Unshaken Like Zion

Psalm 125 | An upright heart trusts an unchanging God for an unshakable life.

• We are held steady.
• We are surrounded.
• We are protected.
• We are at peace.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The scripture that I'm going to read is Psalm 125. Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people from this time forth and forevermore. For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous, lest the righteous stretch out their hands to do wrong. Do good, O Lord, to those who are good, and to those who are upright in their hearts. But those who turn aside to their crooked ways, the Lord will lead away with evildoers. Peace be upon Israel. This is the word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Hey, good morning, Harbor.

unknown 0:49

Good.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

You guys say good morning back. That's really great. Good start. My name's Glenn. I am really, really delighted to be here. To be honest with you, being in a space like this is really good for my soul. We started our church in 2020. As you can imagine, it's the best year possible, statistically, to start a church. And we have met in um four different locations in six years. I've officed out of four different places. Our church has grown. People have been saved. There's been a lot of things to celebrate. Our outreach in the community continues to grow. So I just want to say to you, keep going. God's doing a great work here. You honestly have a, I'm just going to use a very inappropriate word, a dope facility here. I walked in and just thought, man, if you're going to meet in a school, this is a place you want to meet in. This is awesome. So let me tell you this morning at our church, city like Bennington, which is kind of a mirror image to what I drove into down here in this area of the city. It's it's suburbia, it's a school district that's absolutely blowing up, it's new developments everywhere you throw a stick. And it's it's need for the gospel to saturate more and more communities. Um and I uh I can't help but think about us being in the book of Philippians as a church right now. And right now, our student pastor is preaching from Philippians 4. And in Philippians 4, Paul just talks about hey, um uh rejoice in the Lord always. I'll say it again, rejoice. Uh he talks about being of one accord. I just want to be a voice this morning that says, It's my privilege, it's a city like Bennington's privilege, to say, we we are of one accord in the Lord. We uh are delighted to agree in the Lord. We love to, as Philippians 4 says, to labor in the gospel together with you. And we love to rejoice in the Lord. Um I feel spoiled already. I mean, through the through the liturgy this morning, uh the prayer over me. I I already have what I need. Um I'm excited now to just jump into the Word of God with you. And you know why I feel peace standing in front of a group of strangers is that most of you here are brothers and sisters in Christ. Um I'm I'm not here to perform, I'm not here to you know show you a different flavor of preaching from another church. I'm here as your brother in Christ, and we get to open up the word of the living God together today. One of the prayers we always pray at our church, and I just want to pray over you now. If you would just join me, if you're comfortable, bowing your head, close your eyes. God, we are asking you right now, uh bring to mind the reality that we are not guaranteed to be here next Sunday. Uh, we want to steward moments with you and encounters with you in a way that does make much of your name. Great is your name. And so, Lord, we pray that right now your word would go forth with the assurance that it will not return void. I pray it'll land on soil in hearts that is tilled up and ready to receive and take root. And God, I do ask that by the end of our time together today, trust in you would be exponentially greater than it might have been as we walked in. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. By way of introduction, I just want to make a uh statement, and that is that everyone in their life, you and I this morning, sitting in this seat, standing up here, is we're looking for, it's in our nature, we're looking for, always looking for things that cannot be shaken. Uh we're on the hunt constantly for things that are very stable in our life. You know, for some of you, you may come in this morning, and your story is you think a lot and labor a lot toward financial stability. Some of you come in here this morning and you dream of a stable family, a strong nation, reliable and trustworthy health, like actual physical health, personal success. The problem is that everything in our world, because of sin, is not stable. It's always vulnerable to change. Psalm 125 speaks to people that are living in an unstable world. Um, it was a song of worship, not just like a devotional writing, but it was a song you can imagine being sung, like put put to some music, to some humming. People are singing this. It's part of the Shir Hama'alat, which is the songs of going up. Jerusalem was you know 2,500 feet above sea level. Um, it was it was up on you know ridges and um hillside mountains, and these people are making a pilgrimage every year to go to what is the the epicenter of you know the religious world, and that's um to the holy city. And and they're singing these songs as they they go up, and um, it's so significant for them, and it's significant for me even to bring to you today, all these thousands of years later. Because Harbor, as I was uh studying this, one of the things that I could not shake, this is the kind of song that is sang while people are still on the road. It's something that's not sung because anyone has arrived anywhere. It's like a song that's