Crescendo

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Good morning. You know, we have been talking about Psalms, the rhythm and the verse, for a few weeks now, and this Sunday is our last Sunday talking about it. So one more time, I want to talk about how Psalms is made of the verse and the rhythm. The verse is the idea, the gist, the theme, the information. The rhythm is the tone. It's the perspective that the Psalms take. We have talked about this duality in Psalms. We've talked about it a number of ways. We've likened it to music, how music affects both the right and the left side of your brain. So music makes you think and feel. Music engages your compassion and your logic. We've expressed it in terms of communication. So when we communicate with somebody, there is information that we want to relay to them. But then there's all these non-verbals, there's tone, there's body language that is being communicated also.

And then we also liken it to knowing a subject or knowing about an event, like hiking Everest was our example. With Everest, when you hike Everest you need to know facts. So you need to know what to prepare for, you need to know how long that's going to take, you need to know it takes roughly three months to climb Everest. several ten thousand dollars. We also need though, you need personal accounts. You need to hear about the piercing cold. You need to hear about the foolish debts. This is important because this is how meditation works. Meditation, it takes time, but over time that information sinks in. And over time you begin to take on the tone of what you are reading. You begin to take on the perspective of what you are subjecting yourself to. This is why we need to pay attention to what we are taking in. Because like I've said a million times, you become what you rehearse.

You become what you are meditating on. So if you're spending a lot of time watching videos of people talking about how stupid other people are, then you're You're going to think that way, you're going to speak that way. Think about it. How often do you quote movies? How often do song lyrics pop into your head? How often do you remember something that maybe a parent always said to you? I always remember my mother saying to me, You can't stop breathing on account of not breathing right. Those are wise words from a wise woman. I won't forget it. You can't stop breathing on account of not breathing right. So when we go into the Psalms, when we read, for example, when we read Psalm 1-2, Psalm 1-2 says, "...blessed is the man who walks, not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night."

Whenever it talks about this, it's not just that we need to know it. It's not just that we need to believe it, it's that we need to rehearse it. We need to do it. We need to feel its importance. We need to understand the gravity that awaits us. The delight, our delight can be in the law of the Lord when we meditate it, when we meditate on it day and night. And so what we've done is we've worked to study the whole message of psalms, not just one or two psalms that were kind of cherry-picking there, but we wanted to study all the psalms, and so we broke it out into smaller divisions. Book one, we label microphones, right, when you're speaking your heart to God. Book two, chorus. We talked about how there was a chorus, a refrain of wickedness, but also a refrain of putting our hope in God and not in people. Book three was about solos, it It was about the rebellion of God's people, particularly in the wilderness,

and how God was still faithful. In book 4, we looked at it last week about guiding the composer, how God is enormous. And he can see everything all at once, but he still chooses to see the really small things. Today, our last book, book 5, it is crescendo. It is a book about rising in praise to God. Book 5 consists of Psalms 107 all the way through Psalm 150. So it's a big book, 107 through 150. And what it does is, when we understand all this, when we see all this, allows us to see the larger story in Psalms, where if you're reading Psalms 1 all the way through Psalms 150, as you read you kind of come out on the other side of all of this, all 150 Psalms, you come out on the other side of it overwhelmingly thankful. You come out of it overflowing with praise and thankfulness. And this is the crescendo that we are talking about here. This This crescendo of praise is all over book 5.

And so today we are going to choose Psalm 121 to discover what is going on in Psalms... Sorry, in Psalm Book 5. We're just going to read Psalm 121. And particularly we're going to concentrate on a subset in these Psalms called the Psalms of Ascent. Ascent, so I like to climb. That Psalms 120 through 134. So it's kind of right in the middle of Psalms Book 5. What an ascent is, it's a physical crescendo. You are literally ascending, you're climbing up to something. So these psalms are associated with going up, with rising. As we read Psalm 121, I want you to feel this rising. It's not always going to be a physical rising, but I want you to feel the rising. It's Psalm 121. It's only in verses, so we're going to read all eight of them. It says, I lift my eyes to the hills. You see the rise there in the first part? From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not strike you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore. May God bless the reading of His word. This is Psalm 121 and like I said, you can kind of feel the rising in it. And what I want to notice first is that there is this rise to hope and restoration in Psalm 121. So you can almost just pick a verse at random, but the hope and the restoration that's prevalent throughout, verse 2 it says, My help comes from the Lord. Verse 3, You will not let my foot be moved. Verse 6, The sun shall not strike you. Verse 7, Keep you from all evil.

Elsewhere, all throughout the Psalms of Ascent, we can see this rise, this crescendo happen. So in Psalm 126, verses 5 and 6, it says, "...those who sow in tears shall reap the shouts of joy. He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come in with shouts of joy, bringing his trees with him." So you can see, there's this, he's going to start weeping, there's going to be this crescendo into shouts of joy. So 128, 123 is another place you see it. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands. You shall be blessed and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. The idea there is that your house will go from one measure of blessing to another. It will increase, right? That you will eat the fruit of the labor of your hand.

