Look Up, Now Wait

Well,

this afternoon's message comes from Psalm 123.

Psalm 123 is in a series of 15 psalms that is called the Psalms

of Ascent.

What they are is psalms that were gathered together from different times, written by different authors in different

circumstances, and all gathered together to make this series of psalms that the pilgrims,

that the Jews would sing to each other as they went up to Jerusalem, always up to Jerusalem, from

wherever they came, whether it was higher than Jerusalem or not, they came up to Jerusalem.

And I think up is more than the fact that Jerusalem was situated on a hill, up to the Lord that they were there to

worship.

There's 15 of these psalms, this is the fourth of them, the first of them would call for a

polemic.

They're different psalms, number 120, what shall be given to you, you deceitful tongue?

A warrior's sharp arrows with glowing coals of the broom tree.

That's the first psalm, how it begins.

The second psalm reminds us of God's help.

I lift my eyes to the hills, from where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.

And the next one assures that the effort of the journey is worth all the trials and everything

they face.

I was glad when they said to me, let's go to the house of the Lord.

Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem, and it's worth it because God is the goal.

And finally, we come to Psalm 123, the fourth of these psalms, and it teaches us that it is a song of

faithful dependence, a psalm, a song of faithful dependence

upon the Lord.

And in this psalm, which we'll read in a moment, you hear how they acknowledge openly the deep

hurt that they felt, that we feel, but that they felt then when they were despised for the

truth of our faith in Jesus Christ, despised and derided and

scorned for what they believed.

Psalm 123 leads us to Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely

on my account.

Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

And we could say, blessed are we now as we await that reward that Jesus promises for we

who do have to endure that scorn and derision of the world around us.

I ask you, do you sometimes feel your holy patience wearing thin?

Do you feel it wearing out completely?

The people who first sang this psalm, they felt that as well.

And we join them today in how we respond.

And the question we need to ask ourselves as we stand for the reading of Psalm 123 is whose favor do we seek

and what are we looking for and who are we looking for in order to assuage the hurt that we feel?

That's all in Psalm 123, so please stand with me for the reading of Psalm 123.

The word of the Lord here.

Unto you I lift my eyes, O you who dwell in the heavens.

Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,

so our eyes look to the Lord our God until he has mercy on us.

Have mercy on us, O Lord.

Have mercy on us, for we are exceedingly filled with contempt.

Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorn of those who are at ease with the contempt of the proud.

Please be seated.

Well, in many

ways, this people who first sang this psalm, this people was us.

And we are this people.

You see, they had been exiles in Babylon, released by Cyrus according to God's decree.

And we were exiles in this world, released by Jesus, again according to God's decree.

This people who first sang this psalm, their sin had been forgiven after they had paid their price.

That price being 70 years in that foreign land in Babylon.

And the Lord finally cried out, comfort, comfort my people.

Tell Jerusalem, tell this people that her iniquity is pardoned.

She has received double for all her sins.

And that's the first verse of Isaiah chapter 40.

So their sin forgiven after they had paid their price.

Our sins have been forgiven after Jesus paid our price.

In him we have redemption.

The forgiveness of sins, says the Apostle Paul.

Their captors mocked and derided and teased and despised them because of their defeat, which demonstrated or so they

thought that their gods were superior to Yahweh, the God of the defeated Israelites.

Even so we are mocked and derided and teased and despised because of the cross where our Lord in human weakness

humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross, which demonstrates or so the world thinks as

the Babylonians might have thought earlier that our God is an object of faith only for weak -minded fools.

But we hold fast to this, that the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

So knowing all this and hearing this Psalm read, they said, we've had enough.

We've had our fill of contempt and scorn, Lord, we can't take it anymore.

And do we feel like that sometimes?

Whether it's you personally from someone at work or a neighbor or even a family member, a brother, sister, cousin, a

father, a mother, a child, a parent who doesn't believe and

respond cynically to your faith.

Sometimes we just get fed up with it all.

Hearing it constantly coming in on the airwaves, again, if it's not even something personal against us, it's just in general

against our Lord Jesus Christ.

