All right, let's take our Bible and let's turn in the word of God to Psalm 123. Psalm 123. I'll read it, we'll pray, we'll study it together. Psalm 123, a song of a sense. To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens. Behold, as the eye of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress. So our eyes look to the Lord our God until he is gracious to us. Be gracious to us, O Lord, be gracious to us. For we are greatly filled with contempt. Our soul is greatly filled with the scoffing of those who are at ease and with the contempt of the proud. Father, now we turn our attention to the reading of the word. And Lord, we are mindful of Jeremiah who had your word in Him, and He couldn't keep it in. It was like fire in His bones. He had to let it out. Your Word is like a hammer. Your Word is what we need. Your Word is a joy to our heart. And Lord, maybe there is someone here tonight who, in a particular timely way, needs to hear the message of this psalm tonight. We do live, oh Lord, in very difficult days when scoffers mock and scoff and when people treat believers and treat you and treat the gospel with contempt. So we pray that you will teach us from your word. In Jesus' name, amen. I wondered who's that was. It was kings and empires and rulers and leaders who all conspired together against this one man. He was scoffed at repeatedly. He was treated with contempt publicly. As often said, it was Martin Luther against the world. Martin Luther lifted up his eyes to God. He begged for the grace of God while others scoffed at him, while others treated him with brash contempt. And Martin Luther would cry out to God for grace. We do think of the heroic nature of Martin Luther, and that's true. But he was a man who went through great hardship as well. I want you to follow with me as I gave to you in your notes there. No, I didn't. Well, listen to this quote by Martin Luther. Here's what he said. This is a deep sigh of my own pained heart. It looks around on all sides and I look for friends. I look for protectors. I look for comforters, but I find none. Therefore, the word says, where shall I, a poor, dismised man, find refuge? I am not strong, so as to be able to preserve myself. Wisdom and plans fail me among the multitude of adversaries who are assaulting me. Therefore, I come to you, O my God. To you I lift my eyes, O you who dwells in the heavens. Luther reminded himself often that though the world be high and powerful and the mockers be many, God is higher than them all. What will you do then when the world despises you, Luther said, turn your eyes upward, turn to God and see that God with all of his beloved angels and all the elect, God looks down upon you and he rejoices in you and he loves you with a fatherly heart. Child of God, do you need to hear that today? Do you find yourself ever on the receiving end of ridicule or mockery or scoffing or being treated with contempt for your faith or how you're choosing to live your Christian life? Child of God, I want you to hear and believe what we're going to look at tonight. Because if you decide to live for Jesus Christ, mark it down from the truth of the word, you're going to suffer. You're going to suffer. It is a promise from God. It is a guarantee from God. It is a given to all believers. You will pay a price. A couple of scriptures. John 15 makes it very clear. If the world hates you, it hated me before it hated you. Matthew chapter 5, when you are insulted, when you are persecuted, when people say all kinds of things against you falsely. 2 Timothy chapter 3 says, all who want to live godly will be persecuted. Matthew chapter 23 talks about how even family will rise up as times get worse against the people of God. So what we need to do is we have to decide where am I going to fix my gaze and where am I going to look and where am I going to hope and how am I going to respond to the difficult times and the scoffing and the contempt that often seems to tornado over our heads. Where are we gonna anchor our eyes? Where are we gonna look? Where are we gonna go? Here's one, Hebrews 4, verse 16. Let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in a time of need. Oh, what an invitation. What a place that we as believers can go. What hope there is for us. And here we are tonight in a really short little psalm, Psalm 123. It is a song of ascents. Remember, we're in the middle of these 15. It's kind of like a traveling playlist of the Jewish people as they would travel to Jerusalem for the pilgrimage festivals. and they're traveling to Jerusalem, and they're singing, and they're traveling, and they're approaching Mount Zion, and they're approaching the temple, and remember Psalm 120? they leave a very tough home environment. Psalm 121, they lift their eyes up to the hills and they think, where is my help going to come from on the journey? Psalm 122, last week, they finally arrive in the house of God. They worship there. They are delighted to be with the people of God. But now, Psalm 123, they look upward to the sovereign Lord they have nowhere else to go when they are scoffed at and when they are treated. Now, One of the marks of Bible study is we have to observe the text. Just simple hermeneutics. Look at the text and observe. Look in your Bible and notice these initial observations. Number one, notice how short the psalm is. It's really short. And what that means is that prayer in times of urgency don't have to be long. They don't have to be, they could be very short. They could be very short. Number two, what we're going to learn tonight and hopefully this little Jeff Scribbles on this piece of paper here will show you how much repetition is in the psalm. There is a