Songs of Summer: Psalm 121

Good morning. I'm Russ. I am one of your pastors here. You all look good today. I'm like, surprise.

I'm not surprised. I expected you over here especially to look good, man, if it's your first time walking in. We're just so glad you're with us, just glad you're here. We want you to know that we've been learning from the Psalms for the past. I don't know, few.

Right through the whole summer, kind of been tumbling through them over and over again. We're. We're ending that today. It's the last song we're going to spend time in. But for those of us who have been in this, man, it's been so good.

I was reading this week from a pastor and author, a guy named Eugene Peterson. He was writing about the Psalms and he said this, and it really resonated. He said, the first thing that we realized from the Psalms is that in prayer, anything goes. Virtually everything human is appropriate as material for prayer. And then he starts to list them.

Reflections and observations, fear and anger, guilt and sin, questions and doubts, needs and desires, praise and gratitude, suffering and death. We've seen so much of that in these Psalms. He says nothing human is excluded. The Psalms are an extended refutation that prayer is being nice before God, not at all. And here's the line that got me.

He says, it is an offering of ourselves, just as we are, right?

And so maybe that's a good spot for us to begin now. To pause before we step into Psalm 121. To pause so that we can center ourselves around our Father and that we can step into this moment, open to him, open to His Word, and to be just as we are. So let's pause just for a moment to pray, Father, here we are, just as we are, bringing with us, bringing with us what comes with us. The weights we carry, the joys we have, the thank yous that we have.

Here we are, our aches, our joys. We trust you to meet us here and to draw us into your life and to move in us.

Thank you. Amen.

Psalm 121 starts with a note. It says, a song of ascents. So a little history, just so we know what this means, because it is meaningful here. And so what this is so back. You may be familiar.

There is a stretch of time, 400 years, where the people of Israel, God's people, are slaves in Egypt. And God delivers them, collaborating with one of us, Moses, and brings them out. So that could be a million people. It could be 4 million people. It's a lot of people now as they step out.

That's a lot of people. And they have no ways of structuring themselves as a people, as a society, right? And that's a lot of people to figure out, how are we going to operate as a people? And God wants them to operate in a way that's good for them, that they'll flourish. And so what he does is he gives them instructions.

We're familiar with 10 of them, right? We call them the Ten Commandments. There's a whole lot more here. It's a lot of that front end of the Bible, right? Like Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

Are you impressed I remembered those? I got nervous halfway in, just so you know. And these instructions cover all sorts of stuff, like every sphere of life, including rest and festivals. And here's where it connects to these songs. Three of the festivals, the instruction was, y' all come to Jerusalem to celebrate.

So wherever you are in the world during these three times a year, you come to the city and we all come together and we celebrate. One of those includes the Passover. So what we just remembered together, what Shauna led us in, remembering that meal that Jesus led, that was during one of these festivals where everybody was coming into the city. There's another one that's sort of a harvest festival. And the third one, this one, I dig a lot.

It's a festival of tents. You show up and for a week you're camping out, eating and celebrating, right? So these festivals and everybody was to come in. And so if you're Jesus and his family, Jesus did this. I don't know if you ever come across this.

There's a story that Luke tells where his family is headed home from one of these festivals and they lose Jesus, like for a. It takes a day to realize he's gone. Like, you're like, what's going on with Joseph and Mary, right? Like, they're not paying close attention to their kid. They could do better.

Realize this trip in, it's not like their little family and other little families and little families. It's them and their extended family and their village. They. They are all packing up. If you can travel, you're going for them.

It's a three to five day trip from the north down to Jerusalem. For others in Jesus Day, two thirds of the Jewish people don't live in Israel. I mean, they are stretched out from Egypt to Spain, Rome, Turkey, everywhere. And they would come back to these festivals if they could. And so picture people coming in Jerusalem would balloon to more than half its size during these festivals.

And so of course, they lost Jesus. They thought he was. They were with an aunt or an uncle or another part of the village. So they all start to work their way back in. And not only does this family, extended family, village come in, but as they go, they come alongside of other families and villages, right?

And so you can see the people coming together and working their way, walking their way. Most you didn't have a lot of money. Most of them didn't. You walked walking their way to Jerusalem. And here's where the word ascent comes in.

The road to Jerusalem was uphill, right? And these were songs of ascent. Psalm 120 to Psalm 134. These were the songs they sang. Think of it as a pilgrimage.

