Seeking the Peace of Christ's Church

Psalm 122 - Seeking the peace of Christ’s church

A member of a certain church, who previously had been attending services regularly, stopped going. After a few weeks, the pastor decided to visit him. It was a chilly evening. The pastor found the man at home alone, sitting before a blazing fire.

Guessing the reason for his pastor’s visit, the man welcomed him, led him to a big chair near the fireplace and waited. The pastor made himself comfortable but said nothing. In the grave silence, he contemplated the play of the flames around the burning logs.

After some minutes, the pastor took the fire tongs, carefully picked up a brightly burning ember and placed it to one side of the hearth all alone. Then he sat back in his chair, still silent. The host watched all this in quiet fascination.

As the one lone ember’s flame diminished, there was a momentary glow and then its fire was no more. Soon it was cold and “dead as a doornail.” Not a word had been spoken since the initial greeting.

Just before the pastor was ready to leave, he picked up the cold, dead ember and placed it back in the middle of the fire. Immediately it began to glow once more with the light and warmth of the burning coals around it.

As the pastor reached the door to leave, his host said, “Thank you so much for your visit and especially for the fiery sermon. I shall be back in church next Sunday.”

In the case of a fire, not only does a single coal need the presence of the other coals, but the other coals need each other.

What is your view of the church? When was the last time you thought about the church as a whole? Do you believe that your own peace and prosperity are tied to the church’s and that the church’s is tied to you?

Background

The Psalms of Ascent, Song of steps, or Pilgrim Songs are a set of 15 psalms, beginning with Psalm 120 and ending with Psalm 134. These were psalms that were sung as God’s people traveled from various places to go to Jerusalem to make it to the required festivals. They were easy to sing in Hebrew, they are short, and they express a longing to be in God’s presence in Jerusalem. Each one has a keyword, a repetition, and most of them are cheerful.

This psalm was written by king David as the divinely inspired title says, “A song of ascents. Of David.”

Let us read God’s infallible (meaning it is incapable of making mistakes), inerrant (meaning it is without error), which is verbally (meaning every word is God-breathed, not just the ideas behind the words) and plenarily inspired (meaning full, that every part is equally of divine origin and equally authoritative) in the original manuscripts. So, whether we are in a gospel, an epistle, or like today, a Psalm, we are hearing God. Let us give careful attention to its reading.

Glad

Psalm 122 starts off by saying, “I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD!” 

Sometimes we say or use words and only know a “shadow meaning” of them. In other words, we have a vague idea of what the word we are using means. The word “glad” might be one of those words. It doesn’t mean happy, for happiness is a feeling of pleasure or contentment. What glad means in this context is being pleased or delighted. It is a word that seems to express what happens before we become happy or before we get that feeling of contentment.

The psalmist, after he has arrived in Jerusalem, reflects on the memory of the beginning of the journey. He expresses that when he was told that it was time to take the trip to Jerusalem to celebrate and worship God with all of God’s people, he was pleased or delighted. In other words, it delighted him to know that it was time to go to his true home, the place where God’s family goes to experience the presence of God.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem

And now that he is here, he begins to express the wonder of having returned to the city where Yahweh’s presence is and so verses 2-4a continue, “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…”

The psalmist reflects upon the beauty and wonder of the city as he walks up to the gates. He repeats the name Jerusalem twice in a row, as we see at the end of verse 2 and the beginning of verse 3. Here he is expressing a deep feeling of wonder as he looks over the city. It is a beautiful city. It is put together well, and it is filled with the 12 tribes of Israel because they have all come up to celebrate.

But there is something incredible here. The tribes are not their own, they are “the tribes of the Lord.” They are Yahweh’s tribes. They belong to him. God’s people are not their own, they have been bought with a price (1 Cor. 6:19-20). This is why the church, God’s people are so amazing to be with. They have been chosen and bought by God. They are his construction, his work. And thus, they are beautiful, you all are beautiful. You are beautiful because you are the body of Christ, his workmanship. But the ultimate beauty isn’t the physical location where they go, Jerusalem, the city of God, but God himself. Jerusalem is spoken of like this because it is where God’s presence is. God is the ultimate beauty.