lot of repetition here. Looking upward, our eyes are to God. We're going to Yahweh. We plead for him to be gracious, scoffers. I mean, these are repeated words in the psalm. Third, it's a very honest, it's a very blunt psalm. I mean, he doesn't hold back any honest prayers to God. Lord, in the Hebrew, I've had it up to here with these guys. That's what he says three times. I am filled full of this, it's enough. Fourth, this little psalm is reorienting. It is a reorienting psalm. It takes you from your situation to your sovereign. It takes you from your circumstances to your king. I don't know about you today, but maybe you have had a tough day in your circumstances. Maybe you've had a hard day in your situation, and maybe it's real, and it's hard, and it's difficult, and it's painful, and yet this psalm is a psalm of reorientation where it's, let's not get stuck here. but let's look upward to our good and sovereign heavenly king. So, let's look at the psalm together. I want to give you three lessons as we travel through the hardships of life. The more that we live for Christ, the more urgent we live for Christ, the more that we share the gospel, the more that you want to live a zealously holy life, you're going to face contempt. You're going to face it. Not only from those outside the church, but perhaps even sometimes painfully so from those that are inside as well, and that can be hard. So, three lessons. What do we need to know as we travel through the hardships of life? Number one, you see it in your notes? Look up to your God. I mean, as simple as that is, look up to your God. Look at verse one. To you, I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens. Doesn't that kind of put us in our right position? I look up to God. It's language, like Isaiah chapter six. In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, and the train of his robe filling the temple. I saw, and there was one sitting lofty and exalted in heaven's temple, and that's the Lord, the Lord of hosts. That's what the psalmist is doing. To you, I lift up my eyes. It teaches, number one, that God is exalted. God is exalted. It is emphasis because it's first, I will lift up my eyes. I know it's simple, but let's just remember it together. When we look to God, it requires that we always look up to him. I mean, we never look down to God. We ought not to just look at God. We look up to God. We look up to God, like in Mark 5, verse 33, the woman who had the hemorrhage for all those years, she fell down before Jesus at his feet and told him the whole truth of her difficulty. In Mark 7, 25, the woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit, she fell at Jesus's feet, begging for his intervention. In Luke 5, verse 8, after the miraculous catch of fish, Peter fell at Jesus's feet, and he said, depart from me, Lord, I am a sinful man. It's a good place to be, at the feet of Jesus, looking up to him. looking up. Christian, sometimes our difficulties is that we're looking around us at the things of this world rather than looking upward at the one who is seated and enthroned over the world. Verse 1, To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens. What a great phrase. God is enthroned in the heavens. Isn't that so good that we remember our own position as we look to our great God who is seated not just in the heavens, I think it's better from the Hebrew, He is seated above all of the heavens. all the galaxies, all the atmosphere, sun, moon, stars. He is Lord over it all. He is the unmoved God. The elections that happened today, some of us bemoan what happened in New York City and the difficulties there. God is enthroned over all of that. God is unmoved. He is unhurried. God is unfrustrated. God is not worried. God is not stressed out. And yet here we are in verse one, as the posture of a servant, we don't command God. We look up to God. We look up to God. He is enthroned. He is exclusive. He is above the heavens. So Christian, In a little bit, we'll get to pray together and we can worship our God for He is seated in the heavens, above the heavens. Lord over all, we can lift up our eyes to Him. So what do we do? What do we do in difficulty? Do what the psalmist did. Number one, you look up to your God. That's where it all begins. Not looking around at your circumstance, that'll lead to anxiety. Look up to God, that will lead to confidence. Number two, what do we do? Linger long. Linger long. Maybe that's a little repetitive, a little redundant, and that's okay. Linger long before God. Verse two is an amazing verse. There are so many word plays, rhyme, repeated words, illustrations, metaphors. It's a great verse. Look at verse two. Behold, listen up, verse two. Like the eyes of a servant look to the hand of the master and like the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress. So, in a similar way, our eyes look to the Lord, our God. We need to linger in our hopeful trust and reliance upon God. Don't let the outward circumstances of life control your forward and upward view of God. You want to look and linger and tarry long in trust in your God. Maybe you think of it like this. We want to approach the throne of grace. We want to approach the throne of grace and we want to stay there. We want to linger there. We want to pour out our heart to God. We want to plead with God, hold onto God. Isaiah uses the language, take hold of God in prayer. Call upon the name of God. pray earnestly. Now look at the images in verse two. Two of them. A servant obeying the master and a maid obeying her mistress. But don't miss carefully the language. They look to the hand. They look to the hand. Why looking to the hand? The slightest little The little