declaring faith and declaring trust and almost preaching to one's own heart. God, this is who you are, this is why you're worthy of trust. And uh the dangers for people's life who were walking this journey were not gone, the trials had not disappeared, the promises of God were not yet fulfilled. And yet they sang this song. So Psalm 125 is not for people who have escaped the hardship and trials and suffering of life. It's a song for people that are walking through a broken and fallen world, learning that their hope is not found in ever-changing circumstances, but it's found in an eternal, unchanging God, of whom there is only one, and there's no one like him. And he wants to know you personally, and he wants you to trust him. One of the appeals that I want to make this morning comes in the title of the sermon. I just titled it, it's really original, unshakable. Unshakable. The burden I bring to you is that trusting in God. Just think about trust. What do you trust in your life? What are you trusting right now? Trusting in God will give you stability, security, protection, and peace forever. You just read that on the screen. How is that for a promise? Trusting God will give you stability, security, assurance, and peace forever. I want to start with verse one of the text, just to revisit it. Here's what it says those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. Let's just pause for a moment. What an epic verse. Those who trust in the Lord are like a mountain, can't be moved, cannot be moved. It's probably what Ryan Meyer, before he knew the context of it, tattooed on his bicep playing football. You can't move me. Can't be moved. There's something that feels really confident about a text like this. And here's the context you need to know. Jerusalem, the holy city, the place of the Temple Mount, it sat on a series of ridges that really just did become known as Mount Zion. Mount Zion represented to God's people, it represented his throne, represented all of his covenant promises, represented his presence. So this is really powerful imagery for God's people as they approach this place. Literally, geographically, they're walking to this place. And can I just ask you, have you ever looked at a mountain? Have you ever looked at even a big set of hills? They ain't moving. They're not going anywhere. It doesn't matter the kind of weather that hits them, it doesn't matter who walks them or hikes them, it doesn't matter what wars are fought on them, they're not going anywhere. They ain't moving. Think even historically that nations fall and empires collapse and come and go and generations come and go, it's Zion abides forever. I mean, this is a Bible verse that's saying if you are a child of God and your trust is in God, you're like that mountain. You are immovable. And let me just take a human moment here to say one thing that never changes in your life and mine is that everything always changes in your life and mine. A little bit of a sober moment, but some of you walked in here today. You're dressed nicely, you look the church part, but you you're limping in here. Because honestly, there's something in your life that might be true today that wasn't true last Sunday. Uh maybe some of you have have come in here and and uh your life is just in a different place. Something has progressed, something has been even lost or subtracted from your life in the last year, the last couple of years. Um I I won't delve into this, but I I know some of the feeling of that. Um I've twice been diagnosed with cancer and have walked to a church service feeling completely opposite of what I felt the week before, because real things have happened in my life. Um our church family, city like Bennington, has had tragedies strike our church, where people who were with us one moment we lost, and we're now doing a funeral for someone we never thought we would be. Um I'm just I'm just letting you know, like that this is this is life. If you haven't already experienced this as a church, um for a lot of people, you you you come in here and and if you were to be honest, life does not feel totally stable. There is not just a sound peace and tranquility that marks you and your mind and what's ruminating in your mind today. Maybe there's some kind of factor that you were unknowingly trusting in. And when it collapsed, it changed in your life. It exposed that thing. And if something didn't plan out or pan out the way that you wanted, here you are. If I could just offer one what I think is a counterintuitive encouragement to you, it's one that I need often. It's a sobering reality. It's a humbling reality. Here it is. You are not the main character in your life. You're not the center of your life. Your life has never revolved or oriented around you. All of life finds its meaning and its purpose and its significance and its substance in God. The book of Colossians says that about Jesus, all things were created by him, through him, unto him. All of life is bound up in Jesus. There's something so comforting about that. When you're not the main character, but Jesus is the main character of your story. And to be honest, we weren't made to trust in us or trust in our circumstances. We weren't made for that. We were made to belong to and trust the living God. And this is a verse in scripture that's just reminding the people of God look up and see. I mean, look at Mount Zion. Look up and see what represents the permanence belonging to God's promises. And throughout Scripture, Zion becomes the symbol of God's coming kingdom, of a coming king who will be unshakable and unstoppable. We know that king to be Jesus. We know that this coming kingdom is going to reach its fulfillment in the person and work of Christ, both in his first coming to forgive sin and in his second coming to forever establish