Psalms 120 Starting The Climb

I'm the lead pastor here and just want to start off by welcoming you here. Glad that you have gathered together as God's people this morning to worship him. I hope that's the reason that you're here. And be sure to fill out the connection card you received when you walked in.

You can turn those in in the black box back there. If it's your first time with us, we want to give you a special welcome and recognize that checking out a new church for the first time, you know, can be scary or, you know, it's kind of like not knowing what to expect.

But we do ask that you please just take a free coffee mug back there, our way of saying thanks for joining with us this morning. And then you've also received an offering envelope when you walked in. Remember, we don't pass an offering plate here, but anybody who would choose to give and take that step of worshiping God through the overflow of what he's given to you, again, that offering would go in the black box back there.

And then anything that's marked expansion fund goes towards our goal of eventually building a building on the property out on East McGillan. So I know I say that every week. Some of you could probably, some of you could probably say that for me, right?

Because it's, but I, it's, it's just, I want to, I want to welcome you and explain, especially for those of you that this is your first time here, how that all works. So as most of you know, our name, Recast Church, Recast is an acronym for our core values.

We want to be a church that is focused on replicating the R and the E in Recast stand for replicating. Our goal is to actually eventually plant another church. We were the extension of a church that was thinking outside of themselves and sent a group out here into Matawan to start a new church.

And we want to eventually do the same, constantly keeping our eyes and ears open for who God might be leading to us to be that next church planner and the location for that. We want to be a, the C stands for community.

We want to be a church that blesses our community, that is actually a tangible benefit to the area where God has planted us. That is obviously here in Matawan. We recognize that not everybody here lives in Matawan.

So you say, what about me? Our goal is that you'd be a blessing in the community that you live in, in your neighborhood and in the civic life of your community where you, where you live and exist. So but a blessing to our community.

The A stands for authenticity and relationships. We want to be a place where people don't have to just put on a mask and put on a smiley face when they come in on Sunday morning. But if you're down, you can share that with somebody and, and they will pray with you and talk with you and, and sit in that with you for a period.

But also we want to be a place where when you're rejoicing, when things are going well, you have people to come alongside of you and rejoice with you. And so that's the authenticity component. S is for simplicity.

We want simplicity in our programming. So many of you who have been here for a while have noticed we don't have a Sunday evening service. We don't have a Wednesday night service. And that has not been on accident.

It's not like we haven't grown large enough to have a Sunday night service. And once we get big enough, we will. But it's an intentional simplicity in our programming that you might actually have an opportunity to reach out to the world around you.

We find that in many churches in America, it's very easy to get so busy at church day in and day out that you aren't able to connect with others out in society and even your next door neighbors. And so we want to be simple in our programming for that reason.

And then lastly, the T in Recast is centered on the truth of God's word. And you'll notice that as I get up and I speak every Sunday morning, we are talking about God's word. We're taking and reading a section of scripture and then walking through that and talking about what that has to do with us, where we live, and then what we ought to do as a result of coming in contact with God's word.

The Psalms of Ascent and the Journey Toward God

So as we enter into a series on a specific section of the Psalms, they're called the Psalms of Ascent. The word ascent there means going up, like it's an actual word, the word in Hebrew that would be used for step.

So a step up is an ascent. And so the Psalms of Ascent are Psalms 120 through 134, 15 Psalms that all come with that heading in the most ancient manuscripts that we have of the Psalms. They're obviously a designated set that was used with intention.

And as we enter into a series on the Psalms, I'm struck by the authenticity piece of our core values in thinking through that. The Psalms often do not fit well into our box of permissible worship. I believe that, what I mean by that is I believe we all have some kind of an unwritten set of rules about what you can and cannot say to God.

Now like I said, it's unwritten and I mean if you were to just really think about it, you might say, well I can say anything to God, God's big enough to handle it. But deep down in your psyche, do you say anything that's on your mind to God or do you scrub your language when you come into God's presence and talk to him in prayer and things like.

That?

We often want to put on masks and act like everything is okay. We want to clean up our act before we get together with God's people. And like I said, we especially often will scrub our language in prayer to make sure it's nice and formal and acceptable to God.

But the Psalms have none of that. I'm super excited about this series as we start this morning in Psalm 120 and then go on to Psalm taking steps, every Psalm like another step on the ascent towards God.

