Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem

Narrator: Beautifully adorning the crests of two mountains, Jerusalem held great importance to Israel and its people. In addition to its splendor, it was important historically, symbolically, and prophetically. It was the city of cities, the city of their temple, and the city of their God. Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. It's difficult for us to fully understand the affection Jews felt for Jerusalem. It was the epitome of all they held dear, a place of refuge that symbolized the unity of the nation and the center of their faith. It's no wonder the psalmist encouraged his readers to pray for the peace and prosperity of Jerusalem. Join Dr. Boice as he studies Psalm 122, outlining the importance of the city and the correlation between Jerusalem, the church, and the heavenly city yet to come.
Dr. James Boice: Not very long ago, I was talking with a Jewish man who had just returned from Jerusalem, and he was telling me what his visit meant to him. He had been there three times over the years, and he explained that each time he went to Jerusalem, he felt that he was standing at the very center of the world and that he was very moved by it. I said it's not only Jews who feel that way; Christians also have a sense of that too. And people who have gone there over the years have shared that kind of experience often with other people when they came back. I've had the privilege of being in Jerusalem twice. The first time was more than 30 years ago when the city was still divided between the newly formed state of Israel and Jordan. It was a dangerous time. Hostilities were just around the corner, as it seemed at any moment. And I remember carrying my suitcases by myself across the no-man's land in the middle of the Mandelbaum Gate there in the center of Jerusalem, while soldiers from both sides trained their guns down on these very dangerous pilgrims that were crossing from the Arab to the Jewish state. Last time I visited Jerusalem was last year in the fall, and I found that moving as well. I had more time on that occasion, several days to walk around in the old city. And perhaps the most moving of all the moments for me was passing along the base of the massive eastern wall with a guidebook pointing out the stones from the various eras of Jewish occupation and reaching up and actually placing my hand upon the stones that had been reassembled by Nehemiah after they'd been hauled up from the Kidron Valley where they'd been toppled at the time of the Babylonian conquest in 586 BC. Now that was long ago. Nehemiah had reconstructed those stones four and a half centuries before the birth of Christ, and it was 2,400 years before I stood there. And yet something of the aura of the moment stayed with me, and I could very well have said with the psalmist, "I rejoiced with those who said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.'" Now that's the way our psalm begins. Psalm 122, it's the third of these 15 songs of ascent. And it fits, it seems to me, in a certain pattern. In the first of this small group of psalms, the singers are in a foreign land. They're beginning to turn their faces toward God's city, but they're very aware of the hostile and alien environment in which they live. In the second psalm, Psalm 121, they seem to have sighted the city, or at least they're very close to it toward the end of their pilgrim journey. And now in Psalm 122, the travelers are reflecting joyfully on the moment in which they were first asked to join the pilgrim party, and they express the thrill that is theirs now that their feet are actually standing within Jerusalem's gates. How many of us have a love for the town or city, village in which we first grew up? Some of us even have a measure of affection for our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., though it gets harder and harder to do that as time goes on. But there's nothing in our hearts in terms of the affection we have for our hometown or our nation's capital that can begin to echo what most Jews and, for that matter, many people of other faiths feel for this great city of Jerusalem. In the biblical record, it's first mentioned way back in Genesis in the story of Abraham's meeting with Melchizedek because he's identified as King of Salem. That seems to be a reference to the city of Jerusalem, which is what that word Salem is there in the name of the city. It means habitation of Salem or habitation of peace. We don't know a whole lot about the city at that time, but we do know because of archaeological digs that it was occupied by a people known as Jebusites from about 3500 BC. That's three to four millennia before the birth of Jesus Christ. We know that David made it the political capital of his kingdom by conquering it, taking it away from the Jebusites. He built his own palace there. And he also made it the spiritual center of the nation because he caused the Ark of the Covenant to be brought up to Jerusalem, placed there in the relocated tabernacle. And afterwards, when Solomon built his great golden temple there, the Ark was placed within the most holy place of that temple. So it became and was and to a certain extent still remains not only the political capital but the spiritual capital of the Jewish people. Now, it's mentioned in many of the psalms. There's a series of psalms called the Psalms of Zion. We've already had a chance to look at them one by one in our earlier studies: Psalms 46, 48, 76, 84, 87. It's also figuring very strongly in these songs of ascent that we're studying now. It really becomes a symbol of the unmitigated blessing of God in these psalms. And yet sadly, earthly Jerusalem still remains just an earthly city. And we know as we trace the history of the city that in time God allowed it to be destroyed by the Babylonian armies for its many sins. Psalm 122 claims to have been written by David. Was it actually written by David? Most of the scholars today would deny that because they think that all of these psalms come later from the time following the exile when the people were back in the land making trips up to Jerusalem. But it seems to me quite possible that David did indeed write Psalm 122 and that it was