Think of it as a road trip, right? Hey, we're all going on a road trip. But we're going to share the same soundtrack for this trip, right? And they would sing these songs as they traveled for these festivals. So here's Psalm 121.

Imagine their voices singing these together. I lift up my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip.

He who watches over you will not slumber indeed. He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor. Nor sleep. The Lord watches over you. The Lord is your shade at your right hand.

The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life. The Lord will watch over your coming and going, Both now and forevermore. Singing that song together.

And it begins. You notice this? There's an admission, there's a beginning that says, where does my help come from? And hear the admission. We need help.

And we don't like to admit it most of the time, right. That maybe I am sort of needy, right? So if I get hungry, I can whip up an omelet. It's not great. I have some real good cooks in my life.

But if I get hungry, I can whip up an omelet. You know what? I can't whip up an egg, right? Like, I get hungry, I can help myself. But am I self sustaining?

Well, no. So if you're a farmer here today, or if you're a grocer or a truck driver, or a chicken. Thank you. Right.

Turns out I need you if I want to eat right. We're needy. It's just sort of the basic thing. I came across a story this week that you may be familiar with. And this is from the middle of the last century in China, where what they saw was that sparrows were eating the crop.

And they said, well, let's take care of that, let's get rid of the sparrows. And they turned everybody loose to kill sparrows. Like hundreds of millions of sparrows were killed. But it turns out sparrows don't just eat crop, they eat locusts. And so without sparrows to eat the locust, the locust ate the crop and it led to a famine where millions and millions of people died because it turns out we need sparrows.

I'm not a big bird guy, but if I was, sparrows would not be at the top of the list. But we need them. I mean, we could talk about it at this level, but let's just go here for a moment. If you took a breath and said, what is heavy in my life right now?

That is a thing that either, you know, you can't carry that, you can't fix it, you can't make it right, it's bigger than you. Or you're trying to carry that and fix it. And you can ask yourself, how's that really going? And somewhere in you, you go, where does my help come from? Right?

Boy, we can sing this song with them, right? There's an answer, immediate answer in the song. My help comes from the Lord. Not just the Lord, the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. And this psalm is doing a thing the Bible does all the time.

When you're cued into it, you see it over and over and over again, where it is consistently pointing back to Genesis 1 and 2, right? Where that is the space in which God made heaven and Earth. Genesis 1, big cosmic story. Genesis 2, down into the family story, the Adam and Eve story, right? Where does my help come from?

Well, it's the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. Here's the thing. I used to think being a Christian, following Jesus was mostly about what God wants from me, right? He wants me to do the right things, say the right things. Or more specifically, most of the time, to not say the wrong things or do the wrong things.

Things. But the more time I've spent in Genesis 1 and 2 and then reading and spending time in Scripture beyond that, I've come to realize it's far less about what he wants from us, and it's far more about what he wants for us.

Because when you read Genesis 1 and 2, you see God is in charge. What God wants to have happen happens in Genesis 1 and 2. It is the way he wants it to be. And what does that mean for us, man? We are strolling with God in the cool of the day.

Can you imagine being free and open with God? Free and open and relaxed and at ease with our Father in heaven. And we were naked and not ashamed. Imagine being with each other in a way that we never feared. There's no fear of trust or rejection or betrayal.

Complete and open relationship. And imagine having deep purpose in your life because you we were gardeners. We were being fruitful and multiplied. We were taking the raw materials God gave us and collaborating with him to continue to create.

We were like I say it this way and I'll say it again. We were there enjoying God together for the good of the world.

And that resulted in these full tanks, this complete fulfillment of meaning and purpose and belonging and inner wholeness and freedom in our lives. Everything is the way it's supposed to be and it is good. The ancient God's ancient people had a word for this. They called it shalom. Right, completeness, wholeness, everything being right with the world.

And as God's people were making their way to Jerusalem and they are singing and they were reminding themselves that that's not the way it is today, right? They look back and go, oh, it's the Lord of heaven and earth. It's the Lord that wants that for us, that made us for that. We remember him. And they're singing and they go, we need, we need his help.

Because they are carrying the heavy things in their lives. They are carrying the weight of the loved ones who were with them last time, but now they're too sick or too old to make the trip. They were carrying the strain of living in a socio political world, living under the thumb of the Roman Empire, where armed soldiers would ride through town every couple of days to remind you, to remind you to obey the rules and pay your taxes. And they were carrying the weight of do we have enough money left after paying those taxes? They were carrying the heavy things and they were on the road and they were homesick.

