Ascent #1 - Ascend for Help
Message Description
Kick off 2025 with "Ascent," a new series at Orchard Hill exploring Psalms 120–134. Together, we’ll reflect on the journey of rising—whether in personal growth, spiritual depth, or relational connection—embracing challenges, celebrating triumphs, and discovering deeper lessons along the way.
Message Transcript
Well, good morning. Happy New Year! It's great to be together. Before we jump in, I just want to say thank you to all of you who participated in Christmas Eve in one of a variety of ways — either serving, inviting friends, hosting parties at your home, inviting people to the service, then to your home, praying, just investing as a church between our campuses, the services that week, we had more people than we've ever had for Christmas Eve week here. And I've already heard great stories about how God has worked in people’s lives. So I just want to say thank you for just making such a great investment in our broader community.
And also, if you're here today and Christmas Eve was one of your first experiences at Orchard Hill, I want to say a special welcome and just tell you that we pray that you will find spiritual encouragement and sense God drawing you to himself through what happens here today and in the weeks ahead. Let's pray together.
God, as we're gathered today and we come into this new year from a lot of different places and experiences, I ask that you would speak. And as we pray often here, I ask that my words would reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
So how many of you have New Year's goals? All right. How many of you do not have a New Year's goal? All right. That looks to me like it's about half and half, and if you didn't raise your hand, you're non committal. I get it. Studies show that by about three weeks into the new year, most people have abandoned their goals. So if you have goals and you go past three weeks, you are way above average, because most people will say, I'm going to lose some weight. I'm going to get fit. I'm going to do better with my finances. I'm going to repair a broken relationship. And by about January 20th, it's over.
Now, some of us maybe had already broken kind of our commitment. I mean, dry January may not have made it through the first weekend for some. And so there's this sense in which you make these goals, and I've seen a trend sometimes in churches this time of year where what they'll do is they'll do a series to start the new year that's all about some of these same kind of goals: we're gonna get fit with a Bible verse, we're going to repair broken relationships with a Bible verse, we're going to get our finances in order with a Bible verse. And it's not that the Bible doesn't speak to relationships or fitness or finances. It does. But what happens sometimes is it becomes a spiritual veneer of self improvement. And it's basically the same kinds of things that a lot of us want to improve our lives with. And then we just throw God into it. And then when succeed, we feel even worse. Like, I had divine help and I couldn't even do it.
And here's what I believe, and that is there's generally two kinds of churches: churches that are always telling you what you need to do better and basically giving you law and instruction and telling you to perform, and then churches that celebrate and savor the goodness and the work of God on our behalf. And we always want to be the second kind. So this series, the new series Ascent, is not Try Harder. This is a series from the Psalms. Now, as I was trying to decide what to teach to start the new year, I had obviously several options. And as I thought about it, I wanted to do something from the Old Testament. The Psalms are always compelling, but there are 150 of them, and I realized if I did a psalm a week, that would take three years. And I didn't think we had the appetite for that.
So the Psalms of Ascents is 15 Psalms from 120 to 134 that all have this little title, “Psalm of Ascent”, right at the top. And there's some debate about what that means. In fact, Walt Kaiser says the only thing that can be agreed upon in the literature of people who write about it is that this means a Psalm of going up. That's what ascent means. And the idea that some people have is that the people who would go into the temple would stop, and there were 15 steps going up to the temple. And so the ascent was going up, and they would stop on one of each of the 15 steps, and kind of do these as like a call or preparation for worship. Others look at this, and I would probably be in this camp and say there were three festivals a year in which pilgrims from all over Israel and the region would come to Jerusalem. Now, Jerusalem geographically is up, it's high, surrounded by mountains. But anybody who goes to Jerusalem from anywhere else would go up. And so the pilgrims would sing or recite these Psalms as part of their journey.
