Psalm 132
Let’s hear the word of the living
God. This is Psalm 132, a song of ascents. And it says, remember,
oh Lord, in David’s favor, all the hardships he endured, how
he swore to the Lord and vowed to the mighty one of Jacob. I
will not enter my house or get into my bed. I will not give
sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids. until I find a place
for the Lord, a dwelling place for the mighty one of Jacob.
Behold, we have heard of it in Ephrathah. We have found it in
the fields of Jayar. Let us go to his dwelling place.
Let us worship at his footstool. Arise, O Lord, and go to your
resting place. you in the ark of your might.
Let your priest be clothed with righteousness and let your saints
shout for joy. For the sake of your servant
David, do not turn away the face of your anointed one. The Lord
swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back.
One of the sons of your body, I will set on your throne. If
your sons keep my covenant and my testimonies that I shall teach
them, their sons also forever shall sit on your throne. For
the Lord has chosen Zion. He has desired it for his dwelling
place. This is my resting place forever.
Here I will dwell for I have desired it. I will abundantly
bless her provisions. I will satisfy her poor with
bread, her priest I will clothe with salvation, and her saints
will shout for joy. There I will make a horn to sprout
for David. I have prepared a lamp for my
anointed. His enemies I will clothe with
shame, but on him his crown will shine. Amen. This is the word
of the living God. Some of y’all over the last couple
weeks I’m sure watched a few firework shows. Maybe an impromptu
went out in the cul-de-sac. Maybe you went to the local city
fireworks for the 4th of July and then maybe you tuned into
PBS. I think this year they showed
recordings of past firework shows. Then there’s the Boston Pops
firework show. But always at one or two of those
they play I forget which piece of classical music, but the big
crescendo comes, and they have the grand finale of fireworks.
Tchaikovsky? 1812. The Overture of 1812, that’s
it, yep. So you have these grand finales,
and that’s a little of what we’re getting into with Psalms 132
to 134. These are the grand finale of
the Psalms of Ascent. Remember, the entirety of the
Psalms of Ascent are 120, all the way through 134. Then remember,
as we’ve looked at the Psalms of Ascent since April, some by
video, some when we had church outside, and now in our evening
service for the last many weeks, we’ve talked about how they’re
in groups of three. And so you can look at Psalm
132 tonight as the first of the group of three, the last group
of three. So in Psalms 132, 133, and 134, you have the last grouping. Remember the typical pattern
of the threes are trouble in the first one, trust in the second
one, and then something about Zion or Jerusalem in the third
one. And then variations on those themes in general, depending
on what the grouping of three is. Well, tonight in this grand
finale, which will begin and end next week and the week after
with 133-134, you have in 132 the theme of the city of Zion.
You have after that a fellowship or peace, Psalm 133, which is
typical in ARP world, a psalm of fellowship, a psalm of unity. And then 134, about heaven itself. And so the
trouble you might find in Psalm 132 is, will God remember his covenant
to David? Will there always be a king sitting
on the Davidic throne? And of course we know the answer
to that. The answer is yes. And his name ultimately is Jesus. Well, Psalm 132 is more or less
a basic Psalm that’s about building two houses. It’s about building
a house of worship or a temple for God, a dwelling place for
God. But it’s also about building
another house, building a dynasty for the Davidic king. And so verses one through nine,
you may have noticed are more or less about the temple, building
the house of God or the temple of God. and it’s from David’s
perspective. And then the last nine verses,
verses 10 through 18, are about God building a dynasty for David,
a house for David. So it’s a psalm with mutual vows.
David says, I’m gonna build you a house, says that to Yahweh,
and then Yahweh says to David, I’m gonna build you a house.
So these are mutual vows between Yahweh and David. And one of
the things to notice in this psalm is that in order for one
to build a house and sit on its throne, it takes troubles, it
takes hardships. The theme of cross before crown
comes to mind here. Crosses before crown, or hardship
before glory. You know, if you’ve been out
in the work world, what does every young person want today?
