In case you haven’t been here the last few weeks, we talked about the idea that the Psalms of Ascents were actually believed to be sung by the Jewish pilgrims as they made their way up to Jerusalem for the various Jewish festivals. Although they were considered to be somewhat of a travel psalm, over time, they began to be seen as kind of a metaphor for the spiritual life of a person. A person that is slowly ascending up to God. As people who are trying to learn to live everyday life like Jesus, these psalms become an aid to us in our discipleship and our desire to begin to look like Jesus Christ. We have looked at a psalm of complaint. We looked at a psalm of trust. Today, we are going to look at a psalm of worship, Psalm 122. As we read through it, you are going to see why we consider it a psalm of worship. If somebody would read from Psalm 122 and stand up and read. (Scripture read here.)
As you can see, this is kind of a psalm that talks about celebrating the fact of going up to Jerusalem for worship. As a side note, Jerusalem was the worship center, but it was also the city center of the nation of Israel. It was known first and foremost, at least by Jewish people, to be a place of worship because it was believed to contain the very house of God. When the passage refers to the house of God, as a side note, we are not sure exactly how old the psalm is, so we don’t know exactly if he is referring to the tabernacle that would have been known in the time of David or if it actually would be the temple when it was King Solomon. We really don’t know. It really doesn’t matter. All that matters is that they knew that Jerusalem was the center of worship. Although we struggle with the idea of thinking of a place like Jerusalem as the center of worship, I think it is pretty easy for us to consider Bellevue Christian as the center for your worship. Consequently, this passage can give us a nice frame of mind when we think about what it means to come to church.
The passage opens up by saying “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” This is the idea of somebody out in the countryside far away from Jerusalem and a group of friends and family ask him to go on a road trip to Jerusalem. When I get asked to go on a road trip, I get pretty excited. Especially if it means vacation or if it means a long weekend like many people are celebrating this weekend. But the person was very happy. He was more than happy. It says he rejoiced. Rejoice has the idea of extreme happiness. We would say ecstatic. The person was very excited to go up to Jerusalem. You have to keep in mind that this person probably didn’t just live a few blocks or a few miles from Jerusalem. It is more likely that this person would be traveling a great distance over very rugged terrain. But you also get the sense that it didn’t seem to matter to the person because the person had a heart towards worshipping God. His heart was bent towards worship, so he was excited about it. I began to think about it. If I go out in Bellevue and I begin to say something like, “Let’s all go to a Steelers game.” Or if I say, “Let’s go down to Carson Street and have a few beers.” I might get somebody to say, “I’ll go. That sounds good to me.” But if I say, “Let’s all go to church on Sunday morning,” I don’t know if I would get many takers. This has little to do with distance. Whether it is a few blocks or a few miles, it has to do with the distance of the heart between the person and God. The bottom line is a lot of people’s hearts are not bent towards worshipping God, the creator of the universe.
