Would you turn with me again in your copy of God's Word to the Old Testament, the book of Psalms? Our passage this morning is Psalm 122. You can find it on page 517 of your Pew Bible. We are returning this morning to our fall sermon series here at Covenant Reformed through what are known as the Psalms of Ascent, or the Song of Ascent, as it might say in your Bible. We're calling them Pilgrim Songs. There are Psalms 120 through 134, and they are sung historically by the people of God in the Old Testament as they would approach Jerusalem for the annual feasts. They are metaphors for us of our spiritual journey and pilgrimage. We'll see more of that this morning. Psalm 122 sort of completes the cycle of the first three Psalms. Psalm 120, the people of God are frustrated in their exile and they are homesick to gather together and travel to Jerusalem, their city. In Psalm 121, they are anticipating a dangerous journey on which they will be kept safe by God, who is their keeper. Psalm 122, they're there. They're in Jerusalem. So we sort of have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And so we are anticipating the end in Psalm 122. So look with me in your copy of God's Word as we read this Psalm together. Psalm 122, a song of a sense of David. I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. Our feet have been standing 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. There, 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. The grass withers, the flower fades. The word of our God will stand forever. Would you go with me again in prayer? Our Lord and our King, you know that we often feel as strangers and exiles and wanderers in a foreign land. We have every once in a while that glimpse of our eternal home, but it seems so fading before our eyes. Well, give us this morning a yearning and an appetite for your city, for your house, for your everlasting kingdom. Lord, stir our hearts and point them heavenward, that as we journey in this life, we look for the house of God. Do we hope in its ultimate fulfillment at the return of your son and our king, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we ask all of these things. Amen. There's a silly phrase that we sort of hear often in our lives together and the world around us, in which we're advised that when we're sad, we should go to your happy place. You've maybe heard this phrase. Maybe you've used it. Maybe someone's used it for you. You're feeling anxious. You're feeling scared. Go to your happy place. Can't sleep at night. You're having sort of nightmares, anxious thoughts. Well, just go to your happy place. You have to sit in that dentist chair for three hours, right? Just go to your happy place. It's sort of this mental place of sort of peace and relaxation that we go to when we feel sad or scared or anxious or overwhelmed. It's sort of this mental state of mind. And we can't deny that we need a happy place in a world that is so broken and messed up. In a world that is so full of sin and sorrow and suffering, who of us can deny that we need some sort of happy place? The question for us is not sort of, do you need a happy place? But where is it? And what is it? The psalm tells us this morning, and it's not a mental escape that we go to. Rather, we learn from Psalm 122 that the place of our greatest joy is the place of God's greatest presence. The place of our greatest joy is the place of God's greatest presence. Where do you go in your fear, anxiety, danger, sorrow, suffering? You go, you need to go where God is. And there you will find your greatest joy. The psalm takes us on the journey to the place where God is. And if we want to go there, We need to learn to embrace the values that are laid out for us in our psalm. There are three values in the three sections of the psalm, and we need to learn together to value the pursuit of God's city, to value the purpose of God's city, and to value the peace of God's city. Those are our headings, the pursuit, the purpose, and the peace of God's city. Look with me first, verses 1 to 2. We need to learn to value the pursuit of God's city. This psalm shows us an ancient pursuit for an ancient city of Jerusalem. Look how it begins. I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem. So there are two images for us in these first two verses, the image of the house of the Lord and the location of Jerusalem. House of the Lord comes first, and then secondly, we see Jerusalem in verse two. In biblical history, the idea of the house of God predates the physical location of the city of Jerusalem. Sort of scattered throughout narratives in the early part of Israel's history are these occurrences when God specially comes and meets with his people, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses. These meetings are sometimes referred to as the house of God. the place that God meets with his people. After God brings his people through the leadership of Moses out of Egypt and out of slavery, he institutes a physical house, a tent called the