Verse 4b continues, “…as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the LORD.”

It is now the time when God has told all of his people to come together and give thanks to the Lord and be reminded that God has redeemed them from their captivity and made them his people, his family. It is like a big family reunion of all God’s people. All of Yahweh’s family are there. Everyone gets an invitation, no one is excluded. From the least to the greatest, all God’s people are joining in to give him thanks for his great redemption of them. They are meeting to celebrate their freedom form bondage in Egypt. We as the church meet each week to celebrate and give thanks to God for our freedom from curse of sin and the control of Satan by Jesus Christ.

And when we consider the reality of how God’s people are supposed to love one another and live in union with Christ, because of their redemption, this would evoke much happiness. Though we know that family life is hard, even within the church, the reality of what it should be and will be in the New Jerusalem, the new heavens and earth, should invoke much delight and joy.

What kind of emotions or feelings are evoked in you when you think of the Sunday morning gathering? Is it a chore? Is it a duty? Or is it a delight? Do you delight in gathering with God’s people and giving thanks to him? In seeing the visible manifestation of the body of Christ? Of Christ’s workmanship both up to now and ongoing?

Judgment, thrones, peace, and security

Let’s continue onto verse 5, which reads, “There thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David.”

Jerusalem was the place where Israel’s king ruled, judgments were pronounced, and the nation of Israel would be mobilized for war to protect God’s people. It was a place where people could go to take their cases to the king and have a just judgment pronounced. It was a place where people could know that if they were there, they were protected by the king and his army. It was a place where they knew that peace would flow from.

The church today should be no different. Jesus should be ruling our church by his Spirit, and he should be the one making the judgments and leading us. As we are led by his Spirit, his judgments flow through us, his church, and thus, it is a beautiful thing to see how Christ rules and makes judgments in his church.

This is why verse 6 continues, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! “May they be secure who love you!”

We are told here that we should pray for the peace of Jerusalem. But what is peace? The Hebrew word used here that we translate peace is shalom. It carries with it the idea of freedom from any disturbance, whether outwardly, such as war in the world, or inwardly, as in our soul. And so we can think of this as “soundness,” “health,” “prosperity,” but ultimately well-being in general, both with man and God.

And so, God’s people should pray for its peace, its wholeness, because from its peace or wholeness would flow peace or wholeness to all the 12 tribes, to all of God’s people, to those who love Jerusalem, who love the city of God.

Now the question is this, “What does it mean to love Jerusalem?” Does it mean that God’s people love Jerusalem because it is such a great place? Or does it mean something deeper, that God’s people love Jerusalem because of other reasons? There two primary reasons. First and foremost, God’s presence is there. Second, God’s people, his family are there. After all, we read in Ephesians 5, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…”? Jesus loved his church, which is really you all and me, the people of God. And so, we can extrapolate that what we love as God’s people is God himself and his people, our family.

Verses 7-8 continue, “Peace be within your walls and security within your towers!” For my brothers and companions’ sake I will say, “Peace be within you!”

If Jerusalem was secure, then from it would flow peace. And so, they prayed for its peace and it’s good. What this means for us today is that we pray for the church’s peace and security. And as they did, as we do, not only would they, and us, in turn, experience peace, but all of God’s people would experience it. Since we are all one family in Christ, whatever affects one of us will in some way affect us all.

This is critically important for us to see. Yahweh wants us to be concerned about all of his people’s welfare. He wants us to care about them and do what we can to help them know and experience peace themselves. He wants us to be instruments of peace and those who seek our brother’s and sister’s good.