brought into this particular collection because it obviously served the needs of a later age. It's reasonable to suppose that he wrote it on the one hand to express his joy at having established this new capital and also his encouragement of the people to look to it as a unifying force for the nation and as a point where together as Jewish people, not merely with tribal loyalties but as one nation, they might worship God. We know that it did serve this purpose because later, when the kingdom broke up in the days of Rehoboam and Jeroboam, and Jeroboam established a separate kingdom in the north so that now you had not one united Israel but Judah in the south and Israel in the north, two tribes in the south, ten in the north, Jeroboam was very concerned that loyalty to Jerusalem would undermine his own kingdom. So he established cult sites at Dan in the north and Beersheba in the south and Bethel where the people could come and worship rather than going to Jerusalem. So we know that the kind of things that we have embodied in this psalm, the kind of emotional attachment and hopes that are centered in Jerusalem, are something that go back to the days of the early monarchy. Now it falls into three easily identifiable parts. It's all identified here by the way the psalm is broken up in stanzas. The first expresses joy at being in Jerusalem. The second has observations upon the unity of the city. We want to look at that in some detail and also on its function as a center for dispensing justice. And then finally, the third of these three sections is a prayer for the city's peace and prosperity. You can also look at it another way. You can look at it in three different senses. If you look at it historically, well, it obviously refers to earthly Jerusalem and expresses David's hopes or a later poet's hopes for God's blessing on the city. If you look at it symbolically, and we have biblical warrant for that—it's not simply our imagination running away with this when we talk about Jerusalem—if you look at it symbolically, it can be applied to the church. This is what the author of Hebrews does, contrasting the earthly Jerusalem with the fulfillment that we actually have in the church of Jesus Christ. And then finally, if we look at it prophetically, which we may also do because of the way the Bible handles it, we can allow it to direct our attention to the new Jerusalem where everything that was symbolized imperfectly in the earthly Jerusalem has not only a perfect but an eternal fulfillment. So that's what we want to do. Now let's look at the earthly city first of all. At best, it was only a weak type of the heavenly city to come, and yet it still rightly summoned forth joy in the hearts of the pilgrims who made their way up there. That's what the opening verses describe. And it doesn't require a great deal of imagination to think how a Jewish pilgrim might have reacted to finally seeing this great city that was the center of the worship of his people. We remember that there were hardly any real cities in that day. Almost everybody lived in rural farms and at best villages, and so here's this man coming up from one of these villages to Jerusalem. He's never seen a real city before and least of all Jerusalem, and then suddenly there it is before him, this magnificent, as he would see it, capital of his people. We catch something of the emotional attachment to Jerusalem even later in the time of Jesus Christ because of that question the disciples asked at the time when Jesus was being arrested—the night of his arrest. Remember as they were making their way out of the city, they pointed Jesus' attention back to those great walls and they said to him, "Look teacher, what massive stones and what magnificent buildings." And yet Jesus had to point out to them honestly, prophesying what was going to happen, that in a very short while not one stone was going to be left on another; they would all be thrown down. Now what impresses the psalmist as he looked at Jerusalem, having first arrived at it, or the psalmist writing for those who would have first arrived in Jerusalem, was two things. First of all, he talks about its compacted unity. And secondly, he talks about it being a center for dispensing justice. As far as the unity is concerned, he describes it as a city that is closely compacted together. Now, that could refer to a number of different things. If the psalm was written early, that is by David, in the early days of the monarchy, then it probably referred to the actual physical setting of Jerusalem and its size. It wasn't a very big city from our way of thinking of things. It only occupied the crest of two mountains, Mount Zion and Mount Moriah. It wasn't very long; at the best, it was only half a mile wide. It was bordered on each side by two deep valleys, and so it sort of had a dramatic setting for anyone who was making their way up to the city. That would have impressed someone seeing it. They would have said, "Look at that perfectly situated city, so beautifully compacted together." On the other hand, if it was written later, and it could have been, when the city was much larger, then it wouldn't refer so much to the small size of the city but perhaps to the way it was ordered, the neatly compacted rows of houses all standing next to one another. If it was written after the Babylonian exile, when they had begun to rebuild Jerusalem, it might even be marveling at the fact that all of the empty lots where the houses had been burned and destroyed and torn down were now being filled up again, and here was this marvelous city. It could have meant either of those things. And yet, as I read it, it seems to me that it's speaking of something far more important than a physical appearance because when you talk about a compacted unity in the significance of Jerusalem, what you're really talking about is a city which was the very center of the people, the unifying place for this diverse tribal unity. David of course intended it that way. Jerusalem is situated not actually within any one of the tribal areas but on the border. It's more or less on the border between the southern area and the northern where you had the split later between Judah and Israel. But it's also on the border of