tabernacle, so that God is now in the tent in the midst of his people as they camp and as they travel through the wilderness. That idea of the tabernacle is then, under King Solomon, transferred into Jerusalem in the physical place of the temple, which serves the same purpose as the tabernacle, the house of God. That's where our psalm gets a bit confusing. It says it's a psalm of David, but it seems to be talking about the house of the Lord in Jerusalem, but the temple wasn't built a time when David would travel to Jerusalem to see it. So maybe he's traveling and he's seeing the tabernacle, or maybe he's sort of prophetically singing about what Jerusalem will be like under the kingship of his son Solomon. Either way, what's important for us is that in this period of history, the house of God, the place of God, where God chooses to dwell amongst his people, is physically located in the city of Jerusalem. that amongst all of the other important things, important roles that Jerusalem plays in the life of Israel, this is the number one role the city plays. It is the location of the house of God. Now I said it earlier, the Israelites were instructed in the book of Deuteronomy to travel three times a year to Jerusalem to go to the annual feast of worship and celebration and prayer there for their people in Jerusalem. And they were physically going up, right? In the topography of the land, they're walking upwards. And so there are songs of ascent. They're ascending the hill of Jerusalem, or where Jerusalem is, the hill of Zion. So they hear the call. They go on their annual trips to Jerusalem because there they meet with God in the house of God. There is where God promises to be. But look at their experience in verses one and two of this ancient pursuit. We see first in verse one, there is a joy at this call. I was glad when they said to me. Some days, mom wakes you up for something to do, and you're not so glad she's woken you up, right? Other days, mom wakes you up, and you cannot wait to get out of bed, because this is the day I've been waiting for, right? I've been counting down the days until my birthday, and it's finally here. And I was so glad mom woke me up early, right, for the day of my birthday, right? Psalm 122, the psalmist is thrilled that it's finally the day that we get to travel to Jerusalem. I've been waiting to gather in God's place with God's people to worship Him. And I was glad when that day finally arrived. So verse 1 sets us at the joy, sort of at the beginning of the journey. But then verse 2 changes our time totally. It says, our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem. What we learn about these two verses is there's a lot of days and a lot of steps between verse 1 and verse 2. Verse 1 is the joy of the calling. Verse 2 is the wonderment at the arrival. It's as if David is saying, I can't believe we're here. We're here. We made it to Jerusalem. I feel like this about once a year when we go on vacation to the beach. It's how stressful it is to get ready for vacation and then travel to the beach. And we get there, and my wife and I, we put our bare feet in the sand, and we look at each other and say, I can't believe we're here. We made it. We can take a breath. That's what David's saying. We made it. We're here. I can't believe we're here in Jerusalem. The miles between the joyous calling and the wonder at their arrival. This would have happened three times a year for them. I said earlier in the sermon, this is sort of a metaphor for us. That there is a spiritual journey in the Christian life and that we, in a sense, are marching towards, we're on a pilgrimage towards a Jerusalem. And in Revelation, the end of all of the Bible, it tells us that that destination is called the New Jerusalem. We follow the physical pilgrims in our spiritual march towards our new Jerusalem. So there's a sense in which all of the Christian life is contained between verse one and verse two. And verse one is when we first hear the call, when the God's spirit enters our hearts and gives us a new birth and enables us to believe the wonderful promises of the gospel. And we respond in joy. Let's go to God's house. And then verse two is when Christ returns and he brings with him the new city and he raises the dead to life. And it is the first day of the rest of our eternal lives. And we are now between the joyous summoning of the spirit and the wonderment of our arrival in Jerusalem. You should memorize verse two because you're probably going to save them that day. I can't believe we're here. I can't believe we finally made it to Jerusalem. There's one more pursuit in these two verses. There's an ancient pursuit. There's a lifelong pursuit in which we follow the paths of our spiritual forefathers to Jerusalem. But there is also in these two verses a weekly pursuit. Because when we follow the language of the house of God through the Bible, we find that after the temple, the language of God is applied to the person of Jesus Christ. The end of John chapter 1. He