Because the Psalms will lead us through a journey of human emotion in relationship to God. I've intentionally chosen this text and to go through Psalms because we've just gone through an epistle, we've just gone through 1 Peter, which can tend to be very structured and logical in its flow and dense and very pithy.

And then beyond that it's also, it was a little bit like talking about persecution, suffering, is that like just your favorite? You love that? And so it was a little bit dark and a little bit hard to grasp and to bring to our time and where we live.

I hope that we did and I hope that you grew and gained from that. But at the same time to come into the Psalms and sense some of the human emotion in this is beneficial. The Psalms of Ascent are again a specific set of Psalms that were used as songs, as like a song book on the road to Jerusalem.

Three times a year the faithful Jew in this ancient setting would take a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They would take sacrifices to be offered there in the only place of acceptable worship to God, which was the temple during that era and that time, the place where your sins could be atoned for and you could get a fresh start with God.

And so they would take this trip to Jerusalem and they would sing these songs, most scholars believe that they would sing these very songs at legs along the journey, at different points along the way to the holy city.

When a pilgrim started out on their journey of ascent to the central city in the highland, the upper area of Israel, you, by the way, wherever you go in Israel to Jerusalem, you're going up. It's one of the highest points in the entire country and so you're going up to Jerusalem if you're on a pilgrimage, you are ascending.

And the pilgrim would sing these songs. They represent then the traveling songs on the way to the city of God. And as we dig in, we're going to begin to see the richness of this metaphor for our journey to God's place.

How many of you are on a journey to God's place? You're on a journey that culminates in the presence of the Almighty. You recognize that. Your feet have been planted on a journey and you are walking together with God's people towards a destination that is the city of peace, the holy place, the very presence of God Almighty.

The entire Christian life is, in essence, a journey and that's the metaphor we're going to pull out of this and we're going to work through in these 15 sermons going through these psalms together on this pilgrimage towards God's presence.

And let me be clear that the presence of God is with us by His indwelling Holy Spirit. Is God with you right now? Is God with you wherever you go? Absolutely. But even the apostle Paul identified that the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is a first fruit of the manifestation of the presence of God with us when we will eventually reach our destination and it will all be clear in the way that it's meant to be.

So we have just kind of a first fruit. We have a down payment. Now how many of you, when you put a down payment on your house, you celebrate because you own the house and you've already moved in? No, you haven't moved in yet, right?

You put a down payment on it, but it's not completely yours yet. And that's the reality of this journey where we are on a journey and we've got the down payment and we already have the Holy Spirit with us.

But how many of you are longing for that day when everything is finished? When it is good and it is right and you are right? When your spirit is right? When sin is no more? I look forward to that day.

And these psalms are intended to give us a little bit of fuel for the journey, a little bit of energy and a longing for that life that is to come. But we all know that along the way there are many obstacles and barriers in life, right?

How many of you have encountered some obstacles and barriers in your life towards getting to where God is? And like any epic tale of journey, like the Lord of the Rings or whatever, there are obstacles, twists, turns, battles to be fought on the way to the destination.

The Jewish pilgrim in his day, traveling and singing along the way, would be reminded of God on his way to the city of peace. And we must have these reminders on our way to the place of peace. Each one of these songs serving to remind us.

Jerusalem, by the way, Jerusalem is a word that simply means the city of peace. And that's where the pilgrim is heading. The place of shalom, the city of shalom. The temple of God's presence was there.

The place of sacrifice was there. And our trip is no less a trip to the final city of shalom. The new Jerusalem that God promises to his people. Jesus said, I go to prepare a place for you. And that place is the new Jerusalem that John in the book of Revelation sees coming down from heaven to be on this earth with God's people.

And those in Christ are on the road leading to the very presence of God. But in our city, in that city, in that new Jerusalem, there will be no more altar. We do not go carrying with us a sacrifice to make, but we go to meet the once and for all sacrifice.

The one who sacrificed himself for us. But our specific psalm this morning, Psalm 120, serves as a stark reminder that every journey to God begins with an unsettled feeling. Everybody's journey to God begins with an unsettledness.

