Psalm 120, trusting you're there, hear the word of the Lord. 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, you deceitful tongue? a warrior's sharp arrows with glowing coals of the broom tree. Woe to me that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell among the tents of Kedar. Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war. Amen. Thus far, the reading of God's word. Let's ask the Lord for his blessing upon our time. Let's pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, you who dwell in inapproachable light, you who have brought life and immortality to light, You who hold the keys of death and Hades in your hands, you who raised Jesus from the dead after he had offered his own body and blood in sacrifice on the cross for our sins and our righteousness, we ask, Heavenly Father, that you would dwell with us today that you would be near to us, Father, as we seek your will, as we seek, Father, not only to understand your word, but in understanding it, to live it out. Strengthen us, strengthen our hands and our feet, strengthen our minds and our hearts, Father, to know the times we live in, to know that we are called to stand with Christ, the living word, that we are called to stand for peace and not for war. Father, we ask and pray, grant us your grace now. In Jesus' name we ask, amen. You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. That's the lesson that confronts us And here, as we read and meditate upon Psalm 120, which begins a different section of the Psalter. The Psalter is one book of many books, and within each book, five to be exact, there are many sections. And here we begin a new section. We'll pick it up next year, of course, Lord willing, a section called the Songs of Ascents. The Songs of Ascents were songs that were sung by Jewish pilgrims as they ascended, as they journeyed to Jerusalem. And no matter where you came from, whether the north of Jerusalem or south of Jerusalem or east or west of Jerusalem, Because Jerusalem was on a hill, it was said that you always went up Jerusalem. You walked an elevated path. Of course, this physical pilgrimage to Jerusalem is a description of our pilgrimage, of our journey, not to a physical city here on earth, but to the new Jerusalem, to the celestial city. This pilgrimage is not a withdrawing from society, but a living for God in this world, in this society. It's a pilgrimage that transverses this world and it calls for us to keep our eyes heavenward, where Christ is found and from where he reigns over all things. And in your journey to the celestial city, as you walk in this pilgrimage to Christ and to your inheritance, what must you know? What must you remember that you may not necessarily be interested in war, but war is interested in you. You may want to live in perfect peace in a kind of Eden-like society, but since Genesis 3, you have lived in a time of war. Since Genesis 3, man has declared and waged war against God and against his Messiah and against the people of Christ. like the hobbits of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. You may want to put your head in the sand and just cook delicious sourdough bread and brew for yourself whatever craft beer you want and live in a kind of celebratory, festive sort of way. You may want to ignore what Mordor is up to and live your quiet life in the shire, but to do so, God says, is detrimental to your life, is a lie and ignores what God tells us. And so there are three lessons for us in this psalm as we consider the theme of war and peace. First of all, we find the first point in verses one and two. The psalmist is distressed. The psalmist is troubled. And he is troubled, why? Not because of bodily affliction, not because of a personal slight from a neighbor. He is distressed and troubled because he is surrounded by liars. We're told, verse two, deliver me from what, O Lord? From lying lips, from a deceitful tongue. Lying lips and deceitful tongues are not descriptions, however, of merely personal conduct. It's not just that he was told a lie by a friend or by a neighbor, and now he's undergoing some kind of existential crisis. That would be bad enough. Liars, we're told, will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, Revelation 21 and 22. Liars dwell in darkness and they call forth God's wrath. That's bad enough. No, this is no mere personal sin. Lying lips and deceitful tongue, as we read in Psalm 12, are not a personal offense, but a civilizational threat. With their lies, liars seek to overturn the world. They seek to assault God. They seek to assault His creation, His people, and are waging war against everything that is called good, everything that is good. And this, especially, calls forth God's wrath. He is surrounded by lies. The lies of a culture are what Scripture calls idols, the idols of the nations. They are what we see in