pointer, the little direction, the little cue tells that servant exactly what to do. Meaning the servant is attentive. The servant is obedient. The servant is greatly interested in the master. The servant is submissive to the master. The servant is reliable. And the servant is dependent. The illustration is mentioned twice, a servant and a maid servant, to signify complete and absolute dependence upon God. Lord, whatever you want, whatever you want, whatever you command of me, my master, I'll do it. I'll be there. I want to be attentive to you. It's the language of relying upon God. End of verse two, our eyes look to the Lord our God, but then I stopped reading before this last phrase. One of the most important words in all of verse two is this little preposition, until. I'm gonna, I'm going to look to my God until. It means you don't give up. It means you linger. It means you pray. It means you hold on to God. It means you're committed to your master. You are attentive to your master. You linger, you linger, you linger until he is gracious. I love the persistence of that language, the waiting, the desperation, the expectancy, the faith, the single-mindedness. I'm a servant to my Lord, and I am gonna linger. I'm gonna be attentive. I'm gonna cry out and cry out and cry out and cry out until He shows grace and He gives mercy. I came across the illustration of a man named George Herbert. George Herbert was a poet and a hymn writer. And it was said of George Herbert that often in his conversations, when talking about Jesus, he would often add a little phrase. He would talk about Jesus, my master. my master, and the people who knew him well knew that he meant by that, I am at the command of Christ. I am going to obey the will of Christ. I am here to live for the pleasure of Christ. Whatever he wants, I want to be all his. Whenever he commands, I want to be ready to go. But times are hard. We're going to get there here in a minute. Times are really hard for the psalmists. And I'm looking to God and I'm attentive to God. And whatever the Lord says, I want to do it. I want to be sensitive to it. I want to be submissive to my God. But I want to cry out to my God and I want to look to my God until. And maybe that's a key word for you tonight. Maybe the difficulty, maybe the hardship, maybe the illness, maybe the fatigue, maybe the conflict, maybe the difficulty in whatever form that may take. And you need to be reminded from the word, look to the Lord until. He is gracious. Keep calling out. Keep lingering. Keep holding on to God. Keep calling on his name. Keep pleading with God. Keep pouring out your heart to God. Linger long as a servant before your master. Is there anything in your life that maybe you can do that tonight? Maybe tomorrow morning as you come before the Lord in prayer Say, Lord, I need your help. I need your grace. I need wisdom. I don't know what to do here. I don't know how to respond here. I don't know what step to take here. I'm fearful here. I'm tempted to worry here. Whatever it might be for you, you linger long before your God until he's gracious to you. So what do you do in times of hardship? Number one, look up to God. Number two, linger long before your God. Oh, this is great. Number three, look at what the psalmist does. In your notes, in your outline, number three, you lay it all out to God. Just lay it all out. Lay it all out to God. Because here the psalmist is going to plead for more grace and more grace and more grace. And then he's going to honestly come like a child to his father and say, this is really tough. I don't know how much more I can handle this. This is really hard. And he just kind of lays it all out to God. He lays it all out. He's very honest with God. Now, in your notes, you have a paragraph on grace. The Hebrew word, we all love this word, it's the word Hannah. That's the meaning. The word Hannah, the meaning of that is grace. Look at grace from your outline. The grace of God is the kind benevolence of God. God's grace is the unearned and undeserved and unmerited favor. It is the favor, the kind, and perfect kindness of God given to the ill deserving. Amazingly, the grace of God biblically goes beyond this. It even includes the kindness and benevolence of God given toward those who deserve the exact opposite, which is His wrath. Grace pardons, grace forgives, grace reconciles, grace saves, grace empowers. And grace equips the child of God to serve God in a way that is well pleased or pleasing to God. The divine grace not only includes pardon from sin, but it brings power to live for his glory. We need to come to God and we just lay it out before God. Look at the end of verse two, until he is gracious. Look at verse three, here's the repetition. Be gracious to us, O Lord. Be gracious. Don't miss the threefold prayer. Be gracious, be gracious, be gracious. Be gracious. God, I need you to help me. God, I need you to pity me. I need you to come to my aid. God, I need you to give me strength. God, I need you to rescue me. God, I need power. Be gracious, be gracious. Isn't it good to know Psalm 84 11 says that God gives grace. Isn't it good to know that Psalm 103 verse eight says the Lord is gracious and compassionate. Isn't it good to know that Psalm 30 verse 11 tells you that God will turn all of your mourning into dancing. all of the difficulties, he'll turn that into joy. That Jesus came into flesh full of grace and truth, John 1, 14. That we are saved by grace, Ephesians 2, verse 8. Not by works, not by anything that we could ever do, but we are saved by grace. That's the only hope for people like us. That's the only hope for sinners. Be gracious to me, oh God. Be gracious, help me. Not just in