Well, they want a free college education. And if they bummed
$50,000 in loans, guess who they want to pay it off? Well, today
it’s Sleepy Joe. They want future President Joe
Biden to pay off their loans. And then what kind of job do
they want? Well, at least six figures. That would do nicely. And we have this struggle in
our world today. We want everything without doing
nothing. That’s bad grammar. We want everything
without doing nothing. but we’re in the South, we can
say it that way. But what this Psalm reminds us of is that there
are crosses before crowns and hardships before glory. So let’s
take a peek at the building of the two houses. First in verses
one through nine, building a house for God. God has always been
present among his people. Think about that from biblical
history. The center of God’s covenant
is I will be your God, you will be my people, and my dwelling
place will be where? Far off? No, it’s near, it’s
in your midst. And ultimately, we see that fulfilled,
at least in this world, when Jesus, the word, became flesh
and dwelt where? He dwelt among us. He literally,
as the biblical language says, he tabernacled or pitched his
tent among his people. And where ultimately, eternally,
is the dwelling place of God going to be? It’s going to be
with men as the new Jerusalem comes down to the new heavens
and the new earth. So God has always been present
among his people. The center of the covenant is
that God will be with us. And that was true in Eden when
God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden face to face. It
was true when he met with Abraham, he met face to face with Moses
on the mountain of God. He wanted to meet with his people
and be in their midst. And so he followed them or led
them by day in the glory cloud and by the pillar of fire at
night. He rested at the Ark of the Covenant in the tabernacle.
And then as we get to David’s greatest desire, it was to build
a temple where God would come and sit on the throne, which
was the Ark of the Covenant. And so heaven was his throne,
the earth was his footstool, but he dwelled among his people
through the tabernacle, through the temple. And now ultimately
he does so through our hearts as he has made each of us human
temples, temples of the Holy Spirit. But throughout the progress
of redemption, we see David working Well, working hard and suffering
many things in order to do God’s holy will. And so verse one begins
with a prayer. Remember, O Lord, in David’s
favor, all the hardships he endured and how he swore to the Lord
and vowed to the mighty one of Jacob, I will not enter my house
or get into my bed. I will not give sleep to my eyes
or slumber to my eyelids until I find a place for the Lord,
a dwelling place for the mighty one of Jacob. And so we remember
that David, when he was selected to be king, he spent about 10
years on the run from Saul. We read, maybe you remember back
in our studies of the Psalms in the fifties area. Most of
those Psalms were David was in hot water. David was in a cave.
David had a spear aimed at his neck. Saul was after him. People
wanted to kill him. The Philistines were after him.
Ultimately, he had to fight off Goliath, who symbolized all the
wickedness of the world in that day. But ultimately, David fought
and fought and fought and fought until finally he brought the
kingdom of God to Jerusalem, the conquered city of the Jebusites.
And he built a palace for himself. He was making the city great.
And what was his ultimate desire? It was to build a temple for
God. And we know that God disallowed him from doing that. He said,
you got too much blood on your hands. Your son will come after
you. And so between David and Solomon,
they built a great city. They built a great city and a
great temple, a great palace. Now, one thing we must remember
is, does God need a temple built with human hands? No, not even
the world, not even the galaxies and the deepest space can contain
God. Yet God is pleased to dwell in
the midst of his people. now in our hearts and now in
the midst of our worship and ultimately in heaven forever.
But David’s desire was to build a temple, a resting place. He
had seen how God had blessed Abinadab. Remember Abinadab? His house became the resting
place for the ark for some time. The Philistines stole it. And
remember when the Philistines stole the ark, they got the hemorrhoids? That’s at least the way we Best
understand, they got all these boils and painful sores on their
bodies, and it was not well with them when they had the ark in
their possession. But it was taken to Abinadad’s
house in the fields of Jayar, or the woods of Jayar, and it
blessed his household greatly. And so what do you think David
thought? The ark needs to come to Jerusalem and bless my house. And you remember the first attempt
to bring the ark? They put it on an ox cart, And as they were
bringing the ox cart to Jerusalem, Uzzah reached out to steady the
ark because it was going to slip off the cart. And when he touched
it, God struck him dead. It upset David. The temple or
the ark remained elsewhere for a time. And then ultimately David
brings it to Jerusalem, which by the way, is a good reminder,
do things the way God says to do them. How was the ark to be
transported? Did God say in the old covenant,
build an ox cart? and bring it on that and put
a man beside it to keep it from falling over. Use some ratchet
straps if you need to hold it down tight. No, it’s supposed
to have poles of acacia wood that ran through it. And that
box was to be carried, I think, by the Levites, maybe, the somebody
bites. But that’s not the way they did
it. And God got angry. It was his right. But it’s a
good reminder God must be worshipped and handled in the way that he
wants and not the ways that we invent. And so ultimately the
ark came to rest at Jerusalem. David sought to move it. He made
it his oath. He made it his heart’s desire. Now, how many of us would say Lord, until our sanctuary next
door gets fixed, until the repairs are made, I’m not going to sleep. I’m not going to maybe indulge
myself in something I want. How many of us would go out of
our way like David and say, until we can have your mercy seat housed
in our location, I’m going to take a fast from rest. In fact,
I think we find ourselves much like maybe the people who returned
from exile in Babylon. Remember the ministry of Haggai
to the Israelites when they returned. He came to the Israelites when
they had come from Babylon back to Jerusalem. They had laid the
foundation on the temple, but it had been 20 years since they
did anything else. They had a grand celebration.
