Psalms of Ascents - Program 1
Introduction
One of my favourite hymns is “To be a pilgrim” taken from the text of John Bunyan’s wonderful story of Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan was imprisoned for 12 years in the middle of the 17th Century in Bedford in England because of his firm faith in Jesus. The Pilgrim’s Progress, he wrote while in gaol, tells of the journey of a man from the City of Destruction, (this world) to the Celestial City (God’s heavenly kingdom). It tells of all the trials and dangers the pilgrim met on the way to his goal.
The English word “pilgrim” comes from the Latin word “peregrinus” meaning “stranger”, for a pilgrim is going on a journey through a world full of enemies and strangers and his goal is the safety of God’s presence.
On the first (and only) time I visited Israel, some years ago now, our plane landed at Tel Aviv airport in the dusk. After the customs routines, we boarded a coach to take us up to Jerusalem to our hotel. You do go up to Jerusalem from the coastal plain. I knew this, but I was made very aware of the symbolism of going up to Jerusalem as our coach overtook, on climbing a hill, a minibus full of male (Hasidic?) Jews. They were standing in the bus, prayer books in hands, black hats firmly on their heads, side locks dangling at their temples, swaying back and forward as they recited their prayers. They were going up to Jerusalem, and for them it was a significant act of devotion simply to go up on pilgrimage to where, in the long years of their history, their magnificent Temple had stood over their most holy spot, the very dwelling place of God. The Temple is no more, destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, but the place where some of its great stones still remain, is now attended almost constantly by Jews in prayer.
Those Jews in the minibus, devoutly praying as they went up to what is now left of the Temple, reminded me of a set of fifteen very special Psalms in the Bible, numbered 120 to 134, called the Songs of Ascents or “goings up” or “stairs” as one old translation of the Bible has it.
This group of Psalms was probably used by parties of pilgrims going up to Jerusalem for the three special festivals of the Jews: Passover, when they remembered their escape from Egypt, and the Feasts of Weeks and Tabernacles when they remembered God’s goodness to them in guiding them through the Sinai desert to the Promised Land.
The Songs of Ascents begin in Psalm 120 with distress, and end in Psalm 134 with joy. They begin surrounded by enemies and end at home in Jerusalem, where they are surrounded by the servants of the Lord presenting their sacrifices in the Temple, the goal of their pilgrimage.
The first Christians, who were all Jews, had to face the fact that Jesus had prophesied the destruction of the Temple and had brought in a new relationship between God and the whole of mankind, not just the Jews. This new relationship didn’t depend on the existence of a physical Temple in Jerusalem. In fact, Jesus told his followers that they were the Temple of God from now on - just think of it - God can live in you and me! Writing to the Christians in Corinth, Paul could say in 1 Corinthians 6 verse 19: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?”
Where can God be found today? We don’t have to go on pilgrimage to Rome or Canterbury or Jerusalem to find him. Jesus once said to his disciples, “Don’t look here and there for the dwelling place of God, for his Kingdom, for he lives among you and within you.” Wherever there is a heart that is sorry for its sins against God and man, and sincerely cries out for God’s forgiveness, and puts all its trust in Christ, there God lives.
Jesus once told a story about two men who went into the Temple in Jerusalem to pray, one was a religious man, the other wasn’t. The religious man stood praying and telling God how good he was, the non-religious man just asked God sincerely to forgive him of his sins. It was the non-religious man who found that God had come to live in his heart and not the other man, said Jesus.
So, it isn’t a physical Temple we need to visit, but God himself in humility and trust. And yet, there is as sense in which we can join the pilgrims going up to Jerusalem singing the Songs of Ascents. We shall be looking at some of these fifteen pilgrim songs and we shall find out they have a lot to tell us about how to make our pilgrimage as we go through life. They have many wise and encouraging things to say to us. Let me leave some of them with you:
From Psalm 120: “I call on the Lord in my distress, and He answers me.”
From Psalm 122: “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’”
From Psalm 128: “Blessed are those who fear the Lord, who walk in his ways.”
From Psalm 133: “How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity.”
And from the last Song of Ascents, Psalm 134: “Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord who minister by night in the house of the Lord.”
For all of us life is a journey. We have begun it and one day we will finish it. For the unbeliever, and for those who say there is no God, their journey is going nowhere, it has no ultimate goal. It is just going to end in emptiness and eternal judgement; it is a downward journey. But for those who have placed their faith in Jesus for salvation, life is a pilgrimage; it is an ascending journey that has both a purpose and a goal. It has a wonderful end when we reach the eternal Temple which is God himself, the one we have loved and served on our pilgrimage down here.
Psalm 120
In our study of the fifteen Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134, we can imagine a band of men, women and children, some playing on stringed instruments, walking steadily towards the Jerusalem hills and the holy city where they are going to worship the Lord God.
Let us read the first two of these Psalms of Ascent: First, Psalm 120:
“I call on the Lord in my distress, and he answers me. Save me, O Lord, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues. What will he do to you and more besides O deceitful tongue? He will punish you with a warrior’s sharp arrows, with burning coals of the broom tree. Woe to me that I dwell in Meshech, that I live among the tents of Kedar! Too long have I live among those who hate peace.
I am a man of peace, but when I speak, they are for war.”
The Psalm begins with a cry of distress to God because of enemies which surround the pilgrims: people who tell lies and hate peace and are always looking for trouble-they do exist in our world today don’t they? You can be certain that the man or woman who wants to follow God and the ways of peace and justice will have many enemies. It takes great courage to be a man or woman of peace. In many parts of the world today there is conflict and caught between the two sides of those who hate each other and do violence to each other are men and women of peace and reconciliation. As we journey on God’s highway we will be disliked by some for not going the way of the world. For not worshipping money and things we will be despised by some people. For insisting on a personal relationship with Jesus as sour only hope of getting right with God, we will be misunderstood even by some so-called religious people.
Christians are suffering for their faith all over the world today. If a Christian has done wrong he or she must suffer for it, but many are in prison, attacked or even killed simply because the belong to Jesus. The first Christians were called Followers of the Way. They had started on a journey, a pilgrimage and Jesus was the way they were travelling on, and as Jesus had many opponents, so they had, too. The Christian life is not a matter of keeping rules and regulations and rituals outwardly but first and foremost being at one with Christ. Jesus told his disciples to do good to their enemies and to pray for them: He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God” (Matthew chapter 5 verse 9). To be truly a person of peace we have to have Jesus, the Prince of Peace, living in our hearts. The wonderful thing about the Christian good news is that it gives us this peace in ourselves to love others by God actually coming to live in within us. John the apostle writes: “No one has ever seen God: but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” And “”If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God” (1 John chapter 4 verses 12 and 15).
Jesus died on a Cross to bring peace between God and mankind; because of his death on our behalf people like you and me can be at peace with God and with our fellow men and women. Can we say in the words of this first Song of Ascents “I am for peace” and can we say, “I am for Jesus, the Prince of peace”? No matter what race of people you belong to, no matter what language you speak or culture you were brought up in, the One who keeps the pilgrims going to Jerusalem can be your helper and guardian, too. May I invite you to join in this pilgrimage as the way to God and letting Him into your life?