When most of us hear about service, we think about doing something for someone else.  However, Psalm 123 is not about that kind of service.  This Psalm is about our service to God.  This service to God is a difficult skill to develop because it runs counter to our human nature.  We are taught that we should be free.  From a patriotic stand point we celebrate the freedoms we have in this country.  However, our developing relationship with God demands that we be subservient to Him.

At the beginning of the Psalm, God is referred to as “heaven-dwelling” God.  We look up to God for help.  Too many times we are guilty of either looking at God or even looking down on God.  As we look up to Him, we assume the posture of a servant.  Too many times we may look upon God as our servant.  Someone who is  standing by to respond to our beck and call when we are too tired to do something or something is too hard for us to do and we need help.

God is a heaven-dwelling God that we must look up to and once we look up to God we are in a posture of servitude.  However, what happens when we look up to God? The Psalm tells us very plainly what to expect.  We expect, and receive, mercy.  The idea of mercy means that the upward look to God in the heavens does not expect God to stay in that heaven, but He will come down, enter our condition to accomplish the enterprise of His redemption.  As servants of God, what we expect to come from that sevitude is simple, we expect mercy.

The third aspect of service is an urgency.  We have been kicked around and we have been abused.  We need God’s mercy and the Psalm is a part of the literature of outcry, a longing for deliverance from oppression.

Although we do long to be free, we are really slaves.  Not many of us act or feel free.  We are a nation of complainers.  I can’t spend my money to way I want.  I can’t spend my time the way I want.  I can’t be myself.  My life is controlled by others.  There are many addicts today.  Some are addicts to alcohol and drugs, while others are addicts to compulsive work habits, obsessive consumption or recognition.  We all have our masters.  We all are servants of something.  The Christian is a person who recognizes that our real problem is not in achieving freedom but in learning service under a different master.  Every relationship that excludes God becomes oppressive.  Knowing that, we urgently want to live under the mastery of God.

This service we offer to god through our worship will be extended into specific acts that serve others.  As we learn a relationship of service to God, we become available to be of use to others in acts of service.  If the  attitude of service is learned, by attending to God as Lord, then serving others will develop as a very natural way of life.

The Psalm moves from oppression ( “kicked in the teeth by complacent rich men”) to freedom ( “awaiting your words of mercy”) to a new servitude (” like servants, alert to their master’s commands”).

The chapter includes a quote from Karl Barth who said, ” Service is an act whose glory becomes increasingly greater to the extent that the doer is not concerned about his own glory but about the glory of the other.”

The Christian must learn about service.  Service to God first and then extend to others.

The King James version of the first verse has probably the most familiar translation that says, “I was glad when they said unto me, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord.’”

Why are we called, why are we compelled,to worship?  To assemble for worship is voluntary.  No one forces us to do it.  Why do we?

Peterson says that the Psalm singles out three reasons:  worship gives us a workable structure for life; worship nurtures our need to be in relationship with God and worship centers our attention on the decisions of God.

The Psalm says that Jerusalem is a place built for worship.  It is a place set aside for worship, just as our church is.  Some would say that they can worship God just as well on the golf course or in a boat on Kerr Lake.  Can you really worship God as well there as you can in His house?

The Psalm also says that all the different tribes assemble to worship.  We are the same.  We assemble on Sunday morning coming from different places and we come out of various conditions.  We come with our individual problems, concerns and needs.  With all our differing levels of intelligence and wealth, background and eduction, still, in worship, we gather into a single whole.

I witnessed that in the worship service this past Sunday.  Ellen’s sermon spoke of the tragedy in Haiti and the examples of God’s presence in the many acts of compassion.  As she went through her sermon, I was struck by how quiet it was in the sanctuary.  No one coughed. No child was talking.  For a time, hardly anyone was even moving.  We truly had come together as a single whole.  That can only happen when we assemble together.

We also worship because it nurtures our need to be in relationship with God.  Worship is the place where we obey the command to worship God.  Worship is voluntary.  We are not forced to do it.  We worship because we want to.  We do not worship because we fell like it.  If we only worship when we felt like it, there probably would not be much worshiping going on.  I hate to admit it, but more than once I have thought to myself, “I really don’t feel like going to church today.”  Haven’t you felt the same way at times?

We worship, even when we do not feel like it.  Peterson says that we can act out way into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel our way into a new way of acting.  Worship is an act that develops feeling for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in the act of worship.

We also worship because    in it our attention is centered on the decisions of God.  The decisions of God are set out for us the the word of God and the word of God is everywhere in worship.  From the call to worship to the benediction,  we hear God’s word.  Worship is the place where, more than any other, our attention is focused on the word of God.

The time we spend in worship prepares us for the rest of our week.  Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God – it whets our appetite.  Our need for God is not taken care of by engaging in worship – it deepens.  Worship initiates an extended, daily participation in the peace and prosperity of God that we can share with others in our daily rounds.

Psalm 121 is a gentle reminder to us that we are wrong if we think being a Christian is going to be easy. No sooner do we confidently stride out on the road of faith than we trip on some obstruction and fall to the hard surface.