And what would typically happen is in the Old Testament, there are about seven different feasts or some more, depending on how you look at it. But in Leviticus 23:7, for sure, there are three that required the people to go to Jerusalem. There's the Feast of Unleavened Bread, or Passover, which would take place kind of around our Easter. There was Pentecost or weeks, takes place around our Memorial Day. And then there's the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles, which would take place around September, October. And so three times a year, these people would make these journeys for spiritual purposes to come to Jerusalem. And these Psalms of Ascent seem to be tied to that. And the journey that would take place in the fall, our fall, was the beginning of their spiritual year. So they would do this as part of their spiritual journey every year and have reminders of who God is. And if I were to say, what these Psalms are really about, is their affirmations, their assurances, their celebrations, their reminders. They're requests that are made to God and from God to us Not requests, but assurances from God that help us orient ourselves to spiritual life.
And today we're going to look at Psalm 120 and 121. And these two Psalms talk about, in Psalm 120, a cry for divine assurance or divine help. And in Psalm 121, the assurance of divine help. But here's what I would guess, just when I talk about a cry for divine help, and we think about prayer, that there are a lot of experiences when it comes to prayer. Some of us have prayed and we've seen God answer miraculously. And so we have a lot of confidence when it comes to prayer. But even those who've had that experience a lot of times will have the experience of praying for something, asking God for something, pleading with God for something, and not seeing it happen. And so what we do is we stop asking. And sometimes we stop trusting, because we get to a point where we say, I don't know if God cares or if God will act or how God will interact with what I'm asking. And some of us, probably, our lives feel like they're going so well that we just don't want to ask anything because we don't want to upset the apple cart at all. And so the idea of crying for help seems distant. But I want you to see this cry in Psalm 120 for divine help. Here's how it begins. Psalm 120, verse 1, he says:
I call on the Lord in my distress, and he answers me.
Now, most of us understand this idea of distress. You may not be in distress right now, but there are times when you understand distress, and it is an impulse to call on the Lord. You've heard it said, there are no atheists in foxholes. Like, when you're desperate, you say, God, I need help. When an airplane is in trouble, the pilot will often come across the announcing system and say, if you believe in a god, please commence prayer, because this is a time to pray. There's something to be concerned about here. And so we know what it is to pray in our distress. And even if we're not in distress, there are needs, there are things that we feel, and maybe it's acute, maybe it's a health thing where somebody you love has been diagnosed with something, maybe you have, maybe there's a broken relationship. Perhaps you're in a place where you're saying, saying there's an addiction in a family member, somebody I love, and they don't seem to be able to get free. And so you cry out to God.
But I want you to notice what their distress was here, because chances are, this isn't the thing that we tend to think about in terms of distress. Verse 2:
Save me, Lord, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues.
So here the Psalmist says, I cry out to God in my distress. Save me from lying lips and deceitful tongues. Probably what was happening is as the people would begin their ascent, the other people in the area would say things about them. Oh, you're one of those spiritual people who's going up to Jerusalem to do your worship. You know, I did a business deal with you last year. I don't think you're much of a spiritual person. Can't you almost hear this kind of thing? And sometimes the hardest things for us to navigate are things people say about us. Sometimes it's enemies, like it was here. People who are, who are against us, who seem to spread malicious lies about us. But sometimes it's people who are close to us. In Moses' case, when he was leading the Exodus, the people who turned against him were two of his closest associates, Miriam and Aaron. And so it isn't always just people who are outside of our circle. Sometimes it's people who are in our close circle. And then there's a spiritual dimension to this as well. Because one of the ways that Satan attacks is through accusation. This is Revelation 12, verse 10:
Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser...
Okay, the role accusing, saying you are not:
...the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.
So part of the spiritual journey is navigating people who are outside our circle, who will speak against us, people inside our circle, and even a spiritual dimension of accusation, saying, how dare you think you can worship God, serve God after what you thought, after what you’ve, if anybody ever saw that you would not show your face. Do you hear the voice?
And in a sense it's true, because the Christian message isn't improve yourself so that you're acceptable to God. It's Jesus has done for you what you can't do. Jesus is the reason you can stand before God. So the accusation is false, not because it's false about me, but because my standing is in Jesus, not based on me. And that's radically different. But notice how it still impacts us.