our day as we open our eyes and look at the world according to Scripture. We see dominant untruths propagated in our time that bind people to darkness, that blind them into their own destruction, lies that hold sway over minds and hearts and oppose God at every turn. And if we could have an ear, a massive, all-powerful ear that could capture all that was said in this nation, what would that ear hear? We had an ear that could hear what is said by the media, by entertainment, in the political discourse of our day, social media, academia, corporations, schools, what our own hearts say. What does our nation's collective tongue say? In fact, this is not beyond our text. Verse 3 tells us, You deceitful tongue! The psalmist here says all that a nation adores and worships and propagates, all the lies that they promote and establish, is like one collective tongue! A deceitful tongue! What we would hear is what God hears. God who has an almighty all-listening ear. And what we would hear, which God hears, is simply an echo from the serpent from Genesis 3. You shall be as gods. What is it that our nation says? What is it that our nation holds to, right? Our nation says, we, us, you and me, we're good. You're good. I'm good. We're okay. You're okay. We get to determine what's good and evil, what's right and what's wrong, not Jesus Christ. We have no sin. We have no sin. mistakes, we have errors, but we don't have sin. And we, because of that, we have no need of a savior. And we certainly don't need Jesus. Jesus is completely unnecessary. We, if we have errors or mistakes, then we can fix them ourselves. What our nation says is comfort and peace are found in anything, anything you want. Whatever makes you feel good, do that. You are whoever you want to be. Whatever you want to be, you can be that. If you want to be something that you're really not, you can imagine it. You can imagine it into reality. You can create your own identity. This is the world we live in. It's a world that is at war with God. We are the people of God, and as the people of God, we are peacemakers. As the people of God, we are for peace. We are for, that is, Jesus Christ, who is the Prince of Peace. But there is, in this world, no appetite for peace. There is no appetite for being reconciled back to God. And there is, in this Psalm, as a result, a note of befuddlement, befuddlements. The predicament of war is confusing, and it may be confusing for you. But you need not be confused, you need not be befuddled. You want peace, you want Jesus, and all that Jesus is and does and brings. but you are perhaps befuddled, you're surprised, you're disoriented. Why would people not want Jesus? Why would people not want He who alone is good, who is blessed, who is our only source of blessing? And here we find a first point of application for us, that you may not be in this war, Surprised, 1 Peter 4.12 speaks to pilgrims, to those who are exiles and sojourners, those who are living not in a majority Christian society, but those who are spiritual minorities. a minority in the Roman Empire. And Peter says, you have had trials and afflictions come your way. You're opposed. Hostility is coming your way. Arrows from the enemy are being shot your way. Lies are being promulgated and propagated. And so what does Peter say in verse 12 of chapter 4 of his first letter? Beloved, do not be surprised. at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. If this is your first go around, if this is your first rodeo in the Christian life, if you're trying to get your feet from under you, right, and you know the Lord Jesus Christ is good, the Lord Jesus Christ is your Savior and Lord, right, but you don't necessarily have a lot of years in the Christian life, you need to know that this is coming your way at some point. And so what are you to do? Do not be surprised. Do not be confused that when you stand for Jesus in your own personal life and in terms of your public life with others, with family, with friends, maybe with coworkers, it doesn't mean that you go off and evangelize and you don't do the work you're supposed to do. No, do the work you're supposed to do in your jobs. That's what God calls you to do. But it is always the case that in the course of doing that work, you're outed as a Christian, and that's okay. You say, how was your weekend? And people ask you, how was your weekend? And you tell them, my weekend was glorious. I went to worship, I went to church, and it's over in 240 Fairmont, and you should come worship with me if you're a Christian or if you don't know Christ, because Christ is the only, hope that we have in this world. And you talk very organically and very naturally about your Christian faith. And because of that, you haven't gone out of your way to be a martyr or anything. But because of your faith in Christ, you will be tried in the furnace. You will