So these are the psalms of ascent. They sound a lot like this. A lot of them do. So these are called the psalms of ascent. But why? Why are they called ascent? Now, it's not just this emotional ascent, or it's not just the ascent of blessing. It's also a physical ascent, right? a physical climbing. And although we do not know if these point to a specific situation, many believe that the ascent in the Psalms of Ascent is the road from slavery to freedom. Specifically, it is the road from slavery in their exile and Babylon to freedom back to their homeland in Jerusalem. This is a 900 mile span, so it's a long thing. And the total climb on it is 2,000 feet, which is, it's not that much, but when you look at the passage, it has two very steep climbs. First, it's kind of this people right before you get to the valley right below Jerusalem. So you're on this rise and you know, okay, we're almost home.

Then you go down into the valley and then you're rising up against the, to the Temple Mount. So you have these two huge climbs, these huge stairs of ascent. And I want you to imagine, I want you to just picture it. the road back from exile. You have thousands, thousands of Jews that are all walking together that are going from exile into Babylon, returning to freedom, and they're in a really just a long procession. I mean it's like a march going all the way down. And if you can see it, if you can kind to feel all the people around you, you can hear the chanting begin. You can hear the singing. They begin to kind of talk about the hope that awaits them in Jerusalem. There's a couple of beautiful voices that kind of erupt out, and these songs are unearthed on this long procession, this 900 mile walk, all the way back to the the homeland. Some of these songs catch on.

And before long, you have these songs being strung together. These are the songs of ascent. These are the songs they sung, the songs they sung, as God was bringing them back to their freedom. He was bringing their freedom to a crescendo, quite literally. And quite metaphorically, he was bringing them to crescendo. And it is a beautiful language. You read Psalms 120 through 134, that you can see the exaltation. You can see the anticipation of hope and beauty and a return, not just to what's familiar, but a return to the promise. God has not forgotten us. And you can see it all over these Psalms of Ascent. an eruption of joy. And something else happens on that plan of freedom is that these Jews that are coming back home, they begin to look around. They begin to see things and as you read through the Psalms of Ascent, you can see places and location and geography all over it. In Psalm 121, we have a few, we

I lift my eyes to the hills. In 5 and 6 we talk about the shade and the sun and the moon. And these are things that they're looking around on this long journey. They're things that they see. They say, I can't see my eyes to the hills. They can see the hills in front of them. They know that the Lord is going to bring help on the other side of that physical hill. And so as they write these songs down, you see a lot of places. And it's not just been the Psalms of a sentence, it's all over Psalms, Book 5. All over Psalms, Book 5, you have a hard emphasis on places, locations, geographies. Psalm 114, trees, the sea, the mountains, the hills, the rocks, and the pools of water. Psalm 126, talking about Zion, which is Jerusalem, screams in the Negev, sowing and reaping, all things that they've seen. 133, you have Zion again, you have the mountains, and you have the dew of Mount Hermon.

All these things are places that they're familiar with. Psalm 137, you have the waters of Babylon, you have the Babylonian willows, and you have Jerusalem. And Psalm 108 is actually a really great example of this. In four verses of Psalm 108, you have nine different locations, nine different locations of all these places where God is displaying his power.

And so all these places, all these locations are everywhere throughout Psalm Book Five. But why? Why do that? Well, to figure that out, we have to remember that some people are good with directions and a map, whatever they're driving. So you could say, okay, you head down this road and you head over here, especially in the metroplex, you know, I hear about 1187 and 174 and 183 and 360 and 183. It's too much. 121. It's all a little too much. And some people, though, it's no sweat for them. They can remember those street names. They can remember all those numbers with P's. But others, they drive according to landmarks. They don't remember all the three-letter combination of roads, they do remember the landmarks. And a lot of you out there are good at driving with landmarks. And sometimes when you get directions from somebody who drives them with landmarks, they're

like, yeah, it's just past my cousin's house. It's the third pond on the left. Then you take a left. And then there's two farms on the right. And after that, there's a dirt road. It's the next road after that. And you're going, oh my gosh, can I just have a street name? That's nowhere near Google Maps. You know, like they're stressing out here. I was actually driving recently with one of our church members, Ken Fairchild. And Ken Fairchild and I were in his truck and we were on the way out to Granbury. And it's fascinating, honestly. I love this. I love when people start just talking about history or their experiences or their story. And so I was really interested. He on the way out to Granbury, I pretty much got the life history of Ken Fairchild according to Landmarks. He would say, okay, this, I know this person who lives here. I grew up with a guy who lives here over here.

