Ascent #7 - Ascend for Endurance (Dr. Kurt Bjorklund)

Senior Pastor Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues the message series "Ascent" exploring Psalms 120–134. Together, we’ll reflect on the journey of rising—whether in personal growth, spiritual depth, or relational connection—embracing challenges, celebrating triumphs, and discovering deeper lessons along the way.

Message Transcript - https://www.orchardhillchurch.com/blog-post/2025/2/17/ascent-7-ascend-for-endurance

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Transcript

Good morning. It's great to be together, and it's good just to be back with you. As we missed the last couple of weekends, at least being on stage a couple weekends ago, I ended up catching one of those bugs that had been going around. I didn't think anybody wanted that. So, reached out to Terry Thomas, I think, on Thursday of that week, and Terry came in, and as always, Terry is entertaining and insightful, and he was both once again. And then had a chance to plan just to have been away last weekend. Bryce did a great job here, Brady in Butler, Chile, and Bridgeville, Nate in the Strip District, Jake in the Chapel. We're just fortunate as a church to have just so many people who can communicate clearly and well the word of the Lord here together. 

And today we're continuing our series in the Psalm of Ascent, Psalms of Ascent. So the Psalms of Ascent are Psalm 120 through 134, and there's a little phrase at the top that says “Psalm of Ascent”. And probably what this was all about was that as the people were compelled to go to Jerusalem, to the temple three times a year for different festivals, these Psalms would have been sung or recited as they made their pilgrimage together to Jerusalem. And today we're going to talk a little bit about endurance. 

And you might say, well, how does endurance come out of one of these Psalms? Well, this Psalm ,131, says “A Psalm of Ascents”, and then it says “of David”. Now, David was one of the kings of Israel, and we're told in 2 Samuel 7 that one of the things David wanted to do was build the temple, that this was something he felt compelled to do, drawn to do, and he had spent a lot of time raising the funds, getting all ready to build the temple. It was something God had asked the people to do. And yet, David didn't get to build the temple. 

And we're told in Kings that he wasn't able to build the temple in part because he was a man of war. But David never knew that. He just knew that the answer was no, that he felt drawn to do something, wanted to do something, and yet he didn't get to do it. And so Solomon, his son, built the temple. That's why it's called Solomon's Temple. But here, this little Psalm of David shows up in what the people would have recited as they were going up to the temple.  

Now, here's a rendition of the temple, and this is, you know, a rendition. So who knows exactly what it was like? But the idea is this is a grand structure in any era, especially in that time. And when the people arrived, they would have had, even if they've seen it before, this moment of going, whoa, we're here. But just before they arrived, they would have recited this Psalm of David, saying, I'm not too proud, I'm not haughty, I don't concern myself with things too great for me. Why was this part of what they were to recite? And I would suggest that part of it is because disappointment is part of all of our journeys.  

Sometimes we have disappointments that seem trivial. Like, we're disappointed because our flight gets delayed when we're going somewhere that's maybe nice, and we're like, ah, come on. And some of us are disappointed because we don't have a flight going anywhere nice, and other people do, and we're just like, ah, come on. Or we're disappointed that the weather hasn't changed even a little bit here yet this winter. And then we have more significant disappointments. Some of us are disappointed because we got married thinking that marriage would satisfy us in a deep and abiding sense, and it hasn't. Or we didn't find the marriage at the timeline that we thought we would, or we wanted that baby and the baby didn't come. Or we had hoped that by a certain point our career would have brought us more satisfaction. Or we poured into our kids and our kids ended up making some choices that we thought weren't awesome. And there's a little bit of a sense of disappointment. And sometimes that disappointment becomes not just things like that, but it becomes spiritual, because we start to say, God, I've tried to follow you. I've tried to do what you want me to do, and this is what happens.  

And when we get there, there's a temptation not to endure, not to continue. Maybe we just turn our back altogether for a season, maybe for a long time. Or maybe it's more the thing that people have talked about in recent days, quiet quitting. You've heard this phrase for people at work where they don't actually quit. They go collect a paycheck, but they do as little as possible in order to just kind of say, I'm going to continue to come, but I'm not going to give myself to this in a whole lot of ways. And here's what some of us do is we have our disappointments maybe with God, and we either quit or we quiet quit instead of saying, I'm going to continue to press on. And for some of us, even just the very hurts that we've had are part of why it's hard maybe to even believe. Maybe we tried faith for a while and that faith just didn't feel like it ever moved the needle in the way that we live. And so the question is, how do we endure when we find ourselves having mixed results or even negative results?  

Eugene Peterson wrote a book on these Psalms that he called “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction”. It's a great title for what this is, because it's easy to follow the Lord, to align our lives with what God wants when things are going well. It is a lot harder to do when things seem to be going in the wrong direction. 