At first glance, when we read this, it may be hard to connect this psalm to the start of a journey. As you read it, you're going to kind of look at it and go, what does this have to do? Why would they sing this song at the start of their exodus or their pilgrimage to Jerusalem?

But I believe that by the end of our time this morning, we will see the connection between dissatisfaction that this psalm projects and the journey that we are all on. Because any journey requires a leaving something, a leaving somewhere to somewhere.

But it entails leaving something behind. And I'm excited about embarking on this journey together as a church recast. I believe that this section of psalms is a portion of scripture that has the potential to take us on a pathway to great joy.

This is a series on the psalms of ascent, a journey to joy together. So let's open our Bibles to Psalm 120, if you're not already there, and we're going to read the start of our journey together. If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand and one of these guys will provide one.

For you.

And not to call you out, but we do want everybody to have a copy of the word of God on their lap. It's just beneficial and helpful for you to be able to see this as I read. And as I read this, I want you to remember two things.

This is the very word of God. This isn't just somebody who's venting, sounds like venting, but this is God's word. This is God-ordained speech that is written here. And I want you to feel this. I don't ask you to do that very often, but I want you to feel this text as I read it.

Really try to get the emotion of the author. What was he going through in his life? What kind of struggles are going on and what words and emotions is he using to convey this? Psalms are poetry. They are meant to be felt.

And I have to say this carefully, but a dissected poem is like a dissected frog. You can learn a lot, but something has to die in the process.

Right?

And so, my goal this morning is to try to let the poem stay alive. In the process of explaining to you the parts and the moving pieces and what works, I don't want to kill the frog. I don't want to kill the poem.

I want to let the poem stay alive. And I think so often in the Western world, we read the Psalms and it's like we take it apart and we just take a little sliver here or there, and we don't let it impact our hearts.

We don't let it impact where we live in our emotions. So listen to this. Listen to the heart of the songwriter as I read these seven very short verses. Psalm 120, a song of a sense. In my distress, I called to the Lord and he answered me.

Deliver me, O Lord, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given to you and what more shall be done to you, O deceitful tongue? A warrior's sharp arrows with glowing coals of the broom tree.

Woe to me that I sojourn in Meshach, that I dwell among the tents of Kadar. Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.

Let's pray.

Father, I pray that you would guide us into truth this morning. Father, as we read an ancient poem that seems far removed, mentioning geographical locations that we don't even know where they are, and Father, I pray that you would make this come alive to us in the reality of a dissatisfaction with the world around us.

Father, I confess that we live in a culture, and I think that many of us in the room would confess, to having a friendliness with our culture, a friendliness with our society, and a sense of assimilation into this world around us that makes death and the presence of heaven and being with you seem so distant and so far away because we, quite frankly, kind of enjoy the pleasures of this life and the things that we have here.

Father, I pray that you would open our eyes to the reality of the glory that you have awaiting for us on this journey. And Father, as we have an opportunity to lift up our voices in praise to you, I thank you that you are the God who hears, you are the God who answers, you are the God who has made a way for us to take this pilgrimage towards you through your son Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us.

Father, I pray that we would worship you now, not just as an exercise of our vocal chords, but an exercise of our hearts before you. You are awesome, you are glorious, you are majestic, you are holy, and you are worthy of all of our worship this morning.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen. Thanks a lot to the band for leading us this morning and always grateful. Very thankful for Rob to fill in in Josh's absence this morning and so grateful to have people who are talented in ways that I am not, that's for sure.

So you are grateful. Maybe you're not thinking it through right now, but you're grateful that I didn't lead.

The worship.

That would have been really rough for you. So I'm grateful for skilled people. Keep your Bibles open to Psalm chapter 120, so you can kind of see that poem and that song as we dig in and work through it together.

Again, attempting to not kill the thing in the process, but trying to explain what it.

Means.

Distress, Deceit, and the Cry for Deliverance

Sometimes, like I mentioned in my introduction, you know, when it comes to dissecting poetry, it's like dissecting a frog. And I want to keep the thing alive, and what I mean by that is to keep in our minds the focus and the heart behind it.

We can learn a lot from observing a frog jump around, and in this case, we can learn a lot from maintaining the emotion of this psalm as we go through. So what is the feeling of this particular psalm?

The psalmist cries out in his distress. Do you see the distressed sense within this psalm right away? He actually uses the word distress. He is calling out for deliverance. We also see a sense of his anger.

