Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to another Psalms devotional time. I'm Pastor Jason Van Bemmel from Forest Hill Presbyterian Church, and this morning we are beginning what is probably my favorite section of the Psalms. Now, if you've been watching these Psalms devotionals for a while, you've probably heard me say more than once, this is my favorite Psalm or this is one of my favorite Psalms. I don't know that I've ever said it's definitively my favorite Psalm. Might be Psalm 130 if I had to pick a favorite. Or Psalm 103, or Psalm 34, or Psalm 22. Anyway, this is my favorite section of the Psalms, and it is the songs of ascents. And the songs of ascents, ascents means going up, going up to Jerusalem. And these are pilgrim songs. They were sung by the people of God as they made their three times a year pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, for the feast of Pentecost, and for the feast of Tabernacles. And so each one of these three feasts required God's people to come and gather together in Jerusalem, and the city would swell to many times its size. So these are songs that Jesus sang. all of his life when he made pilgrimage to Jerusalem. From being a young boy, I remember the story of when he was left behind at 12 years old, staying in the temple. That was actually, you know, his sort of becoming a man time. And then, you know, he He made this pilgrimage, you know, several times recorded in the gospel. And so these are songs that Jesus would have sung. They're pilgrim songs. And they're pilgrim songs for us because we are on a pilgrimage from this life to our heavenly Jerusalem, to our eternal home. And they're great songs for us to take to heart, to meditate on, ponder, and learn to sing, as it were, with our lives. All right, we're going to begin this morning with Psalm 120, which gives the motivation to go on pilgrimage by meditating on the realities of living in a fallen and broken world. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we love you because you have first loved us. We belong to you because you have made us your own. Father, would you Meet with us this morning. We need your Holy Spirit to take Psalm 120 and write it on our hearts, Father. Write it on our hearts and strengthen us in our spirit by your word and your spirit. Draw us close to Jesus. Make us long for our heavenly home. Make us faithful pilgrims on our journey toward our heavenly home. We pray this, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen. Psalm 120. 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 Meshach, 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. Psalm 120. This is a powerful psalm, and again, it is the beginning of the Songs of Ascent because It, in a sense, is our motivation for wanting to get up and get out of this fallen world and its twisted ideologies and its deception and violence and go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to our heavenly home. The psalmist is in distress. In my distress, I called to the Lord and he answered me. I know that over this past year, many of us have felt deep and profound distress by many of the events that we have seen unfolding around us. Are we crying out to the Lord? Are we going to God in our distress? Are we looking to Him? Got my Star Wars mug going. Gail wanted to see this, because she said she didn't get a chance to see it. So here it is. The Millennium Falcon with TIE fighters, and the second Death Star, and X-Wing fighters. It only makes that picture appear when it's full of hot liquid. So you know I have a full cup of hot coffee right now. Sorry. A little ADHD moment there for you. Sorry. The psalmist is in distress, he's in deep distress, and I know that we've been in distress over this past year. I don't care who you are, and there's different reasons for it, right? And a large part of the cause for our distress is deception. He says, 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? There are many voices in the world which are lying, and they are dividing people, and they are stirring people up, and they are deceiving people. It's not right. And the psalmist here is distressed over deception. And he says that lying lips and a deceitful tongue, he's wishing this picture is that the tongue, the tongue of the deceiver, right, would be pierced through with sharp arrows and would be burned with glowing coals from the broom tree. And that would just be a very intensely hot coal. Woe to me that I sojourn in Meshach, that I dwell among the tents of Kedar. These places are far from Jerusalem. They're in a sort of Gentile area that's sort of dominated by the Hittites, who were a very warlike people. And so the psalmist is saying, I'm far from my spiritual home. I'm far from the people of God, who are the truth tellers and the peace lovers. and instead I'm living in a land of deception. And look at what the deception leads to. Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak they are for war. There's a connection here being made in Psalm 120 from deception right, in the opening verses in the middle, to violence, hating peace, being for war. These two things go together. If you read scripture, and if you study history, and if you study our culture right now, these two things go together. The deceivers come in and they lie. And they say things that are not true, but which are targeted and intended to inflame the passions of those who hear them and bring them to the point of outrage. And when you get a group of people whose passions are inflamed and who are brought to the point of outrage, they will do violence, they will go to war. And that could be under a tribal leader going to actual war in the ancient world, or it could be some of the scenes of violence that we've seen tearing apart our country over this past year. God judges such deception and violence. Micah chapter six tells us, shall I acquit the