Over the weekend Lili and I sat down with a couple for lunch after the morning service at First Baptist Church in Paducah, KY and had a very interesting and encouraging conversation about adoption. They were talking about how in the beginning, everything seemed pretty clear cut. They decided they wanted to adopt a child from Guatemala, knew another couple who had just adopted from the same area through the same agency, and trusted that God would provide for them if this was indeed his will. Yes, they would have to travel. Yes, the adoption was going to cost them a good bit of money. And yes there would be some challenges to overcome. But they knew all that, and had battled through their fears and doubts to the point of trusting God to meet their needs.
However, if I fast-forward their story a bit, at one point it looked like the Guatamelan government was not going to let them leave the country after they had unexpectedly spent five months in the country, spent well over a hundred thousand dollars, and had their lives threatened by some criminals in the area. Needless to say, their clear belief that God could meet their needs in order to adopt this child was challenged more in the midst of that moment than it was when they were just sitting around their kitchen table deciding to enter this process, months earlier.
Yet that’s the way a number of beliefs are in the Christian life. I remember Bill Mounce once saying at Union that you better settle in your heart that God is sovereign now before you’ve had your third miscarriage in a row and lost your job right before Christmas. Mounce is right, and this morning we have an opportunity to let a truth settle into our hearts that is going to be challenged by our circumstances. Even as this couple in Guatemala had to look through the darkness of their circumstances again and again to remind themselves of the truth they had clearly confessed and believed in times when they were seeing more clearly, so it is my hope that Psalm 125 might prove to be a good reminder of some truths that we may indeed have a harder time seeing when we find ourselves walking through dark and difficult times. My hope is that we might settle these truths in our hearts today so that we might remember these things when difficulties come, so that these truths might serve as an anchor for our souls.
And for those who are walking through great difficulty and darkness at this very moment, I pray that this might be a moment where you can pause before the Lord, have your vision cleared, and be reminded of some truths that might serve to uphold you as you walk through this difficult time. Therefore, with that, let’s turn to look at Psalm 125.
The psalm itself is brief, consisting of only five verses. And it’s mainly instructional in that four of the five verses are informative. That is, the psalm tells us something; it teaches us some fact. The only exception is verse 4, where the psalmist prays that God would do good to those who are upright in their hearts. Then, however, he turns right back to providing information for the reader before finally concluding with the declaration, “Peace be upon Israel.”
Therefore, because the psalm is mostly informative in its nature, I want simply to highlight for us the truths this psalm is declaring and also draw a point of instruction for us from the psalmist’s prayer in verse 4. Therefore, with that, we can see from verses 1-2 that the psalmist wants the readers to know the security and protection those who trust in the Lord have.
The psalmist writes in verses 1-2, “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.”
The image which the psalmist paints here is one of security. Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion which cannot be moved by abides forever. This is clearly a note of stability. The Lord has fixed his people; they cannot be moved. Those who trust in the Lord and are positioned in him are not able to be moved from that. Then, he adds that the Lord surrounds his people like the mountains surround Jerusalem.
What this means is that there is a security and protection from the Lord that Christians have that unbelievers don’t. We are secure. We are surrounded by the Lord like the mountains surround Jerusalem. It means that right now, in your life, God himself is protecting you and holding you secure.
Now, instantly when we hear that, perhaps it brings more questions than answers. Perhaps this produces more of a sense of confusion in our hearts than praise. After all, some of us have been abused in about every way imaginable. Some of you grew up in situations that you would hate to think of anyone ever having to live through. We have members in this congregation who have cancer. We have family struggles. We’ve been hurt by our own decisions, even. So, right off the bat, perhaps we hear these verses and say, “This cannot mean what it says. That declaration simply does not line up with reality.” So, what then does this text mean?