They had the foundation done. They built an altar. They made
a sacrifice. There was lots of whooping and hollering and everything,
but 20 years had passed and Haggai comes and says, what is wrong
with you people? You live in houses with paneled walls. You’ve
got your 92-inch flat-screen TVs and your cable vision and
your Nancy Pelosi Sub-Zero fridges full of ice cream. Y’all know
that joke, I guess. You’ve got all this, and my house
still lies in ruins. What’s wrong with you people?
You earn money, and it goes in bags with holes in it. You put
your grain in sacks. They leak. You don’t prosper.
See the contrast between David and his desire for God’s house
and often the desires of God’s people for the house. But isn’t
that interesting how David’s zeal, David’s devotion got him
carried away until a house of God was built. And maybe sometimes
our human emotion gets the best of us. But nevertheless, that
was his zeal. That was his great desire. And
we see the same desire in David’s greater son, even Jesus. We read
earlier in John chapter two of his desire for the cleansing
of God’s house. But hasn’t that carried forward
through the ages when maybe we bump into a reformer like Martin
Luther or John Huss or Wycliffe, and others who say God’s house
is in shambles. It needs to be put back in the
right by the word of the living God. And so we ought to have
zeal for God’s house, devotion for it. But notice the special
attention given to God’s saints in this first section, building
house for God, verse nine. Verse nine, in a sense, is a
call to worship. Let your priest, let your people
be clothed with righteousness and let your saints shout for
joy. There’s a lot of buildings we
could get involved in. the construction of and even
the funding of. We certainly want to have a home, a shelter
for our family, and that’s a good thing. A home is wonderful. But
we could get involved in building schools. We could get involved
in building universities. We can get involved in building
community centers. We could get involved in building, you know,
down the street from me there’s the wonderful park and arboretum.
We could get involved in donating and building all kinds of things,
a new scout hut, a new animal shelter. You just read your daily
paper, there’s always a place where we could send our money
for the building of something, for the doing of something, but
what’s the greatest place, the greatest kingdom value? It’s
the house of God, for it is where his priest come clothed in righteousness. And it’s where the saints shout
for joy. There is no greater room on earth
than the one we have next door for any greater activity. And
it’s a special privilege to be part of God’s family and to have
a place set apart for worship. And so that’s the first half
of the psalm. It’s building a house for God. The second half is building a
house for David. You find that in verses 10 through
18. And you have a wonderful example
here of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. God’s sovereignty
here is this, I have sworn, I have sworn to my servant, David, verse
11 says, a sure oath from which he will not turn back one of
the sons of your body, I will sit on your throne. God promised
to David, the little shepherd boy from the family, and remember
the lineup of brothers, not him, not him, not him, not him. Do
you have any more boys where there’s the little runt? the
goats and the sheep, fighting off bears and whatnot. Well,
he’s the one that gets picked. And it’s a promise to this David,
a little shepherd boy from Bethlehem, that from your body will come
a king, an everlasting king. And
it’s why, is it Matthew’s gospel begins with a genealogy? And
I think Luke’s gospel does as well. And where do those genealogies
always end up? With David and then Jesus. And
so it’s a wonderful thing to see in those genealogies, how
God keeps his promise. So there’s God’s sovereignty.
I’m going to let your throne last forever, but there’s also
man’s responsibility. Look at verse 12. If your sons
keep my covenant, if your sons keep my testimonies that I shall
teach them. their sons shall also forever
sit on your throne. We read through the Bible in
a year sometimes, and we painfully get our way through Kings and
Chronicles. And what do Kings and Chronicles always say? And
so-and-so became a king. And so-and-so either did what
was right in the eyes of the Lord, or so-and-so did what was
evil in the eyes of the Lord. And so you have God’s sovereignty.