is the house of God. And though the temple will be destroyed, it will be raised again in three days. Because the Lord Jesus is the very presence of God. He is God tabernacling among us, traveling among us. And then when he is raised from the dead and he ascends on high, he sends his spirit in Acts chapter 2, so that the gathering of the people of God, known as the church, is now the house of God. So we read 1.22 and we understand Jerusalem for us in our redemptive historical moment as speaking of not only our travel to the New Jerusalem, but our weekly travel to the Sabbath day gathering of the people of God. The journey of verse 1 and 2 is reenacted weekly in the gathering of Christians for worship. The church on earth at worship is the house of God. It is the place where his greatest presence is to be found. Not a beautiful sunset on the beach, not an isolated mountaintop right in the Blue Ridge Mountains. No, it is here. in the small, fumbling, somewhat awkward gathering of the saints of God. It is here he promises to meet us by his word and spirit. And here we know his presence greater than anywhere else on this earth. Verses one and two is reenacted in the weekly rhythm of work and rest, of the joy at the call and the wonder at the arrival. Now, I wonder how many of you got here this morning and said, wow, I can't believe I made it to church. Maybe some of you did. I can't believe we're finally here. We are to embrace the weekly call to worship. We are to value in our lives the rhythm and the pattern of the weekly call to worship. It used to be the bells that are chiming from the steeple. Now it's the buzz on our smartphones telling us time to get up and go to church on Sunday. The most important commitment, one of the most important commitments you can make as a child of God is to be in his house every Sunday. It sounds overly simplistic, doesn't it? It sounds like I'm giving you some rule, like there's this legalist pastor telling me I have to be in church every week. No, I'm telling you, it's your greatest joy to be in the place of God where God promises to be week in and week out. I have seen, although not entirely experienced, but I have seen moms with young kids struggling to get to church on Sunday. I've seen it in my house for years. And I would say to you, as you wake up Sunday morning, and there are two hours ahead of you of brushing hair, and ponytails, and tucking in shirts, and getting breakfast on the table, that verse 1 is true for you. You will be glad when God said, let us go to the house of the Lord. I say to you who are single, or who are widowed, or who are an introvert, and you can't imagine driving to church again and dealing with that awkwardness, it is good. to go to the house of the Lord. You who are weary and are sick and think there's so much a better way to spend your Sunday than putting on nice clothes and sitting amongst people that you might not love that very day. Verse one applies to you. I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. The beginning of this summer, I did something very stupid. I signed up and I ran a half marathon. And it was horrible. It was a disaster. But I realized soon into this hot race that I was not prepared and I was going to be dehydrated really fast. And there's no way I could run 13 miles. But I knew that they were going to have water every two miles. And so I changed my approach and thought, I just need to get to the next water table. If I can just get this next two miles, this next mile, this next quarter mile, if I could just make it to that water table, then I can keep going. That was my goal. That's, I think, a silly image for us of the pattern of the Christian life and the six days of work and the one day of rest that God has given us. He lays us a water table. or as the psalm says, a table in the wilderness. That in the exhausting and isolating and suffering journey of the Christian life, he gives us Jerusalem once a week. He gives us his presence once a week. And let me continue with the silliness. I don't run to that water table exhausted and say, I really want some water, but it's going to be kind of awkward. I don't know those people, so I'm just going to keep running by. I don't say thanks for the water, but I'm too tired. I'm just going to keep going. We are not wiser than God. He has designed a week for us, and he has designed a gathering on that greatest day of the week to feed and nurture our very souls. Our ancient forefathers, they pressed through the physical obstacles to come to Jerusalem. We don't have really the same physical obstacles as some of us do. We have more kind of mental obstacles. But dear brother and sister in Christ, let us go to the house of the Lord. Let us rejoice at that call as God ministers to us where he promises to be. You know, I wonder often as a pastor, why don't we pursue the city of God like Psalm 122? And I think it's because we don't really understand what it's for. We don't really get, what's the church for? What's the church supposed