It is common for each of us to turn to God when we are in trouble or in dire need. Sadly, for many, prayer has come to mean little more than making our needs known to Him and asking Him to supply our daily necessities, perhaps echoing Jesus’ teaching to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). At times, we see God as a provider and hand Him a long list of requirements. At other times, we want Him to be our enforcer, someone who will protect us by striking down our enemies. Sometimes we treat Him as a banker who keeps our money safe and pays interest on it, or as a doctor who will deal with all our health problems and spare us the hospital bill. Even when we seek Him as our deliverer, it is, sadly, not from our sin. Instead, we ask to be delivered from evil spirits that were attracted to us by our own evil desires and fantasies.
To put an end to this approach and begin a new journey, this Psalm teaches us what our first cry should be as we start walking in the footsteps of Jesus, the Way. It is the first of the Songs of Ascents and therefore plays a vital role in the life of every believer who wants to begin the journey with Jesus. In it, the Psalmist expresses his satisfaction at having called on God in his distress and received an answer from Him.
Save Me From Lying Lips
I call on the LORD in my distress, and he answers me.
Save me, LORD, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues.
What will he do to you, and what more besides,
you deceitful tongue?
He will punish you with a warrior’s sharp arrows,
with burning coals of the broom bush.
Psalm 120:1-4 (NIV)
Beyond the reasons already given for calling on God, the Psalmist faced a different situation: he recognised that he was living among lying lips. Isaiah recognised the same thing when he stood in the presence of God (Isaiah 6:5). Such discernment is possible only there. Apart from Him, we cannot see ourselves in this dreadful state; instead, we assume it is common and normal for everyone. Have we ever realised that we are living among deceitful tongues?
Like the Psalmist, we should call on God to save us from lying lips and deceitful tongues. Through the prophet Isaiah, God warned us of the consequences of hiding behind lies instead of coming to Him truthfully (Isaiah 28:15,18). God does not ask us to fake our righteousness. He asks us to confess our unrighteousness honestly, so that He can make us righteous with the righteousness of His Son, Jesus. Yet within religious settings, people try to prove themselves holier than others and fail to acknowledge or confess their own shortcomings.
In one parable, Jesus exposed the deceit prevalent in the church and called us into His presence, even if that means stepping outside it. Inside the temple, the Pharisee could not admit his shortcomings for fear of what his fellow worshippers would think, so he recited every deed of his own and counted it towards his righteousness. The tax collector, free of such peer pressure, stood at a distance, and from there he could recognise his sin in the presence of God, who is near to each one of us. Are we suffocating within our fellowship, unable to breathe the air of His Spirit, and covering ourselves with lies that we know have nothing to do with our salvation?
Here lies our blind spot: we too follow lies, yet we pray for God to punish the deceitful tongues. In doing so, we keep wrongdoers from experiencing God’s love, threatening them as though they were about to be consumed by His wrath. God has set us apart from the lies of this world so that we may shine for Him, imparting the truth of His Word to those who do not yet know it.
How Long Have We Lived In Lies?
Woe to me that I dwell in Meshek,
that I live among the tents of Kedar!
Too long have I lived among those who hate peace.
I am for peace; but when I speak, they are for war.
Psalms 120:5-7 (NIV)
Atmospheric pressure is measured with a mercury barometer, and its units are hectopascals (hPa) or millibars (mb). In the same way, the spiritual atmosphere of our fellowships can be measured: the response we receive when we speak peace is the barometer that tells us whether the place where we dwell is fit or unfit for us. When a person has the Holy Spirit within, He gives that person understanding and clarity regarding His instructions. But if we are influenced by spirits other than the Holy Spirit, we lack understanding, and even comforting words feel like a spear piercing our hearts.
The barometer reads the atmosphere and guilt is what raises the reading. The guilt we carry is the unit of measurement, and as it increases, we misunderstand every word spoken by others, even when it is well intended. It also distorts the truth and the love of God contained in His Word and forces us to view everything negatively, so we train ourselves to remain in the darkest places. Because our guilt keeps increasing, we cling to the middle portion of Jesus’ words, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). We fail to grasp the first portion, about His peace, and never gather the courage to understand the last portion, how Jesus has overcome those troubles, or to venture into that territory.
Instead of receiving comfort and peace, our hearts are stirred up by the devil and end in indignation. A fitting example is the man born blind, who shared his experience and acknowledged that Jesus had come from God. The Pharisees became angry and threw him out of the synagogue (John 9:22-34). The Scriptures on which they meditated day and night could not help them understand Jesus, the Son of God, whom the prophets had foretold in detail. The lesson is that even with the Word of God, understanding depends on the spirit within us, and because the Word of God is truth, lying spirits cannot understand it. Here again we see that there was no place for the Word of God inside the synagogue, and the one who truly experienced its healing and transforming power was forced to leave. Remarkably, as soon as they threw him out, Jesus came, met the man who had been born anew, and embraced him.
It is time for us to evaluate how much time we are spending among deceitful tongues and to identify what keeps us there. The reason is that we value the human rules taught by religious leaders and never incline our ears to God (Isaiah 29:13). When we receive hatred and false accusations in response to speaking the truth and doing good to others, it is a signal to leave them and run swiftly to God our Father, where we will find peace. There He will shape our hearts to listen to and understand His comforting and true words, thereby saving us from the deceitful tongues.
Loving Heavenly Father, help us to discover our sin in Your mighty presence and to leave it aside, so that we may begin our new journey and march forward in Your Way. Hear our first cry and keep us safe from the alluring lies of this world. Amen.
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