We just get so fed up that we cry out with Psalm 123, Lord, we've had our fill of this contempt we can't

take anymore.

The world's gone insane.

We hear this all the time, life torn from the sanctity of the womb, a world unwilling to know

that girls are girls and men are men, a world that takes freely of what Christ has provided through His church,

all the while boasting that they had done it.

We hear all this.

We feel all this.

It stings us.

It hurts us.

You ever feel like you just can't take anymore?

You know, when I was a boy, my favorite cartoon was Popeye, Popeye the Sailor Man.

And after almost a whole episode of being abused by Bluto, his nemesis,

Popeye would finally say, that's all I can stands and I can't stands no more.

And down goes this bench and pop goes his forearms and with one punch, Brutus is off to the moon.

That's all he could stand and he couldn't stand no more.

Well, our response is not spinach.

We're arm in arm with the brethren of old.

We cry out with them that we're exceedingly filled with all this.

We've had enough.

And now we need to look at this psalm and see where do we go?

To whom do we go?

What do we seek?

What do we do with this fed -upness, with crying out with these pilgrims because we too are pilgrims?

Lord, we are not just filled with it.

We are exceedingly filled with it.

Lord, you gave me a big cup that can handle a lot in your power as I pray to

you that I stay godly and respond rightly.

But Father God, the cup is overflowing.

I have nowhere to put what's flowing out of the cup.

I can't take anymore.

Where do we go?

To whom do we go?

And what do we seek when we go there?

It starts out, to you I lift my eyes.

This is a worship leader.

This is the worship leader.

It's the body who responds, behold, the eyes of servants look to the hand of masters and

so forth.

It's he who begins and sets the example, unto you I lift my eyes, O you who

dwell in the heavens.

Where do we look?

When you're so fed up, when you can't take anymore, when you just can't control your tongue anymore and give a godly,

gentle, Christ -like response, look up.

Look up where God is high and lifted up.

Look up, up, up and away, as the song said years ago.

Look up away from the contempt and the scorn of this world.

These are spiritual eyes that look up and see Jesus.

These are spiritual eyes.

There's something like Stephen's before he died when he said, behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing

at the right hand of God.

Eyes lifted up where Jesus, after he had accomplished our redemption, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

He is there.

He is far away from the travails we suffer.

So where do we look?

Where do you look?

We need to look away from ourself and we need to look away from this horizontal trouble where it all comes from

because it does not come from on high.

From on high comes our comfort.

From on high came our redemption, came Jesus Christ.

Look up, up and away from these troubles that have overfilled your cup.

In the second verse, the congregation follows the leader's eyes.

They say, so our eyes look to our God.

Have you had enough?

Sometimes all this, whether again, it's directly at you personally or it's just coming in through the

airwaves, through the cable, on the radio, just constant, have you had enough of the world's contempt and

scorn?

Sometimes it gnaws at us.

It creates a sore the way a dog does by scratching and chewing a minor cut and worrying it into a major wound.

It keeps us up at night.

It forms words on our lips that should never come forth.

And we find as this goes on and on that relationships are wrecked and bitterness can dominate.

And why is all this?

Why does that happen to us, to God's people, to believers in Christ?

Well, too often it's because we look to the source rather than the cure.

What else can the world do but deride and hate Christ and mock His people?

The world is capable of none other than that.

And so we need to take our eyes off them, off of it, off of all of that, and look

not horizontally, not to the one or the ones or the thing that is bringing this to you,

but up to God, who in the ultimate sense is the one who is being scorned and mocked and

derided, held in contempt.

Brothers and sisters, do not look at man in whom there is no help but only more trouble.

Do not look at man who is only when you look at him and try to argue with him, it's just going to become more derisive and

more scornful and more contemptuous.

No, don't look to man where there's no help but only more trouble.

Look to Him who dwells in heaven.

Look to the Lord our God.

You need to look up.

The first thing we need to do is get our eyes off of this and look up to where Jesus is

seated at the right hand of majesty.

So we look up and that's first.

And how do we look?

How do you look up to God?

We look with humility.

We look humbly to our God.

What does it say in Psalm?