This used to be nothing but dairy farms and now there's only two left. This, this didn't used to be built up over here. This is what it used to look like. And then even when we got to guys property, we were going to a guy's house to pick up something he was donating to the church. When we got to that guy's property, Ken Fairchild knew what used to be on that guy's land, which is crazy. Um, but he said, you know, he's talking to my friend and goes, yeah, This used to be because oh, that's crazy that you know that

Ken Fairchild is a wealth of information when it comes to landmarks. He's just been around And it was so interesting to watch him do that Part of the reason that he can do that part reason that people function that way is because landmarks places They mark our lives and they hold memories for us. Location, specific houses, specific schools. I remember going back to my elementary school when I was in high school and seeing my kindergarten teacher and thinking, man she looks so tiny. How is she so small and how do I remember her so big? How's the school so little and I remember it being so big. If you've ever gone to your childhood home, right, and you're all grown up now, You know what I'm talking about? All these memories should start flooding in. If you've ever gone back to an old park, an old swimming pool, maybe your grandparents' house. I know for me, going back to New Orleans and getting in the house where my great aunts lived,

there were five of them in the same house. During the cold months, which there were like four or three, just a few cold months in South Louisiana in New Orleans. I remember during the cold months they had these floor vents that would kick on and those floor vents were only about that big. I remember being so cold and the heat coming up through those floor vents and I would just kind of put my hands on it, put my face on it just to get warm. I'll never forget that and that will always be associated with die-hangs, that specific house in New Orleans, Louisiana. And, you know, that's true of people, but it's also true of us as a country. Think about it. Think about the songs that we sing as a country, and all of the locations and places in geography that is in the lyrics of those songs. Think about the Star Spangled Banner, right? The Star Spangled Banner is simply a description of a war scene.

And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air help prove through the night that our flag was still there. What are you picturing when that happens? You're picturing an old tattered American flag still waving even though the bombs were going off, even though the war was raging on. That's the Star Spangled Banner. America the Beautiful does the exact same thing. It talks about skies and grain and mountaintops and plains and from sea to shining sea, above the front of planes. My country, Tis of Thee, America, my country, Tis of Thee does the same thing. It's land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside left freedom ring. Look at it. I mean, it's all over. There's no coincidence that all of these songs that we hold so near, they also contain geography in them, because that geography, those locations hold a special place for

us. They hold memories for us. We are wistful. We are nostalgic for them. We long to hold on to those things. And so in Psalms Book 5, and in the Psalms of Ascent, it is full of physical martyrs, not only to help us remember the information, but also to help us maintain a profound emotional connection to what's going on here. I don't know if you've ever done journaling in your spiritual life, and if you've gone back and read those things, you read the journal entry from years ago and think, wow, man, I've grown so much since then. Wow, I haven't grown enough since then. It is something that gives you perspective. It allows you to go back and see.

As a church, right, we don't have a journal, but as a church, we have a building. As a church, we have songs that we sung. As a church, we have a particular history. There are times when we want to hold on to the memories more than we want to make new memories. Let me put it a different way. Sometimes we get so preoccupied with remembering how it used to be that we forget that we are on mission together, not only to just make new memories, but to be, to take ground for the kingdom of God, to love people in Jesus name, to make disciples, to think biblically. Whenever you read through the Psalms and I hope that you happen, I hope that you would take the occasion now to read through the songs. As you read through those songs, and they begin to wash over you, it begins to change the way you think, it begins to change the way that you see, and it can even change the way that you sing.

Something we do as a church often is sing song. When we're together, we're singing all the time. And I will say, it is both a great thing and a bad thing. It's a great thing because those songs hold deep truth for us not to forget. But it also can be a bad thing because there have been churches that have suffered from division over music. Over music. Particular styles of music, particular songs. We want to fight over music. It is both our great privilege to sing together and it is also a great burden to bear that that we do not begin to worship the memories, but that we worship the Lord that the songs talk about. So today, let us sing together. You at home, I want you to sing loud whenever we're doing our worship set today. I want you to sing and remember God's goodness toward us, God's goodness toward you in particular. And remember, let this building be a reminder of God's goodness toward us.

Let the songs that are familiar to us be a reminder of God's good tests. But let us not fall into the trap of worshiping those things, of tying the building in too much with our identity as a church. We are not the building. The church is God's people, God's household, God's family. And we can celebrate that. We can celebrate our freedom that we have in Jesus. We can take true joy in the fact that we don't need to be ashamed of our sin, that we don't need to cover up what has been done, but that we can openly say, I was a sinner, I was a liar, and Jesus made me a truth teller. I was a sinner and Jesus set me free. As we sing today, I want you to remember both the feeling of your freedom and remember the fact of your freedom. Remember the feeling and the fact of our freedom. And as we sing our songs now, let's pay attention to the message. Let's feel the emotion.

Let's pray. Let's sing and let's mean it. And after we will have our time of imitation, let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for today. Thank you that you are just backloading all of these things, all these songs with not just location, the truth. Help us to hang onto that, help us to worship you, help us to remember those things and know that you are in charge. what was to trust you as we sing, involved in us as we sing. And at your name we pray, amen.