Other than that, as we continue on, we don’t know how much time passed between verse 1 and verse 2. We do know it sounds like suddenly this person finds himself standing at the gates of Jerusalem. The passage goes on to read “Our feet are standing in your gates, oh Jerusalem.” Reading this passage, you get the sense that the person didn’t just walk right through the gates. The person was very excited to be there and kind of stood in awe. How many of you have been to the Grand Canyon in Arizona? What about the Eifel Tower in Paris? What about Kennywood? You know the feeling you first get when you go into Kennywood. I finally come and the gates are there and I just get so excited. I think it is the excitement some people feel when they go to a tourist destination like the Grand Canyon or the Eifel Tower. When they finally arrive and see it, they are just kind of awestruck. I remember when I was in the Navy, I decided I was going to take a train up to Rome, not only to meet a girl, but also to see the Roman Coliseum. I went from Naples to Rome. I got off the train and thought I would have to walk a few blocks or a mile or so. When I got off the train, the Coliseum was right there probably 30 feet in front of me. It almost took my breath away. What I had read about all through history was now staring me in the face. I remember sitting in the park across the street just looking at it. I was just in awe. I get the sense that this is how the psalmist is feeling when he comes upon the gates of Jerusalem after this long journey. But I don’t think the person is in awe because of the huge gates that face him. I think he is in awe because of what is behind the gates. Behind the gates is the house of the Lord where the Lord’s presence would be. It was God who told David and Moses that he would dwell in Jerusalem. When the temple was done, Solomon wrote a prayer of dedication. Among other things, this is what Solomon said. He said “I have indeed built a magnificent temple for You (You being God). A place for you to dwell forever.” This is the place that God dwells. I know we have a lot of people come through our doors in any given week around here, but I doubt if anybody, including myself, just stop at the steps and stare at the front door and say “Wow, Bellevue Christian Church.” People who come late can barely get a bulletin let alone stand there in awe of God or what might be in there. We just aren’t used to it. We take these things for granted that this might be the house of God. As I say house, I am not talking about a building. I am talking about people who all through the centuries have traveled into a church, not just this church but any church, for the sole purpose of meeting God. Meeting God by way of his Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit that individually and collectively resides in the hearts of believers who collectively are referred to in scripture as the body of Christ. We see that in Ephesians 1:22 where it says “God placed all things under his feet and appointed him (him being Jesus) to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” That is what the church is. It is the body of Christ. At a minimum, if you begin to reflect on this, you think maybe I should make church more of a priority. And that is when, at some point, you can reflect on it and say God is really in this place.
So the person was very excited about going up to Jerusalem. When he got there, he stood in a state of awe, but the passage that follows seems to give an indication of what would have made him excited to suddenly be in Jerusalem. He goes on to say “Jerusalem is built like a city that is closely compacted together.” You read that and say it sounds like a crowded place. But there is another translation that gets it a little closer to the meaning. It says “Jerusalem is built like a city which has company together.” Still a little confusing, but the sense here is that Jerusalem became known as a city that was a good place to assemble and a good place to gather either for an assembly or for worship. Eugene Peterson in the paraphrase The Message says it like this, which I think is in plain English, “Jerusalem is a well-built city, built as a place for worship.” It was a city that was designed for worship. A well-built city. Many churches are well-built. You may not know it, but this church has been here since 1896. It is 120 years old. If we take care of the building, I believe it can be here for another 120 years. It is a well-built building basically designed for worship. It is not only that we have entered a building that is designed for worship. We entered into a worship service. A structure that is designed for worship. It is what people refer to as the Order of Service or the Order of Worship. In simplistic terms it is just taking the various elements of a service and arranging them in a way so that when you leave here you don’t just think I just attended a concert or I just attended a lecture. But rather you were ushered into the very presence of God. I think that is what we are trying to do. It definitely is a challenge. We are trying to bring people in so they might get a glimpse of the presence of God while they are here. That is our aim and it is a challenge.
Because, as the passage goes on, we are taking people from all parts of the city, and bringing them together for that one purpose to praise God. That is a challenge. The passage goes on to say “That is where the tribes go up – the tribes of the Lord – to praise the name of the Lord according to the statute given to Israel.” In case you are not familiar with it, when he is talking about tribes, he is not talking about the Cleveland Indians that Debbie likes to follow. He is talking about the tribes of Israel. Basically the 12 tribes that he sent in from the 12 sons of Jacob. When they came into the land, they were allocated land, which is on this map here. You can see the capital letters. Those are basically the various sons of Jacob and the land that they were apportioned on both sides of the Jordan. That is what he is talking about here. Even though the tribes are scattered, they come up together because of their common history and their common need to come and worship God. Likewise, throughout the week, we are all scattered in our various locales with friends and family and coworkers, our various tribes so to speak. We are out there separated during the week, but we come together as one on Sunday. Although the world tends to want to put labels on us like black/white, gay/straight, Republican/Democrat, and all these labels they put on us out there, when we come here, the only labels we take are the ones that are given to us by God. That is spelled out in 1 Peter where it says “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you might declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Do you hear those titles? Chosen people. A royal priesthood. A holy nation. A people belonging to God. He is talking about Christians here. Those are the titles he has given. That is what I love about the church. The church is the only place where you can take people from all these diverse backgrounds and put them together and they can praise God together on a Sunday morning. It is just amazing to come out and see the united praise of people. People that would have no other reason throughout the week to really hang with each other, come together because of that common history, that common heritage, and their desire to “declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into light.” The author Eugene Peterson wrote the book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction that is based on these psalms that some of you might be reading. He goes on to say “With all of our differing levels of intelligence and wealth, background and language, rivalries and resentments, still in worship, we are gathered into a single whole. Outer quarrels and misunderstandings and differences pale into insignificance as the inner unity of what God builds in the act of worship is demonstrated.” A lot of words there, but he is basically saying we come as a diverse group of people with all sorts of differences, but when we come into worship, we are one. We are united as one person.
