Expository - Songs of Degrees

Psalm 120

In the Song of Solomon we find a picture of the believer in the Shulamite woman. At the beginning of that book she is one who knows her Lord, the king, the one whom she loves, but she is conscious of her own neglect and the separation between her and her beloved. "My own vineyard," she declares, "have I not kept." It is a story of neglect, but it is also a story of a yearning for the Lord. The Song of Solomon traces her ascent, through various experiences, until she finally knows that full communion with her Lord. It is a going on and a going up to Him. She becomes as one who has hind's feet, as it says in Habakkuk 3 v 19 - that is, she is able to walk in high places. Do we not yearn to be among those that have full communion with God and who are enabled to walk in heavenly places?

There was the awakening of a desire to know the Lord. This is the first step: that realisation of our need as believers for more of the Lord; to realise, perhaps, that we have neglected our own spiritual state. The beginning is that experience of a longing to be where the Lord is and to be in Him. In Psalm 73 vv 24,25 there is a revelation of such a desire: "Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee." Oh, that we might have such a longing in our hearts that cries out to our Lord Jesus and to none else.

Note when the Psalmist cried to the Lord. It was in his distress, a phrase which in Hebrew means "in a tight or narrow place." He discovered that things in life were closing in on him. Does the Lord allow things like that to happen? Yes, He does. In Hebrews 12 it explains that the Lord uses such experiences that we might become partakers of His holiness. In our distress we cry out to Him. The Lord had brought the Psalmist to a narrow place in his life where he found no way to move. All he could do was to cry out to the Lord in his distress. The Lord brings us to such places that we might at last look upward, get our foot, as it were, on the bottom rung of the ladder and start moving Godward.

As you read this Psalm you realise that the writer is tired with what people have been saying, the deceit and lies. He is tired of being attacked and criticised. He wants to be where the Lord is. Finally, He wants reality. Sometimes it takes a long time to see that in the world around us there is nothing but lies and deceit.

The god of this age is a liar. Is that where we seek life? Maybe we think that friends in the world are better than our brothers and sisters in church. Beware! What seems to be friendship in the world is deceitfulness. Even news and current affairs reports in the media are fantasy more than truth. The trouble is that the world thinks it is truth. The only reality is Christ, and yet the world talks about Christ as if He is fantasy. Let us go on to know Him.

Isaiah saw the problem when He saw the Lord, high and lifted up, the Lord at the top and he at the bottom of the ladder. Then he realised how wrong everything down here is. "I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips." It is not so much a matter of getting out of the world, but, rather, getting the world out of us. Certainly the Bible tells us that He has delivered us from this present evil world. Nevertheless, we are in the world; we are not to be of it. If we have allowed some of the world principles to get into our lives we might find them manifesting themselves in the things that we say. Jesus said that it is out of the heart that come all those things that defile, and the lips show what is in the heart. Gossip, backbiting, lying, telling half-truths - we need to examine what is in our hearts, for such things do not come from the Lord. We need to cry out to the Lord. In my distress, I cried out to the Lord.

In the end, the lying lips and the deceitful tongues of the world will reap what they sow. "Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper" is what they will receive. Lying, deceitful words are like arrows which, once released from the bow, cannot be recalled; they are like coals which burn on in the memory of the victim. However, one day the Word of the Lord will come as a sharp arrow and will pierce into those that have slandered and injured with the tongue. The coals of juniper portray that judgement which burns forever. Juniper was a plant which, when placed on the fire, burned for a long time. Let us want to be delivered and separate from all that worldly deceit and seek that full communion with our Lord Jesus Christ in heavenly places.

Further, we find that the Psalmist had been living in the wrong place, in Mesech, dwelling in the tents of Kedar. Meshech was descended from Japheth, not from the line of God's people, the line of promise through Shem. Kedar was descended from Shem but of the line of the flesh, for he came through Ishmael. In the Song of songs, the bride says that she is as black as the tents of Kedar. We do not want to be in the wrong place, out of line with God's promise, in a place of blackness and darkness. Mesech was to the North of Israel; the tents of Kedar were to be found to the South of Israel - anywhere but in the land of Promise. Are we dwelling, spiritually speaking, in the wrong places, anywhere but where God wants us to be. If so, let us cry out with all our being, "Deliver my soul, O Lord...You've saved me, but I've not been living the right life. I've not been living in the promises of God. Let me get my foot on that first step that leads upward."

Jesus said that we should abide in Him. That is our dwelling place, not in the things of the world. Look at the worldlings. They hate peace. When you get down to it, they do not want the same things that you want. The moment you speak in the Lord, you are for peace, but you will find very quickly, they are for war. They will attack you and be against you, for the world is against Jesus. In my distress I cried unto the Lord ...... AND HE HEARD ME.