Where Are Your Eyes Fixed? Psalm 123

INTRODUCTION

Church, let me begin with a simple question:

Where are your eyes fixed?

Where has your attention been this week? What has occupied your mind? What has shaped your emotions? What has filled your conversations? What has troubled your heart?

For some of us, our eyes have been fixed on our work. For some, on finances. For some, on sickness. For some, on family burdens. For some, on the future. For some students, perhaps your eyes are fixed on a new college, a new city, new friends, and many uncertainties. For some, your eyes may be fixed on people who have hurt you, words that wounded you, or situations that have not changed.

And what we keep looking at shapes us. It shapes what we feel, what we fear, what we desire, and what we trust.

Psalm 123 is a psalm of ascents. Psalm 123 is one of the shortest prayers in the Songs of Ascents. These are psalms that are used by pilgrims as they journeyed to Jerusalem at least 3 times a year for the annual festivals. Psalm 123 teaches weary pilgrims where to fix their eyes: not on their troubles, but on the enthroned and merciful King. In a weary world, God’s people lift their eyes from their troubles to the enthroned King and wait for His mercy.

Main idea: Look to God till mercy comes.

Psalm 123

A song of ascents.

¹I lift up my eyes to you,

to you who sit enthroned in heaven.

²As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,

as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress,

so our eyes look to the Lord our God,

till he shows us his mercy.

³Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us,

for we have endured no end of contempt

⁴We have endured no end

of ridicule from the arrogant,

of contempt from the proud.

Outline:

Where to look? Look to the Lord.

How to look? Look like servants looking at the master’s hand.

How long to look? Look until He shows mercy.

What do we do while waiting? Make petition.

Where to look?

1. Look Upward – Look to the Lord

Psalm 123

¹I lift up my eyes to you,

This Psalmist says: I lift up my eyes to you..

In these 4 songs of ascent, we see a progress that begins in Psalm 120:

Psalm 120 – The Psalmist laments his surroundings.

Psalm 121 – The Psalmist lifts his eyes to the hills of Zion.

Psalm 122 – The Psalmist delights in the house of the Lord.

Psalm 123 – The Psalmist looks above the hills to the Lord in heaven.

Their ultimate destination even then was not Jerusalem, but to the God in heaven.

The issue is focus. The psalmist is not denying his trouble. By the end of the Psalm, we discover that he is surrounded by contempt, ridicule, arrogance, and pressure. His circumstances are painful. His heart is weary. His soul has endured much.

But before he speaks about his pain, he tells us where his eyes are fixed. Life is full of responsibilities, worries, distractions, sickness, financial stress, family burdens, and spiritual battles. But the psalmist teaches us to turn our attention Godward. Prayer is not merely asking; prayer is lifting our eyes to the living God.

ILLUSTRATION

I remember when children participate in a school sports day or a cultural programme. They may be standing in a line, marching, running, or performing. But many times they are looking into the crowd. They are searching for the face of their father or mother. They want to know, “Are they watching me? Are they there?”

And the moment they see their parents, they feel strengthened. They feel noticed. They feel secure. The presence of the parent gives courage to the child.

How do we lift our eyes to the Lord in the midst of all of the distractions and challenges? I would say that there are many ways. But the way that this text encourages us to think about is prayer.

Prayer is turning our eyes to the living God and being attentive to him.

How often though we are consumed by the distractions of this world? God’s word reminds us to pray at all times, pray without ceasing. But this is an invitation for us to live our lives before God, to be present to the one who is always constantly present in our lives.

Brother Lawrence, 17^th Century French Carmelite who spoke about Practice of the Presence of God’ even in small moments. Even a brief prayer in the middle of work, study, traffic, or anxiety can become a moment of lifting our eyes to God.

So this morning, the first call of Psalm 123 is: Look up.

Lift your eyes to the Lord.

Before you look at the mountain, look to the Maker.

Before you look at the storm, look to the Sovereign One.

Before you look at your need, look to the God of mercy.

Transition: Let me ask: Why would we want to lift our eyes to him? Why would we want to give the Lord our attention?

Reason: Because of who our God is: God’s Position

Psalm 123:1b

to you who sit enthroned in heaven.

Psalm 115:3

Our God is in heaven;

he does whatever pleases him.

God is king over all creation. He is King of the heavens to whom everything belongs. To whom all power and authority and dominion belong. So we turn our eyes to him.

When Jesus was asked, “Teach us to pray, Lord.” Jesus said, “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” Jesus knew that we need a daily reminder about God being the cosmic king who rules and reigns over everything that we see.

Everything—our spouse, children, job, city, and world—belongs to Him and it is under His sovereign rule and his providential guidance and oversight. Lifting our eyes to this Living God is turning to the one who is in charge. God is the one who can make a difference and change the situation that we are wrestling with.