a momentary situation, but Lord, I need your divine grace, not only temporally, but I need it eternally and spiritually as well. May the grace of God seize you and grab you and cause you to marvel afresh. that God would shower kindness upon people like me and you. Boys and girls, the only hope we have is the grace of God. The only hope that we have is the undeserved kindness of God. But look at what happens. Why is he crying out for grace? What is causing the psalmist to do this? Look at verse three. Be gracious to us, O Lord, be gracious. Why? Because we're greatly filled with contempt. Okay, in the Hebrew, it's a little bit more blunt than that. God, I've had it up to here. I've had enough. It's what he's saying. And he says it three times. I've had enough. Verse four, my soul is greatly filled. I've had enough. Middle of verse four, with the scoffing of those who are at ease and with the contempt of the proud. Why the repeated word contempt? Why that word? I mean, other things hurt. Other things can bruise, I suppose. Gossip is no fun. Slander is hurtful. But contempt? I mean, that's like one commentator said, that's cold steel. That goes deeper into the spirit than any other form of rejection. Just say an arrogant, proud, angry contempt. with the intent to ridicule and demean you publicly so that others join that bandwagon. Our Savior dealt with that. Our Savior endured that, didn't he? Jesus received scoffing and mocking and contempt from the Pharisees. Israel mocked and despised and treated with contempt the prophets of God that daily rose early and they came and they gave God's message to Israel. God gives grace to the afflicted, but God scoffs at the scoffers. Proverbs 3, 34. But that's part of Christian living, isn't it? I mean, it's part of living for God, that there will be contempt. Ishmael mocked Isaac. Pagan nations mocked Israel. Sandballot, remember that, Nehemiah 4? Sandballot mocked Nehemiah repeatedly. False prophets mocked Paul in 2 Corinthians 10. Self-righteous Jews mocked Jesus when he hung on the cross. The world mocks Christians. The psalmist is on us. He's laying it out. Lord, I am filled full of this. Lord, I've had it up to here with these guys. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. They're treating me with contempt. Verse four, they're scoffing with me. They are proud. Ironically, if you look at the last word in your Bible, in the psalm, it's the word proud. The Hebrew word for proud is the one who is inflated in self-elevation. Well, that's kind of ironic because in verse 1, our eyes are looking up to God who is enthroned above the heavens. And yet here are the proud ones who are so elevated, elevated in their pride. Maybe you know the story of John Hus, 1415. John Hus was on trial and he would not recant his faith before the authorities. He believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and the authorities were so angry with John Hus that they stripped him of all of his garments. They degraded him. They mocked him. They scorned him. They treated him with cold-blooded contempt. And then they put a paper crown on his head and they wrote on it, a ringleader of heretics. Then they led him to burn him, burn him to kill him. But he went to the stake singing. singing Psalms. He went to the stake praising his King and praising his Lord and praising his Savior. What do we do? How do we learn from this Psalm when we are going through the hardships of our pilgrim journey and our pilgrimage in this world? I think one lesson from Nehemiah, remember Sanballat tried to mock him and Tobiah and all the others. Nehemiah, he kept at his work. He kept going, kept working, kept staying to the task. He did what he knew he had to do. And what an example we have of our Savior, who was crucified. He was mocked. He was treated with contempt. He was scoffed at by those at ease. He was on the receiving end of contempt by those that were proud and arrogant. And what did Jesus do? He continued doing the work of the Lord, and he hung on the cross. And he stayed there. What an example. What an example for us. We have a champion. We have a champion. We have a forerunner who has endured contempt, mocking, scoffing, just like we do. So what do we do? You look at this psalm, it's short, it's brief. You look at this passionate heart cry. What do we do? Well, we have to look up to our God. We certainly need to linger long before God. We lay it out unto our God, but maybe some practical takeaways in your notes. Number one, we rehearse. We reaffirm the steady sovereignty of God. Number two, we humbly and cheerfully embrace the honor of of being a servant of the Lord. I'm just a servant. I'm a slave. Paul loves that word. I'm a slave of the Lord. I'm a slave. Third, we cry out for God's grace in your time of need. Dads and moms, employees, employers, Missionaries, pastors, elders, younger, older. Lord, I need help. I need grace. Help me today. That's a good prayer. Fourth, we unburden. We unburden our hearts by casting our hardships from the contemptuous scoffers. We cast all of our burdens onto our God. And why do we do that? Remember 1 Peter 5 verse 7, because he cares for you. He cares for you. So Christian, you're traveling through this world. You've got difficulties ahead. You have scoffing that comes your way. You have ridicule. People may treat you with contempt in all different sorts of ways that it may come your way. Here's a Psalm. that reminds you, look up to God, look up to God, cry out to God, cry out to God, and lay it all out. Tell Him, tell Him all the details. Unburden your heart to God because He cares for you. It's a great guide through difficulties of life. We need that, don't we? Let's pray.