to be doing? So I want you to see, secondly, in our Psalm, we need to value the purpose of God's city. We need to know what it's for. Why would we want to be there? What's going on there? Look at verses 3, 4, and 5. David arrives, right? He's amazed in wonderment as he arrives, and his feet are there in Jerusalem. And then he looks around, and he reports to us what he sees in the city of Jerusalem. And he sees three purposes. First he sees that the purpose of God's city is to unify. Look at verse 3. Jerusalem built as a city that is bound firmly together. That's sort of a weird statement to make. You know, maybe some of you who are kind of into building or architecture, you like to look at certain ways a building is made. So David is looking around and he says Jerusalem is built firmly together. Like literally the blocks are carefully and well placed. The city is compact and snug. It's sort of its own unit of self-sufficiency, sort of architecturally. It's actually the same language used in the book of Exodus to speak of the tabernacle. The cloth is so knit together to make it a single whole. So there's this physical unity to the city of Jerusalem that then as David's contemplation leads in verse two to a spiritual unity. I'm sorry, verse four, a spiritual unity, to which the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, as was decreed for Israel. So the scattered tribes in their diversity and variety now in their own customs and probably their own dialects at this point, they gather together in the city of Jerusalem and their diversity to be unified under the rule and the reign of their king. The king draws people from every tribe and tongue and nation. We see this parallel in the work of Jesus. It is his work to gather and unify his church. We read in Galatians that neither June or Greek slave nor free male nor female for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Jerusalem is a picture of physical and spiritual unity. The church is to be a picture, maybe not of physical unity, but certainly of spiritual unity, of drawing together that which is separated in our fallen world in unity around the King, picturing the new Jerusalem unity of every tribe, every tongue, every people, and every nation. There's our first purpose. of the church to unify. Just kind of say an obvious thing, if people aren't here, then there's not that picture of unity. Second is to worship. The purpose of the new city, the purpose of God's city is first to unify, secondly is to worship, the end of verse four. Two, the reason why the tribes gather together is to give thanks to the name of the Lord. Here's the heart of our worship, is a heart of gratitude and a heart of thanksgiving to the God who has saved us by the work of Jesus Christ. Augustine said that a Christian should be an alleluia from head to foot. A praise and thanksgiving sort of from head to foot, right? It should consume who we are, an ongoing burning heart of gratitude towards God. But here's what's interesting about the text. It's not only that you are to worship and be grateful to God, but here is when and where you're supposed to do that. Verse 4, as was decreed for Israel. God tells Israel when they're supposed to gather for worship and where they're supposed to gather for worship. Psalm 122 does not say, whenever you are ready, then's the time to come to gather with the people of God. It says, here are the dates and you are to be there. Eugene Peterson writes this, he says, worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship. What is he saying? He's saying that worship is formative. that worship cultivates the right attitudes and affections for God. And if we just wait around, enjoying the fruits of a fallen world, our appetite for God and for true Christian worship is going to shrink. And if we wait until we're ready to go, we will never go again. Sort of that experience when you try to go on a diet and you've been eating junk food and it's time to eat some healthy food. And what happens that first day when you make a salad and you eat some broccoli and all that other gross green stuff? You don't want it. You just want to go get a Big Mac and fries, right? You don't want the apple, you want the Snickers. But then if you stay at it, if you continue to eat healthy food that nourishes and grows your body and makes you strong, then all of a sudden you don't want the big mac and fries as much anymore, right? You grow, at least that's what they tell me, I've never made it this far. You grow to want the healthy, nutritious food. This is what worship does. Week by week, gathering with God's people, it funnels our appetites into the proper channels that we now desire the richness that is God and not the trivial cotton candy of the world. And that only happens as we gather, as he calls us, in worship. That's the purpose of Jerusalem, God's city. It's to unify, it's to worship, but there's a final purpose. That purpose is to judge. Look at verse 5. Their thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David. Now, what does this mean? Well, Jerusalem was the place where the people of God came for judgment, right? There's two women. There's one baby. They both say the baby's theirs, right? Where do they go for judgment? Well, they go to King Solomon. He renders judgment there from the throne. It says thrones for judgment. Then it says the thrones of the house of David. That's important for how we understand the Psalm. That means that in the historic progression of Jerusalem, David and then Solomon, and then the hope is that that continual lineage of kings would sit on the throne in Jerusalem and would judge with righteousness, justice, holiness, grace, love, and mercy. You know what happened that didn't stick in Jerusalem. David's throne was established. But then what happened in the history of Jerusalem? What happened particularly when the Messiah, when David's greater son, when the Lord Jesus Christ came to Jerusalem? Hear what he says in Luke 13. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings? And you are not willing. Behold, your house is forsaken. The heir to the throne in Jerusalem came and he was rejected. This is a sombering reality to the purpose of the house of God. It is a place to judge. To put another way, it's the place where the king renders judgment. And it puts the question back to us this morning, how have you responded to this king? How have you responded to King Jesus who has come riding on a donkey in humility and in suffering and in death? You see, from the throne of Jerusalem, the church comes a message of judgment. God's word announces that every person is fallen short of the glory of God. That all have rebelled against him, have hated him. and are condemned because of your rebellion to an eternity of his wrath and punishment. And the king is just and the king is righteous and that condemnation cannot be questioned despite the great desire to deny it and to laugh at it and to make light of it in the world. And yet it is also from that same throne of the king comes the herald of good news that pronounces that the Lamb of God has come and that the Lamb of God has died for the sins of his people. and that He has given Himself to receive upon His head all of the wrath and righteous judgment of God intended for those who have rebelled against Him, but who are marked before time to become His people and His church, and that that same proclamation of judgment that both condemns us, also assures us that by simplicity of repentance and faith, we too are saved. How have you responded to your king. This morning is the chance, the day to repent and believe. To turn from a life of sin and rebellion, a life of running from his proper worship, a life of hating him in your heart, a life of hypocrisy. And trusting a fresh alone in Jesus as the king and savior of sinners. Why do we go to God's city? Why do we go to the house of the Lord? Well, it's the place to unify. It's the place to worship. It's the place where he judges. And when all three of these come together perfectly, it produces our third and final value. It produces peace. I want you to see thirdly in our passage that we are to value the peace of God's city. Verses six to nine. That word pops up in our verses three times. Verse six, peace of Jerusalem. Verse seven, peace be within your walls. Verse eight, again, peace be within you. On one level, peace here just means no more threats, right? A freedom from that which threatens you. You can see it just in these few words, there's that which threaten the people of God that comes from without. It says they need security in verse 6 and verse 7. Speaks of the towers and the walls within which they are secure from the threat without. You can imagine for the traveler through the nights and through the hills of Israel and finally making it to Jerusalem, they can finally have a good night's sleep because there's great walls and towers around them to protect them. But there's also peace within your walls. within your towers, within you. Peace amongst the gathered diversity of the people of God in the city of Jerusalem. There's no division. There's no more bickering. There's no more infighting. There are no more threats without and within. But there's a deeper sense of the peace of God's city here. You know the root word here, the word Shalom. A word that brings with it a whole host of meaning, a word that tells us that in God's city, when there's no threats without or within, with God's blessing, there is spiritual health and prosperity. There's wholeness, there's unity, there's well-being, there's flourishing peacetime. Prophet Isaiah says it like this, they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. The weapons of war will now be weapons of peace. And the weapons and the men and the energy used for war now are used for peace. And now there is flourishing and shalom and wholeness and well-being in the city of God. I don't need to tell you once again that the physical Jerusalem failed at this. We find Jesus for a second