I have been inclined to speak this morning
from one of my favorite psalms as the last of my sermons on some of the
psalms. It is a favorite because it has been a devotional psalm for me
through all the years. A part of the reason is that there is a wonderful
meterized version of it in our hymn book.
"Unto the hills around do I lift up, my longing eyes.
O, whence for me shall my salvation come, from whence arise?"
Unfortunately, our hymnbook doesn't use the simple tune I learned for it
long ago. I know the tune it uses -- but not well -- so I won't try to
lead you in singing it.
From such verses in the Scriptures is our daily coping with life and
dependence upon God enhanced. I might say, parenthetically, that one of
the good reasons for frequently singing theologically enriched hymns is
that they enable us to take the truth of God with us during our daily walk
which is often in secular places.
Allow me to treat this psalm in three steps:
I. FIRST, WHAT IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN HILLS AND HELP IN THIS PSALM?
1. Sometimes it is said -- often by people not very familiar with the
Bible or its God -- that there is great strength gained by looking at towering
hills and mountains. It is said that they give people a sense of immovability
and permanence and so forth. But the idea is totally foreign to the rest
of the psalm. I'm afraid that such an interpretation sounds more like the
romantic age than the age of the worship of Jehovah.
2. Others, with a good bit more justification, say that it is an appeal
to the power of God as evidenced in creation. One could make a case for
this. However, the psalmist could have chosen something more activistic
and dynamic for his allusion; such as a storm or a flood. But this is partly
true. The Psalmist is, no doubt, remembering that God made these mountains
that he is looking at.
Every look up on a starry night; Every scene of a magnificent spectacle
of the physical creation; every report that comes out in the news about
the wondrous complexity and harmony of the human body should drive the
Christian to his knees, so to speak, in worship of the great Creator who
is our God and Heavenly Father.
3. But I believe the full answer to my question is more complex than
that. It is highlighted by the probable, original use of these Psalms 120-134.
In the older versions the title says they are songs of ascents and this
title appears at the heading of each of them: "A Song of Ascents" It means
"a song of going up" "of ascending" in Hebrew. Some have imagined that
inasmuch as this last book of the Psalms (Book V, in which this psalm is
located) seems to have been compiled from previously written inspired psalms
for the liturgical use in the temple, -- that these 15 Psalms were sung
by the Levites as they marched up from one platform to another in the post-exilic
temple. But I think that a better explanation that has been given is that
they were pilgrim psalms that the pilgrims sang as they went in large traveling
companies up to the annual feasts in Jerusalem -- which for them, you must
understand, was always "up" even from the geographical north or even from
the top of some mountain that might have been higher in actual elevation
than Jerusalem. You remember that Jesus, when he was 12 years old, was
said to have gone up to Jerusalem in just such a company (Luke 2: 44).
One is reminded of the English who always go "up" to London.
The reason I believe this interpretation is the correct one is that
the themes of these 14 Psalms are all about the things a spiritual Israelite
would be thinking as he went up to Jerusalem to obey and worship his God.
They might have sung them over and over again, in some cases antiphonally
or some have imagined that they sung them at traditional spots along the
road to Jerusalem coming up from the Jordan Valley -- the way most people
who came from a distance approached Jerusalem.
This is not my main point this morning, but I pause to ask you if you prepare
yourself in similar fashion as you approach public worship from week to
week or for the use of the sacrament of communion from time to time? Do
you prepare yourself for worship and for the use of the communion by a
purposeful anticipation? I urge you to make a habit of doing so. Anticipation
of things positive is one of the aspects of our psychology that enriches
life. And in the case of spiritual anticipation, it enriches us in an even
greater way
4. If this was the case historically, this psalm is an affirmation
of God's protection of them on the way. We know that robbers often hid
in the hills, particularly where they overshadowed narrow passes in the
valleys far below as people made their way through the desolate wilderness
on the eastern half of Palestine. In fact, when I was a student in Jerusalem
back in 1962 and 63, thousands of years after this psalm was used this
way, there were instances in which foolish tourists decided to go hiking
through the wilderness of Judaea and were relieved of their possessions
and clothes by Bedouin robbers and sent absolutely naked on their way with
only their shoes and their lives left over from their adventure.
This, I suggest, is the context in which hills and help are mentioned
in these first two verses. It is not the romantic idea of a beautiful,
inspiring hill, but the sober idea that any one of these towering hills
might be a cover for a band of robbers or assassins. And the Lord whom
they served was their only protector.
