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There can be little doubt, so it seems to me, that these psalms, from one of which our text is taken, were all of them songs of the exiles returning from their captivity in Babylon. Their very name - "Songs of Degrees" - denotes that they were sung as the people went up towards their land, their city, and the sanctuary of the Lord. But the frequent allusions to the Exile, to its degradation and sorrow, to the almost complete destruction which had there all but overtaken them, and then to their preservation and restoration, all show that in these fifteen psalms we have the devout utterances of those whom God had once suffered to be in exile, but whom he had not only graciously preserved therein, but now had wonderfully restored. So that we may picture the long line of the returning captives as they journeyed on over the weary waste of rock and sand which stretched between the place of their exile and their beloved home. We listen to them refreshing and cheering their hearts from time to time by singing one or other of these holy psalms. Alter their return, these psalms appear to have been collected together, and to have formed part of their national liturgy, and were sung, as they well deserved to be, when their city and temple were again built and dedicated to the Lord. There is a beautiful progression in them - an advance in thought and expression, harmonizing with the commencement, progress, and completion of the return from Babylon to the city of God. The first tells how, in their distress, the exiles cried unto the Lord, and utters their lament over their long sojourn in the strange land. The next - the hundred and twenty-first - is one which, it is probable, formed the evening psalm, as the tents were pitched, and the whole encampment lay down to rest. Then did they lift up their eyes to the Lord - the Lord that kept Israel and who neither slumbered nor slept. The next is a song of gladness in view of their once more standing in the house of the Lord - the gladness of those who had long been hindered in the enjoyment of any such privilege. The next recalls their prayer - their earnest, pleading prayer, which they offered up because of the contempt of the proud and the scorning of their luxurious stranger-lords. And the next celebrates with joyous rapture the great deliverance which God gave them: "Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as a prey to their teeth." Such is the spirit of the whole. And then comes the devout conclusion from all their experience - the blessedness of trusting in the Lord. Perhaps it was sung as the exiles drew near to Jerusalem and Mount Zion, and saw the mountains round about her, and the Mount Zion which abideth for ever. As those beloved heights, on which their fathers had gazed with delight, reared themselves on high, unchanged amid all the storm and tumult which had surged around and upon them, they seemed to the devout Israelites a type, not only of the Divine guard over Israel, encompassing his people even as these mountains "were round about Jerusalem," but a type also of the stability, the permanence, the immovability, of all those who trust in the Lord. "They who trust in the Lord shall be," etc. No object was more familiar to the devout Jew than Mount Zion and the mountains round about Jerusalem. As often as they went up to the house of the Lord, and day by day, all those who dwelt in or near Jerusalem, as did most of those who came back from the Exile, Zion and the surrounding heights were conspicuous before them. And good was the use they made of them. They beheld in them a symbol of their God, and a promise of what they themselves should be if they put their trust in him. Thus did this familiar everyday scene speak to them. Happy are they who, from the common surroundings of their everyday life, the many gifts of God's love which daily they enjoy, hear and listen to a voice which speaketh to them such holy truths as these! As one has well said, "Believing Englishmen, you may specially bless God that your country gives you an admirable picture of your own security, by dwelling alone, separated by the floods from all other nations. This is the security of our beloved isle."

"He bade the ocean round thee flow;
Not bars of brass could guard thee so." They that trust in the Lord shall be as these happy islands, which shall not know the rod of the oppressor, for the Lord has guarded them with a better defense than walls or bulwarks. Hebrew comparisons were most fit for Hebrew believers, but those nearer home should serve us as theirs served them. But now to turn to this blessed truth itself which our text declares - the ever-abiding, the immovable stability of them that trust in the Lord.

I. CONSIDER THE BLESSING HERE PROMISED. To "be as Mount Zion, which cannot," etc. From the days of Melchizedek, in the early patriarchal ages, right on and down to our own, Jerusalem has been an historic place. It has never been moved. Other great cities, like that of Nineveh, Babylon, and the cities of Asia, we can now but taintly trace where they stood. But Jerusalem has not only preceded, but has long survived them all. But in what sense can God's people be said to be as Mount Zion!

1. Of the Church of God it is historically true. If by violent persecution or other calamity she has been driven from one region - as from all North Africa - it has only been to settle more immovably in other and wider lands. There is no more reassuring argument to the mind anxious for the welfare of the Church of God than her history in the past. This psalm is truer of her than it was of Israel.

2. Of the individual believer it is also true; for he cannot be moved. His feelings may be. He may, as did the psalmists oftentimes, imagine that "the Lord has cast him off for ever, and hath in anger shut up his tender mercies." But it is not so really. Read the triumphant challenge of St. Paul at the close of Romans 8. That tells the real truth, as doth this psalm here. For the city of Divine grace lieth foursquare, like the city of God told of in the Apocalypse, and is defended with all those within it - as God's people are - by the mighty walls of God's omnipotence, righteousness, love, and grace - even the grace of the Holy Spirit working within us. Therefore is this psalm true.

II. THOSE FOR WHOM THIS BLESSING IS DESIGNED. "They that trust in the Lord." Now, this trust is:

1. A very simple thing. Anybody can trust - old and young, rich and poor. It requires no long study, no store of learning.

2. And it may be a very imperfect thing. Not mature, not strong and mighty at all; but yet it is trust, like him who cried, "Lord I believe: help thou mine unbelief."

3. It does not matter how or where we may have been brought to it. Blessed be God!

III. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THIS TRUST AND SO GREAT BLESSING.

1. Because God so delights in our trust.

2. It is the transforming grace.

3. It identifies us with Christ in his life.

4. It devitalizes our connection with the first Adam, and grafts us into Christ. - S.C.

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Parallel Verses

KJV: {A Song of degrees.} They that trust in the LORD shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever.

WEB: Those who trust in Yahweh are as Mount Zion, which can't be moved, but remains forever.