Not just for Jerusalem, but for Eden. Genesis 1 and 2, right? Do you feel that homesickness, that longing for a world where we can be free to enjoy God together for the good of the world in complete ways, in full shalom.

I think we see this all the time. A few years ago there was a tragedy, and it was 2015, January 7th, you may remember, there was a terrorist attack in France and it was an attack on people who made comics. And that sent repercussions through people who do comedy here in the US and like many others, that next day, Conan o' Brien opened his show without his normal funny monologue. He started on a serious note. And this is something he said.

He said. So it's very important tonight that I express that everyone who works at our comedy show, all of us, are terribly sad for the families of those victims, for the people of France, and for anyone in the world tonight who now has to think twice before making a joke. And here's the sentence he said, it is not the way it's supposed to be.

How many of you feel that in your bones that the world right now is not the way it is supposed to be? And you feel that because you know it's set in you to know the way it is. We are homesick for the world that the God, the Maker of heaven and Earth put together for us. And here's the thing, the thing that stinks about Genesis 1 and 2 is Genesis 3 comes next, right? And that's where shalom gets shattered.

We break it. It's sin. We want to be like God. We wanna decide what's good and evil. That's Genesis 3.

You know what we're doing in Genesis 4? We're killing our brother, right? And then the ripple effect works its way through history. And today, as we stand here, there's terrorism and armed conflict. There's poverty, prejudice, human trafficking, abuse and neglect.

And every day we're confronted with contempt in ourselves and in other people as we bully, as we dehumanize and demonize. And even though most of us are not people who murder people, we can get really good at assassinating their character with slander and gossip, right?

Man, even on our best days, it's still not satisfying enough, right? This is an old thing, but, man, it sticks in my head. 1987, the LA Lakers win the championship. NBA championship. And they turn around and win it again in 88.

Do you know what they were chanting before the end of the night from the court? They just won what they're chanting. 3 Pete. 3 Pete. 3 Pete.

What does that tell you? That when you are objectively the best at your job, if your goal is to be successful, you are the absolute most successful. Not just one year, but two years in a row. And you know what? It's still not enough.

Because even when it's the best it can be, it pales in comparison to the world when God's in charge fully, right? And we are homesick.

We are homesick. As they travel their way to Jerusalem singing these songs, man, we are traveling through life, aching. Where does our help come from, man? The. The early Jesus movement, Our forefathers and foremothers in the faith, they got this.

They use language for us. Peter's writing to people in Turkey, Christians like you and I, in a time when they are being experiencing hostility and harassment for their faith. And here's what he says. Dear friends, I urge you as foreigners and exiles to abstain from sinful desires which wage against your soul. He says, you're foreigners, you're exiles.

You don't belong here, right? You are here, but this is not your home. You're from somewhere else, right? Paul says it this way. He gives us another thing to think about.

He says, but our citizenship is in heaven. So you are what, A citizen of where? Heaven, not earth. Now, I want you to understand this, and this will be important when we see Jesus, the word heaven. He's not talking about the place we go, where we die.

He's talking about heaven as in the place where what God wants that. Where God is in charge, where what happens is what God wants to have happen, right? He says, that's where we're from, which looks a lot like Genesis 1 and 2, right? And that is our future. It's where we're headed.

We are citizens of heaven, not of earth. And he says, and we eagerly await a savior from there, our Lord King Jesus. He's saying, jesus did a saving work on the cross, but he's going to return and that saved. He's going to save us in completeness by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, even down to that. He will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Foreigners, exiles, citizens of heaven. No wonder we're homesick, right? We're away from home. This isn't where we belong. We belong in shalom.

We belong in wholeness. We belong where we can fully enjoy God together for the good of the world. And being away from home, the temptation is to give in to despair.

And maybe you're here.

Maybe words like, man, I'm weary or I'm tired.

We can give in to hopelessness, feeling helpless, feeling powerless. We can just start to expect the worst. Or maybe somewhere in us, we've agreed with this statement. This is as good as it gets, right?

And maybe that's you right now. It has been me.

I want you to hear the rest of the psalm, because halfway through, I want you to notice, it turns. It turns from talking about God to talking to each other. The Lord watches over you. The Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life. The Lord will watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore. Do you hear that? Who are they singing to each other?

Do you need that? Someone to sing to you and remind you that the Lord is the Lord. He's the maker of heaven and earth, and he is good and he is able, and he is for you.