And so what I'd like to do is just simply show you from these Psalms two perspectives and two practices that can help us endure where we are. And again, this can be all kinds of things. Some of us have said, God, I'm going to honor you with my sexuality. And then we end up not being satisfied in that area when we finally meet somebody and get together. Or we say, God, I'm going to give of my resources and the car breaks down, do an expensive repair. I mean, there are a myriad of things that create this kind of disappointment. And so the practices and the perspectives in these Psalms, although they're ancient, are really for any of us who've ever said, I'm going to follow God with my life.  

And the first perspective I'm just simply going to say is that there are things that are beyond me. And the reason I say this is because in Psalm 131 and 132 you get the Psalm of David, 131. And then the second Psalm 132 talks about David. Verse 1: 

“Lord, remember David 
and all his self-denial.”

In other words, God, remember what David did to help this nation get in a position to build the temple, and remember that you promised that he was going to build a temple. In fact, the promise was ultimately that one of his descendants would sit on the throne and would rule forever. In other words, his kingdom would have no end. And the challenge here is as these people come and ascend to Jerusalem and they recite this psalm, David's kingdom did not have no end. David did not always have a descendant on the throne. The throne hasn't been there in perpetuity, meaning there was a disappointment for the people. And now the question becomes again, how do we endure? And it's important to be able to say that sometimes there are things that are beyond us. Psalm 131, verse 1: 

“My heart is not proud, Lord,
my eyes are not haughty...” 

The ESV says: 

“O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; 
my eyes are not raised too high...”

And then he says this. He says: 

“I do not concern myself with great matters 
or things too wonderful for me.”

What he's doing is he's saying, God, there are some things I don't understand. And I'm not so arrogant or proud that I demand an answer. Have you ever heard somebody say, someday when I get to heaven, God's going to need to give me some answers for why things went the way that they went? Now, I understand that, and I think God's big enough to take our questions. And I think that if you ask that kind of with a genuine curiosity, God may even answer you. But if my way of asking that question is to say God's going to have to give me some answers. Do you hear the arrogance in that? Like, the God of the universe needs to tell me why God chose to do things a certain way.  

And yet sometimes that's the mindset. And so to have a perspective that says, there are some things that are too wonderful for me. I'm not proud, I'm not arrogant. What you're doing is you're saying, God knows some things that I don't know. And that is good. I'm going to just give you an illustration of this. This will feel like it's left field, but I'll come back to it in a second.  

So I've been fascinated by this idea of us eliminating Daylight Savings Time. Have you heard this discussion? Okay, and so there's conversation. Should we eliminate Daylight Savings Time? So here's a couple maps. So this is our current scenario in the country. So on the left, this is when you have a sunrise time of 7am or earlier. So when it's dark, you don't. So as you can see, where we live, you get some dark. You get some days where the sunrise is like kind of seven or later. That's called winter here. Okay? That's what we get. And then on the right side are days where you have a reasonable sunset time of 6pm, so that's our current scenario.

On the next map you have this. This is if daylight Savings Time were abolished. So what this means is that there would be a time of the year where the sunrise in most of the country is now earlier, and then later you can see how it gets darker earlier on the other side. And then here's the next one. This is if Daylight Savings Time were always in effect. So in other words, if we didn't move our clocks at all, we always stayed on standard time. Now you can see it's substantially darker in the winter in the morning and then lighter at other times of the year. Now, you're probably thinking already, you've already spent way too much time thinking about this. Well, here's what this means, and this is why this matters to me. So in our winter or in our summer right now, the sun comes up around at the earliest 5:15 in what they call civil twilight. So it isn't the actual sunrise, but when you start getting the daylight hours, okay? If we went on permanent standard time, that would happen at 4:15 in the morning in the summer and you would lose an hour of daylight at night. Now, I don't know about you, but I have a hard time sleeping in already. 4:15 light? I don't want that. Okay? And here's the other problem. If they make it permanent in the winter, our sunrise would move to about 8:45. Again, civil twilight. So, you know, given a little bit of time, but that means you wouldn't get daylight until almost 9am sometimes.  

And I'm thinking, I hope they keep daylight savings for those of us in Pittsburgh. I mean, I see the maps. It looks nice when you look at the map, what it does if you abolish it. But here's my point. This is too wonderful for me, because I can't do anything about it. I mean, I can write my congressman, I can write my senator. I can Google it every now and then to say, what's the status? But if I spend a lot of time thinking about how my life will change if one of these things happens, it doesn't do anything. And what some of us do with our lives spiritually, is we go through our lives saying, God, why did you let this happen? How come it went this way? God, why can't you make it different for me, instead of sometimes just simply saying, God, you have a way of doing things, and there are some things that are beyond me. 