man with wicked scales? and with a bag of deceitful weights. Your rich men are full of violence. Your inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. Therefore, I strike you with a grievous blow, making you desolate because of your sins." So here we have an added element to this mix. And that is the rich who are profiting off of the violence. There are still today those in the world who make their living off of stirring up violence and doing so through lies. So you have a deceitful tongue, you have inhabitants speaking lies, you have rich man being full of violence. Why would a rich man be full of violence? Because it profits him, right? It makes him richer. And that's very often what happens even today in our culture. Many of the voices who are lying to people, who are telling them things that are not true in order to stir up their passions and sort of get them to act out in violent ways, they are in fact preying upon the people that they are deceiving so that they can get rich from them. And it is happening in all over our country, to be honest with you. And you need to attune yourself to be able to hear what is true and what is a lie. One of the most important things for God's people to be able to do is to be discerning. To be discerning. To know the truth and to speak for the truth. And if you are listening to voices that are inciting violence or encouraging violence, because of irresponsible, untrue, unfounded things that are being said, then you have a responsibility as a child of God to pull back from that, to understand and know and love the truth, and to speak the truth in love into a culture that is being torn apart by violence and deception. This is a call from God to us to go on pilgrimage. Imagine if the psalmist here in Psalm 120 just decided to pick sides and remain in Meshach and Kedar and just sort of join the fight. If he bought into one set of lies and he just sort of joined the fight and fought against, that's not what his calling is. That's not what his longing is. He is for peace. He is for truth and he is for peace. And that's going to set his heart on pilgrimage. on pilgrimage to God, to get away from the lies and to get away from the violence. Our heart attitude is to be more like Jesus. Always, as believers, we are called to be more like Jesus. And what was Jesus approach? Isaiah 53 tells us, by oppression and judgment, he was taken away. And as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth. The Lord Jesus did no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth. He never took up arms to fight his way among those who were opposing him. He never encouraged his followers to do so. In fact, you remember when Peter took up his sword in the garden of Gethsemane and he chopped off the ear of Malchus, who was a servant of the high priest. Peter joined the violence for a righteous cause. Surely it was unjust for Jesus to be arrested and taken away and killed. Surely that is wrong. And so Peter felt zealous. He felt justified. He felt like he was serving the Lord. when he picked up his sword and he chopped off the right ear of Malchus, the servant of the high priest. But Jesus said, put away your sword. Jesus healed the ear. This was a man who was coming to arrest him. This was a man who was his enemy. Have we forgotten, as believers, that our Lord commands us to love our enemies? to bless those who curse you, to pray for those who persecute you. I'm afraid we've adopted a completely different spirit altogether, the spirit of the world that says you need to fight for your rights. You need to oppose. A great respected Christian leader whose books I have loved and enjoyed, said that we need to fight to the last drop of blood. He said that last week. That was wrong. That was sinful. That was wicked. That was deceitful and violent. We as believers must, we must step away from the deception and the violence and we must walk in the footsteps of Jesus, loving our enemies, serving our neighbors, speaking the truth in love. Even as Jesus was being oppressed and treated unjustly, even as they were making his grave with the wicked, which means he was killed as a criminal, he did no violence. and there was no deceit in his mouth." Brothers and sisters, we are the children of God. We are ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are salt and light to a world that is dying and dark. We must not give in to hate. We must not join the dying dark world in their death and in their deception. We must shine the light of God's word, the light of his truth, and do so in love for the good of our neighbor. I hope and I pray that we will hear God's voice calling us to step away from the lies, the deception, and the violence that is caused by those lies and deception. Let's pray. Father in heaven, oh, how we need you. Oh, how we need your Holy Spirit. Oh, how we need your word. Oh, how we need faith in you to anchor our souls in the midst of a storm. I was just reading this morning, Lord, of how Jesus was asleep in the boat in the midst of the storm and the disciples were panicked and accused him of not caring for them. But he had peace because he trusted in you. Father, give us the peace that trusts in you. And let us step back from the voices that would encourage lying, violence, division, hatred, selfishness, worldliness. Let us reject these things far from our lives and fix our hearts on pilgrimage. Fix our hearts on pilgrimage, on you. Oh, how we long to be with you. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, that was Psalm 120, the first of the Songs of Ascent. And each one of them is wonderful and powerful and important. Psalm 130 is among them. Probably my favorite psalm, if I pinned me down and had to pick one. So please keep joining us Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning at 830. May the Lord bless you and keep you. Have a blessed day in the Lord. do do