Psalm 123
Some of you may be familiar with the British television show, Downton Abbey. It centers on the aristocratic Crawley family who rule Downton Abbey as the Earl and Countess of Grantham. The show takes place in the years 1912 up to the early 1920s. A country home like the one in the show would have had about fifty servants to care for the ten members of the family and part of what makes the show so interesting is the interplay between servants and masters. There is an upstairs life and a downstairs life and the intersection of the two is strictly controlled. Here are some rules for servants during this time period.
• Never let your voice be heard by the ladies and gentlemen of the house
• Always ‘give room’ if you meet one of your employers or betters on the stairs.
• Always stand still when being spoken to by a lady and look at the person speaking to you.
• Never begin to talk to ladies and gentlemen
• Servants should never offer any opinion to their employers, nor even to say good night.
The goal is for servants to be as invisible as possible while they do the work to cook and clean and manage the estate. Meals are cooked downstairs and then brought upstairs where the servants, after serving the dish, stand along the side of the room, attentively watching to see where they might be needed. A terrible offense would be to have a spoon clank against a metal serving dish or in any other way bring attention to their presence.
Lord Grantham has a valet who helps him dress and attends to his personal needs. Lady Grantham has a maid who does the same for her and despite the fact that affection between them could develop over the years, the valet and maid know their boundaries and do not cross them. Servants exist to make the life of their masters better. Their personal concerns are not to intrude into the lives of their masters.
This is the setting used as an analogy in the fourth of the Psalms of Ascent, Psalm 123.
The psalm begins with an expression of submission.
1 I lift up my eyes to you,
to you whose throne is in heaven.
I lift my eyes to you. This indicates the relative position of the psalmist and God. God is above the psalmist. God is not at eye level. God is not below. God is above.
Daniel looked up to God. When he received a vision of a heavenly man, who we understand to be Jesus, Daniel wrote that (Daniel 10:7–8)
I had no strength left, my face turned deathly pale and I was helpless. 9 Then I heard him speaking, and as I listened to him, I fell into a deep sleep, my face to the ground.
When Jesus told Peter to cast out his nets and they were filled with fish, (Luke 5:8–9)
he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”
Peter looked up to Jesus and if we want to see God, that is where we all have to look because we do not serve a manmade god. We did not create a god. God created us and he is infinitely greater than we are.
God spoke through the prophet Isaiah: (Isaiah 55:9)
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Paul wrote eight glorious chapters in his letter to the church in Rome. He wrote about the wrath of God we deserve and the mercy of God that rescued us. He wrote about our struggle to do what we know to be right and how God, once again, rescued us. He wrote about the amazing love of God from which nothing can separate us. And then, as he stopped to reflect on all he had written, he burst out with this doxology: (Romans 11:33–36)
33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
35 “Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?”
36 For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
God is so far above us that we have to look up if we are to see him. It is only when we minimize who God is, when we reduce him to a more human level, that we can take him for granted, look him in the eyes, and expect him to take care of our every need.
In the bulletin there is a quote by Graham Cooke: Your image of God is the single most important element of your spiritual journey.
Who is Jesus, the second person of the Trinity? Perhaps the best place in the Bible to look for an answer to this question is the letter Paul wrote to the Colossians. Paul’s letter to the Colossians was written to counter some accusations being made in the church community of Colosse. They viewed the material world as evil and thought it impossible that God could take on a material, human body. Therefore, they argued, Christ could not have been Emmanuel, God in the flesh.
They did not argue that Jesus was not a baby and then a man, but they limited him to that. So listen to Paul as he told the Colossians just exactly who Jesus is. (Colossians 1:15-18)
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.
This is Jesus high and lifted up. This is Jesus in his proper place. We lift our eyes to worship him. (Philippians 2:9–11 )
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
How do we relate to such an exalted Lord? The psalmist used the image of a slave with his master and a maid with her mistress as a way of describing our relationship with God.
2 As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
till he shows us his mercy.
As I mentioned, a servant does not presume to share his troubles with his master. A servant exists to make the life of his master easier, not to trouble his mind with the servant’s problems. The cover of the bulletin has a painting by Jan Vermeer. It is a picture of a mistress and her maid. The maid stands with her eyes looking down. She does not presume to look her mistress in the eye. She is bringing a letter and there is speculation about what is happening at the moment in the painting. But I like the eye of the maid that is focused on the hand of her mistress because it is the gesture of the hand that indicates to the maid the will of her mistress. The mistress does not need to trouble herself by speaking. Just a motion of her hand will tell her maid whether she can share her concerns or not.