be surrounded by people completely uninterested in Jesus. And more than this, who are hostile to Jesus. and you need to know you're living in a war. This is the way of the world. You may have want to live in a time when God was universally loved and worshiped, but those conditions haven't existed for thousands of years since Genesis three. And so what are you to do? What does God call you to do? You must go to God in distress. As Psalm 120 tells us, verse one, in my distress, what did I do? I called to the Lord. As your soul is weighed down by the lies of this world, congratulations. You're distressed because of the lies of the world. Congratulations, it means you're alive in Jesus Christ. It means you are alive to his truth and you have no appetite for the lies of this world. It is a comfort. to be distressed by the lies of this world because it means that our hearts have been tuned and transformed by Christ and turned to Him. But in our distress now, we ask God for mercy. Have mercy upon me, O God. Send out Your light and Your truth and lead me to Your dwelling place, as Psalm 43 says. And we ask God for mercy, that God would not only establish us in His truth, in His light, that we would remain unshaken and unshakable in Christ. but that God would lead men who live in darkness out into His precious light and life, into His truth. Our distress must move us to cry out to God, to hope in God, to long for Christ, to long for his reign, and to seek to walk in lights. And that's the first point, the distress of the psalmist. But secondly, God tells us about not only lying lips and deceitful tongues, but He tells us what He's going to do to liars. What payment can they expect to receive from God? Verse 3 and 4. What shall be given to you? And what more shall be done to you, you deceitful tongue? A warrior's sharp arrows with glowing coals of the broom tree. Verse four is, of course, what we would call a sentence fragment. It's not really a complete sentence. So there's a little bit of ambiguity there. What is it referring to here? It could refer, it could be describing the kind of militancy that liars exerted. Similar to other Psalms where we're told that the wicked aim their arrows and wet their swords, they sharpen their swords against the innocents. Liars are like warriors who have been arrayed in battle to fight against God and his Messiah. And they have shot their lives like arrows against God, his people, and the created order. And they have sought the destruction of truth with great violence and boasting. With our tongues, we will prevail against and over the Lord. Verse four could be describing liars, but it really is describing God. What God will give liars, what liars will receive from God. And here we find the great irony of divine judgment, that that which the wicked, that which liars sought to do, they will have done to them. They have sought to destroy truth, but they in turn will be destroyed by truth incarnate Jesus Christ, who will destroy liars with a sword that proceeds from His mouth, we're told in Revelation. God will pierce liars with sharp glowing arrows. Those revolutionaries who sought to overturn society by warring against God, who sought to establish lies and to deceive the masses, what will they receive? Hot coals from the broom tree. Coals here are simply charred wood, like charcoal, ready to be lit to fuel a fire. And especially the broom tree was said to have coal derived from it that would be long burning, long lasting, never ceasing to burn. This is what punishment will be like for the wicked, a fire that will never cease to burn against them. We are in a war, not because God has started the war, but because man initiated war against God since Genesis 3. And since Genesis 3, you have to remember, there has been, and it's very hard to fathom this because we are people who live 50, 60, 80, 100 years perhaps. It's such a blink of the eye. But since Genesis three, we have lived as a human race, mankind, and accumulated lies upon lies, lies upon lies. And in every generation, there have been those who have been deceived by lies from antiquity. Lies that are being promoted from generations ago, being promoted today. And this war might seem like it will never end, but God tells us that it will end. It cannot continue indefinitely forever. What will happen to you deceitful tongue? What will happen to those who align themselves with the father of lies? Jesus will destroy them. Satan, demons, all those in power, all those in society who have aligned themselves with darkness, their end will be a fiery, eternal judgment of unending torment, which is what is called by scripture, hell. And so in this second point, a second point of application, do you, Stand with Christ. Do you stand with Jesus, who is the light of the world, who is truth incarnate? He declares in John 14, six, I am the way, the