On earth there may be no mercy, no help. People may reject us or refuse help. But in heaven there is plenty of help and mercy for us. We need to be regularly reminded of God’s position and it reassures us in the midst of our circumstances that no matter what we are facing and no matter how overwhelmed we are, we are in a relationship with this sovereign God for whom nothing is impossible.

Application: Teenagers and youth who are with us today, do you know that God is in the heavens and he does all that is good and he is sovereign over every one of your circumstances. There is no part of your life that he does not rule and direct. So we lift our eyes to him because he is the one who is enthroned in the heavens. He is the sovereign Lord.

But this raises another question: So how are we to relate to this sovereign King to whom we lift our eyes?

How to look?

2. Look Humbly

Look like Servants Looking to the Master’s Hand.

Psalm 123:2

²As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,

as the eyes of a female slave look to the hand of her mistress,

so our eyes look to the Lord our God,

till he shows us his mercy.

Using simile here this psalmist clarifies for us what our relationship to the living God actually is. We are servants and God is the high King. We are his servants, yet God loves us deeply, for whom he has given his only Son to die so that we might come into relationship with him. We are adopted into his family and we are more than servants of course. We are sons and daughters of the high king. But nonetheless this category of servants is what Psalm 123 uses to clarify for us our relationship to the living God.

We look to him, we lift our eyes to him as servants look to their master

How does the apostle Paul often introduce himself in his letters?

Romans 1:1

Paul, a servant (doulos) of Christ Jesus,

Doulos – servant, bondservant, slave. We are servants.

Two observations to make about the relationship between the slave and the master:

a. Servants watch and obey.

Example: Like a waiter looks at the master at the table. The master makes a small gesture at the plate and the servant serves food. The master takes his glass, the servant instantly fills it. The servant looks at the hand of the master to do what the master wants him to do.

That is how the psalmist looks to God and that is how we must look to God.

The picture of the servants looking at the hand of the master suggests:

• Direction — His hand guides us.

• Provision — His hand supplies us.

• Protection — His hand keeps us.

• Mercy — His hand helps us.

There is a second observation about a servant:

b. The servant depend on mercy.

The look of the servant on the master is not a look characterized by fear or uncertainty, rather it is a look that is characterized by hopefulness in awaited mercy or favour.

Embedded within this simile, there is a picture of the responsibility of the masters and mistresses to and for their servants.

There is an obligation in that relationship for: Provision, care and protection from the master to the servant. The lifting up of our eyes to God is a humble, hopeful, dependent kind of look waiting for God to show mercy.

Mercy is the fundamental part of His character. When God reveals himself, he reveals himself as a God of graciousness or mercy.

We see the revelation of God in the OT, when God is made known to Moses in Exodus 34.

Exodus 34:6

⁶And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness,

The root word there for gracious is actually the same root word here for ‘have mercy.’

Example: We trace God’s mercy throughout the Bible. See the Exodus deliverance for the people of God from Egypt and their slavery. God intervenes, God hears their cry, God shows them grace. God even shows grace and mercy in the moment of the golden calf incident. After they went wayward and ran away from him, God forgives and says, “I will remain present with you.” That is our only hope.

God is fundamentally gracious and his grace is manifesting, giving himself to us.

For us, the NT believers, where do we see the grace and benevolence of God most of all? It is of course at the cross of Calvary where God in the person of His Son would go to such great lengths to demonstrate his love for us, to show us favour, to deal with our deep sickness of sin, so that we might be raised to new life with him and enjoy fellowship with him, the living God for the rest of our lives and for all eternity. God reveals his character as gracious and God’s actions reveal him as gracious as well.

So, the psalmist says:

Psalm 123:2b

so our eyes look to the Lord our God,

till he shows us his mercy.

We are to look as servants to God for his mercy.

3. Look Persistently

How long to look? Look until He shows mercy.

Never give up waiting on the Lord. He will answer in His time, in His wisdom, and according to His mercy.

Psalm 123 says, “So our eyes look to the LORD our God, till he shows us his mercy.”

This means we do not lift our eyes to God only for a moment and then give up. We keep looking. We keep waiting. We keep praying. We keep trusting. The believer’s posture is not casual attention, but persistent dependence. We say, “Lord, I have nowhere else to look. My help, my mercy, my grace, and my strength must come from You.”

A beautiful example is blind Bartimaeus in Mark 10. When he heard that Jesus was passing by, he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet. But the Bible says he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”

That is Psalm 123 in action. He kept looking to Jesus for mercy. He refused to be silenced by the crowd, his condition, or the delay. And Jesus stopped, called him, and healed him.

Church, do not stop looking to the Lord. People may discourage you. Circumstances may delay. Your own heart may grow tired. But keep your eyes on the merciful King. The Lord may not always answer in the way we expect or at the time we expect, but He will never ignore the cry for mercy that comes from a humble heart.

