Psalm 124

If the Lord had not been on our side—
let Israel say—

if the Lord had not been on our side
when men attacked us,

when their anger flared against us,
they would have swallowed us alive;

the flood would have engulfed us,
the torrent would have swept over us,
5the raging waters would have swept us away.

Praise be to the Lord,
who has not let us be torn by their teeth.

We have escaped like a bird
out of the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken,
and we have escaped.

Our help is in the name of the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

Mark 4:35–41

Jesus Calms the Storm

That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”

He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

Our Help Is in the Name of the Lord

We have been in a sermon series on the so-called Psalms of Ascent, and we’ve heard Psalm 124 this evening in that series of psalms. The Psalms of Ascent are about a journey from a low place to a high place.

In ancient times, when the psalm was written, that would have been a physical journey from the lowlands of Israel, where most of God’s people lived, up into the hill country where Jerusalem was. Then, once you got into Jerusalem, there was another hill to get up — the Temple Mount — and once you were in the temple, you had to walk up some stairs to get to the place of worship. And so that was the ascent which inspired these psalms.

It’s not just physical, though. It is also a symbolic journey of ascent, because ascent — going upwards — symbolises the journey of our Christian lives, as we move from the exile of sin and return to heaven and grow in holiness.

Now, apart from the Bible, I think probably no book has had as profound an effect on English Christianity as this book, The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. The story describes the journey of the main character, Christian, through this life, always heading towards Mount Zion — that is, heaven.

And in this story, the journey of Christian the pilgrim is not straightforward. He gets into a number of threatening and dangerous situations. Psalm 124 is so important because it shows us that our Christian journey is not meant to all be plain sailing.

The psalm describes a time when God’s people Israel were attacked — probably ambushed on their way somewhere. Nobody is completely sure of the event this refers to, but the type of event is clear: a sudden military disaster.

Having described this attack as like almost drowning in overwhelming water, the psalm gives all the praise to God for the deliverance of his people. Clearly, the ambush by Israel’s enemies did not succeed, and God’s people were saved.

And so the psalm reminds us that the shape of the Christian life is not just a constant, smooth upward trajectory. It’s more like a square root symbol, if you can imagine that from maths. There is always a dip down before there is a higher ending.

The Pilgrim’s Progress describes many such instances. The vivid language of raging water in our psalm is used to describe the attack that God’s people suffered, and I think it enables us to relate to the psalm more easily.

Because I expect few of us will ever experience an actual military ambush. But we will experience moments when something in our lives feels like an ambush — a sudden illness, a stressful situation at work, or difficulties in family life.

Then we really can relate to the language of the psalm. It feels like the stress of the situation is water overwhelming us. It feels hard to keep one’s footing on the riverbed. The current seems so strong, and we wonder: Where is God in all this? Why is he not sorting the situation out right now?

In The Pilgrim’s Progress, the main character Christian experiences, at one point in the story, an amazing vision of what heaven is like. It comforts him so much to see this light in the distance.

But shortly after that, he is compelled to descend into the Valley of Humiliation — a word which, in John Bunyan’s time, did not mean humiliation in the sense of embarrassment, but being brought very low. Exactly what we have been thinking about — the lowest point of that square root sign, when we feel at our worst.

And for Christian in the book, to make matters worse, while he is in this valley he is accosted by the evil spirit Apollyon. Apollyon tries to tempt Christian into trusting him, and when Christian resists, the evil angel breaks out into a grievous rage and wrestles Christian to the ground.

We are told this:

Then said Apollyon, “I am sure of thee now,” and with that he had almost pressed Christian to death, so that he began to despair of life. But as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good man, Christian nimbly stretched out his hand for his sword, and caught it, saying, “Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise.” And with that gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that had received his mortal wound. Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” And with that, Apollyon spread forth his dragon wings and sped him away. Then Christian saw him no more.

So in this direst moment, Christian reminds himself of the words of the prophet Micah:

When I fall, I shall arise.

This is that square-root shape. Yes, we go down, but the Lord will bring us up again. This is the shape of the Christian life.

Not that God always immediately rescues us from overwhelming circumstances, but that sooner or later, we shall arise. Overwhelming situations may be short, they may be long, they may continue even unto death.

I myself have been through dark times when I felt overwhelmed, when I felt like God had abandoned me. And yet, to quote Psalm 40:

He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.

When we arise, like in our psalm, we will then praise the Lord who made heaven and earth for his deliverance.

Psalm 40, which I just quoted, mentions the pit of destruction. And indeed, it was out of the City of Destruction that Christian first set forth in Bunyan’s book.

So the first overwhelming situation we each need to make sure we have been lifted from is the pit of spiritual death. All who have not, like Christian in the story, laid their sin at the foot of the cross are spiritually dead.

Jesus’ most important message was the one with which we began our service:

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.

To repent means to turn around towards God and away from ourselves. And it is to go through humiliation, because it is to turn away from trying to control our own lives. It is to agree with God that we are by nature sinners deserving his wrath. It is to accept that the only way to the heavenly city is to let Jesus pull us from the pit, since only he can remove from our backs the weight of sin that keeps us there.

And it does not seem like a pit when you are in it. It just feels like normal life.

At the start of the story, when Christian is still in the City of Destruction, he says, “I want to leave on a journey.” And his friends and family say, “What are you doing? What are you on about? Stay here. Stay with us. Don’t worry about that journey.”

But once you are out, you realise it is the difference between prison and freedom.

Every person who has been born again and become a true Christian will say that the humiliation was worth it a million times over.

Now I am free and truly alive.

So we need to make sure we have been lifted from that pit. If you are not sure whether you have been lifted from it, now is the time to be sure. Do not return home unsure. None of us knows when we will face our maker and judge.

But for those who have been lifted from this pit and are now on the journey to Mount Zion, there will be setbacks in our faith. There will be overwhelming situations.

But this we can always say, as Christian did:

O mine enemy, when I fall, I shall arise.

For:

In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

For our final arrival in eternal glory is not dependent on our strength and effort. It is guaranteed through the conqueror of sin and death, and he has gone ahead of us to prepare a place for us.

Of us, he said:

I will lose none of those the Father has given me.

The wonderful thing about this is that it shows our arising after overwhelming situations is not dependent on our courage — or even on the strength of our faith.

I can personally testify that one can feel abandoned by God and utterly forsaken, and yet still be lifted up.

As our psalm said: