Psalm 122
Welcome to our next edition of
the Psalms of Ascent. Let me invite you to turn to
Psalm 122. Just by way of reminder, the
Psalms of Ascent are Psalms 120 to 134. We’ve done an introduction. We looked at Psalm 120 and the
trouble of the psalmist. He lived in Meshach and Kedar.
He lived among wicked people. He had bad neighbors. We looked
at Psalm 121. Where does the help of the psalmist
come from when he’s in trouble? His help comes from the Lord
who made heaven and earth. So we’ve looked at trouble, trust,
and the third category of these Psalms of Ascent is Jerusalem.
And so Psalm 122 is a study of the pilgrim arriving at Jerusalem. And so this is the third in our
series, plus the introduction. Let me ask you now to give your
attention to God’s Word, to Psalm 122. Hear God’s Word. This is a song of David, the
Psalm of Ascents. David says, I was glad when they
said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. Our feet have
been standing in Jerusalem, within your gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem
built as a city that is bound firmly together, to which the
tribes go up. the tribes of the Lord, as was
decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord. Their
thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May they be secure who love you.
Peace be within your walls and security within your towers.
For my brothers and companions’ sake, I will say, peace be within
you. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek
your good. Amen, that is God’s word. When
I was a kid growing up, in our house we had a grandfather clock,
and fairly often the grandfather clock would need attention and
care in order to keep proper time. The weights would need
to be raised so that the weights could keep the momentum for the
timekeeping of the clock. We would have to adjust the chimes
and various sorts of things. It was a finicky instrument,
but it was a fun way to learn how to keep time. Also, as a
young kid, I had a watch that wasn’t battery operated, but
it had to be wound. You had to wind it, I think,
daily in order to keep it running. But these were instruments that
would keep time, and you had to maintain them. You had to
give careful attention to them. And I want you to think, when
we consider Psalm 122, about how Sundays are a way for us
to keep time. God has given us six days to
work. He’s given us six days for our
own pleasures. He’s given us six days to serve
Him in the world, to work at our locations, to take care of
our yards, do our laundry, get our groceries brought into the
house, our cupboards full again. He’s given us six days for these
activities, even our recreations, our ball games, our sports, our
hobbies, and those sorts of things. But He’s given us one whole day
in seven for rest and for worship. So as we consider Psalm 122,
I want you to think about how Sundays help us keep time, how
Sundays help keep our week centered on God, how Sundays help us mark
time. Now, we’re without Sundays right
now with the COVID-19, with the coronavirus. Tomorrow, which
is April the 26th, will be our sixth Sunday at least for our
congregation, without church. Many churches have been, or will
be, after tomorrow, seven Sundays without church. We squeezed one
extra service in because we figured we could enjoy it, and the number
by our governor was not yet prohibitive for our congregation. But tomorrow
will be six. Sundays without church. And it’s
upended our weeks. Many people are reporting they
don’t know what day it is. They don’t know what time it
is. Their clocks aren’t set. Their watches are not wound because
Sunday is not there to keep time for them. Church is important
for us. Sundays are important for us.
It’s our true north. It’s how we estimate time. It’s
how we keep our lives calibrated and centered on the Lord, our
God. Church helps our body and our
soul both receive refreshment and rest that is needed. We come
to church, much like the psalmist in Psalm 73, the world has got
us all bent out of shape. We can’t see straight, we can’t
think straight, but we come again into the house of God and we
see what is good, right, and true. And the church, Sunday
services, they calibrate our minds. They calibrate our hearts.
It’s like getting a front-end alignment on your car. You’re
not driving straight, and so you take it into the shop. Your
tires are wearing unevenly, and before you know it, you’ll have
road trouble. And so church is like that front-end
alignment. It helps us get straight. Word,
hymns, creeds, prayers, confession, assurance, Seeing familiar faces
and receiving the encouragement of the saints are all important
aspects of gathering on Sundays with God’s people in God’s house
on God’s day. And even more importantly, most
importantly, we have the work, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
through the ordinances of God’s church. That’s why we come to
a Psalm like Psalm 122, and we sing songs like, I’m so glad
I’m a part of the family of God, or I was glad when they said
to me, Let us go to the house of the Lord. Maybe you’ve sung
the Psalter or the hymn version of Psalm 122. Or when we all
get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be. We reflect
like the psalmist does on Sundays. And in a sense, our feet are
in the church. We’re in and under the ministry
of Christ through the elders. And we say like the psalmist,
it’s too good to be true. It’s a wonderful thing to be
in God’s house. I hope that’s how you feel each
Sunday as you gather with God’s people. But we’ve lost the privilege. We’re now living in a time where
we must honor those in authority over us who’ve said, please don’t
gather. We’re living in a stretch of time where we need to honor
our neighbors and protect their lives by not spreading this disease. But as we look at Psalm 122,
As we look at it as a group of the whole, Psalms 120 to 134,
as we look at it as a small group, Psalm 120, 121, and 122, we remember
the trouble, Psalm 120, trust, Psalm 121, and now Jerusalem,
Psalm 122. I want us to think about Psalm
122 and the topic of Jerusalem, and I want us to think about
Jerusalem from three perspectives. The great, late preacher James
Montgomery Boyce gives a very helpful outline in his study
of Psalms, and he follows this order, which we’ll follow in
our study. He talks about the real and physical
Jerusalem. He speaks of the church today,
and then of the eschatological, or the Jerusalem in heaven, the
Jerusalem that will come down on earth when God makes all things
new. So we’ll think of Jerusalem from
those three perspectives, the city, the church today, and then
the new Jerusalem, which has come down from heaven. Let’s
think for just a moment about Jerusalem, Jerusalem of the ancient
city. This Psalm, Psalm 122, is one
of the Pilgrim Psalms. It would have been sung by the
people of God in days of old as they made their way from wherever
their homes were in Palestine to Jerusalem for the three feasts
of the year and other assorted events that took place at Jerusalem. We all go to churches in our
neighborhoods, but the people of God all had to gather at Jerusalem
to meet with God. And so these are pilgrim songs. We will go to the house of the
Lord. I rejoice that I get to go. These are the Psalms of ascent,
the Psalms of the pilgrim way to heaven. Remember in Psalm
121, the Psalmist dwelled in Meshach. He dwelled among the
tents of Kadar. He lived in a pagan area. He
was far from Jerusalem. And God calls some of us, remember,
to live in dark places. Yet when we get to worship God,
there’s much light and much joy. And then Psalm 121 was the pilgrim’s
progress, as it were. This pilgrim who lived among
pagans was on his way. He could see and taste his arrival
in Jerusalem. How did he get there safely? How did he make his way through
the many dangers, toils, and snares from the faraway place
of Meshach or Kedar to Jerusalem? Well, he put his trust in the
creator, redeemer, and protector and provider, Yahweh. So now Psalm 122, the pilgrims
have arrived. They are there at Jerusalem.
You know how it is when you take a car trip, a long trip, you
get there and you can’t believe it. It’s taken hours. You get
out and you stretch your legs, you stretch out your arms, you
clean the trash out of the car, you uncontort your body, if that’s
even a word. You’ve been bent up and cooped
up in the car for far too long. But you get to your destination
for our family. We go to the same place for vacation
every year. We can’t wait to get there. And
when we get there, it’s almost a moment of unbelief. Another
year has passed. It’s vacation time. God has preserved
our sacred place that we go. We usually stay in the same place.
And so we look around and see the sights and sounds. We look
for differences. We note at our arrival, that
the place we love so much for our annual pilgrimage is safe. But there’s unbelief for the
pilgrim with all the sights and the sounds and the vibe, the
vibrations of these pilgrim feasts at Jerusalem. Think, if you will,
about maybe the annual state fair in your county or your town,
your state. A state fair is a wonderful thing
people look forward to It’s a social event, it’s a fun event. There’s
food involved, all sorts of activities for the whole family, for all
the generations that gather. That’s a bit like what Jerusalem
would have been like at feast time. It was much like a fair.
It was centered around religion, the temple, the sacrifices, the
feast. There were for sure markets for
various things you needed, including for your sacrifices and keeping
your vows before the Lord, but there would have been various
things that you might not have been able to get in your small
town far away, so you might have saved up a little money and brought
it along and said, we’re gonna get the new plow, honey, or the
new robe, or whatever it was you needed. It was like going
to town, and so there was a market. It was a social event. It was a fun event for people
of all ages, but there was also a function of the law there. It
speaks of the thrones. of David. If you needed judgment,
if you needed a court case settled, you could go and have that done.
What’s so special about Jerusalem? What’s so special about the ancient
city? Well, it’s the city of David.
It’s the city that David captured and built into the place where
the king of Israel would live and rule and judge. But it’s
also the place where Solomon, his son, later would build the
temple, the grand temple that was the house of Almighty God. designated Jerusalem as the place
where his name would dwell among his people, Israel. And so when
God’s people were summoned to God’s presence, they came to
Jerusalem, the city of David, the city of God. But this city
has ancient roots. You’ll remember in the story
of Abraham when he met the strange and ancient king Melchizedek.
Melchizedek was the king of Salem, the king of Jerusalem. When Abraham
was called to offer up his son, his only son Isaac, on the mountain
of Moriah, that would have been in the vicinity of Jerusalem,
the Jebusites would have lived and ruled in Jebus until David
came and conquered it and made it the city of David where he
built the palace, he built the gardens, he built the walls,
he built the great structure. Jerusalem was a great and wonderful
city. Now it met some downfall from
time to time. They would let it go into ruins.
Various kings would fix things up. The people of God would put
their money in the coffers and they would make some repairs
on the temple or on the city. Remember that Babylon, as a punishment
for Israel, their unbelief and their disobedience, their idolatry
toward God, they came and they destroyed the city. They laid
it to ruins. Remember Jeremiah in his Lamentations talked about
how they laid the city bare. He wept over Jerusalem. But Ezra
and Nehemiah and others would return after some years, as God
predicted, and they would come and rebuild the city. It was
never as grand as it was under David and Solomon, but they would
rebuild it. They would lay the stones for
the temple. reconstitute the worship of God there. When the
Romans came and colonized Israel, Jerusalem, some of the pagan
kings put money into the temple and rebuilt it. It was torn down
again after Jesus’ ministry and life. And today we have the ancient
ruins there. It’s a wonderful, beautiful city. If you ever have the privilege
of going there, you’ll see why the psalmist was so excited to
go and to be in the great city of God. What’s so special about
Jerusalem? Well, it’s a place, it’s a city
as we’ve mentioned, but it’s the place where God’s house stood. It was Yahweh’s footstool. It
was there where the thrones of judgment were and you could come
receive justice. It was a place of unity. The
12 tribes of Israel who were scattered across the promised
land to their inheritance would pack into the city. It was like
all the in-laws in the house at Christmas. or Thanksgiving
or another holiday, maybe at the beach together. Everybody
who was scattered was gathered, but it was a place of unity.
It was a tight city. Streets, walls, houses, a wonderful
and amazing place to see and to visit, but to worship God.
It was a place where God’s people gathered to worship when God
summoned them. They remembered the Exodus and Passover. They
remembered God’s provision for them in the wilderness years.
And they remembered God’s goodness to them as their farms made produce
and God was caring for them so greatly and wisely and providentially.
So that’s a bit about Jerusalem. Let’s think for a moment about
the church, the church today. Since Jesus’ death, his resurrection,
His command to his disciples, the Great Commission, go into
all the world, preach the gospel, make disciples, baptize disciples,
do this till the end of the age. Jesus promises to be with us.
He leaves his Holy Spirit. He’s given apostles, he’s given
pastors, teachers, he’s given gifts to the people in the church
for us to carry on as God’s people in this world. Once God’s people
were to be gathered in Jerusalem, but now he has scattered us from
Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth.
We study the apostle Paul’s missionary journeys. We see he made his
way around the Mediterranean Sea and the gospel went to the
east and it’s come to the west. And the gospel is still going
into various places around the face of the earth. But what is
the church? We’ve looked at what is Jerusalem.
What is the church? Is it a place? Is it activities? Is it people? Well, it’s some
of all of that. First and foremost, it’s the
people of God. The church is the assembly of
God’s people. Just as it was the assembly of
God’s people in the old covenant It’s now the assembly of God’s
people throughout the ages in local places, but it’s the people
of God, the people of God here on earth, but also the people
of God whose lives have ended or their spirits have been made
perfect, they’re gathered in heaven. We speak of the church
triumphant, those who’ve made it to heaven, but the church
militant would be the church on earth. So it is the people
of God. It is activities. There are certain
activities for the church. We worship. We teach, we preach,
we evangelize, we pray, we care for one another. We learn, we
grow, we serve. There are activities that we
do as the people of God following Jesus’ marching orders. In 2020,
we might look at the church and say there are activities galore.
And really the main priorities that Jesus gives us have really
lost their place. Churches have become sports leagues,
churches have become activity centers for all sorts of things,
and none of those things are necessarily bad or evil, but
in many cases they become the main thing. You take away those
amenities, you take away those activities, and there go your
people. Find a church that’s simply growing,
and growing exponentially, because they worship, because there’s
preaching, because there’s Bible teaching and discipleship, because
there’s prayer, because there’s serving one another and being
served. That’s really the center of the
activity according to Jesus’ marching orders. Well, the church
is a people, the church is activities, but the church is also a place. It’s a place. Our particular
church has a building. We’ve had it over 50 years. a
wonderful sanctuary and fellowship hall. We have classrooms and
offices. We have a wonderful, beautiful campus. But we have
this great steeple on our sanctuary and it rises into the sky and
it tells all who drive through our church’s neighborhood, this
is a place where God is worshiped. This is an outpost of heaven.