Most scholars think this was a call and response psalm. You know, where there's a leader who's calling out the first line and then people are calling out, then together as a people. The second they were joining their voices, singing and bringing hope to each other.

So maybe there's a key here for us, like, how do we turn from homesickness to keep homesickness turning into hopelessness, right? So here's the thing. They didn't travel alone, right? They didn't travel alone. They were traveling together and singing together, hoping together.

So there's a connection again of Genesis 1 and 2 and shalom, straight line into Jesus and what he came to do because he. He came. His favorite topic, the thing he talked about more than any other thing is referred to, uses the word kingdom, either the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. He used to read that and think, well, that he's talking about someday. Later.

What he's saying is, hey, when I showed up here, I am the king, and heaven came with me, right? Life came with me. It's breaking into the present. In fact, the way he would say it is, he would say, the kingdom of heaven is at hand or near. And he meant space, not time.

He meant, it's so close you can reach out and touch it. How could he say that? He's the king, right? Where he's in charge is where it looks like Genesis 1 and 2. It looks like home to you and me.

And he showed up and he brought home with him to us, right?

And then he invited people to follow him and to learn how to live and cultivate home. Even taught them. He's like, hey, pray this. Pray God your Father, your kingdom come, your will be done in what earth as it is in heaven, right? God, Father, where you are in charge and things are the way you want them.

Bring it here. Because when it's here, it is good for us. It is so good when you're the king and we aren't, right? Oh, man. So he shows up and he's like, hey, this is.

This is the kingdom I am proclaiming, the good news of the Kingdom of God, right? And then he invites people in and he starts to train them. But he doesn't do it alone again, right? They didn't travel alone. He doesn't do it alone.

He invites the 12. I'm going to train you to specifically, specifically be like me and do what I do. Which means he trained them to enjoy the Father together for the good of the world, right?

And then what they're, you know, there may be 500 followers when he resurrects, but he promises and tells them, hey, you're going to get better help than I can give you. The Holy Spirit's going to come. And when the spirit comes, 50 days later, the spirit drops and shows up. And 3,000 people are like, we want to end right now, right? And they start gathering together, some in the temple courts, but 3,000 can't do that.

Where are they gathering up? Wherever they can. These little small circles of people in homes practicing the way of Jesus, enjoying God together for the good of the world, experiencing the kingdom in their little circles, right? Nobody is along the way. We don't follow Jesus alone, right?

I am not a citizen of heaven. We all. Y' all are citizens of heaven, right? Y' all are foreigners. Y' all are exiles together.

All this reminded me of again, and we are needy. What do we need? Well, on the list and high on the list is that we need each other, right? But of a woman who was part of a church, but she had been assaulted in her own backyard in the middle of the day. But she was courageous.

She started to see a counselor. And after a few meetings, the counselor persuaded her to share her story with somebody else, with two stipulations. It can't be a family member or your minister.

And so she said, I would like to tell Sam Smith, which was kind of a surprise. Sam was a member of the church who was a sometimes recovering alcoholic.

And you might think, well, you might want to tell another woman or. Or somebody that maybe appears like they got a little more together than Sam. And here was her answer to why Sam. She said, because Sam has been to hell and back. And I think he may know what it felt like for me to go there, there, and maybe he can tell me how he got back.

Man, don't we need people that can tell us that we got back, right? Don't you need the same in your life? Don't you need to be a Sam in somebody's life?

So how do we cultivate Relationships like this want to get practical. How can we do this? I want to give you a simple thing that you can begin to do that can start to cultivate this.

Have better conversations with people. And I'll explain better, more meaningful conversations with people. Because here's the thing. A lot of things that we think are conversations are really, I got my opinions, you got yours. We share them with each other, right?

And if I like yours, we might meet up again. If I don't, who knows? Or some of you may have realized I'm a guy who likes to tell stories, right? Has this ever happened to you? You tell somebody a story and you tell a guy like me a story, and I go, you think that's a good story?

Let me give you mine, right? And you're just competing one story after the other, right? Or if you share something and they go, you know what you should do? And there's a whole list of shoulds, right?

I want to give you two simple questions that for me, have opened this up over the last few years. These are questions I sit with people when we pray through them, or we just talk, right? What's one good thing in your life? And what's one hard thing in your life? And you can share at the level that you feel that you can be honest, but it only works if you are right.

Because trust me, my friend Chris, he was here in the last service. I remember talking about this in his response. He's a chaplain at Mercy, and he was like, do you know what we call the hand sanitizer? You know, that I hit multiple times a day, every day. We call it a paper cut finder.