Will the hand gesture to “come here” or to “go away”. Suppose the maid has a problem. Will the mistress gesture with her hand to come and tell me what is going on? Or will the mistress gesture with her hand, go away, don’t bother me?
When the Babylonians captured Jerusalem and deported the leading Jews, the ancestors of Nehemiah were among them. Nehemiah was probably a grandson of the Jews who had been deported by the Babylonians and when the Persians defeated Babylon, the talents of Nehemiah were recognized and he was appointed as cupbearer to the King of Persia. As cupbearer, Nehemiah served drinks at the royal table and ensured that no poison would be put into the king’s cup in an attempt to kill him. This was a highly honored position.
Nehemiah received news that the Jews who had survived the exile were in difficulty. The walls of Jerusalem were broken and the gates had been burned. Nehemiah wept when he heard the news and for some days he fasted and prayed. When he was requested to attend to the king because wine had been brought to him, Nehemiah did not presume to tell the king his troubles. But the king saw that he was sad and so invited him to share his burden.
Nehemiah looked to the hand of his master and waited to be invited.
Nehemiah was mourning the ruins of his homeland and in Psalm 123 the psalmist is grieving the ridicule and contempt he and his people are receiving and he cries out for mercy.
2 As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God,
till he shows us his mercy.
3 Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us,
Notice that the psalmist does not demand mercy. He does not insist on receiving mercy. He looks to the hand of God, waiting until God decides to show mercy.
He waits. His eyes are on God, as the eyes of a servant looks to the hand of his master, but he waits for the smallest indication that his request will be granted and God will show mercy.
About now you might be asking yourself, “Is Jack trying to say we should not come to God with all our concerns? I thought we were supposed to go with confidence into the presence of God with all our requests.” My response is to say that we have no right to be so presumptuous. Who are we to go boldly into the presence of so great a God? As in the psalm, we have to look to the hand of our master. We have to be invited to come with our requests. What does the hand of the master tell us? When you look at the hand of Jesus, what do you see? Do the hands of Jesus tell us, “Come here,” or do they tell us, “Be quiet and go away?”
At each of his wrists there is a scar where a nail was driven to hold him to the cross and these scars are our invitation. Jesus did not have to go to the cross. He had options. He could have avoided Jerusalem. He could have called on angels to protect him. He could have pleaded his case with Pilate and escaped crucifixion. He could have rallied the crowds that followed him to form an army that would defeat the Roman occupiers. There were many options but he chose to submit to death on a cross because he wanted us to live with him for eternity.
The psalmist cries out three times for mercy. We cry out for mercy and the voluntary death of Jesus is his response to our cries. We look to his scarred hands and see our invitation. (Matthew 11:28–30)
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
We look to the hands of our master and Lord and he tells us, “Come to me.” Because we have been invited by his scarred hands, we come boldly into his presence, as the writer of Hebrews encourages us to do: (Hebrews 4:16)
Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Because we have been invited by Jesus to come to him, we bring all our concerns without reservation. (Philippians 4:6)
6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
We have an open relationship with God and we bring all our requests to him but we do this only because we have been invited by the scars on his hands. He gestures with his hands, “Come,” and we come.
How do we respond to this invitation from Jesus? After Paul presented God in all his glory he began his practical application with this exhortation: (Romans 12:1)
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
In response to his invitation we come and offer ourselves to him. In the light of what we know about him, we fall to our knees in surrender and offer all we are and all we have to him. We exist to serve him and when we understand how much he has done for us, because we know he loves us, we take joy in being his servants.
One difficulty is that, over time, we begin to take his love for granted and begin to expect him to take care of us. We begin to think that God exists to make our lives more comfortable. We increasingly pay attention to him only when we need something from him.
A second difficulty arises because we have so many needs and our friends have so many needs. We pray and pray and get frustrated when things do not work out the way we want them to. We are bothered by God’s seeming lack of attention and ask, “Where are you?”
Whenever we find ourselves in either of these positions, it is time for a refresher course. We need to remind ourselves, once again, who Jesus is. We need to ask ourselves, “Who is the master and who is the servant?” We have to be continually reminded of the glorious, pre-existing Creator God we serve. We need to lift up our eyes and see Jesus in his exalted state, the Risen Lord.
We need to protect and encourage that image of Jesus and resist the temptation to reduce Jesus to a more manageable size.