Benjamin and Judah. And it wasn't a Jewish city; it was occupied by the Jebusites. So when David took it over, he was, as it were, establishing his capital in a neutral place. It's exactly the way Washington, D.C. was chosen here. It was neither a southern city nor was it a northern city because at the time you had that kind of difference in American politics, but rather it was a border city. And that's what Jerusalem was, so it became this politically unifying force. What's even more important, it became a unifying spiritual force, which is why David wanted the Ark of the Covenant to be brought up to Jerusalem. So when the tribes came up, they came up at the place where they all recognized that they truly came together, that is they came together around their God. And then there's this other thing, there's this matter of justice. It's what the psalmist seems to have noticed and reflected on as his feet first stood within the gates of the city. You have it in verse five, "There the thrones for judgment stand, the thrones of the house of David." It could refer to judgment courts within the palaces or other government buildings, but it may mean something more than that. We remember when we study the Old Testament that justice was often rendered at the gates of the city. You recall that Job, for example, was one who sat with the elders at the gates of the city and rendered justice. You go to the book of Ruth, and you find that that's where Boaz went to settle this matter of Naomi's inheritance and the estates; he did it at the gates of the city with the elders. You think back to David's time and when Absalom was trying to stir up a rebellion against his father, he used to stand, perhaps sit at the gates of the city, intercepting people that were coming up to get justice in the courts and say, "Well, they won't take care of you very well, but I'll see that the right thing is done." He used that in order to undermine his father's authority. Now if that's what's in view, there may very well have been literal judgment thrones there at the gates of the city. And so the psalmist, as he makes his way up there, sees that and says, "Isn't that significant? Isn't that important? That here is a place where justice can actually be done." Derek Kidner, in his commentary on this psalm, says that dispensing justice is a ruler's first duty and best gift. And that's absolutely right. Dispensing justice is a God-appointed assignment for rulers; that's what the state, that's what government is for. One of two great assignments given to the state: one is dispensing justice, and the other is protecting its citizens, both from within—that is from criminals and lawbreakers within—and also without in terms of national defense. That's what the state is for. And what happened in Israel was whenever justice was done, not only the city but the nation prospered. When those who were in positions of leadership failed to exercise justice, then the nation and the city declined and eventually, as we know, Jerusalem was overthrown by the Babylonians. Now when we think about this, we can't help but apply it to the church. When you get to the end of this psalm, the psalmist is praying for peace, and that's a bridge to where we are today. He's aware, no doubt, as he thinks back over the history of the city, that it had not always been a place of peace. Indeed, there are few cities on the face of the earth that have been more fought over than has the city of Jerusalem. And so he directs his thoughts to the people. He says, "Now look, if you really care about Jerusalem, you ought to pray for it." And then, lest you get the idea that somehow he's urging on others something that he's unwilling or too lax to do himself, he leads the prayers. And so the last stanza says, "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 with you." And so he says pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Now when we apply all of this to the church, we find that the church according to the New Testament is for us what Jerusalem was to Jews in the period that the psalm was written. What the author of Hebrews tells us is that the ancient city with its temple and its temple worship was something that the Jews rightly valued and loved but that something much better has come for us by the work of Jesus Christ. In Jesus, God has established a new spiritual temple by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, and he has brought us to use the language of the book of Hebrews, not to Mount Sinai or even to the old Mount Zion but to a new Mount Zion and to a new Jerusalem. Here's the way the author of Hebrews talks about it. He's writing now to Christian people: "But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire." We get a lot of parallels, therefore, from this psalm to the church of Jesus Christ. What is it that impressed the psalmist when his feet were actually standing within the walls of the holy city? The first was unity. It was a compacted unity, a place where the Jews coming from all their various tribes with all their various tribal loyalties could actually be one. Isn't that true of the church of Jesus Christ? We come together from very diverse backgrounds—racial backgrounds, economic backgrounds, educational backgrounds—all of those things. But in the church gathered around Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, we are one. Sometimes we look out at the mixture that God has called together and we think God has a very strange idea about how one should establish unity. You ever looked around about you at all these strange people that God for some bizarre reason has brought together in the fellowship of Jesus Christ? You ever looked at yourself and wondered, "How in the world did I ever get here in the midst of these people?" Well, that's God's doing. And so we look at the church and we can say the same sort of thing that the psalmist does here. We can say the church, the city of God, is closely compacted together. It's where all the various people go up, and they go up to worship God. That's a wonderful thing. And then how about this matter of justice? Isn't the church a place where we have found the demands of justice met by the death of Jesus Christ and where by the grace of God