Psalm 120
As we stand on the bottom of the 15 steps that are the 15 Songs of Degrees, the key thought is the cry for deliverance. It is the cry of a believer to the Lord for help, a cry from a heart that wants to be closer to God.

In the Song of Solomon we find a picture of the believer in the Shunamite woman. At the beginning of that book she is one who knows her Lord, the king, the one whom she loves, but she is conscious of her own neglect and the separation between her and her beloved. "My own vineyard," she declares, "have I not kept." It is a story of neglect, but it is also a story of a yearning for the Lord. The Song of Solomon traces her ascent, through various experiences, until she finally knows that full communion with her Lord. It is a going on and a going up to Him. She becomes as one who has hind's feet, as it says in Habakkuk 3 v 19 - that is, she is able to walk in high places. Do we not yearn to be among those that have full communion with God and who are enabled to walk in heavenly places?

There was the awakening of a desire to know the Lord. This is the first step: that realisation of our need as believers for more of the Lord; to realise, perhaps, that we have neglected our own spiritual state. The beginning is that experience of a longing to be where the Lord is and to be in Him. In Psalm 73 vv 24,25 there is a revelation of such a desire: "Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee." Oh, that we might have such a longing in our hearts that cries out to our Lord Jesus and to none else.

Note when the Psalmist cried to the Lord. It was in his distress, a phrase which in Hebrew means "in a tight or narrow place." He discovered that things in life were closing in on him. Does the Lord allow things like that to happen? Yes, He does. In Hebrews 12 it explains that the Lord uses such experiences that we might become partakers of His holiness. In our distress we cry out to Him.

The Lord had brought the Psalmist to a narrow place in his life where he found no way to move. All he could do was to cry out to the Lord in his distress. The Lord brings us to such places that we might at last look upward, get our foot, as it were, on the bottom rung of the ladder and start moving Godward.

As you read this Psalm you realise that the writer is tired with what people have been saying, the deceit and lies. He is tired of being attacked and criticised. He wants to be where the Lord is. Finally, He wants reality. Sometimes it takes a long time to see that in the world around us there is nothing but lies and deceit. The god of this age is a liar. Is that where we seek life? Maybe we think that friends in the world are better than our brothers and sisters in church. Beware! What seems to be friendship in the world is deceitfulness. Even news and current affairs reports in the media are fantasy more than truth. The trouble is that the world thinks it is truth. The only reality is Christ, and yet the world talks about Christ as if He is fantasy. Let us go on to know Him.

Isaiah saw the problem when He saw the Lord, high and lifted up, the Lord at the top and he at the bottom of the ladder. Then he realised how wrong everything down here is. "I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips." It is not so much a matter of getting out of the world, but, rather, getting the world out of us. Certainly the Bible tells us that He has delivered us from this present evil world. Nevertheless, we are in the world; we are not to be of it. If we have allowed some of the world principles to get into our lives we might find them manifesting themselves in the things that we say. Jesus said that it is out of the heart that come all those things that defile, and the lips show what is in the heart. Gossip, backbiting, lying, telling half-truths - we need to examine what is in our hearts, for such things do not come from the Lord. We need to cry out to the Lord. In my distress, I cried out to the Lord.