And then what you see in Psalm 120 is this, is this journey of, of walking through this. In verse three, he talks about how God will respond:
What will he do to you, and what more besides, you deceitful tongues?
In other words, God is not going to just simply let things go indefinitely. Verse 4:
He will punish you with a warrior's sharp arrows, with burning coals of the broom bush.
He uses a couple of images here to say, God will not just simply leave this alone. Verse 5:
Woe to me that I dwell in Meshech, that I live among the tents of Kedar!
Now, Meshech and Kedar were two locations, one to the north, one to the south of Jerusalem, where they were far from where the covenant people, the people of God, seem to live. And so what he's talking about here is alienation. Woe to me if I live apart from, or in alienation from the things of God. And then he says this, verse 6 & 7:
Too long have I lived among the people who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.
Again, if you've lived in conflict, you know a little bit of what this is like. If you have had to live with it in your home, or in a business, or a close connection, and you just simply want people to get along, to thrive together, and somebody's always coming in and speaking against you, you know how disheartening this can be. And this is where these people were living. In fact, if you have been in a place where, where you've been kind of having people saying about you things, you know, the distress of it. Now, again, his prayer here is probably bigger, the distress in general, but it seems specific to this. And I want you to notice what verse 1 says. He says, he cries to the Lord, I cry to The Lord in my distress. And then what does it say? And he answered, God answers prayer.
Now, God doesn't always answer prayer the way we want him to. Sometimes he answers yes, sometimes he answers no. And sometimes his answer is, wait. But God always answers prayer. And when we get into our headspace of saying, the only way God can answer my prayer is the way that I want him to answer my prayer, then it isn't God that we're worshiping or praying to. We're asking God simply to serve our ends or what it is that we need or want. And what we need to do is to see that God does answer.
Maybe a way to think about this is if you have kids or had kids who were little at one point and they came to you and said, hey, would you help me with my homework? Now, sometimes that's a legitimate request for help with homework. Sometimes it's a desire to say, I don't want to work that hard. Would you help me make this easier right now? And so it's not really, would you help me? Because I can't. It's help me because I don't want to. And if you're a good parent, what happens is you see through it. And sometimes your answer is, no, you go do it. It's your homework. It's not mine. I already went to high school. Or, wait a minute, why don't you go work on it for a while and then I'll come help you with what you can't get. And sometimes your answer might be, yes, I'll jump right in. But as a parent, you are trying to not just simply give your child what they ask for, but give them what they ultimately need. What God does with you and with me is he gives us what we need, not just what we ask for. But sometimes that's why we don't want to keep asking, because we say, well, I asked God to help me with my homework and he didn't help me, so now I don't really want to ask anymore. But notice here the Psalmist saying, I cried to God in my distress. And he answered. Maybe we just need to be reminded that God does want us to ask and to bring our requests.
But I want you to also see the assurance of divine help. This is Psalm 121, and it begins this way. He says:
I lift my eyes to the mountains — where does my help come from?
Now, again, the topography of Jerusalem is, it's set high, and there's mountains around Jerusalem which could have been filled with enemies who could attack Jerusalem. So when he says, I look to the mountains, where does my help come from. He could be saying, this is a treacherous journey, a treacherous decision. Where are we going to find help? And he's saying, where does it come from? Or it could be, I'm looking to the mountains, I'm looking at them and even beyond and saying, my help comes from the Lord. But notice what he's talking about here is the key to this.
He says I lift up my eyes. Now, to lift up your eyes is a Hebrew phrase that is obviously talking about your gaze. And he's saying, I look to the hills and I have to look and see not just my circumstances, but my help that's beyond. You see, when you and I look at our circumstances, we will tend to end up being overwhelmed, because we'll look around and we'll say, there are enemies, there are difficulties. If you read the news and look at what's going on in our world, sometimes you'll say, I can't believe what I just saw. What kind of world do we live in? And you'll be overwhelmed. And sometimes it isn't just global events, but it's personal events where you'll look around and you'll say, I'm seeing this and I don't see a way out of it, I don't see a way forward. And we'll be overwhelmed. And then the impulse of the self help movement is to say, that's okay, you have everything you need within you, so look within.