That is what is going on here in this passage. These tribes are coming together for worship. When we come together for worship, unlike the psalmist, we don’t come out of a sense of obligation. We don’t come because we have to come. We come because we get to come. I think that is one of the themes of Summer in the Son this year that Ramsey was exposed to. We don’t have to do something. We get to do something. We get to come to worship. For the psalmist and the Jewish people at the time that was not an option. Going back to this passage, Psalm 122:4, it says “That is where the tribes go up – the tribes of the Lord – to praise the name of the Lord according to the statute given to Israel.” A statute is a law. It is an ordinance given down by a higher authority. In this case the authority being God who gave this law through Moses and Moses wrote it down in the book of Deuteronomy. The law is this: “Three times a year, all your men must appear before the Lord, your God, the place you will choose at the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, which is also known as Passover, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Tabernacles. So it was required for all faithful Jews to go up for these festivals. But as you read this passage, you get the sense that the psalmist wasn’t really coerced. He wasn’t strong-armed into going up to the temple. He really wanted to go to the temple. He knew when he went to the temple he would be able to re-hear the narratives of his faith, the stories of his faith. The great stories of deliverance and being delivered from their various enemies. They loved hearing them over and over. They wouldn’t just read them. They would listen to them. Over all these years, it continued to shape them as a people and as an identity. Likewise, we come to church here. We don’t just go to church to go to church. When we come in, we are reliving the stories. We are reliving our story. We are reliving the story of our deliverance that came by way of the gospel and by the cross of Christ. That is what we are coming for. We come to remember where we came from and where we came to through our baptism and really what direction we are headed. We are going in the direction of becoming children of God. Children that look like Jesus Christ that are being shaped into his very image. As I have said before, whether we like it or not, we are being shaped 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We are being shaped by things like the internet, by the books we read, by the people you hang with, the movies you watch, the games you play. All this is having a shaping influence on your heart. When you come to worship it kind of counteracts the shaping of the world. It counteracts all the junk that you get in the world that is trying to shape you and pull you into its mold and begins to reshape your heart back to God. It begins to pull your desires back to God. That is what we need. That is why we come to church. To counteract all the stuff that the world is trying to tell us we need to be.
The primary way that happens is through the word of God. The written word of God. The sung word of God. It is through the word of God because the word of God has the ability to open up the heart and give it a little nudge here and there. This passage goes on to read “There the thrones for judgment stand, the thrones of the house of David.” A side note, Jerusalem wasn’t just a worship center. It was the civic center. It was the judicial center. The highest courts in the lands were there. These thrones would be set up so they could hear the people’s cases at the royal palace or civic auditorium or possibly near the front gate. The cases would be heard. You would have this royal official, in some cases it would be the king, who would hear the cases and convict people of a crime or sin and dole out punishment or in many cases extend mercy. The bottom line is what he was doing was really trying, if it was a legitimate hearing, to correct wrongs. To make wrongs right. That is really what is going on in judgment. You are trying to make a wrong right. Having said that, by no means do I mean we stand here on a throne and try to judge the people’s hearts. That is not the job of the pastor. That is the job of God. That is what he does through his word. That is exactly what his word is designed to do as we are told in Hebrews 4. It says “The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” The word does that. Any pastors responsibility is just give it out. Give it out the way that we feel it should get out and let God do the work. Contrary to what some people think, our job is not to make you feel bad if you’ve been here. Not to make you feel bad about yourself. But really what should be the design of all preachers sending out the word is to bring you towards peace. Most of us have this chaos going on. There is stuff going on in our soul. We resist when our soul is being opened up and being exposed. We fight that and shut it off. But really, if we begin to deal with it, we move towards peace.
