The Posture of the Dependent: Obedience and Vindication Text: Psalm 123:1-2
Introduction: The Great Inversion
We live in an age that worships at the altar of the autonomous self. Our entire culture, from the highest echelons of academia down to the most vapid television commercial, preaches one constant, droning sermon: you are your own. You are the captain of your soul, the master of your fate. Your will is sovereign. Your feelings are the final authority. To be dependent is to be weak. To be a servant is to be degraded. To look to another for help, for direction, for your very sustenance, is considered the great shame of modern man.
And into this proud, chest-thumping rebellion, this psalm, one of the Songs of Ascents, walks in quietly and detonates the entire edifice. This psalm teaches us the essential, foundational, and liberating truth of our creatureliness. It teaches us the sane and joyful posture of absolute dependence on God. Our generation wants to lift up its eyes to a mirror. The psalmist teaches us to lift up our eyes to the heavens.
This is a wartime psalm. It is a prayer offered up from a position of weakness, from a people being scorned and held in contempt by the proud. And so it is a psalm for our time. As the Christian faith becomes more and more an object of cultural derision, as we are increasingly treated as fools or bigots for holding to the ancient faith, we must learn this posture. We must learn to have our eyes fixed in the right direction. For if our eyes are fixed on our circumstances, on our enemies, or on our own meager resources, we will despair. But if our eyes are fixed on the one enthroned in the heavens, we will find grace, mercy, and eventual vindication.
This psalm presents a stark contrast between the eyes of faith, which look upward to the Lord, and the blind eyes of insolent unbelief, which see nothing as they ought to see. Pride anchors the ungodly to this earth, making the entire globe their ball and chain. But faith, expressed in this simple act of looking up, is what connects us to the throne room of the universe. This is not a passive, sentimental glance. It is the focused, expectant, and obedient gaze of a servant to his master. And in our world, that is a truly revolutionary act.
The Text
To You I lift up my eyes, The One enthroned in the heavens!
Behold, as the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, As the eyes of a servant-girl to the hand of her mistress, So our eyes look to Yahweh our God, Until He is gracious to us.
(Psalm 123:1-2 LSB)
The Upward Look (v. 1)
The psalm begins with a simple, profound declaration of orientation.
"To You I lift up my eyes, The One enthroned in the heavens!" (Psalm 123:1)
The first act of true worship is to look away from self and up to God. This is the opposite of the navel-gazing spirituality that is so popular today. This is not about finding the god within; it is about acknowledging the God who is transcendent, the God who is utterly other, the God who is enthroned. The psalmist's troubles are on earth, surrounded by the proud and scornful, but his help is not. His help is in the heavens.
Notice the description: "The One enthroned in the heavens!" This is crucial. He is not a localized deity, a tribal god, or one power among many. He is the sovereign ruler of all things. The throne is the symbol of absolute authority, of rule, of dominion. While the proud strut on earth, thinking they are in charge, the psalmist anchors his soul in the reality that there is a throne in heaven, and it is not empty. The Lord sits upon it (Psalm 2:4). This is the foundational truth that stabilizes the soul in the midst of chaos. Your enemies may have a temporary platform, but God has an eternal throne.
To lift up one's eyes is an act of will. It is a conscious rejection of despair. Despair looks down at the dust, at the grave, at the insurmountable problems. Faith looks up. It is a gesture of hope, of expectation, and of supplication. It is the posture of a child looking to his father, of a subject to his king. It acknowledges both God's loftiness and our lowliness. We are down here, and He is up there. And this is not a cause for alienation, but for hope. The one on the throne is the very one to whom we can appeal.
This is not a vague hope in "the man upstairs." This is directed, personal, and covenantal. The psalmist says, "To You I lift up my eyes." He knows who is on the throne. It is Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God of Israel. Our hope is not in a distant, impersonal force, but in the God who has revealed Himself, who has made promises, and who is faithful to keep them.
The Servant's Gaze (v. 2)
Verse 2 provides a powerful and, to our modern sensibilities, a shocking illustration of what this upward look entails.
"Behold, as the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a servant-girl to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to Yahweh our God, until He is gracious to us." (Psalm 123:2 LSB)
The psalmist says "Behold," telling us to pay close attention. He is about to give us the central image of the psalm. The relationship he describes is that of a servant, or slave, to his master. In our egalitarian age, this metaphor makes us uncomfortable. But we must not sanitize the Scriptures to make them palatable to our rebellious instincts. The Bible is not ashamed of this analogy, because it communicates a profound spiritual truth.
What does it mean for a servant's eyes to be on the hand of his master? It means at least three things. First, it is a look of dependence. The servant looks to the master's hand for provision, for his daily bread. He knows that everything he has comes from that hand. So it is with us. We are utterly dependent upon God for our every breath, for our every meal, for our very existence. "In Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Our eyes are on Him because without Him, we have nothing.
Second, it is a look of obedience. The servant looks to the master's hand for direction. The master gives his commands often through simple hand gestures. A flick of the wrist, a pointed finger, and the servant knows his task. This is a picture of a believer who is eager to do the will of God, who is watchful, waiting for his next assignment. He is not looking for a way out of service, but for a way to serve faithfully. Is this the posture of our hearts? Are we constantly looking to His Word, seeking to know His will, ready to obey instantly without question?
Third, it is a look of desperation and hope for deliverance. A servant who has failed, or one who is being threatened from outside, looks to the master's hand for mercy or for protection. The master's hand can provide discipline, but it can also provide defense. The servant's only recourse is the master. This is precisely the context of the psalm. The people are "exceedingly filled with contempt," and they look to God's hand for vindication and grace. Their eyes are fixed on Him, and they will not look away "until He is gracious to us."
This is the tenacity of faith. It is not a fleeting glance. It is a fixed gaze. We look, and we continue to look. We wait, and we continue to wait. We do not give God a deadline. We do not say, "I will trust you for a week, and if things do not improve, I am taking matters into my own hands." No, we look until. That word "until" is the essence of persevering faith. We wait upon Him, for as long as it takes, because we know that He is our only hope and that His grace is worth waiting for.
Conclusion: The Liberating Service
The world tells you that to be a servant is to be less than human. The Bible tells you that to be a servant of the Most High God is the only way to be truly human. The world tells you that dependence is demeaning. The Scriptures teach that dependence upon God is the source of all our strength, dignity, and freedom.
The ultimate expression of this servant's gaze is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. He, the eternal Son, took upon Himself the form of a servant (Phil. 2:7). He said that He did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). His eyes were always on the hand of His Father. He said, "I can do nothing on my own authority. As I hear, I judge... I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me" (John 5:30).
Because Christ became the perfect servant for us, we can now be accepted as servants of God. Because His eyes were perfectly fixed on the Father's hand, even unto death, our wandering eyes can be forgiven. And now, through Christ, we are invited into this same relationship of loving, dependent, and obedient service. It is not a grim duty, but a glorious privilege. For the hand we look to is not the hand of a capricious tyrant, but the hand of our loving Father. It is the hand that was pierced for our transgressions. It is the hand that holds the scepter of the universe. It is the hand that will one day wipe every tear from our eyes.
Therefore, in a world that is drunk on its own pride, let us soberly and joyfully take up the posture of the servant. Let us lift our eyes to the One enthroned in the heavens. Let us fix our gaze upon the hand of our Master, our Redeemer, and our God. And let us wait there, with unwavering faith, until He is gracious to us. For He will be.