It doesn’t mean that we will avoid suffering and pain if only we will trust in God. I think we all know better than that simply by life. Additionally, the Lord himself has promised us suffering. When Paul was called to be an apostle, the Lord told Ananias that he would show Paul what things he must suffer for his name’s sake. Paul was chosen to suffer for Christ’s sake. Additionally, much of the book of 1 Peter is written instructing us concerning how to respond to suffering, especially for that suffering that comes because of our righteous living. Furthermore, we see the book of Job where the Lord not only permitted the suffering that came to Job and his family but was the one who said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth …” (Job 1:8), a statement that ultimately led to Satan requesting permission to attack Job and his family. And this is not something that caught the Lord off guard. That is, it’s not as if God brought Job to Satan’s attention but then was surprised that Satan was going to request to attack him.
So what do these verses mean when we consider all of these verses and episodes in our own lives and could multiply them in clearly showing that those who trust in the Lord do suffer, sometimes severely?
Again, we could say that it means something about the church in some sense, but not about individual believers. After all, isn’t that what we are sometimes tempted to do, to distance these promises from us and allow them not to be something that we take to heart as if they apply to us? But I don’t think this works because the psalm itself says that this is true of God’s people – of “those who trust in the LORD.” That means everyone who trusts in the Lord cannot be moved and is surrounded by the Lord like the mountains surround Jerusalem.
I think these first two verses, then, mean at least two things: 1) nothing comes to us except that it first is measured out in God’s hands, and 2) that God will not allow anything to come to his children that would ultimately lead them to fall away from him.
Now, let me take this first one and address it. Nothing comes to us except that it is measured out by God. I think that is the logic of verse 2. If God surrounds us like the mountains surround Jerusalem, then just as nothing can come into Jerusalem without passing through the mountains, so nothing can come to us except that it is measured out by God. And don’t we see the same thing with Job? Satan has to be granted permission to attack Job, and along the way God tells him, you can do this but not that. God was measuring out Satan’s attacks on Job, permitting certain things and forbidding others.
So, again, evil things will happen, and evil people will make significant and responsible decisions that will hurt you. But God measures it out. God measures out that which comes to you. Let me say that one more time a bit differently, the God who sent his own Son to die in order to pay for your sins so that you might be with him forever, he measures out that which comes to you. This should be a comfort to us in the midst of our pain. It doesn’t mean that we will all of the sudden say, “Oh, I get it, this suffering is great.” It’s not great. We wouldn’t have suffering if we didn’t live in a fallen world. But we can look and say, “I don’t understand my pain and agony, but I know that it has been measured out by a God who has demonstrated his love for me in a more powerful way that anyone else whom I have ever known.” This is how Spurgeon comforted himself in his suffering. He wrote, “It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.”
Now, again, we might say, “Even if I know God has measured out my suffering, it still feels like it’s going to crush me? So, what comfort is there in a pain that is measured out by God that destroys us?” Well, that brings us to the second aspect of what this text means, that is, God will not allow anything to come to us that will lead us to fall away from him. Or let me put it a bit differently and merge this truth into the overall second point for us.
See, one reason that I think the meaning of the first two verses, in part, is that God will not allow anything come to you that would press you so much that you would deny him or fall away from him is because verse 3 follows verses 1-2. And verse 3 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.”
Now, catch that. The scepter of wickedness will come to the land. That is, God’s people will suffer, even at the hands of the wicked. But God will not let it rest there for such a time or in such a weight that we would forsake him. God understands that we are weak. He knows that we are feeble. And it is not an empty symbol that God is measuring out your suffering as it comes to you. It means that God, knowing that there is only so much suffering or temptation we can take before we are pressed to stretch out our hands to do wrong and sin and forsake the Lord, will not let temptation come to you that is too strong for you to bear.
It doesn’t mean that you won’t have intense suffering and temptation. It does mean, though, that God will not give you more than you can handle, and it means, I believe, that God will give you rich grace to deal with deep and dark suffering and temptation. Remember God did not remove the thorn from Paul’s flesh but did tell him that he had given him grace sufficient for it.
But, and this is what you can know and rest on, God will not allow you to face temptation so strong and suffering so deep that it will drive you to forsake him. He knows you. He knows the grace you need. And in that sense, you are secure and can rest and trust in God. I don’t know what tomorrow holds for any of us, but I do not that if you are trusting in Christ’s work as your hope for salvation, that God will not allow anything to come to you that would press you to fall away. He will not allow any temptation to come to you without a way to escape or bear it.