He is angry enough to call for judgment on his enemies. He is prayerful. He is talking to God, but he is angry. He is desperate, as shown by his exclamation of, Woe to me! Woe to himself, in verse 5. And he expresses a longing for peace amongst a people of war, showing that he has little peace in his life as he writes this song.

He has a longing for peace, but it's not his reality. It's not where he lives right now. So everything as we walk through these seven verses has to be filtered through a heart of desperation and distress, remembering all along that this is the first, this is the opening song.

This is the first song in a stair step to Jerusalem, in the ascent to the abode of God, to his dwelling place, to his temple. Well, in his distress, he's crying out, and where do people turn in the midst of their.

Distress?

Where do you turn when you are in distress? Some turn to the refrigerator, right? Some turn to Kohl's for another new pair of shoes. Some turn to friends. And not that that's altogether bad, but they weigh them down with the problem or just enjoy a bit of gossip in the process.

Some unwisely turn nowhere and just stoke the fires of rage inside their heart, ready to explode at anybody and anyone, and then they don't even know why they're exploding,.

Right?

This writer, this author, this psalmist, this person going through distress here, called.

To the Lord.

They went to the Lord. In my distress, I called to the Lord. He went with his problems to Yahweh or Jehovah, depends on how you pronounce it. He went to the Almighty Father with his problems. The word distress in this text indicates a narrow space.

It's a word picture in the Hebrew language. A lot of those ancient languages, in particular Middle Eastern languages, even Arabic today or Hebrew today, is a lot more of a picturesque kind of language.

So it draws a picture for you when it's using an adjective. And this is a narrow space. The idea is that this songwriter feels cornered. There's not a lot of margin. He's in a tight spot in life. Have you ever been there?

Have you been in a place in life where it felt like there's not enough wiggle room? I don't know how to get out of this. Any of you a little bit claustrophobic? I'm not claustrophobic. I just don't like tight spaces.

I don't have a fear of heights. I'm just afraid of falling, right? But the whole idea of claustrophobia, it doesn't really bother me until I picture or think about going through a cave, spelunking. That's the fun word for cave exploring.

Have any of you ever been spelunking? I've seen this. I've heard it said that there's a time when you're going through a cave and it gets tight enough that you don't go backwards because your clothes bunch up and you get lodged in.

Now, does anybody already have lost some of you are like, stop talking, stop talking about it. Like that does, that freaks me out. I don't like the thought. And then not only that, you just got to keep going forward.

You keep going forward.

Like I mean, what if it gets tighter?

You're in trouble.

Ah, so you just kind of, I don't want to be the first guy to explore any given cave system. But that's the narrow space. The I don't know where to go from here. The I don't have margin in my life. I don't have any wiggle room.

And that's the distress, right? There's a sense that I think all of us have experienced the tight spaces in life. And notice that in turning to the Lord, the psalmist, the songwriter indicates that the Lord has answered him.

He has received an answer. He has brought his anxiety to the Lord like first Peter told us to a few weeks ago. Cast your anxieties on the Lord for he cares for you. We see that here, maybe Peter had some of these psalms in mind as he said that.

He had the indication that it is, that God is big enough to bring your problems to when you're in a tight space, cry out to him. And this songwriter testifies to the faithfulness of God to answer us in our moment of need.

But before we think too generally about this distress, like we can just think all any, any old problem that I have in life is what the songwriter is writing about. He's just got some generic frustrations, some generic stresses in his life that he's talking with us about.

You know, the general stresses of time management or balancing family and work or financial concerns. And so we could just, we can, you know, there's a whole host of tight spaces in your life. But he has one specific thing in mind that he's going to spell out to us.

He, really verse one is just setting the stage. In my distress, I called to the Lord and he answered me. And now the rest of this time is going to be dedicated to looking at the specific problem that he faced and walking us through that.

The thing that brought this songwriter into a narrow space is something that I think all of us can relate to at some level.

Broken relationships.

Specifically, it is broken relationships that have brought this man to his knees, that have brought this songwriter to the narrow place in his life. Messed up, jacked up relationships. Where verse one explains the prayer and the resolution, the rest of the psalm explains the actual prayer itself.