An indictment

Today’s rugged individualism, I can do it on my own because I don’t need anybody, of the West was unknown to the Hebrew people. They were a culture and society that lived and died together. What affected one affected all. Our rugged individualism has no biblical support. This ideology is Satanic and has no place in a Christian. This is something that we must repent of, for it is sinful and is of this world, it is of the flesh, and must be cast off by the renewing of our mind.

At its core, Christianity is a life of dependence and helplessness, relying on God and one another. Any and every Christian is our concern. We are all united to Christ. We are all one body. And so, what affects one of us affects all of us. We have no right to be unconcerned about our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world who are being killed and persecuted. And so, how much worse is it to ignore the brother and sister who is struggling in our very town, or in our local church? We have no right to turn a blind eye to the greater Christian community. We must pray for them, their peace, and we must give to them and help them as we are able.

Finally, verse 9 says, “For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your good.”

We are told that David, and really all of God’s people, should seek Jerusalem’s good for the sake of the house of the Lord our God. What does this mean? David and all God’s people should seek the good of the house of Yahweh our Elohim, the I Am, our Creator.

The house of Yahweh our Elohim in David’s time was still the tabernacle. The tabernacle was where the presence of God dwelled with man. We read in John 1:14 speaking of Jesus, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jesus himself is the true tabernacle for who’s sake we should seek the good of Jerusalem, the church of God.

Ephesians 5:25-27 is helpful here, for it expresses what it means to seek the good of the church, “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 

We are to pray for and work in the church with the same desire and goal of Jesus, to see his bride, the church, be without spot or wrinkle. In other words, we are to endeavor to not cause trouble in it, but we are to do all we can to make sure that others don’t either.

Our desire should be to see God’s people, our true family be living in unity in Christ Jesus.

Applying Christ

Jesus put an end to the need or desire for an earthly Jerusalem and an earthly king. He came and said that a time is coming when we will worship anywhere in spirit and in truth. That time was at the conclusion of his life and his sacrifice upon the cross. Then and there, in Jerusalem, the temple curtain was torn from top to bottom. God himself tore it, thereby expressing that all had free access to God, not through the temple in Jerusalem, but through Jesus Christ, the true temple.

And so, in judgment, some 35 or so years after Jesus’ death, Jerusalem, and the temple were destroyed. Never to be needed or travelled to again for the sake of worshipping God. The temple came to live within us. We, God’s people are the temple of God. We are all united to Christ.

And so, it can be said, as Jesus said, that now, where two or three are gathered in his name, for his purposes, Jesus is there with them. Jesus is the fulfillment of all that Israel longed for. He is the true temple. He is the true King. He is the one who sits on the heavenly throne and judges. He gives us his Spirit and we can pronounce his judgments toward one another and the world. He is the one who sits as the true heir of David on the eternal throne of God in the true city of God.

And now, we, as God’s temple, as God’s house, are bound firmly together in Christ as he is the chief cornerstone who holds us all together. We are all part of the body of Christ that is knit together by Christ, making us one new person, serving Christ’s purposes.

And Jesus Christ, as the Scripture says in Ephesians 2:14–16 has killed the hostility between us, “For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.”

And so, we pray and strive for our brothers and sisters to have peace, because together, all those united to Christ are one body, and so we seek the peace of our body, who is under our ultimate head, Jesus Christ, our peace.

Jesus has amazingly and awesomely united us to him through his death and resurrection. And so, we seek the good of all those united to Christ and delight that we have been granted to be a part of this beautiful body, this beautiful city, the church. And so we live and strive to see it thrive.

Do you remember or know the membership questions of our church? Questions 4 and 5 say, “Do you promise to support the Church in its worship and work to the best of your ability? Do you submit yourselves to the government and discipline of the Church, and promise to study its purity and peace?” Doesn’t this sound a whole lot like what Psalm 122 was talking about? My questions to you and I today are: What are we doing to seek the peace of the church? Are we praying for its peace? Are we living in peace with others in the church? Are we willing to be reconciled with them even if they have harmed us? Doing these things is what it means to pray and seek the peace of the church.