But I don't know about you, but looking within sometimes leaves me pretty defeated, because three weeks wasn't a very long time to keep my goals. And here the idea is look up, lift your eyes and say, where does my help come from? And what I want to do is just show you in Psalm 121 that there's two words that are used to describe God that help us move to having assurance of his help or assurance in his character. And I'm going to give you the Hebrew words, and I don't love to always give you Greek or Hebrew words, because a lot of times our English words are sufficient, but sometimes it's helpful just to see the nuance and the connections of some of these words.
And so in verses 1 & 2 is the word “help”, and it's this Hebrew word, ezer, ezar, depending on how you want to transliterate it, generally in English, E, Z, E, R. And it's a word that is used for one who does what is necessary to help another. What's significant about this word is it’s the same word that used in Genesis when God is said to make a helper for man. He's going to make the woman the helper, the ezer for man, which is the woman. Now, without going into all of the detail of woman, man, helper, and this, that'll be a podcast for another day, maybe I'll assign it to one of our pastoral staff, but without going into all of that, the point of this is God takes this title for himself.
Here he says, he says, the Psalmist says, I lift up my eyes to the mountains. Where does my ezer come from? Where does my help come from? And other places. God is said to be our helper, our ezer, the one who does what's necessary for us to achieve or get the help that we need. My help, my ezer, comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. So he says, I have help, but it's not just help from somebody who can't help me. It's the very God who makes heaven and earth. I mean, this is striking to use this kind of language.
And then he says this. In the next few verses, he uses the word, the Hebrew word shamar, again transliterated S H A M A R. And it's a word that means to watch or to keep. And so some translations have “keep”, some have “”watch. The NIV here goes back and forth, and it's a word that means to be a guard, like a military guard, set at the entrance of something that is to be protected, to be cherished. So again, get the picture here. God, you're my help. You're the one who does what's necessary to give me what I need. And you're my guard, my keeper. Here's how he says it:
He will not let your foot slip — he who watches [shamar] over you, will not slumber; indeed, the one who watches over Israel [shamar] will neither slumber nor sleep.
Now, Jerusalem was, was built on stone, slate stone. So when it rained, it was very slippery, very wet. So this is an image. He's saying, he won't let your foot slip. And then he says, he who watches over you won't slumber or sleep. This was probably a reference back to the story of Elijah. If you remember, Elijah was calling down fire, and the prophets of, of Baal didn't respond. And he's like, is your god asleep? It was trash talk at that point, by the way. And here the Psalmist says, our shamar, our guard, never slumbers, never sleeps. I mean, God doesn't sleep so you can. God doesn't rest so you can. If you're up all night, you're taking worries to yourself that you don't need to take to yourself that you don’t need to take to yourself, because God is your keeper if you are in relationship with him:
The Lord watches over you — verse 5, [shamar] the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.
Now, when you're hiking in an arid climate, the sun in the daytime is really treacherous. The moon probably not so much. This is probably a way of saying your real dangers and your imagined dangers, the Lord is watching over them all. And then verse 7:
The Lord will keep you [shamar again] from all harm — he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and your going, both now and forevermore.
Derek Kidner in his excellent little commentary on this, says:
“I don't know what is more encouraging, that God is watching over us now, or without end forever. But they're both encouraging. The Lord is your keeper.”
Now, I would guess hearing that, that there's a lot of reaction. If you've been around church, around faith, and you kind of believe that because the Bible says it, and yet it's still sometimes hard to believe because it seems so “other”. Some of us maybe are here and we're saying, I'm not sure; it doesn't seem like God's been my keeper, my watcher, and all the things I've walked through in this world, I wish it were true. And the idea is when you come in faith, this is who God says he will be for you. This is what the people of Israel were affirming in their spiritual journey. The Lord is my watcher, my keeper. The Lord is my helper.
Now I do need to say something about this little phrase in verse 7 where it says this:
The Lord will keep you from all harm...