And our job as a congregation is to bring heaven down to earth
so that people may taste and see that the Lord is good. Our
church is to be a place of glory, God’s glory, a place of beauty,
the beauty of the truth, and a place where God’s people can
flourish as they hear God’s word, receive ministry, and are blessed
by the power of God, the Holy Spirit. And when we leave week
by week, after the benediction, God’s blessing on us, we are
to go and to witness and to bear testimony to the gospel of Jesus
in our homes, our families, in our places of work, our neighborhoods,
in our spheres of influence. But while we’re here on Sundays,
when we can be here on Sundays, we are to sit under the ministry
of God’s word and revel in that God is in our midst and be recalibrated,
have our lives again re-centered on who God is and what he’s done.
I want to suggest to you that the Church of 2020 is in great
trouble. It’s a church full of activities.
It’s a church full of activities that in many cases are irrelevant
to Jesus’ marching orders. All churches are busy. You can
fill your schedule with church activities, but often they aren’t
worship and often they’re not learning and growing and serving.
But many people have become bored with church. Church is inconvenient
to them. Church stops the flow of their
incessant activities. And so Sunday is a box they have
to check to say they’ve done it. Instead of the Lord’s Day,
we now have the Lord’s Hour. We’re sitting in church and we
really have on our minds and hearts our to-do list. We need
to get a jump on Monday. And really the pressure for the
preacher is hurry up because there are people sitting in the
pews that have something else they’d rather be doing But we
need to be reminded of what God’s word says to us. Think of Hebrews
chapter 12, beginning at verse 22. We read these wonderful words,
and these are the realities we should keep in mind when we come
to church. I’ll back up to Hebrews 12, verse
18. It says, for you have not come to what may be touched,
a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest, and the
sound of a trumpet and voice whose words made the hearers
beg that no further messages be spoken to them. It speaks
of the Israelites at the foot of the mountain when Moses was
receiving God’s word and meeting with him. For they could not,
these are the Israelites, they could not endure the order that
was given. If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.
Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I tremble
with fear. I want you to think of these
next verses when you think of Sunday, but you, have come to
Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly
Jerusalem, and to the innumerable angels in festal gathering, and
to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and
to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous
made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and
to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood
of Abel. And then he gives a warning,
see to it, that you do not refuse him. who is speaking. Dear friends, you need to think
very highly of church. It is a place, God’s house. It is certain activities, yes. And it’s a people, a people of
God gathering in the presence of God to worship. And so is
it an awesome experience for you? Are you glad when our fellow
Christians say, it’s time to go to church? I was glad when
they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. Is it
something awesome or is it inconvenient to you? I want you to think about
a different aspect of church, and the psalmist speaks of this.
We should pray for the peace of Jerusalem. We should pray
for the heritage that we are to leave to the next generation,
the heritage of the church, the legacy of the church. Future
generations won’t have a church unless we leave it both in good
shape and in good form for those future generations to come. The church is a sacred trust,
and those whose hands it is in now have an obligation to see
to it that the church is established well and prepared for the future
ahead. Many, I think, in the church
today are selfish. We live in very fine homes and
our churches are suffering. I’ve even noticed of late that
the architecture of new churches are basically metal buildings
with a little brick on them and you go inside and it’s a giant
finished warehouse. I happen to serve at a church.
We have a wonderful sanctuary where God’s people built a beautiful
structure. It has traditional church architecture. It has a high sanctuary ceiling. We’re very privileged to have
it. And it shows us that this is a sacred place. It is a place
for other world activities. It’s not like the YMCA. It’s
not like a school building. It’s not like a doctor’s office.
It’s really not like any other building in our city. And so
we have this wonderful house of God, but it’s not the case
for many churches. People live in very nice homes,
very lavish homes, have giant mortgages and expenses. But the
churches suffer and meet in substandard buildings, and I say that in
wealthy America. We’re living in the richest time
yet. God’s church, maybe like in the
time of the rebuilding of the temple in Ezra and Nehemiah’s
day. People are living in paneled
houses while the house of God lies in ruins. But it’s our job
not only to provide a building and to provide traditions, to
provide for the long-term care and resources for the church. But leaders should think ahead.