As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a handmaid to a mistress,

servants whose every need is provided by their master.

I mean, if you really believe that God is there in heaven, if you truly believe that Christ is seated at

the right hand of majesty, then humility would joyfully say every good and

perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of lights, perhaps even a good and perfect gift to give you

patience to endure and words to answer back that don't continue the scorn,

that don't add to their contempt, but show Jesus Christ and stop their mouth

with the love of Jesus Christ and with the winsomeness of Him and how we could answer firmly,

but never with returning contempt for contempt, never answering sin with more sin.

Now we could freely confess as a humble people that Christ is not just a great provider, but that He's our only

provider.

Now the word provider is pretty common, I mean, we hear things like your primary healthcare provider and things like that, and we

get that care, what happens but a human will check our pulse and check our blood pressure, a human being and a doctor

comes and prescribes and a nurse comes and administers and so forth, they are providers.

The Christian, to the contempt and to the scorn even through the rage of the world says, thank you doctor

for your health, thank you nurses and healthcare professionals for all you've done for me, and now, because

you've helped me, I praise God for the training that He gave you that you're working to my

good and God gets all the glory, because it's God who ordained and decreed that I should be here this moment

receiving this help from you, so thank you, human, I appreciate what you've done and all the effort,

praise to God who ordains all things and who governs all things even as we learned

in the catechism this morning,

and we praise God for providing us with the benefits of their skill, and why do we do that?

Because we are Christ's servants, servants, doulos in the Greek and

usually and often rightly translated as slave, we are His slaves, we are slaves to righteousness and no

longer slaves to sin.

We are His servants and we join these ancient servants and handmaids with our knees bent, our heads

bowed, and we're trusting that in God's goodness when the hand opens, provision for our need will fall

out.

So we look first up, get your eyes up, up, up and away, away from the trials and

travails of this world.

They're not going to go away, but look up for help from them, to Jesus,

and we look with humility, Jesus Christ the very model of humility, for He said, I'm

humble and lowly in heart, describing Himself.

We look up, we lift our eyes to Jesus, and then we look down, we bow down,

we put our eyes to the ground, we look to that open hand, we put our hand out with ours open, and we look to

that hand of our master.

No peeking like children spying out on Christmas to see the presents that are being wrapped.

We bring to Christ only our need, our need for Him.

We don't look up as though there's the slightest misgiving that He who knows what we need before we ask will have

anything in His hand except what is good and needful and will supply the need of

the moment.

And remember, as we look to God, so our eyes look to You, O Lord our God, said the psalmist, and we

join them as our eyes look to You, O Lord our God, Jesus Christ, our risen Savior.

Remember this.

It's a hand that you don't have to reach out and try and pry apart.

It's a hand that is willingly and lovingly opened because we come to that hand, we come to that God

in the name of Jesus Christ, His beloved.

You go to God's hand and no other.

We don't seek relief in other ways.

We're not like shoppers at a bazaar looking for a bargain.

The ancient people who sang this psalm, you know what they were forgiven of?

They're forgiven of looking to something other than God.

They're forgiven for looking on the horizontal when they found themselves idols and

false gods to worship.

This is what they got forgiven of.

They'd look to their idols.

They looked to them for provision.

And so often when we keep our eyes on the horizontal, we don't have an idol made out of wood or

silver or gold or anything like that.

But anything that we go to other than God, anything that we think will give us what God says He will

provide, or even a part of God's provision, it's an idol.

We need the same forgiveness that they had, though they paid the price for their sins.

And as I said at the beginning, Jesus paid the price for ours.

They paid for their sins.

Jesus paid for ours.

And yet, by looking horizontally, they found their needs met by idolatry.

And for that, they were exiled.

And we need to take this example as we look humbly to the God, to the Lord, as we look up with

humility, knowing that when that hand opens, He will give us that provision.

But it must be God's hand and that alone.

And where we've gone and looked for anything other than that, other than His provision, we need

to repent of that and come to God and trust Him and wait for Him.

I will wait and see what God the Lord will speak, as we said in the opening psalm.

But what do we seek?