So, so far, we see that we are secure and protected by God and that one of the key realities we can rest in, therefore, is that God will not allow temptation and suffering to the point that we are pressed to fall away from him. We see those sweet truths in the first three verses.
Yet, verse 4 is odd in that the psalmist no longer is giving us instruction or providing information. Rather, he prays, “Do good, O LORD, to those who are good, and to those who are upright in their hearts!” So, how does that verse function? What does that verse teach? I think it teaches us this: one of the means God uses to preserve and uphold his children is the prayers of his people.
See, I think that’s what happens in verse 4. The truths in verses 1-3 lead the psalmist to prayer. And this is not uncommon in the Scripture. In Ephesians 3, for example, after Paul has declared that the Ephesian believers have been chosen by God before the foundation of the world and have been sealed by his Spirit until they should dwell with Christ forever, says that he bows his knees and prays for them to be strengthened in their inner man, to grow in faith, etc. That is, Paul says, “Because I know God will do this, I pray to that end.” That is, what I think we are seeing in verse 4. The psalmist declares what God does in believers’ lives and then prays to that end. That is, he knows that one way God does this is through the prayers of his people.
What this means for us is that we do not look at our brothers and sisters in pain and suffering and say, “Whew, I’m thankful I don’t have to be involved in their lives or spend my precious time in prayer for them because God has already told us that he will only let so much come on them lest they should fall away from him.” We can do that no more than we can say in any way allow our understanding of God’s sovereignty to eliminate our need to responsibly obey his commands.
Rather, we see one another in suffering and pain and in great temptation, and we say, “I will be a means that God will use to uphold and preserve his child.” We do this in small windows all the time when someone has surgery or a family member die, and we prepare meals for them for a week. That’s a good thing, but that’s the tip of the iceberg. As members of a church, we must remember that we have linked arms with every other member, saying that we will fight for all of us to reach the celestial city (to borrow an image from John Bunyan). That means, we do not simply walk alongside one another, encourage one another, and pray for one another in the short term. We continue to do that throughout our struggles. We pray for one another. We consider and ask what needs there are. When Lili and I lived in the house prior to the one we live in now, we lived next door to a lady whose husband had left, and she had young sons. And I remember her saying to me one day, “I know someone from your church because he comes and spends time playing basketball with my son and just being with him, discipling him.” That is the means that God often uses to uphold his people, to give them the grace to keep them from falling away – it is the service of ministry of his people, including their sacrificial service and prayer.
So, God measures out our struggles and will not allow our temptations or struggles to be such that they drive us to fall away from him. And, further, one means he uses to uphold and preserve his children are the prayers and acts of service from other believers. What a kind God we serve and what a word of encouragement and comfort. Yet, the psalm ends with a warning.
Perhaps there may be some who hear this message and think, “Wow, what security we have,” and therefore think they will not guard against evil or will perhaps pursue sin without the fear they once had. Well, the text then ends with a warning: “But those who turn aside to their crooked ways the Lord will lead away with evildoers” (5).
That is, one of the ways that we manifest that we really are children of God is by continuing to turn away from evil and trusting in the Lord. Therefore, do not today think this text is giving you some kind of security in your sin so that you are led to run into sin. The text says, “Listen, if you do that, you will be judged.” John says in 1 John 2:19, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”
That is, there will be some who walk away because they were never of those who truly know Christ, and they will be judged. So, be warned today if you hear this message and somehow are forming schemes in your heart to want to sin against God. Hear the warning of verse 5.
But I trust that most of you do not have that response. Rather, you have hearts that want to obey the Lord, even through your struggles. In fact, you hear that warning and your heart affirms again, “I want to obey the Lord, though, not run into sin.” So, to you, I leave you with the last word of the psalm: “Peace.”
You will walk through deep, dark, and difficult struggles and temptations, but know that God has measured them out, that he will not allow them to be such that you are driven to forsake him, that God’s people are praying for you and long to serve you, and that one day you will struggle and suffer no more. One day there will be perfect peace. Until then, we walk with trust in our great God. May we then delight in him as we come to the table. Amen.