We sing sometimes about Darling Jesus. There is truth behind those words but those are theological concepts, not an accurate description of the relationship we have with God. Jesus is the bridegroom and we are the bride. That is an image that Jesus used to describe his relationship to the church. A bride calls her bridegroom, darling, but Jesus is far more than the bridegroom of the church, his bride. Jesus is so much more than the image of bridegroom that to sing Darling Jesus is to minimize who he is.
We sing that Jesus is my friend and that is also true in a theological sense. But it fails to accurately describe our relationship with God. Paul writes in Romans 5 that we were once God’s enemies. (Romans 5:10)
For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
We were God’s enemies but now, through the work of Jesus, we are no longer his enemy. But to say God is our friend, or that Jesus is our friend, puts him at eye level with us and our eyes are no longer lifted up to Jesus.
Jesus picked twelve disciples who spent three years with him. Among the twelve there was an inner circle of three: James, John, and Peter. And in John’s gospel he identifies himself as Jesus’s closest friend.
At the Passover meal the night Jesus was arrested, he talked about one of them who would betray him. They were confused and wanted to know who Jesus was talking about. (John 13:23–24)
One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. 24 Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, “Ask him which one he means.”
Peter, who was the acknowledged leader of the disciples, turned to John to ask him to find out from Jesus who he was talking about.
So if anyone was ever the friend of Jesus, John was a friend of Jesus. At the end of John’s life, when he was in exile on the island of Patmos, he had a vision of the resurrected Jesus. (Revelation 1:12–17)
12 I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and among the lampstands was someone “like a son of man,” dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. 14 His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. 15 His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.
How did John respond? Did he say, “Jesus, it’s been a long time. How are you?” Did he go up to Jesus and greet him? Did John laugh and joke with Jesus about old times? John did not look Jesus in the eye.
17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.
John lifted his eyes up to Jesus and that is always the posture for us. Although it is helpful for us to understand that we are much loved by Jesus and that we are no longer the enemy of God, we always have to have proper reverence and awe for the pre-existing Creator God who loves us and brought us into his eternal family.
We are loved by Jesus. Jesus told his disciples in the Upper Room (John 15:14) “You are my friends if you do what I command.” Jesus wants us to feel loved by him. Jesus wants us to enjoy the intimacy we can have with him. But never forget who Jesus is and what Jesus has done to give you the privilege of coming to him so freely.
Having an exalted view of who Jesus is makes a difference in how we pray. As I pray for people, I pray for someone who needs physical healing. I pray for someone who needs emotional healing. I pray for someone who needs to surrender to Jesus and use her gifts for God. I pray for children whose parents were taken away from them. I pray for people and, to be honest, I often pray without a lot of hope that my prayer will be answered. I have prayed for some people for a long time and have not seen an answer to my prayers. I get frustrated and wonder where God is. I wonder why God is not doing anything to help these people.
I cry out for mercy and want instant gratification. I do not want to wait for the master to act. I want to be the master and get the result I want now, this week.
My challenge is to remember who God is and surrender to him. I know he loves these people I pray for more than I could ever love them. I have to wait for him to act. This week as I was praying for the children at the Village of Hope, I listened to a song that sang of God’s power in nature, in the mountains and the seas, and this helped me to see how great God is. My frustration that the children are still without their parents 3 ½ years after they were deported has made God smaller in my eyes and I prayed without much hope. But when I was encouraged to see how great God is, then my hope grew.
If you were to analyze your prayers over the last month, what would they indicate? Do most of your prayers fall under the category of Things You Can Do for Me? “I need this.” “I want that.” “Give me this.” “Give me that.” Would an analysis of your prayers say you view God as your Sugar Daddy? Your rich uncle?
How often this past month have you started your day with a prayer like this: “Father, today I offer myself to you to be used for your purposes. I don’t know how you will do this but I want to be open in every moment to be used by you in the lives of people around me. Help me today to keep my eyes focused on you.” Do you ever start your day offering yourself in service to God, asking what you can do to help him in his work?
Hear this word from Isaiah 66:1–2
This is what the Lord says:
“Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
Where is the house you will build for me?
Where will my resting place be?
2 Has not my hand made all these things,
and so they came into being?”
declares the Lord.
“This is the one I esteem:
he who is humble and contrite in spirit,
and trembles at my word.
Remember who God is. Keep an exalted view of our pre-existing Creator God. Remind yourself that God does not exist to serve us. We exist to serve him. And yet, amazingly, because of his great love, God did take on the role of a servant to bring us safely into his eternal kingdom. Because of this great invitation, do not hold back. You have been invited to come to God, to share all your concerns without reservation. But never forget that it is Jesus who has invited you.