time lamenting and weeping over Jerusalem in Luke chapter 19 now. And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it saying, would that you even you had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. Jerusalem, you are the city of peace, but even you don't know the things that make for peace. So Jerusalem fails at this peace. What do we see about the new Jerusalem? We see that this peace is guaranteed. We see in that city that all of the gates stand wide open because there's no night. There's no threats from without or within. There is shalom, right? There is overflowing blessings. Remember when I preached a month ago about the overflowing streams and the trees of life that keep bearing their fruit constantly, all the kinds of fruit. Every month, it's overflowing with bounty and peace. So behind us, we have a physical city that has failed at this peace. Ahead of us, we have an eternal city that will thrive in this guaranteed peace. What about now? What about the Jerusalem that is the church? Well, David tells us pretty clearly, verse 6, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Verse nine, for the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good. He's speaking of Jerusalem as the house, I mean, as the place of the house of God. So he is praying and seeking the peace and the good of the house of God. That's clearly a closing application for us. If you're a member of this church, you have taken a vow to promise to study its purity and peace. That phrase is kind of awkward for us. People always ask, what does it mean to study the peace and the purity of the church? It doesn't mean go check out a book at the library entitled Purity and Peace and read it. That means we are to work for it. We are to want it. We are to aim for it. Three ways, briefly, as we close, that we study for the peace and purity, that we study the peace and purity of the church. One is that you pray often for the church. Pray often for this church. Pray that we would be secure from threats without, and that we would be secure from threats within. Put us on your weekly, if not daily, prayer list. Number two, work for the unity of the church. And I want to be clear as I say this, not for the uniformity of the church. Unity is a lot easier when everyone else is just like me. If you all would just eat the same food I eat, we would have a lot easier time getting along, wouldn't we? If you all dress the same way that I dress, we could all get along a lot better. If you would just vote for the same people I vote for, this would be a whole lot easier to get along. If you would send your kids to the type of school that I think you should send your kids to, that I send my kids to, then we'll have a lot easier time getting along. The Bible calls the variety and the diversity and the cultures and the people and the tribes and the nations that God has saved to be drawn together in a unity of worship, in a unity of mission. And it is so much easier when we make it all about us and make everyone look just like us because then there's nothing to fight about. We overcome. through the unity of the gospel, through our head, Jesus, who has drawn us together. So I urge you as your pastor to work for the unity and not the uniformity of your church. Finally, a third way to study the peace and the purity of the church is to be reconciled. There's lots of issues always in the church. There's arguments. There's division. Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 5, if you know, Your neighbor has something against you. Go to him and be reconciled. You work for the peace and the purity of Jerusalem and the church as we seek to be reconciled. Now, here's the bad news. You're not very good at all these things. You're probably going to fail at all these things. But we have a greater king who is working for our peace and purity. We have a greater pilgrim. who has journeyed the path of Psalm 122 before us. We have a king who is preparing for us this city. And he says this, let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also." There in the place of God, in the place of His greatest presence, is our greatest joy. So, brother and sister, come. Let us go to the house of the Lord. Let's pray. Our God and our King, you have given us blessing upon blessing, salvation beyond what we could imagine. You have redeemed our lives from the pit. You have set our feet on solid ground. You have given us Your Spirit as the seal of our inheritance, that as we journey, we are assured that our arrival within the gates of Jerusalem is guaranteed. Now help us, O God, as we stumble along the way. Help us especially as we pray for and we seek the peace of this, Your Church, the peace of this earthly experience of Jerusalem. And oh God, as we seek that, as we seek to diligently gather week by week amongst other fallen people with whom we need abundant grace upon grace. Lord, teach us that it is indeed our greatest joy to be in the place of your greatest presence. We ask it all in Jesus name. Amen.