The passage closes by talking about peace. It says “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: ‘May those who love you be secure. May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels.’ For the sake of my brothers and friends, I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’” A lot of stuff in here I don’t have time to go into, but two words should jump out. The word peace and the word secure or security. As I have talked about before, the idea of peace is not just an absence of conflict. That is part of it, but it is really this inner peace. The Jewish people call Shalom. It is a whole sense of well-being. Security does not have to do with how much money you have in the bank. This sense of security is actually a sense of leisure. It is a sense of being so at peace with God that you are kind of just at rest. That is what it is about. Jerusalem did need their prayers. It needed the prayers back then just as much as it needs it today because of all the wars and political issues going on and violence. People needed to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. As a side note, when he says “May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels” basically he is expanding that prayer out into the larger part of Jerusalem, not just the worship center. It is putting it out into the public arena. Then he goes on to say “For the sake of my brothers and friends, I will say, ‘Peace be within you.’” It is an interesting thing, but what I suspect he is suggesting here is that as the Jewish people experience peace in a very real way, the peace of God, and then go out in all the various civic areas of city, their peace will begin to overflow to others.
Likewise, in closing, think about America. America is by no means a place of peace right now. Some even suggest we are at war. We know there are all sorts of divisions. Whether it is race relations, division over gender issues, obviously the political climate, gun control stuff. All these divisive things. The newest division seems to be over whether the pro-football players should be singing the National Anthem. I am not giving an opinion on it. All I am saying is immediately another division was created. Every 24 hours there is a new division created and people are taking sides on things. We do need to pray for America. In announcement time, Debbie is going to talk about an opportunity for people to pray for America. We do need to pray for America. But going back to this passage, he says “For the sake of my brothers and friends, I will say, ‘Peace be with you.’” For the sake of my brothers, my sisters, my coworkers, peace be with you. What I think he is suggesting is that as you begin to experience peace, you being individually and collectively Christians, as you begin to experience that peace that transforms all understanding, the peace that comes through Jesus Christ, that peace ideally should spill over into the area, into the borough, into the city. So when you go out, you go out like Jesus or at least somebody actually trying to live like Jesus. If you do it long enough, hopefully some of that peace will begin to spill over into others, which means when you go into the world, you don’t choose to engage in all the conflicts out there that you see on Facebook and the internet and all this stuff. Like some Christians do, they feel the need to jump right in the middle of it and give their two cents and all they do is fuel the fire of division. A better option is to be people of peace. People who leave the church, go out into the world to go into the schools and business and as a person of peace so much so that somebody says I noticed there is something different about you. You used to be so angry and so divisive. I have seen you change and you just don’t seem like you used to. Hopefully that will create an opportunity for the person to say where that comes from. Maybe even open the door and invite the person into church. That is what the Great Commission is about. We talked about making disciples. Making disciples is simply about going into the world and being a person of peace. Someone who has changed from within because of what Christ has done for them. Beginning to be the peace in the world so much so that, like Jesus Christ did, when somebody says how can I get this peace, he said “Come follow me and I will show you.” Over time, eventually that person too would be able to mouth the words of the psalms. He would be able to say “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’.” Because it is at the house of the Lord where I found my peace. Let us pray.