his kingdom. Christians, let me just talk to you on this side of Jesus' life and his death, and his resurrection, his defeat of death. On this side of that, while life is ever changing, when we fall into sin, maybe our passion for God wanes, our living on mission doles, our health declines, something happens to someone we love, things change. Things change. We have to make the daily decision. It's actually a choice. We have to command our own heart to trust that the gospel of Jesus Christ does not change. It doesn't change. Our feet really are on solid ground. You may feel feel unstable, but let me just tell you something. If you have bowed your knee to Jesus and you've trusted him for the forgiveness of your sin, you believe his shed blood was enough to atone for you. You've given your life, you've transferred ownership of your life from you to him. You're a child of God. And I just want to declare good news. God loves you, he chose you, he really does adopt you, delight in you, accept you, forgive you, approve of you, makes his home in you. He's got a perfect, sovereign plan for you. Here's the thing though, the first six words of that first verse are the point. All of this is only for those who trust in the Lord. I love Isaiah 26, 3. It says, you keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you. You keep in perfect peace the person whose mind is stayed on you. I've held on to that, I've I've I've clung to that, that's ministered to me. Are you trusting in the Lord today? Is all of your trust for every point of provision in your life, all the needs that you have, like is your trust bound up in the Lord? To where the the picture is like a mountain. The wind and the rain can come, but child of God, you will be like an immovable mountain. That's really, really good news in an unstable world. You can receive stability. What a promise. Verse 2 talks about security. Says, as the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people from this time forth and forevermore. Mount Zion is the, is not the highest place of elevation in that area. In fact, the Mount of Olives, Mount Scopus, those are among other peaks that rise up above Mount Zion. So actually, when you take a pilgrimage to this city, these people would have seen, here's Mount Zion, and then they would have seen surrounding ridges that are higher than that. And it just geographically, again, it gives this picture of like if I'm there, if I'm where God's presence is, if I'm trusting in his promises, that then the Lord is gonna surround me like Jerusalem itself is surrounded. So the pilgrims would actually see this as they approach Jerusalem. They're literally walking between hills that wrap around this city. I want you to imagine singing. I'm not gonna sing. I want you to imagine singing. Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion. I want you to imagine sweating and walking, and the kids are running ahead, and you're maybe taking a break, and you're thinking about where you're headed on this pilgrimage, as the mountains surround Jerusalem. Think about singing that while you're looking at these mountains, so the Lord surrounds his people. Imagine a Jewish father bringing his children to Jerusalem. Maybe he's taxed heavily by a foreign government, maybe his crops barely survived. There's bandits and thieves and attackers along the road and along the journey. Maybe some friends have compromised with the pagan culture, and he wonders if God even still remembers Israel. And then Jerusalem appears. He starts to see the city on the horizon. He sees the mountains surrounding the city, and everybody starts singing, and suddenly this is not abstract theology. Suddenly the landscape is preaching the truth to him. The geography becomes a reminder in this man's heart that God is surrounding and encircling him. And I believe that today in Christ Jesus, we can say the same thing. We are surrounded, encircled by God. Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. Not only that, but we're safe. Christians, you know you're safe. I mean it. No matter what, you are safe. You are secure because God's mighty hand is on you and on your life from now into eternity. Twice the text says, forever. From this time, forevermore. A couple ladies in our um church that by God's providence this last week I was meeting with. Just doing some uh pastoral care, just checking in. Both of them, their late husbands, funerals, I officiated. So these are these are widows. And I'm sitting down across the table with them, and I just want their story I'm gonna share in like one minute to be a testimony to you. One of them was diagnosed over 10 years ago with terminal cancer, has undergone like craniotomies, every kind of thing. Cancer spread all through her body. She was told over and over again, you you don't have much time, you don't have much time, you don't have much time. She just kept going, going, going, and going. Her family, her husband, her five children are spending a lot of this time praying, of course, for her healing, but soberly preparing for her to be gone. And then her husband has a stroke and passes away. She's left a widow, five children. They've spent years preparing for her passing, he passes. And she is one of the most joyful women that I've ever met in my life. One of the things she always preaches to herself over and over again is Lord, I may not be able to trace your hand, but I will always trust your heart. I know your character, God. I trust you. And it's because she knows Jesus. She knows that, as the Psalm says, God is good and He only does good. And the way that these people would march toward Jerusalem and see the Holy City today, as New Testament Christians, we look at Calvary. We look at the cross of Jesus Christ. We see God made a promise to save and then came and