I’m gonna put a king on the throne, and he’s gonna be a king in the
line of David. Yet they must serve the Lord
faithfully. They must keep covenant and obey
him. So what were some of the high
spots in the Kings and Chronicles? Well, the high spots were when
a little eight year old boy becomes king and he finds the book of
the law. And what does he have the priest
do? Quick, put it back. We don’t want to do things that
way. No, they read the book of the law and the hearing of the
people. They repent of their sins. And there is for a time, great
prosperity and peace in Israel because they do what’s great. But over and over, Israel, even
though favored by God, has moments of disobedience, moments of covenant
breaking, and ultimately exile into Babylon, yet God’s favor
never leaves them. Israel is dear to his heart.
He always has a remnant, and he always has a king. Verse 13
reminds us of God’s promise, for the Lord has chosen Zion.
He has desired it for his dwelling place. This is my resting place
forever, God says. Here I will dwell, for I have
desired it. And then we go on to see God’s
covenant blessings. God is gonna build a house for
David, a dynasty, and God is gonna bless the people. carry
on after verse 14 with verse 14 or verse 15 I will abundantly
bless her with provisions I will satisfy her poor with bread her
priest I will clothe with salvation and there it is again just like
in the previous section her priest I will clothe and her Saints
will shout for joy there’s always a clothing of God’s people with
righteousness and them then them worshiping or shouting for joy
for their salvation so God and his great blessing graces and
showers his people with goodness. But what about David’s throne
forever? Well, in verses 17 and 18, you
see a couple of wonderful images. There’s the horn, there’s the
lamp, and there’s the shiny crown. And those three things are very
important in the ancient Near East. They’re very important
for, Kingship and you you see glimmers of this or hints of
this in the book of Revelation when it talks about all the horns
It talks about all the crowns and the diadems, but it also
talks about lights that don’t go out they burn Forever you
have strength that’s what a horn is in the Bible a horn is a sign
of strength maybe like a buck or a great bull there’s strength
and Then there’s perpetuity a lamp that will never burn out What
does God threaten in the seven letters to the seven churches?
If you’re faithful, I’ll let your lamp burn. But if you’re
unfaithful, guess what? I will take away your lamp stand. And so a burning light is a sign
of perpetuity or continuance. And then a shiny crown is one
of honor. It’s opposite of enemies who
will be clothed. with shame. And so as we live life in this
fallen world, as we live in the middle of a crooked and depraved
generation, one thing we can always remember is God has a
throne that will last forever. God has a people who will worship
him forever. And it doesn’t matter if persecutions
come. It doesn’t matter if only a few
gather. It doesn’t matter if the world
seems to be falling apart. God is always going to be on
a throne. A son of David will always sit on it, Jesus. And
God’s people will always have a place in this life and in the
life to come where they can worship at God’s footstool. No challenges,
threats, or persecution can stop because we remember his sworn
oath. We remember his sworn oath and
that God will be worshiped at a place and he will rule on a
throne. And that can get disrupted. We’ve
even seen and are watching it now. the attempts to disrupt
worship, particularly, can you imagine us being a church in
California? We would have to do what we’re doing now, what
we did this morning, what we’ve been doing the last, what, 10 weeks
or so, 12 weeks we’ve been back. We would be doing it illegally.
But nevertheless, God promises there will be uninterrupted worship
in heaven. There will be uninterrupted kingship
and the throne will never be threatened there. I remember
the way the Bible ends. The Bible ends with the new heavens
and the new earth and the coming down from heaven, Zion, the holy
and perfect and beautiful city and the great proclamation. Now
the dwelling place of God is with men. He will wipe away every
tear. God will be our God and we will
be his people. And so until then, let’s remember
God’s sworn promise and have faith that no matter what comes
around us, God will always rule and God will always have a people
to worship him. Let’s pause and say a prayer
together. Lord, we bless you and thank you for this reminder
of your oath, your covenant, the sure things that are ours
in Jesus. Remind us of these things day
by day as we become saddened by the news and even find ourselves
in a place of discomfort. Show us that what will last,
what will be forever, by your grace and for your glory, we
pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.