When that happens, where do we find our strength?  Do we look to the mountains?  People during the Psalmists time did.  Those who worshipped Baal built altars and shrines to Baal on mountain tops.  it would be common in those days to expect to look to the mountains in times of trouble in search of Baal.

No, the psalmist says, He will look to the Lord for strength.  He will look to God who made the mountains.  He will look to the Creator, not the creation for strength.

Three possible misfortunes might befall the traveler in our Psalm.  A person might step on a loose stone and sprain an ankle.  A person might get a heat stroke or might fall prey to pressures of fatigue or anxiety ( described by the ancient writers as moonstruck).  We can update our own list of dangers.  A crazy man, with explosives in his underwear, may try to blow up the plane we are on.  An accident – in an automobile, from a stepladder , on the athletic field – can, without warning, interrupt our carefully laid plans.  A medical test result could throw our whole health into question.

The promise of the Psalm is not that we shall never stub our toes, but that no injury, no illness, no accident, no distress will have evil power over us, that is, will be able to separate us from God.

All the water in the oceans cannot sink a ship unless it gets inside.  All the trouble in the world cannot harm us unless it gets within us.  The promise of the Psalm     is that God guards you from every evil.

The only serious mistake we can make when illness comes, when anxiety threatens, when conflict disturbs our relationships with others is to conclude that God does not care.  This is the mistake of supposing that God’s interest in us waxes and wanes.

The Christian life is a pilgrimage toward God, but in going to God, Christians travel the same ground everyone else walks on, breathe the same air, shop in the same stores, pay the sames prices for gas and groceries, fear the same dangers, are subject to the same pressures and distresses and, ultimately, buried in the same ground.  The difference is that each step we walk, each breath we breathe, we know we are preserved by God, we know we are accompanied by God and we therefore know that no matter what doubts we endure or what accidents we experience, God will guard us from all evil.

This walk of faith is the solid, secure experience of God, who keeps all evil from getting inside us, who guards our life, who guards us when we leave and when we return, who guards us now, who guards us always.

Being a pilgrim tells us that we are people who spend our lives going someplace, going to God and whose path for getting there is Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, many of us, instead of  being pilgrims, are actually tourists.  As tourists we live and spend the vast majority of our time in one place and periodically leave that place and to visit another place.  We sight-see.  We meet and talk to the “locals.”  We may even buy a flowery shirt so that we look like the locals, because, after all, no one likes to be recognized as a tourist.

For many of us, our Christian experience is as a tourist.  We visit church periodically.  While there we interact with the people t. We sing the songs and even try to dress like everyone else so that no one will mistake us for a tourist.  However, we do not stay long and very soon we return to our home and the other world that we spend most of our time in, and, except for our memories, that is not much about our regular life that would let anyone know that we had “visited” the church.

Our pilgrimage as a Christian is a life-long journey.  It calls for us to be obedient to God for a long period of time and it requires that we be moving in God’s direction.  It is not an easy journey.  There are obstacles. There are diversions and distractions that tempt us off the path.

Our study is about this pilgrimage and the support and encouragement that is available to us to helps us keep our obedience and stay moving in the right direction.  The basis for support and encouragement is found in the Psalms.  Specifically, we will be reading Psalms 120 through 134.

Our first Psalm is 120.  I am not going to set that Psalm out here, but please stop and take the time to read that Psalm.  Eugene Peterson is the translator of “The Message” so the version of each Psalm in our study will be from “The Message”, but it does not really matter which translation you read.

The chapter on Psalm 120 is entitled “Repentance.”  It is not a very beautiful Psalm.  It certainly is not a happy Psalm.  It is the Psalm of someone who has become fed up and disgusted with the world that he lives in and he calls out to God for help.  Peterson puts forth the statement that a person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way.

The world will tell us what we need to be happy.  We need money, material possessions, prestige, power, recognition and beauty.  If we can acquire those things we will have it made and we will be happy.  The Psalmist has discovered that these promises are simply not true. The world has told him lies and he is doomed to live where he would rather not live.

The beginning of our pilgrimage starts with repentance.  I use to have a very simplistic understanding of repentance.  I thought it was nothing more than just saying I was sorry for my sins and asking God to forgive me.  True repentance is much more than that.  Peterson says that repentance is not an emotion.  It is not feeling sorry for your sins.  It is a decision.  It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god.  It is accepting the fact that the world’s definition of success is a lie and that you want a better life than what the world offers.

We will never start our journey to God until we reject the ideas that the world would claim are paramount.  The first step toward God is a step away from the lies of the world.  It is a no that becomes a yes.  We say no to this world and yes to God.  Repentence is the first word in our Christian pilgrimage.  It is a rejection that is also an acceptance, a leaving that develops into an arriving.    We will not start our long obedience in the direction of God until we say the no to the world that is a yes to God.

I hope you are having and will continue to have a good week.  Cindy and I will be in Virginia this Sunday for the baptism of our granddaughter Hannah.  Scott will be leading the class.  If you are not currently in a Sunday School class, we invite you to join us.

Our journey has begun.  It will be a long journey and it will not be easy.  We will need help for this journey.  Where does that help come from?  The next Psalm that we will consider next Sunday is Psalm 121 which tells us of God’s providence.