took on flesh and lived the life that we failed to live so that he could go die a death as our substitute in our place. And we can be reconciled to God and have a relationship with him. We could know his power. We could walk in friendship with him. We could have union with Christ. Sat down with another lady this week who married to a guy for near 30 years and he passed away from cancer. She remarried. Married for five years. That guy had a heart attack. Passed away, twice widowed, just learned that she has her own cancer diagnosis. And I'm sitting across the table from her. You know what she's asking me? Help me find purpose in this chapter of my life. How can God use me in a city like Bennington? Who can I mentor? Who can I train? And when I ask her, what is it that just keeps you going? She says, I just trust him. I trust him. I've never not trusted God. John 10, 27, the Lord Jesus Himself. I've given eternal life to you. No one can take you and snatch you from my hand. I will hold you. These women know a God who draws near, a God who pursues, a God who is one who holds, a God who is one who keeps, a God who gives his people security, that they do not ever have to question. So I just want to ask this morning: do you know that God surrounds you? Do you know that you know, that you know that God is with you, that you are safe with him? Did you know that God draws near and surrounds the anxious person and the grieving family and the person who just got bad news and the person facing uncertainty and the struggling marriage? What about the church that faces opposition? God surrounds. You may feel surrounded by problems right now. Satan may be tempting you, the world may be rejecting you. Suffering may be hurting you, but I just want to remind you if you are in Christ and you're united to Jesus and your faith is in him, here's the truth. By the authority of God's word and because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, you will not be consumed. You will not be destroyed. It will be good for you forevermore. Trust in the Lord because you can receive security. You get stability from God, you get security from God. Psalm also shows us God's assurance. Verse 3 it says, For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous, lest the righteous stretch out their hands to do wrong. Do good, O Lord, to those who are good, and to those who are, don't miss this harbor, upright in their hearts. But those who turn aside to their crooked ways, the Lord will lead away with evildoers. The psalmist. He writes about the scepter of wickedness. Context would tell us that that is oppressive rule. And it may be, we honestly don't know the specific context of Psalm 125, but it may be, likely is the oppressive rule of another nation. It might be the rule of God's own people that have been raised up to lead the people of Israel, and instead they abuse that authority, they throw away God's word, they prop up idols, they lead the people astray. The same language, scepter of wickedness, is used to describe in the prophet of Isaiah the rule of Assyria and Babylon, two nations that conquered and controlled Israel. That's Old Testament history. Then the Psalm says something really surprising. Don't let the scepter of wickedness rule, lest the righteous stretch out their hands to do wrong. So what that's teaching us, what that little segment right there is showing us, is that the psalmist is recognizing a temptation. When godlessness, spiritual darkness, evil worldliness seem to be successful in our life, there is going to be an ever-present temptation for God's people to assimilate, to compromise. The scepter of the wicked, the power of darkness and evil, actually begins to become an influence. And so it begins to misplace our trust. We stop trusting in God because we don't believe that trust in Him is going to bring us through something. And we start believing the lie, that there are better alternatives and other ways, and we can begin to compromise and walk in what the psalmist calls the crooked ways. It says, Do good, O Lord, to those who are upright in heart. That phrase, upright in heart, more literally means straight of heart. And if you're wondering, what does it mean to be straight of heart? It's the same thing as verse one. It's to trust in the Lord. Do good and be upright of heart is not just be a righteous person to earn something from God. It's saying it's a heart matter. A person fundamentally in their heart trusts God or doesn't. And so in a text like this, the psalmist is wanting to make a precious promise from God that evil, just want to remind you, evil is temporary. Darkness in our world is temporary. And so, Christian, don't lose sight. Don't compromise. Don't grow weary of doing good. Instead, walk with assurance. And maybe you're asking right now, what assurance? Assurance of what? What assurance is that? I would just call it gospel assurance. Let me press in here. Zion. Mount Zion. Both a real place in Israel's history. The church, it's also a theological symbol. It's pointing to God's coming kingdom, and it's pointing towards something greater and something final. Something that should be really good news for everyone in this room, because through Jesus in Hebrews 12, we learn that believers come to a heavenly Mount Zion, and we receive from God. This is just crazy to think about. We receive from God an unshakable kingdom with an unstoppable, good, just king, Jesus. And in the book of Revelation 21 and 22, the new Jerusalem, where God's presence permanently dwells with his people, is a place with no more crying, no more pain, no more presence of sin. Hard to even think about that or fathom that kind of reality, but that's the good promise that God makes to his people. And we're all moving toward that. Why? Why can we be confident that