Now, in Athens there are hills, albeit not like the great, rocky, desolate
hills of Palestine. But it is not the hills that you need to watch out
for but the streets and sections of the city after dark that you need to
look out for. But in every area and circumstance of our lives there are
"hills," so to speak, that are far more treacherous than the streets after
dark in certain sections of our city. They are decisions; forces that touch
our lives over which we have no control; the effects of lack of spiritual
discipline -- those kind of "hills" "From whence shall our help come? Our
help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth." Hills and valleys,
streets and cities, the forces of nature and the whole realm of human history
and behavior are under his sovereign control. Our help comes from the Lord!
Are there any foreboding hills that tower over you life just now and
you are in the valley far below just approaching a narrow pass? It is not
surprising, for in principle, all of us are like those ancient believers
so long ago. Life is filled with hills and valleys of difficulty and anxiety,
if not indeed of terror. Their help came -- and our help "comes -- from
the Lord who made heaven and earth." What a great comfort it is to the
serious Christian!
II. IN THE SECOND PLACE, THE ANCIENT PILGRIMS WERE ASSURED THAT THE
LORD WOULD INDEED HELP AND PROTECT THEM.
1. The sovereignty and almighty power of God is a great comfort and
treasure to the child of God. ("v.2")
2. Whatever our explanation is for our experiencing robbers from the
hills or troubles in the valleys, it is certainly not because God is incapable
of coming to our aid. In deism and paganism the deity is either out of
touch with his creation or incapable of doing anything about it; In pantheism
he is part of the problem. But in the theism of the Bible, God through
the Second Person made heaven and earth and upholds all things by the word
of his power and is infinitely powerful. "(Our) help comes from the Lord
who made heaven and earth."
3. This help is comprehensive.
("vv.3-4") Nothing sneaks up on God. Your protection is 24 hour protection:
("v.6").
Your protection is whole-life-activity protection: ("vv.7-8").
Now, how can this be in the light of some of the difficulties which some
of us face? This is partly dealt with in my third point:
III. HOW DOES THE HELP COME FROM THE LORD?
1. Of course, sometimes it comes in the form of what must be classified
as a miraculous intervention. "He will give his angels charge over you
lest you dash your foot against a stone," is not just a messianic prophecy.
It is a reality for the obedient child of God. In eternity, we may have
the vision to look back and see, surprisingly, repeated interventions of
God in our lives on earth at points where we right now are inclined to
see as "good luck" happenstances.
O give thanks to the Lord every time you have a "near miss" from a terrible
accident or a potentially fatal sickness or a seemingly random malevolence
of nature. It was really God sending his holy angels to protect you or
decreeing events to exclude you or to favor you. Do you have the habit
in such a case of offering up a quiet prayer of thanks to the one who is
"your keeper, your shade on your right hand?" You should! You surely should
develop such a habit!
2. At other times God uses secondary means to give us help. In sickness
we pray and at the same time take responsible medical action. Even in the
N.T., an age frequented by dramatic sign miracles, Paul told Timothy to
drink wine for a medical problem he had when he might have supernaturally
healed him from a distance. Sometimes -- oftentimes, God gives us help
through secondary means.
3. But sometimes, God is clearly not pleased to give us help that removes
the difficulty. Those who believe that the Christian life is just one miracle
after another have to face up to the fact that everybody dies and that
death is the ultimate "trouble". And we all face trouble. This Christian
life is not a freedom from trouble. Even Paul the magnificent, archetypical
Christian, did not solve his many problems of sickness, disability, natural
disaster, political injustice by commanding a miracle with uplifted hands
and boisterous prayer to God Almighty. It is not a miracle-strewn path
to heaven, as some of our naive brethren would have us believe. But our
dear Heavenly Father, "who keeps his Israel and will neither slumber nor
sleep" says to us "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you
and when your task on earth is done I will receive you to myself for Jesus'
sake. And I will reward you for all of eternity for those times when I
have allowed you to go through difficulty, unfufillment, unsuccess, pain,
less than adequate provision for your needs, and persecution by my enemies."
This is not a footnote. It covers a substantial number of instances
in our lives where the Lord does not deliver us out of the trouble itself
but pacifies, comforts, and encourages us in the midst of the trouble.
If we miss this, we miss a significant portion of the experience of even
the most faithful and ideal of the Lord's servants. Read the last half
of II Corinthians 11 for some examples of this.
Now, how have you been helped during the past days of your Christian life?
How have you been helped so that you are able to say ("v.2")? Does your
experience jibe with ("vv.3-6")? How have you been helped? Some of these
ways are very intimate experiences, but some are not. We should be hearing
from numerous ones every week on instances in which your "help comes from
the Lord who made heaven and earth" who has kept "your going out and your
coming in" during the long days of your Christian profession. |