we seek to be agents of justice too? This should characterize the church's stance over against the secular world. We ought to be talking about justice issues—not just issues that advance our own particular concerns but liberty and justice for all. That's a legitimate evangelical Christian point of view. And how about this matter of peace? Shouldn't we pray for the peace of the church? The Bible does. You find it all through the New Testament. Think of Paul's letter to the church in Philippi. He loved the church, but there was a lot of dissension there. He prays asking two women to get together and stop fighting and then he has this advice, he says to all the members of the congregation: "So don't be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your requests to God." And what? "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." Or how about Paul's many prayers: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him." "The God of love and peace be with you." "Mercy and peace be to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God." "Peace to the brothers." "May the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way." And the very end of the book of Hebrews we read: "May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in you what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever and ever." There's a pattern for our prayers and a model for our behavior within the fellowship of the people of God today. And yet we have to say when we think along these lines, earthly Jerusalem and then the spiritual Jerusalem which is the church, that even when we have come to this great advance which Hebrews talks about in the church of Jesus Christ, a far better thing than the old earthly city, we nevertheless are dealing with imperfection and sin because the church as we know it is not perfect. And so we look beyond the church to that great heavenly Jerusalem which is also described so clearly to us in the Bible. We have to do that, you see, because this is a pilgrim journey and these are pilgrim psalms and we're not yet arrived at that ultimate heavenly destination. And so we lift up our eyes to heaven and we say, "One day that's where we'll be." And we have to begin to live as citizens of that city. We capture a glimpse of it in Revelation. John is writing about the city and he has these wonderful descriptions. He says it shone with the glory of God and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper as clear as crystal. It had a great high wall with 12 gates and with 12 angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three in the north, three in the south, and three on the west. The wall of the city had 12 foundations and on them were the names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb. And he goes on, he describes it as a perfect cube. He says that when he looked for the city's temple, he didn't see one because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. Moreover, the city doesn't have any sun to shine on it by day nor the moon by night because the glory of God gives it light and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut for there'll be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life. He describes a river of life that flows out from that city from the throne of God. It causes trees to bear fruit and their leaves, he says, are for the healing of the nations. And when John looks at God's servants who are gathered there, he sees the name of God on their foreheads and he says that they dwell in perpetual light and they are going to reign with God forever and ever. Sometimes it's hard to know what to do with those descriptive elements. They bear some resemblance to reality because the heavenly Jerusalem—heaven itself—is not just an imaginary idea. It's a real place; it's where we're going. And yet at the same time these elements are obviously symbols symbolic of spiritual things and they're to be interpreted by the way the symbols occur in the Old Testament. It's hard to balance the two. But what we can know is that this is the destiny of God's people. We really are going there. We are pilgrims on our way to that heavenly city. And furthermore, as we go along that journey, we know that God who has called us to faith in Christ and has prepared a place for us is able to keep us from falling and to present us at last before his presence with exceeding joy, where we will be forevermore. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you that you have set a marvelous destiny before us and we thank you for the picture that we have of it here in just this one psalm. We ask that you would use what we have studied together today to encourage us on our journey. The journey is long, sometimes there are very difficult moments, sometimes we sense that we're treading along that dangerous and difficult path alone. But our Father, you are our guide and you are our guarantee. And so we look to you with joy until that day when we actually see you face to face and hear the words, "Welcome home, come in. Well done, good and faithful servant." We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
Narrator: Thank you for listening to this message from the Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today's church. To learn more about the Alliance, visit Alliancenet.org. And while you're there, visit our online store, Reformed Resources, where you can find messages and books from Dr. Boice and other outstanding teachers and theologians. Or ask for a free Reformed Resources catalog by calling 1-800-488-1888. Please take the time to write to us and share how the Bible Study Hour has impacted you. We'd love to hear from you and pray for you. Our address is 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Please consider giving financially to help keep the Bible Study Hour impacting people for decades to come. You can do so at our website, Alliancenet.org, over the phone at 1-800-488-1888, or send a check to 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. For Canadian gifts, mail those to 237 Rouge Hills Drive, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C 2Y9. Thanks for your continued prayer and support, and for listening to the Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.