No matter who you are, if you've ever prayed and said God, would you work? You've had moments where you say, doesn't seem like God's keeping me from harm. I mean, bad things happen. So how does God keep me from harm? This seems like a promise without any condition. So if I have harm, then God can't be my keeper. Therefore I don't trust God. I can't pray, I can't think about it. Well, there's a couple ways that this has been answered. One is the word “harm” in Hebrew is the word ra, R-A, and it can be translated evil, harm, bad. It's a very common word used for anything negative, basically. So this could be taken in the very narrow sense of saying, this is about evil, or it could be taken to say anything bad, and it could be anywhere in between. And usually the way that you translate a word like this is by context. Meaning, this word has such a range of meaning that it could be, he won't let anything of ultimate evil come against you. I would probably take it that way, as I look at and understand how that word can be translated.
But the other way to take this is to say that the idea that nothing ultimately will harm you is that if there is something that is displeasing to us, that happens, it is not ultimately for our harm. And I realize to say what I'm about to say, if you're walking through something that's incredibly distressing, will feel insensitive. I don't mean it to be insensitive, but if you as a parent, say to your child, when they want you to do their homework, help them with their homework, no, you do your homework, it is precisely because you love them that you are saying no, not because you don't love them. And sometimes the kid can't see it. They're just like, you don't love me. That's why you're leaving me hanging. And like I said, it feels insensitive. I get it, to say, whatever harm you feel like you're walking through, God may be saying, there is something more that I am working that is more important here than whatever you think is at stake in this moment. And ultimately, what we're talking about when we talk about the assurance of divine help is coming to a place where we say, okay, God, I trust that you really are who you say you are, even if circumstances are not going to my liking, and that's why I can keep crying out to you in my distress.
There's an image that's been used to think about this, talk about this, from some different writers over some different time. One of them was a man named Henry Nouwen, who wrote about a trapeze as being an analogy for faith. And he had become just persuaded by the idea of surrender, that he needed to understand the trapeze idea of letting go of a bar and then being caught by somebody else midair and saying the act of faith is like letting go of a bar and saying, I trust God. I'm letting go of what feels secure for something that's ultimately more secure.
John Ortberg picked up this idea and wrote about it in one of his books. Here's what he said:
The word trapeze, the little bar between the ropes that a trapeze artist has to let go of, comes from the ancient Greek word trapezia, which means table. About the only time it's used in the New Testament is when the writer claims that Jesus gathers his friends around the table, the trapezia that we now call the communion table, and teaches them that he will have to let go of his life for them, and that the only way to hang on to one's life is to let go. He then climbs to the cross to let go and hangs above the earth for three hours with his hands stretched out, not moving a muscle. ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,’ he breathed when he did that. He was saving us, and he was teaching us about trust.
Here's the leap.
God comes to you and says, ‘Let go. Will you let go?’”
And there's another Pastor John Tyson's his name, who said that he was teaching this one time and read this whole thing and felt really good about it because people were like, yeah, I gotta let go. And then in his book he says that some people from his church who were into actually doing trapeze flying routines invited him to come and he said he felt like he had to go, so he went. Here's what he says about it. He said the people came and said, you don't actually understand the analogy until you do it. So here's what he said:
‘We've actually been going to trapeze school, and we'd like to take you for a lesson so you can see what we mean firsthand.’ ‘Sounds great,’ I said, and my wife and I agreed to go. Neither of us gave it any real thought. When the night finally arrived, my wife and I headed to an obscure part of Brooklyn, and only there did we come to terms with what we had agreed to do. We'd be climbing to the top of a circus tent and onto a tiny platform, then swinging out while holding onto a small bar, and finally entrusting our entire beings into the hands of who knows what. I walked into the tent trying to project an air of confidence. But as soon as I saw the height of the platform, a knot started to form in my stomach. After seeing the delight on my friends' faces, I knew I couldn't back out. I dutifully complied with all of the safety instructions and got ready for my turn. While waiting in line, my friends explained to me the missing part of the metaphor. Most people think of the catcher, the trapeze bar and the person in the swing, they said, but they miss the crucial thing that gives you the confidence to