And what we need is what I call this practice, which is in verse 2, which is to quiet our hearts. Verse 2: 

“But I have calmed and quieted myself, 
I am like a weaned child with its mother; 
like a weaned child I am content.”

So when a child is weaned, it goes from being agitated until the mother can comfort the child, to being able to comfort him or herself without the help of the mother. You know how this goes if you've ever had a baby. And so he says, I'm able to comfort myself, because I have not said I'm agitated until I get an answer. Charles Spurgeon, in writing about this, said: 

“It is one of the shortest Psalms to read, but one of the longest to learn.” 

And then in Deuteronomy 29, verse 29, we see this. It says: 

"The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.”

In other words, there are some things that just belong to God. They don't belong to us. There was a movie that came out several years ago now, Bruce Almighty, Evan Almighty, maybe you've seen these. And the premise is that this man gets frustrated with how God is in doing things the way he thinks God should do them. And through a series of events, he gets to answer all the prayers as if he's God. And at first it's like, this is awesome. I have godlike power. And then what happens is, as he starts to hear all the prayers, all the requests, see all of the ways that things need to be balanced, he starts to say, I don't want any part of this. This is way too much for me. And at the end of the movie, to put some words into it, he quiets his heart, his soul, and says, you be God. I don't want to be God anymore. And if we're going to endure, sometimes one of the things that needs to happen is we need to say God, this is beyond me. You're God. 'm not. And I'm glad that you're God and I'm not. And I'm going to quiet my heart and say, there's mystery, there are things that I don't get, and it's okay.  

See, it's not bad to ask. But once we start demanding, we become like the agitated child who can't be calmed down. But when we're weaned, we're able to say, God, this is your thing. It may not be how I would choose to do it, it may not be how I like it, but this is your thing.  

So that's one perspective, one practice, but there's a second one here. And this is basically the idea, the perspective, that God works in his time, not always in ours. I mentioned that David wanted to build the temple and didn't get a chance to. But not only that. The people expected that when this temple was completed that there would be a reign in which Israel and the Jewish people would be able to experience the kingdom of God here and now in a way that would be pervasive, and yet that isn't what happened. Psalm 132 starts with this verse. In verse one: 

“Lord, remember David
and all his self-denial.” 

Remember what David did. Verse 10:  

"For the sake of your servant David, 
 do not reject your anointed one.”

Now why would this language be part of this? They're going up to worship in the temple that's all about the establishment of the kingdom of God. And yet they're talking about the rejection of His anointed one. What they're talking about here is the fact that things have not progressed the way that they anticipated or wanted them to progress. Verse 11, Psalm 132: 

“The Lord swore an oath to David, 
 a sure oath he will not revoke: 
‘One of your own descendants 
I will place on your throne.’”

But there was not always a descendant of David on the throne. But in the New Testament, we're told in Luke 1, verse 69 that Jesus will be the fulfillment of this prophecy and will sit on the throne. Now here's the question again. The people had a delay. Their timing, God's timing. Is Jesus on the throne in Jerusalem today? No. So there's still a delay.  

And here's why this matters. If you understand kind of the flow of how the Bible works, what you have is you have the fall of humanity, the sending of Jesus, the Messiah, the Savior to save people from their sins. He ascends into heaven and then he's going to come back to reign to fulfill this prophecy that one day he will reign on the throne of David in Jerusalem, literally. And what that means is that if you come to faith in Jesus Christ, you can say, my sins have been forgiven. But I anticipate a time when I'll participate in the rule of God. God will work in his time completely and totally.  

Maybe it's a little bit like this. Have you ever been on a plane during a storm where you take off and then you get up above the clouds and all of a sudden you're above the clouds and it's as if there's no storm, as it's as if there's no weather, and then you come back down in and you're in the weather again. Well, if you're ever on a body of water during a storm, what you know is that every little inch of water and progress feels like a battle, and you're in this perspective, and then sometimes there's a plane flying overhead and you're just like, they don't even feel any of this. And maybe, just maybe, if we could see things from God's perspective instead of from ours we'd say, yeah, I'm in the middle of a sea and a storm right now, but there is coming a time when I'll be able to see things as God sees things, and that this is not the end of the story, but God is at work. And so what the perspective is, is to say that God's timing isn't always our timing, that he's still at work.

And I think that this really leads to another practice, which I'm just going to call the practice of hope. Psalm 131, verse 3: 

“Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore.” 

One of the things that we have a hard time doing is hoping directly. In other words, we can't just make ourselves hope directly, but we can hope when we focus on what will be on that flight, if you will. I'm saying there's a storm that I'm in, but there's a perspective that's different that says this is moving somewhere. 