truth, and the life. There is none who can come to the Father except through me. Do you stand with what Jesus says and how he created the world? We can... reject Jesus all we want, we think, and yet we cannot because to reject him is our own destruction. And even before we get to the last judgment, when you try to live against the grain of creation, when you try to live however you want, you may try to fly from atop a building, but you will find very quickly that gravity will overcome and overwhelm you. And that is what liars seek to do. They seek to live however they want. Is this you though? Is this you? Do you stand with Christ? Do you stand with what He says about you and about me? How, in our condition outside of Him, we are dead and we are hopeless and we are helpless? Or do we stand against Christ? Do we stand against Jesus? Rather, with Satan and the father of lies? In our day, it's hard to quantify, it's hard to enumerate, it's hard to speak about which lives are more dominant. We want real medicine for a real problem, or do we want fake diagnoses for fake illnesses? Band-aid solutions are proffered by all in society. Do you wanna be saved? Do you wanna have happiness in your life? Do you want your sins forgiven? Do you wanna have a sense of peace? Then do this. Then try this. Then listen to this guru or influencer or whatever else. But Jesus alone is our hope. Jesus alone is our savior. There is no hope apart from Jesus. There is no life. There is no blessedness. There is no happiness. There is no light outside of Jesus. Don't you see that those who stand against Christ will be destroyed by truth, will be destroyed by light, the light of God. No, brother, sister, beloved people of God, friends, we are called to stand with Christ and to find in him our light and our life and everything that God made us for. And we find in the world nothing, nothing that can perfect or complete us. This is the end of the war, but in the meantime, what do we find? Verses 5, 6, and 7. In the meantime, we know that, yes, on the last day, God will establish his reign of peace. And those who have aligned themselves with Christ by his grace and mercy and salvation will enjoy unending bliss and joy and communion with him. But those who have aligned and arrayed themselves against Christ will be punished. But in the meantime, what are you to do? The question is before us, who is for war and who is for peace? The psalmist says, woe to me that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell among the tents of Kedar. Meshach here is a descendant of Japheth, found in Genesis 10, a son of Noah. And Kedar is a son of Ishmael, found in Genesis 25, the son of the flesh of Abraham. And both Meshach and Kedar were idolatrous, barbaric, deceitful, and bloodthirsty peoples in and around Israel. But in Psalm 120, David, the psalmist, is saying that there are those in my own homeland who are like the men of foreign nations. They are like Meshach and Kedar. And woe to me, he says, because my soul is wearied. It's tiring to dwell among those who hate peace, that is, who hate God and who hate me as well. It's like a young student in school wanting in the cafeteria at the lunch hour to eat his or her sandwich. And then the bully comes and I'm just trying to live in peace. I'm just trying to stay in my lane. I haven't looked at anyone. I haven't cracked any jokes. I'm just here eating my sandwich. And yet those who are for war want to fight me. What have I done? What have I done? Church lives in a land dominated by darkness and lies. The church is for peace, but the world hates peace and is for war. And remember what peace is. Jesus Christ is our peace. The wonder of the Gospel is that although mankind has declared and waged war against God, since Genesis 3, God sent Messiah Jesus as the Prince of Peace. And in His crucifixion, we're told, He establishes peace between God and man. He is our reconciliation. He brings us to God. Because He is God and man. In Jesus Christ we have true peace, the forgiveness of our sins. In this most heinous, evil act of man, God brings forth redemption. and gives man true life. And this is, you see what peace is in Hebrew, shalom. It's a sense of completion, of wellbeing, of being fully restored again, being made whole again. And this is what Jesus is. Jesus is our peace. He is our reconciliation with God, between God and man, in his cross. Jesus is, furthermore, the peace of man, the reconciliation of man to his neighbor, and the reconciliation of man to all of creation in his cross. And here, you see, is not just the wonder of the gospel, but the duty of the gospel. God calls his church to proclaim peace, to proclaim the glad tidings of Jesus Christ. The church is called not to proclaim revolution, not the overturning of God's will, not the rejection of Jesus. There is no good news if you reject Jesus. But