let go midair. I was now keenly interested in the details of this metaphor. On the ground is a trapeze instructor, they said, an expert who understands every element of the trapeze world. He is the person who sees everything objectively and knows just where you are in the moment. They went on to explain that when you are learning to surrender, you have no concept of timing. You have no way of knowing when it's safe to let go or cling to the bar for dear life. When we don't have that perspective, letting go is more like suicide than surrender. But when the expert instructor yells ‘hep!’, you can trust that he sees what you cannot see, and that the catcher is ready to take hold. Placing trust in this person and not your own sense of skill or timing is what enables you to let go. This was the missing piece of the trapeze metaphor. When we give up control, we need to know that someone is aware of the bigger picture, the whole story, and can see everything from start to finish. When learning to let go, we can't trust our controlling instincts of fear and pain. We must rely on another to teach us to surrender. And this is why surrendering to God's sovereign care is so essential to our faith. He chose us before the foundation of the world, determined the time in history that we should live, placed us in our circumstances, and is working out his will in our lives. He loves us and is committed to our flourishing and joy. Only when we truly believe that are we are in the middle of his plan can we stop manipulating other people in an attempt to fulfill our own plan. Finally, my moment on the platform arrived. My first jump was a disaster. Every instinct I had was to cling for dear life to the bar and not let go. I simply dropped out of the sky in terror, lacking even a semblance of grace. And then I bounced off the net awkwardly to the applause of the room. The only thing that was hurt was my pride, but the concept of surrender had quickly moved from being a great analogy to a terrifying reality. By the third attempt, I consciously tried to relax and listen for the master's voice, his position on the ground. Seeing the whole situation and my exact position in the air gave me hope. I took hold of the bar and swung out in the air. My body was tense, my ears were straining for the voice I now knew I could trust. And there, in a confident, clear tone, it rang out, ‘hep!’, and without fear or hesitation, I loosened my grip and let go. And the catcher caught me.
You see, trust in God, saying, I trust that he is my helper, my watcher, even when it doesn't feel like it. And we all have choices that we're going to make in the coming days, years, of our lives. Where it will be — will I hold on and say, I know better, I can't trust God, or I will trust God, even if it doesn't seem like it, even if my circumstances seem to be going against it? And looking to God, God as the helper and the keeper is why we'll have the confidence to ask. But without that, what we'll do is we'll keep trying to say, I'm going to manage this. And in our management, we will continue to get what we've always got.
There's one other thing I want to point out about this Psalm, and that is this is a communal Psalm, meaning these were not individual journeys. People didn't travel from where they lived to Jerusalem by themselves and sing these Psalms by themselves. They did it in community. And in America, we've made much of our spiritual journey an individual journey, meaning we talk about our relationship with God. We judge the effectiveness of a church or a service or a message by what we get out of it. And if we don't like it, we go online and find something else, instead of making it a communal journey. And that's not all bad. But my point is this, and that is there's something to being with people where you are vulnerable enough to say, this is where I'm in distress and where I need to cry out to the Lord, and there are others who know your journey.
We do that here at this church in our small groups. It's a great place just to say, here is where I feel distress, and to walk with some others who are looking and saying, I've been through some things, and you can have hope that God is still in charge. He's watching, he's keeping, he's at work. It's part of what we do when we gather here is say, I'm not sufficient for the day, but there's a God who is. And together we point each other to it. And so if you're in a group, I want to encourage you to get real about the distress that you're facing, about the cry of your heart and the need to focus your eyes on Jesus, how you need support for that. And if you're not in a group, maybe this is a good time to get in a group, and if you're not certain you're of faith, can I just say to you, God wants to relate to you as a helper and a keeper, and if you will come to faith in Jesus Christ, he will be your ultimate helper and keeper, the Savior of your soul and the one who loves you and wants your best. And that's the God that we can trust and journey with as we begin these Psalms of Ascent.
Father, we come to you today and ask that you would help us to trust and let go, rather than cling to control. And in that, that we would find freedom and joy and hope. And we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Thanks for being here. Have a great week.
This transcript was automatically generated. Please excuse errors.