for a Christian, that's the end? That's the finality. That's the ultimate reality. Well, it's because Jesus Christ and his love and his grace and his mercy, he stepped into human history, into our broken world, and he faced temptation. He faced the temptation to trust in a lot of other things, and he never sinned. Scripture literally says Jesus fully entrusted himself to the Father. You want to talk about trust? Trusting in the Father. Jesus fully entrusted himself. He actually says, My life is not taken from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I give my life as a ransom for many. Then he rises from the grave after he says he's going to defeat death, and he does it. He goes to the grave and then he comes back to life and says, I have all authority in heaven and on earth. Scripture says everything is subject to him. All things are going to culminate in him. And so listen, we don't have an escapist theology. Christians, that's not in our Bible. There's no way that we can move away from the hard things in this world. Let me just give you assurance here that actually, I want to say it this way. The assurance that God gives, it starts with a bad and then moves to a really, really good. Okay? Here's what I want to assure you of today. Something you never thought you'd hear from a pastor, perhaps. You will be shaken, and you will be struck down, and you will suffer, and you will face trials, and you will face loss and grief, and you will be under the cloud of mortality as the Bible describes. You will sojourn through a dark world groaning for redemption. The church, you will have that redemption. Evil does not get the final word. Satan does not get the final word. Sin doesn't get the final word. Death does not get the final word. Jesus Christ gets the final word. Here's what the world needs, Harbor. You're a young church plant. Each of you show up for different reasons, different motivations. The world around you, the county you're in, the community you're in, the place you work, the friends you have, you know what they need? They need people who are stable people, secure people, assured people. The world needs calm people in the middle of chaos and non-anxious people in the middle of uncertainty. The world needs exhale people when everyone is holding their breath. No, not you, Christian. No, no, no, no, not the people of God. We know a rock. We know a redeemer. We know a defender. We know a rescuer. We know the king of all kings, the Lord of all lords, who is coming again for his church. We do not fear, though the earth give way. Trust in the Lord, and you will be as immovable as Mount Zion. That's what it looks like to have an upright heart, a straight heart that trusts God. Let me close with the final declaration of the text. It's a declaration, one word. Peace. The very last phrase, Psalm 125, 5. Peace be upon Israel. Now, this is a promise that when Jesus came would expand beyond Israel. That's why most of the people in the room today know and love and follow Jesus. It's because the good news of the gospel has gone out to every tribe and nation and tongue, and we're praying that it goes out to more and more and more, and it spans the globe, and the knowledge of God covers the earth like the waters cover the sea. The peace in the Hebrew is shalom, and it means more than the absence of conflict, it means wholeness, restoration and healing, well-being, God's blessing. To my friend in the room today, who has not yet believed and trusted in Jesus? I don't believe for a second that you would be sitting in this room by accident. That's not the God I believe in. I don't believe for a second that there's not purpose for you being here. And I just want to ask you, do you actually have peace? Sure peace, stable peace, secure peace? What is your life right now actually standing on? Who or what are you ultimately trusting in? Is it something that can change? Something like your success or a particular relationship or your financial situation or your reputation or your possessions or your ability to control your own future, which is a false reality. Or are you trusting in the Lord? Jesus Christ invites you today to stop carrying the weight of making yourself secure and to actually place your life completely in his more than capable hands. And if you've never trusted Christ, he just calls you to come to him, to turn from sin, to believe that he died and rose again, to receive new life and forgiveness that he has for you. And so here's my appeal. Here's my appeal. Come and rest in Jesus. Come and rest in Jesus. Come and rest in Jesus once and for all. God is the rock of his people, he's a refuge. Trust that Jesus can forgive your sin. Trust that Jesus can make you new. Trust that Jesus can break the power of sin and addiction and greed and lust and all the powers of darkness, the things you may call demons in your life. Trust that Jesus has never met a power that he cannot overcome. Trust that Jesus can restore broken things in your life. Because harbor those who trust in the Lord receive stability and security and assurance and peace forever. They cannot be moved. Would you pray with me? God, I simply ask that today your word would minister to believers in the room toward an unshakable life built on confidence in you. I ask for the courage today to repent of things we've put our faith and our trust in that are not worthy of our trust. And God, I do ask that you would build in this church lives that this community is witness to. Lives that sing this song while in the middle of difficulty, while in the middle of trials, while in the middle of a fallen, broken world. Song that says those who trust in the Lord cannot be moved. And we thank you for this gift and this promise in the name of Jesus Christ. All God's people said.

unknown 38:38

Amen.