And the issue the psalmist is working through is a cry for deliverance. He says, and I quote, from lying lips and a deceitful tongue. Ooh, scary. Those lying lips, terrifying. Seriously, the songwriter's distress is caused by lying.

Simple sins on the part of others in our lives have an impact on us, right?

Have you experienced that?

And in reality, the little sins that we commit, we deceive ourselves into thinking, well, that's just, that's only going to impact me. But do they affect community? Do they affect relationships? All sin has a movement toward death, towards destruction, towards breaking things that we cherish and love.

All sin.

I love the real life aspects of the psalms. He doesn't candy coat this. He doesn't sugar coat this. He's going to tackle something head on here in the text. The deceit of others can and often does get in the way of our peace.

In a more general sense, the psalmist is frustrated with a culture of sin. Specifically here, he's talking about deceitful, lying lips and a deceitful tongue. But in verses five through seven, we're going to actually see him broaden that out to culture in general and say, he's frustrated with sin in general, in his culture.

And I want to point this out to you. This is really key. This is important for us to grasp. A frustration with sin, that can be sin in our culture. Primarily, it ought to be sin in ourselves, right? I mean, where do you identify sin?

Is it pretty easy to see it in other people? Is it pretty easy to call out other people's lying lips? Other people's deceitful tongues? But sin, a frustration with sin is indeed the start of a journey from opposition to God, to the worship of God.

A dissatisfaction, a frustration with sin, with a culture of sin, with the sin that we see in our own heart, that is the beginning of a journey towards God. When we become frustrated and angry and disappointed with sin.

The phrase, by the way, in, I mentioned the Hebrew, and as we go through this series, I'm going to mention this a lot. It's a very picturesque language. And unfortunately, sometimes we try to translate in a way, we take a little bit of the flourish off of the translation.

And so deceitful tongue is actually a sniping tongue. It's a shooting tongue. It's got the idea of a guy with arrows, firing arrows at people. The picture of this is a tongue that puts someone in its sights and unleashes a barrage of deception with an attempt to destroy.

This is a malicious tongue. This is a tongue set to harm others intentionally and looking for opportunities to harm people. It is destructive and malicious. But you might ask, why such a strong reaction to lying?

Okay, raise your hand if you've had someone tell a lie about you that impacted your reputation or cost you something. I think probably most all of us have. It's pretty much everybody has had somebody tell a lie.

And some of you didn't raise your hand because you can't think of a specific illustration or you just don't ever on principle raise your hand. And I understand that. But I do. I believe that most of us have had this very experience where you've had somebody lie about you and it cost you something.

And you survived, right?

You're here.

You survived that.

So why is lying such a big deal? Why cry out in distress to God against these wicked liars? Why the drama, songwriter dude? Like why is all of this like, why so much like frustration over this? Well, let me suggest to you that first, we need to correct our thinking a little bit regarding lying.

Lying is indeed a big deal. Worth making God's top 10 list, right?

Did it?

I made a top 10 list of no-nos. Okay, lying makes that list. I would suggest this to you though. I would say something fundamental about lying. That deception is like the raw material that other sins are made out of.

Deception is core to many lies. People murder at a bedrock level because they believe a lie. People are proud because they believe a lie. People have adultery because they believe a lie. Deception is at the heart of the original fall of mankind into sin.

Did God really say that you're not supposed to touch this fruit? Did he really say that? Are you sure?

See how deception is a component, is one of the building blocks of other sins? And the very fall of Satan himself into pride begin with a lie that he could become more powerful than God. A lie at the very core, at the very origin of sin.

Justice, Judgment, and Prayer Instead of Revenge

Verses three through four show that the songwriter is emotionally engaged and he's not backing down from the hurt and the pain and the frustration. This is where many good Christians want to scrub the text, okay?

We have a tendency to clean it up for God to make it, you know, it doesn't sound, so it doesn't sound so harsh. I mean we spin this PR for God, you know, you don't want it to really say this do you? So I could, I could alter it or edit it or tell you what it doesn't really mean this.

The guy who's writing this isn't really vindictive. He's just aloof and pointing out that sin deserves judgment. But that's not exactly, I can't say that fairly because the author is vindictive. The author wants retribution for, against this person who has lied.