So keep looking until He shows mercy.

Now, there is always a different path that we can choose. It is not a path of waiting and looking, it is a path of taking over and stepping in.

ILLUSTRATION

Abram and Sarai show us the danger of refusing to wait. God had promised, but they became impatient and took matters into their own hands. They had a child through Hagar. Waiting on God is not weakness.

We always have the temptation, instead of looking at the King of heaven, waiting until he is gracious to us, of getting impatient and getting ahead. Our temptation is always to get impatient, not to wait upon his time and to force things our own way.

Will you wait upon him? This kind of waiting, and looking and crying out is the Christian life. Through a world of tears and challenges and trials, we wait upon him.

Psalm 123 tells us to look until He shows mercy. Hebrews 4 tells us where mercy is now found: at the throne of grace, through Jesus our High Priest.

4. Pray Honestly

What do we do while waiting? We Wait by Making Petition

V1-2 – Clarifying what the relationship is between us and the Living God.

V3-4 – Show us how we walk in that relationship.

The psalmist is facing a lot of trouble from the wicked. They have been disrespected, suffering, and being mocked. This expression is used in Amos 6. They are those who have stepped out and they are now causing scorn and contempt to fall upon the people of God. The Psalmist brings all the petition to the Lord.

It is by this strong petition which comes out of the context of trouble. It starts with honesty. The best place to start in the life of prayer is to be truthful. If you don’t know how to pray, the best thing to do is to start telling God what is really going on in your life and in your mind. Just be truthful. We see the psalmist doing that here at the end of v3 and 4.

We have endured enough from the ridicule from the arrogant and contempt from the proud. But instead of stepping out like Abram and Sarai or like Saul, the psalmist stays in there, hangs in there and cries out to God.

Psalm 123:3-4

³Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us,

Or be gracious to us, Oh Lord be gracious to us. You see how the Lord is surrounded literally in the text by a plea for mercy and grace. This is the defining posture of what it means to wait upon him in the midst of this world of trouble. Be gracious.

I think he is right. This is our prayer. As we wait in this relationship as servants before our King, the occupation of our waiting is the petitions of prayer, it is the lifting up our eyes to the Lord, being attentive to his presence and crying out to him for grace and favour. This is what we are called to be and do as pilgrims in a weary and dry land.

There will be of course challenges along the way, in this case they are external, those are proud and arrogant. But there will always be challenges and Jesus in the life of the apostles leads us to expect this and to place our hope in him alone.

Are you waiting upon the Lord?

Are you lifting your eyes to him who is enthroned in the heavens?

ILLUSTRATION

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi dissident. He was executed at dawn on April 9, 1945, at the Flossenbürg concentration camp a few weeks before the end of World War II in Europe.

His fellow inmates knew Bonhoeffer was a pastor and begged him to hold a service. This man in the last day of his life knowing he will be executed in an hour or two, led a gathering of prisoners in worship and preached to them from God’s word.

Dr. Fischer-Hüllstrung, the doctor in the place of execution recorded the following observations about Bonhoeffer’s final minutes: “…I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God…At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”

How did God answer that prayer for mercy and grace and submission to His will? The answer of God’s mercy and grace was not actually in the changing of the difficult circumstances in which Bonhoeffer was in, God could have done that but did not in this place. But it was in the strength and peace and magnificence of soul that was found within his breast.

God often answers our prayer for grace and mercy sometimes in delivering us but at other times he enables us to face trials of this world with courage, peace and sacrificial love to the end of our days. It is true that one day that circumstances will change entirely, one day everything will be turned on its head, one day the King who is the ruler of the universe will be displayed and every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. We know that is true today and we are in relationship with him today and he will give us strength, mercy, and favour to walk through whatever it is that you are facing, one day it will be made clear and true. That is our great hope.

So let’s continue forward pilgrims on the way to God which is Jesus Christ, look to Him, cry out to Him, wait for Him. He is merciful and he is gracious.

CONCLUSION

Church, where are your eyes fixed today? Let us come to the throne of God for mercy:

Hebrews 4:16

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

If your eyes are fixed only on your problem, you will be crushed. If your eyes are fixed only on people, you will be disappointed. If your eyes are fixed only on yourself, you will be exhausted.

But Psalm 123 calls us to lift our eyes to the Lord, the One enthroned in heaven. He is sovereign. He is merciful. And in Jesus Christ, His mercy has come near.

So lift your eyes. Yield to the King. Expect mercy. Speak honestly in suffering. And wait faithfully.

Our eyes look to the Lord our God, till He shows us His mercy.

When life is heavy, do not keep looking only at the trouble. Look to the Lord. Look humbly. Look persistently. Pray honestly. In Christ, mercy is available from the throne of grace.

Ask the congregation to say softly together: Lord, have mercy on us.