We should be thinking of the next 50 years. Our prayers should
be for the next 50 years. I think of the privileges our
congregation has. Over 50 years ago, someone donated
the land our church campus sits on. A building was built and
it was paid off probably within 15 years of its completion. Someone has donated an organ.
We were recently given the wonderful gift of a new set of hymnals.
We have these wonderful pew Bibles that were given to us. Several
years ago, the gifts and talents of the church were used to remodel
much of our building, and so we have a clean, useful, functional,
and wonderful facility. We have no debt. We have money
in the bank. We have a five-year plan. We
have a 50-year plan. And if by God’s grace we are
faithful and the Lord blesses us, the next generation should
enjoy our church. And so, dear brothers and sisters,
do you love the church? Do you love the Sabbath? Do you
come when you’re called? Do you worship, learn, grow,
serve? Do you serve others but you yourself are served? Do you
love the ordinances of the church on Sunday? you gather as often
as you possibly can until you’re called home to glory in the presence
of Almighty God. So we’ve looked at Jerusalem,
we’ve looked at the church, now I want us to think about the
new Jerusalem. Think about the Jerusalem which
the scriptures in the book of Revelation speak about the new
Jerusalem which is above and comes down to heaven. The new
Jerusalem. The goal of Redemptive history,
if you read your Bible, is for God to be with his people. God
cannot be with his people if they’re living in sin. God cannot
be with his people if they’re living their own wicked ways.
And so God has made a way for his people to draw near. And
that was in the old covenant through the sacrifices. It was through the laws. But
now under the new covenant, it’s through the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, wherein he obeyed God perfectly. He died a sacrificial
death. It was plenty to pay for our
sins and miseries. He’s adopted us into the family
of God. He’s given us the Holy Spirit, the church, to teach
and guide and to make us arrive safely home in heaven. And God promises that one day
he’ll make a new heaven and a new earth and that the Jerusalem
which is above, we spoke of it from Hebrews chapter 12, that
reality of the heavenly worship that we participate in while
on earth, That will come down from heaven to earth, the new
created new heavens and new earth. And God will dwell in the midst
of his people forever. There will be no sin. There will
be no sinners. There will be no pain, sorrow.
There will be no sweat. There’ll be no thorns, no pain,
suffering. All sin and its curses and effects
will be gone away. Remember that God has always
desired to be with his people. He’s made a way for us to be
with him. And so he met with Adam and Eve in the garden. Abraham
built altars as he sojourned in the promised land. God met
with his people at the mountain at Sinai. And most importantly,
God, in Christ, tabernacled among us in the coming of Jesus. John
chapter one, a very important chapter in the coming of the
Messiah, says that in the beginning was the word, the word was with
God, the word was God, and he made his dwelling place, or his
tent, he tabernacled among us. And that’s what heaven will be.
It will be us with God forever, unhindered, uninterrupted, and
glorious. And so think back to church.
Church is a taste of heaven. It’s a foretaste, as we like
to sing, of glory divine. And so Jesus tabernacled among
us. But remember also that the Bible speaks of God not living
in temples made by human hands. but he is making a temple out
of his people. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone
and he is raising up in each and every one of us living stones
and he is building a temple. He is building a dwelling place. The book of Revelation speaks
of Jerusalem above, a wonderful spiritual reality where God dwells
on his throne, Jesus at his right hand, the angels and all created
beings surround the glory night and day worshiping God and the
spirits of those who been taken in death, have been made perfect,
and they surround God’s throne night and day, and they worship
Him. And the Bible speaks of in that new heaven, new earth,
that new Jerusalem coming down from above, and God again will
dwell in the midst of a garden with His people, and His temple
will be in our midst. But until that day of the Lord
Jesus Christ, until that day when Jesus raises the dead, until
that day when he judges both the wicked and the righteous,
and until that day he renews the world where the old will
be gone, the new will come, and until he sets free this creation
from bondage and purges it from every evil inhabitant, until
his believers in Christ are fully redeemed as Adam’s helpless race. We are to live on earth as the
church calling all peoples, all nations through the gospel to
live in harmony with almighty God through Christ and one day
to live with him in paradise and to feast at his table and
to worship the lamb. I don’t know about you, but Sundays
are an important part of the week. It’s how we wind our watches.
It’s how we set our clocks. It’s how we calibrate our time. Do you say every Sunday, I am
glad to get to go to the house of the Lord? Do you lay out your
clothes? Do you look at the newsletter
and read through the Bible verses? Do you prepare for worship with
your Bible and hymnal? Are you early to bed? Do you
anticipate Sundays? And do you say with the pilgrims
who travel to Jerusalem, are we there yet? I can’t wait to
be in God’s house. Amen.