the church proclaims the gospel of peace, that when you come to Jesus Christ, you are reconciled back to God, back to your neighbor, back to his creation. But as we proclaim peace, as we are, in verse 7, for peace, they are for war. The war until Jesus comes back continues. It's a war that's waged by the father of lies, Satan himself. It's waged by those who are aligned with Satan. It's waged by men and women and nations and cultures that seek their life and their meaning in lies and not in Jesus. And it is waged against Jesus and his people and all of creation. And yet, as we conclude, what must you know? What must you do, people of God? You must stand for the gospel of peace of Jesus Christ. It is very easy to be discouraged. It's very easy to downplay the Christian faith, especially as we don't want to be harassed. We don't want to be badgered. We want to live in a kind of peace. But you need to connect the thoughts of the Christian faith and the Christian life and realize the blessedness that God is calling you to. And you must say, how can I do anything except stand for peace, stand for Jesus Christ? As it were, the psalmist is saying, I am for the Lord Jesus Christ and His crown righteous King, but they are against Him, and they seethe against the Word of Life. I am for the worship of God. You are for the healing of salvation of mankind, even while they insist on doubling down in their disease and irrationality, the disease of their soul. I am, the Christian church says, for creation, rightly reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, but they want to overturn what God has established in creation. We are for truth. but they are for ideology. I am for life, but they are for death. The Christian church says, I am for marriage, for family, for responsibility, but they are for sexual lust, irresponsibility, and misery. Beloved, in this fight, in this war, you cannot be for war. You cannot be for overturning the will of God. You must be for the gospel of peace of Jesus Christ. You might want to be left alone, but you won't. And so what will you do? What will you do when liars come tomorrow? When liars come perhaps today, later today, and knock on the door of your mind and heart and say, let's be for war. Let's be for overturning the will of God. Let's be for rebelling against God. Let's be for rejecting Christ as our only hope, our only life, our only salvation. What will you do? No, the church must say, the church must stand firm. and declare what scripture declares. And you must as well, people of God, brother and sister, and say, I am for peace. And you show forth the work of Christ in your life by what fills your mind and your heart and your mouth. You see, this is what salvation is. This is the work of Christ in your life, that God destroys the tongue that stands opposed to Him, and He replaces rebellious tongues with worshipful tongues. Your mouth that shot out venom against Christ now kisses the Son and worships Him, and you are to now be for peace. be in your mind and in your heart, but with your mouth, with your words, not for cursing God anymore, but for blessing God who is blessed forevermore. In our time, we are at war. but we are at war because we are for peace. We stand opposed to the rebellion of man because we stand for the obedience and the faith of Christ. People of God, may God give us strength and fortitude as we continue as pilgrims to march upward, heavenward, into that celestial city, our inheritance that will be given to us on the last day. Amen? Let us pray. Our Father and our God, we thank you that you have saved us. in the beloved, in Jesus Christ. What a glorious mercy. What a wonder it is to know you, Father, through Jesus Christ, and to commune with you, Father, and to be found once more, and to know what it means to be human because we have been made whole in Christ. Father, continue your work in us. restoring the image of Christ in us, restoring us to fellowship and to the friendship of Christ, restoring us to righteousness and holiness and truth and wisdom. And Father, to do so, Lord, in Christ alone, our Savior. And Father, more than this, to stand for Christ, our Savior, and Lord, to stand for his work, Lord, that he has accomplished on the cross to reconcile us to you and to one another and to your creation, to no longer live alienated and under condemnation, but to know, Father, true life as you created it to be. Father, grant us strength, Lord, when we are opposed by the world, when we are the recipients of their hostile words, of their lies, and of, Father, their decadence. Give us strength, Father, to remain resolved, to live for Christ, to continue to bless your holy name, and to, Father, have the joy of your salvation, the joy that is given to us, Father, as we are in Christ. Hear us, Father, we ask and pray for all these things, in Jesus' name, amen.