And I want you to see something in the Bible about how things end. Because this idea of Jerusalem and, and somebody reigning in Jerusalem is actually central to the whole story of the Bible. This is Revelation, chapter 21, verses 1 and following. Revelation, end of the Bible, end of the story. Here's what it says: 

“Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away...”

Now, new here in the original language, there are a couple of Greek words that can be used for new. There's new in time and new in like essence or type. This is the word for new in essence, new in type. So he's saying there's a new heaven, new earth, the old one, it's passed away. And then it says: 

“...and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God...”

So what happens in the future is this New Jerusalem comes from God and establishes the kingdom of God. And then it says this: 

"...prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’” 

Then verse four, listen to this: 

“’He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’”

And so the promise is that there will come a day when there will be a new Jerusalem, a new heaven, a new earth, and Christ, the Messiah, who's in the line of David, will rule on this earth, and there will be no more sea, no more death, no more pain, no more mourning, no more crying. In fact, the words that are used here are compelling. When he says there will be no more mourning, it means grief or sadness. No more crying. It talks about a wailing, an almost inconsolable grief. And then when it says pain, it's a word that could mean distress, or it can mean basically an evil. In other words, there won't be any more evil.  

In fact, if you've come to faith in Jesus Christ for your salvation, you can say, in the past, God has freed me from the penalty of sin because I've been declared right before God. In the present, God is delivering me from the power of sin. And in the future, he will deliver me from the very presence of sin. Meaning all of the things that are broken in this world, all of our disappointments, all of the things in which you say, why is it this way?, will one day be things in which God reign will be made right. There will be no more tears.  

And the only way that you and I can live with that kind of hope is to remind ourselves of what is ahead and to remind ourselves of who God is. In fact, in Matthew 13, there's several little parables, but there's two little parables told back to back. One is about a man who finds a buried treasure in a plot of land. And he goes and he sells everything he has so that he can buy the land to get the treasure. And it says he does it with joy. And then there's a sentence right after that, it says, and the kingdom of heaven is like a man who finds a pearl of great value and he goes and sells everything he has to go and buy the pearl. And in both instances the statement is “the kingdom of heaven is like”, in other words, when you and I understand what the kingdom of heaven really is, when it's clear to us, we'll say there's nothing that's worth as much to us as that. 

But the problem a lot of times is in the middle of our day to day lives and existences, we feel like what really matters, what we really need, is what's right in front of us. And so instead of living with hope and endurance, having an endurance that comes from hope, where we quiet our soul and can say, look, there are some things that are beyond me, nd it's okay, because I know that God is working. What we do instead is we say, I'm not sure God is working, therefore I need to figure out how this works. We're agitated and we don't have hope. But hope is what helps us to quiet our soul and then to say, God, I can continue, because I know. I know that this is a pearl of great price. And even if it seems like I'm in the middle of a sea, a storm right now, there's a perspective that's better.  

You know, some of us are here and we're in the middle of a storm right now, and you've been hoping and praying and saying, God, would you work? And it feels like Gods distant. And God may do something now in a miraculous, immediate way, but there may be a way in which God also says, I'm not going to do exactly what you want right now, but I still have this. And will you live with hope even in the midst of what that is? That can be all kinds of things. 

Maybe you've invested in somebody and they've turned your goodwill back against you. Or maybe you've said, God, I'm going to be faithful in this area of my life, and then you look at it and you're just disappointed with the results. Hope says, God, I know you're not done, and I know I don't get it, but I trust that you're God and that you're good and that there's coming a day when you'll make it right.  

Would you just take a moment, bow your heads, close your eyes with me, and let me just ask you right now, what is it that has been your disappointment recently? Maybe toward God even? And can you articulate it even to God in this moment and just say, God, this is what I've been disappointed about.  

Maybe it has to do with your kids, your marriage, your finances, your health. Maybe it has to do with friendships, whatever it is. Are you able to say, God, I don't get it, but I know you're working, therefore I will quiet my soul while I hope in you. Maybe you're here and your idea of Jesus has been, I kind of do some things, and then God gives me some things. But the very way in which Jesus came the first time turns that on its head, because it reminds us that we don't do something to get something. God does something for us, meaning we come into a relationship with the God of the Universe, not because we are good, but because Jesus is good on our behalf. And so you can trust in Jesus to be your Savior today and say, because of that, I know I'll share in the hope.  

And if you believe that maybe for a long time, and yet you still find yourself without hope, I want to just encourage you to come back and say what's ahead and who is God? And because of that, I can live with a bit of hope and I can endure in doing the right thing, seeking God where I am, even if it doesn't feel like the right thing.  

God help us to see as you see and to live with a long obedience in the same direction. And we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. 

Thanks for being here. Have a great week. 

This transcript was automatically generated. Please excuse errors.