What does the deceitful tongue deserve, he says? What should they reap for the deception that they have sown? What should happen to them? Those who have sniped others deserve themselves a pierced tongue, he says.

And what this songwriter isn't hoping for, is hoping for is not just a pierced tongue with a nice metal stud to play with when they're trying to talk to you. What the songwriter is hoping for is a sharp fiery arrow through the tongue.

An appropriate gift for a malicious deceptive tongue is a fiery arrow to the mouth, he says. The songwriter says, what do you get for lying about me? How about I punch you in the tongue? That's what he says.

I mean, he's not happy. Interestingly, just a side note here. Again, it's a little bit of a diversion from the emotion of the text, but the roots of the broom tree, what's he talking about here? Like, what's that got to do with anything?

And sometimes we come across these Old Testament things that are like, I think I might know what's going on there, but I'm not sure. The broom tree is a really tough, dense wood that was used to make charcoals.

It was often used to cook on, and once it was lit, it would burn for a long, long time, and it was hard to extinguish. So smoldering embers of the broom tree were often used in warfare during this time, with a sharp arrow piercing a flaming bit of broom tree, and then fired at enemy encampments to light things on fire.

And so this was, have you ever wondered, like, sometimes how they would use, what they would use in ancient times, sometimes they'd wrap it in pitch, they'd do different things, but here they would actually take burning coals and pierce them and fire them, and they were hard to extinguish.

And so he's saying, what does the liar deserve? Burning arrows. We cannot scrub this author's hunger for vindication, for judgment. We can't scrub it from the text, but what needs to be pointed out immediately to clarify for us is that this is a prayer.

This is a prayer.

He is saying these things in the context of praying to God Almighty. He doesn't go out and get an arrow. He doesn't go out and light some broom tree embers. The psalmist, instead, is crying out to God.

The author is calling to God for vengeance, but he is not taking revenge. This is significant and very important for us on our journey. In a broken world, full of broken relationships, the sojourner on the path to God cannot take the time to get sidetracked into the cycle of revenge.

But to turn to God in prayer and ask for vindication, to turn to God and ask for judgment, to turn to God and ask for justice is not a bad thing.

It's not a bad thing.

Longing for Shalom in a Hostile Culture

So far, in the first four verses of this text, it sounds like a dude has been lied about and he's been out of shape about it. We might even hear what he's saying is a bit whiny, like, songwriter dude, get over it.

Liar's gonna lie, right? I mean, what's the deal? But verse 5 begins to tie in this first half about deception with a second half that leads us back to remembering that this is a song sung at the start of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Why singing about deception? Why singing about lies? Why singing about all this stuff? And verse 5 is gonna bring that together, explaining to us why would a pilgrim sing this song as he embarks on a journey to God's place?

We find out in verse 5 that this pilgrim has been living in a desperate environment the exclamation, woe is me, sounds kind of dramatic and extreme and doesn't get used very often. When's the last time you used the word woe?

Like, in that way.

Not like, whoa, dude, but like, whoa. It sounds kind of dramatic and extreme and it doesn't get used often because it's dramatic and extreme. If someone came to me and said, woe is me, I invested in Facebook or woe is me, my classes are tough this semester.

I'd be like, chill with the woe word, dude, okay? Just maybe dial that back just a bit. Like, woe is not maybe what you mean by that. So why this extreme dramatic response? Why the distress over the lies?

Why cry for deliverance from deceptive tongues? Why is there woe here in verse 5 over his geographical residence? Well, the geography is now going to tie into the pilgrimage because now we are finding out where is the starting point of this pilgrim's journey?

Where is he beginning?

This is going to be very significant for us as we think about our culture and where does our journey start? The starting point of this journey is a hostile foreign land. A place where this guy is not at home.

A place that is different than what he is intended for. The text tells us he's been sojourning in Mishak, his dwelt among the tents of Kadar. And so now you get it, right? You're like, oh yeah, Mishak, Kadar.

Now I understand what he's, I get it now, right? Probably don't even need to explain that to you guys. I had to study it myself. Mishak was like the furthest known regions north during this era. Like, think as far north as they could conceive.

We might go Siberia or we go to the North Pole or whatever. But this is in the area of Ukraine and Russia on the northeast side of the Black Sea. There were warring tribes of pagans, Gentile pagans that lived there during that time.