What do we look for when we go to God?

We're fed up.

We can't take any more.

And we fall down on our knees and we follow the psalm and we're humbly waiting for that hand to open as a maidservant, as a servant.

It's only that hand.

And when that hand opens, we trust what will be in it.

How long do we wait to see what God the Lord will speak, for He will speak peace to His people?

The psalm says, until He has mercy on us.

Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us, because we're going to wait until we have Your mercy.

Have mercy on us, O Lord, because until we have Your provision, until Your Spirit

speaks to us by Your Word, and we find the answer and the words to speak back, or the comfort,

even if there's no words, where you get into a debate or discussion with those who are deriding you, just that

special comfort, that peace that passes all understandings, we will wait until the Lord

has mercy on us and fulfills His promise to bring those things true in us.

Have mercy on us, O Lord.

Mercy is the Hebrew word, hanan, and it's usually rendered in our ESV almost every time it comes

up as mercy.

The NASB says, be gracious to you.

The Net Bible, the New English translation says, show us favor, and those are really better than mercy.

Oh, mercy is wonderful, but graciousness or favorable is really a better

translation of it.

So the Lord, a God merciful and gracious is how He revealed Himself to Moses when He put Him in the cleft

of the rock and passed by Him.

The Lord merciful and gracious, and gracious is that same word, hanan.

God used this Himself to describe Himself.

This word can mean to have sympathy, to have compassion.

It can also mean to grant a favor.

You know, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew used two different words for mercy.

In verse 2, where it says, have mercy on us, the Greek translators, ancient time, about 350

BC, used the word artero.

You don't have to remember that.

It means to have compassion.

It means to have pity on us.

Is mercy?

Yes, it is mercy, but mercy is not getting what we deserve.

What they're asking for is grace, which is to receive what is not deserved, and the next time

mercy comes up in the Hebrew, the Greek translators said, have mercy on us, oh Lord, have mercy on us.

They used the word eleo.

It's where we get elegy.

It's a sad poem.

Have mercy on us because of the sadness of our position.

Have compassion of us.

Have sympathy.

Enter into this, oh Lord, because this is a sad song that

we're singing about the contempt and the scorn that we are enduring.

So in that sense, it's almost a preposterous request.

It's an unfortunate prayer of the lesser to the greater pleading that he might come down and feel what they feel,

to know firsthand the indignation, the bite of the wagging tongues, the contempt, the scorn

that he who is the blessed and only sovereign, he who is the king of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has

immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, that God would come down and walk the

disgraceful path with them.

It's preposterous.

I mean, it's unheard of.

What God would do that?

What God would come down and walk on this filthy earth and let mere humans

scorn him, show contempt to him, be derisive in

his very face?

What God would do that?

Well, that's exactly what God did in Jesus Christ.

That's exactly what he did in Christ his son.

We read, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, who came in the form of sinful flesh.

I'm mixing a lot of scriptures up here, of course.

Who was tempted in all ways as we are, yet without sin, who bore our burdens and infirmities, in whom

God became flesh and dwelt with us.

And Paul goes on to say, for there is only one God, and that's Yahweh, the Lord our God.

He is one.

There's only one God and one mediator between man and God, the man Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave

himself up for us.

What God would do that but our God?

What God would answer a prayer of his people, say, come down, Lord, have sympathy, not just

sympathy and empathy, but come down, Lord, and experience this with us.

We can't take any more.

And God comes down.

He sends his son, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, and does just that.

Jesus, who in this life, and especially on the cross, bore our shame, who felt the contempt and the scorn of the world,

and Jesus, who emerged as we with our ancient brethren

must as well.

He emerged with his eyes lifted up, lift up your eyes like Jesus did, who said into your hands I commend my

spirit, unto you I lift up my eyes, so our eyes look to you, look to the Lord our God

until he has mercy on us.

Up with Jesus, off of the travails of this world, away from the scorn,

and up to Jesus for our comfort.

Look to the Lord who had compassion, who showed us favor, who didn't just enter in but lived with

us and dwelt with us, and in Jesus Christ faced all that we face,

yet without sin.