And I was like, that's hard.

Sometimes what's hard is your paper cut. But, you know, often what's hard is something way heavier, right? You know what we're doing with those two questions? What's good and what's hard is we are rehearsing the kingdom of God again, I want you to hear this. When Jesus says kingdom, draw a straight line to shalom.

Genesis 1 and 2. Because what does the kingdom look like? It looks just like Genesis 1 and 2, where we're enjoying God together for the good of the world. And he says, boy, you can cultivate space. You can hold space together.

That looks the same where the kingdom can come. Now, here's the thing. If the kingdom is at hand, it can break in at any moment. That means there are good things right here. There are good things around us all the time.

And we can name one and give God credit and say, thank you. Right. But we're also between now and. And when Jesus returns to set it all right. And that means it's hard.

And we could be honest and truthful about hard. And it keeps our eyes on the long view. Because here's the temptation. Some of us want to go back because things seem like they were better back then. At least they made more sense.

Let's go back to that. Some of us want to go, hey, we just need to get forward. Because, you know, going forward is always better. Here's the thing. Hope isn't always in either of those spaces.

Hope is out there when Jesus returns. And hope, more often than not, is right where we are, when we are willing, willing to name how the kingdom is showing up right now in our lives. Simply what's good and what's hard. And you can do this at lunch today with whoever you came with. If you've got kids, these are questions kids can answer.

And here's what you do when you answer this question. What's one good thing? What's one hard thing? Here's how you respond. Thank you.

Trust me in this. When somebody says, here, here's what's hard, Just go, thank you for sharing that. Trust the spirit to do work because he's with you. What's good and what's hard. And if you're aching today, if you are homesick and you're like, I can't even begin to figure out who I have in my life that I could sit and talk that way with, come join us here.

Right 9am There's a room between those two doors called the Great Room. It's on the other side. I've been hanging out in there with people, as Whitewater discovers. It's just round tables. And whether it's one round table or 10 round tables, you can sit down with a handful of people around that.

And we will guide us through questions like what's good, what's hard? Here's a story about Jesus. What do we learn about him? What do we learn about us as humans? What does he want from us?

And what maybe is sticking out to me? And what can I. What's one simple thing I can do, right, to follow him? We're holding space to practice enjoying God together for the good of the world. Come in at 9, hang, join in and experience that space.

Or just start to ask those questions, right? But the invitation is this. You need hope and you need a people to hope with, Right?

You need someone to hope with. They didn't travel alone.

And I don't know if you've been here. I have been here. Where I've walked in. Walked in on a Sunday morning and I found a seat and we started to sing. And I couldn't because I had more questions than answers that day.

Because I had more doubts and wrestling with God than I had ease. And I saw the words and I was like, I don't. I don't know if I can sing them like I mean them today. But you know what happens? I hear you sing them and you sing them for me, right?

Singing Hope when we struggle.

So I'm going to invite you in just a moment, I'm going to invite you to stand and I'm going to. Not quite a calm response. I'm just going. I'm going to say the line and I want you to repeat after me, but I want you to do it with gusto. Because here's the thing, some of you won't be able to say the words, and it's okay, but we're going to say them.

And remember, these words are to you, right? So when you hear these words, when you hear this spoken, I want you to hear it direct line from words that God gave us to words that we share with each other. So even as you speak it, receive it. You get to give it and you get to receive hope, right? And after that, I just want to pray over you.

So let's stand together.

And I'm going to say a line and you're going to say it back together. And not to me, but to one another. The Lord watches over you. The Lord watches over you. The Lord is at your sorry.

The Lord is your shade at your right hand.

The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm.

He will watch over your life. The Lord will watch over your coming and going, Both now and forevermore.

Let me pray over you, Holy Spirit. Come, you do what we can. On that day when 3,000 joined in, it was a day that you cut loose and entered into our lives. And what came out of us, Holy Spirit, was your fruit, your love, your joy, your peace.

Come, Holy Spirit, move in us. Not just me, in us.

Pour in your hope today. Pour in your love that it may pour out of us into others.

Thank you, King Jesus, for rescuing us and for giving us the hope that we can keep our eyes on, on the horizon, knowing you're going to come again and everything will be set right. And in the meantime, you're setting things right in here. Bring it on.

We long for home.

Thank you for your home and King Jesus, it's in the authority and our allegiance to your name that we pray today. Amen.