anything that we ask specifically from God, if we think deeper, really amounts to mercy.

If you ask him for your daily bread and he provides it, what is that to you?

Mercy.

Do you deserve your daily bread? Did you earn your daily bread?

Mercy.

The skills and the ability to go, well, wait, I work a job. I mean, come on, I've got a job and I work hard at it. The skills that you have that provide you income?

Mercy.

The energy in your body to do that job?

Mercy.

The oxygen provided by which your lungs are burning. Fuel?

Mercy.

So that the request of the person who comes to God in humility recognizes that it's all mercy. All of it, from beginning to end. I ask him to save my children and to keep them safe. That is not what I deserve.

I ask him to heal me and keep me safe. That is not what I deserve. I ask him for wisdom. That is not what I deserve. Whatever we ask for from God, be it a promotion, a new Jaguar, a job transfer, whatever you can conceive of that you might ask from God, it is all to ask for something that you and I do not deserve.

So any affirmative response from our Heavenly Father is mercy. Anytime he says yes. Anytime you experience good. Anytime you have something from the hand of the Lord, it is to you mercy. And obviously I've got to be careful because going over to the other side, we don't like to think of it in these terms, but the cold that some of you are experiencing.

Mercy.

The difficulties in our life that sharpen and are there in our lives intentionally by the hand of God to refine us and to make us more in the image of his Son, including suffering.

Mercy.

It doesn't always feel like it, right?

But it is.

So the one who lifts their eyes to God in our song is showing us the right attitude. An attitude of humility and a request for mercy. And further, and what is often lacking if we're honest, is also found in verse 2.

The songwriter lifts their eyes with the third thing.

Persistence. Persistence.

Could your prayer life, could my prayer life be described as persistent? This author looks to the Lord their God till he expresses mercy. They're going to fix their gaze on him and not let anything break that gaze until they receive that which they are seeking.

I think this is akin to God speaking through the prophet Jeremiah saying, You will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all of your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations.

There is a persistence to seeking the Lord. And so the songwriter lifts their eyes persistently. But fourthly, they also lift their eyes expectantly. The phrase till he has mercy upon us is pregnant with the anticipation that God is a good father who takes care of his children.

There's a belief that God will indeed provide mercy for his people in this text. And as much as pride can foil this process, the converse of humility, so can impatience and distrust. How often do we neglect to persevere in our request to God?

When we ask and then walk away. The late Rich Mullins, have any of you ever heard of Rich Mullins? Singer-songwriter, I love a lot of his, I think we even sing a couple of his songs here. I really like him a lot.

He wrote a song and then recorded it on a tape recorder a week before he died. Never had a chance to produce this song. It has been professionally redone by some people and you can get it on his Jesus album, The Jesus Project.

It's an interesting song, it's called Hard to Get. Any of you are even familiar with the song that I'm talking about? The song is called Hard to Get. And it's an authentic song that I think relates to our authentic song.

And yet, as I've listened to that song, and I enjoy it, I like it, but it's always been a little bit edgy. A lot of Rich Mullins' songs were a little bit edgy and they were always a little bit ahead of their time in regards to what the church was ready to understand of God and he always pressed the limits and I love that.

The song is called Hard to Get and it's like playing hard to get. How many of you know what that phrase means? Maybe your wife, when you first met her, she played hard to get, right? Like a little bit coy, a little bit off, kind of just like I'm holding you at arm's length for a while here.

So how do you feel about that? That statement applied to God. Playing hard to get. Some of us, that might make us uncomfortable and I think it ought to make us uncomfortable. And yet, I do not believe that that is a statement that God rejects about himself.

I don't think God looks at me when I say, God, it kind of feels like you play hard to get. He goes, yeah, that's right.

I do.

I do. That sounds like me. Speaking in parables. Putting the cookies on the top shelf and not always explicitly coming out with exactly everything. He doesn't come down and physically eat breakfast with me.