Watch Focus Friday June 20, 2025 “I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.”
 
In my distress I cried to the Lord, and He heard me.
Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips and from a deceitful tongue.
What shall be given to you, O lying lips?
Or what shall be done to you, you false tongue?
Sharp arrows of the warrior with coals from the broom tree!
Woe is me that I dwell in Meshec, that I dwell among the tents of Kedar.
My soul has dwelt too long with one who hates peace.
I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war. Psalm 120
 
This is the first of the songs of ‘ascent.’ It is the beginning of a pilgrims’ journey up to Jerusalem. They leave their home surrounded by wearying enemies and set their face to meet God in the refuge and tranquility of His sanctuary. It is the anguish of a soul longing to be rescued and vindicated. A prayer and for peace. As the priests ascend the first step, they cry out for deliverance and pronounce the coming judgment, a barrage of warriors’ arrows that land and burn as a heap of lasting coals finally putting the oppression to a complete end.
 
Lying lips and deceitful tongues belong to Meshec and Kedar, both part of wider geopolitical coalitions that controlled trade and threatened Israel’s settlements. These warring tribal societies dealt in slave trade, pillage, and kidnapping, as well as general commodity trading. They were part of larger geopolitical cabals. Kedar descended from Ishmael and exploited Israel’s weakness and vulnerability in times of internal turmoil through hit and run raids. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and 2 Chronicles, have much to say about the terror, torment, and judgment, of these enemies, summed up in the call for the watchmen in Isaiah 21.
 
Many tongues continue to rise against Israel, including from within the church and media. These voices deceive and confuse people and their leaders. We have learned and seen that revelation of Israel from scripture as God’s unique chosen people is like a compass or the ballast holding a ship’s center of gravity and keeping it steady. Without this revelation, leaders, nations, policies, ideologies, and religions, are unable to discern the wider purpose of the God of the Bible who holds the destiny of nations in His hand.
 
Psalm 120 describes events in the forefront of global news today!
 
It is the exasperated cry of constantly dealing with and defending oneself against near and far neighbors who use every weakness to take advantage and destroy, with weapons and with tongues.
 
Pray explicitly for these primary world leaders and the heavy decisions effecting billions of families in these turbulent times:
President Trump
Prime Minister Netanyahu
Ayatollah Khomeini
President Putin
President Xi
President Zelensky 

Call for the watchmen:
 
Prepare the table, set a watchman in the tower, eat and drink. Arise, you princes, anoint the shield! For thus has the Lord said to me: “Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he sees.” And he saw a chariot with a pair of horsemen, a chariot of donkeys, and a chariot of camels, and he listened earnestly with great care. Then he cried, “A lion, my Lord! I stand continually on the watchtower in the daytime; I have sat at my post every night”…For thus the Lord has said to me: “Within a year, according to the year of a hired man, all the glory of Kedar will fail; and the remainder of the number of archers, the mighty men of the people of Kedar, will be diminished; for the Lord God of Israel has spoken it.” Isaiah 21:5-8; 16-17.