Have mercy on us, oh Lord, have mercy on us.

Do you know what this is like, God?

You are so up and far away.

I lift my eyes to you who is enthroned in the heavens, unapproachable light.

I look to you, oh Lord.

Don't you know what this is like?

You've given me more than I can endure.

You've given me too much.

God says I have come in my son, and it's not too much, because my son

felt it all, yet without sin.

My son was mocked and derided, most especially on the cross when the tongues wagged, says he saved

others, let him save himself.

If he's the king of Israel, let him come down from the cross.

The cow is the bulls of Bashan, becoming beasts.

Jesus endured what we do.

Jesus was God.

Jesus always was God, always is God, always will be God.

He was God in the flesh.

God's compassion.

God's entering into the scorn and contempt all the sin that we face.

His compassion, because of that, he himself experienced it in Jesus Christ, his son.

He walked this earth.

That compassion is in him, in Christ Jesus.

God's entrance into all our hurt, all the scorn, all the contempt that we're subjected to, be it from

a family member or a friend or a co -worker, be it in your face or behind your back, be it

passively coming in through the airwaves, through whatever media you listen to,

all that scorn, God entered into in Jesus Christ, his son.

Have you had enough of it all?

Do you think you can't take any more?

Let me ask you, where have your eyes been when you feel that scorn?

Where does your answer come from?

Does it come from, this is what he needs to hear, this is what I want to tell her, or do I

lift our eyes up, bow our knees, open our hand in front of our master,

whose hand we know will open with just what we need, as he promised the disciples that when they were apostles,

that do not worry about what you say, do not be anxious in that hour, for the Spirit will tell you what to say

in that moment.

Do we trust that?

We can't even test it if we're looking this way.

We can't even put our faith in it and try it if we're looking at the person and trying to think what this person needs to hear from me.

I lift my eyes to you, oh Lord, who dwells in the heavens.

What favor do we seek?

If that word mercy should better be translated as favor, they're looking for that favorable attitude

towards them, looking for God to be gracious to them.

And here, if the view we have is wrong, horizontal instead of vertical, eyes this way

instead of lifted up, then whose favor are we looking for?

Man's favor.

We're looking for the favor even of the person who's given us the scorn and contempt and the derision.

And what would that favor be?

We get to win an argument, which is no favor at all.

They ask for God's favor.

They ask for God's sympathy, for God's empathy to come down and be favorable towards us.

He couldn't be more favorable than to have sent his only begotten Son.

Have you had enough of all this?

Has the contempt just gotten to you?

Do you not know how to respond?

Does it keep you up at night?

Do you toss and turn, trying to think of how am I going to answer this one?

How am I going to convince this one?

How am I going to beat that argument?

Where are your eyes looking?

And whose hand are you looking to see opened to give you what you need, that need of that very moment?

Let it be Jesus Christ.

Lift your eyes up to him, to the Lord God who dwells in the heavens, to Jesus Christ who's

seated at his right hand.

Trust his spirit to give you the patience and the winsomeness and the very demeanor and

attitude and words of Christ, which we have in the scripture.

And know that we haven't had more than we can take.

If you're in Christ Jesus, you haven't gotten more than you can take.

Because in the temptation, God makes a way of escape.

But you'll never find that way if we don't look up and lift our eyes up to him

and close with 2 Corinthians 4, 6 -9 where the apostle Paul says, for God

who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory

of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to

us.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not driven to despair,

persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying in

the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies, for we who

live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in

our mortal flesh.

So death is working in us, but life in you.

Look up, jar of clay.

Look up, you with feet of clay, feet of stone.

Look up because in this world we're perplexed, but in Christ not driven to despair.

In this world you are persecuted but not forsaken.

God has not forsaken, I will never leave you or forsake you, struck down but not destroyed as Paul was

stoned, and then he got up and went away.

He walked to the next mission field, always carrying in the body the death of Jesus Christ and never

ashamed of it, no matter what we're given.

And whatever we're given, however it fills us, not more than we can bear.

We haven't had our fill until the Lord Jesus Christ returns and calls us to himself, amen?