And this is God's holy word.
Psalm 122, a song of ascents 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.
And for the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.
This is God's word. Let us pray.
Lord, we ask now that you would help us to focus on your word
that we would receive from you tonight,
that you would take away the burdens, the distractions
that are creating barriers now in our heart and our minds
to looking at this passage you've written to us.
We recognize that though this was written in an ancient time,
in an ancient hand by David himself,
that you have written this in your providence for us too.
And so we come now and ask that you would help us to believe that and see it.
And we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.
There are 15 Psalms of Ascent.
The Psalms of Ascent are a whole group of Psalms
from Psalm 120 to Psalm 134.
So this is the second of them.
Psalm 121 is the first.
And Psalm, excuse me, I should say, this is the third of them.
And the reason they're called the Psalms of Ascent is that three times a year
for Israelites that believed in the Lord,
they are called to come to Jerusalem if they're able for feasts.
And so when you would travel as an Israelite in the ancient world to Jerusalem
three times a year, that was a pilgrimage.
You were a pilgrim on a journey.
And the Psalms of Ascent are songs you would sing along the way,
songs you would sing at different points throughout the journey.
And so we don't do this as much anymore.
I guess we wear headphones or AirPods throughout the city.
And maybe every once in a while we might sing out loud while we're walking around.
But in the ancient world, people would always sing
while they're walking and traveling places.
If you've been to the military tattoo across the street,
you know that the tattoo is framed around that,
that there would be a band that would go with the army as they travel
and people would sing songs.
And so the Psalms of Ascent are the songs that Israel,
the Israelites sang along the journey to Jerusalem three times a year for the pilgrimage.
And those three feasts were Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Booths.
And so you would travel to Jerusalem for Passover to remember the Exodus story.
You would travel to Jerusalem for Pentecost to remember the giving of the law
on Mount Sinai, the Ten Commandments.
And you would travel for the Feast of Booths as a memorial for the time in the wilderness,
living in tents, living without a home.
And so in each of these, you would go,
you would make a sacrifice to the Lord in Jerusalem at the temple,
and you would bring your very best, the best of your grain,
the best of your sheep, your lambs.
And really, it was all about remembering what God had done for Israel historically
and what God had done for you in your life.
And you come to these and you say,
how can we, as New Testament Christians, sing the Psalms of Ascent?
What does that mean for us?
We don't go to pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year, nor should we.
What does it mean as a person on this side of the gospel
to sing a psalm like we just sang, Psalm 122?
And the reason we can sing them is because they're God's Word.
That's a good start.
But also because in Hebrews chapter 3 and 4,
the writer to the Hebrews says that if you are a Christian tonight,
you too are a pilgrim.
It's the same language.
You are an exile.
You are a wanderer.
You are wandering through the wilderness of this life towards a city, a Jerusalem.
And so these psalms, the Psalms of Ascent,
become new songs for us in a different way as New Testament pilgrims.
And the theme, I think, here is the very first, the third word, verse 1,
David arrives in Jerusalem and he says, I was glad.
So the question tonight is, what makes for true gladness?
What makes for true gladness?
And where is that to be found secondly?
And then finally, how do you seek that?
And so that's how we can sing the Psalms.
What makes us glad?
So let's think about that together.
First, what makes for true gladness?
Verse 1 and 2 is the focus here.
Two things that will help us here.
A couple more things to know about the Psalms of Ascent.
The first is that by tradition outside the biblical text,
we know that the Israelites often,
when they went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year,
they would often refuse to sleep in any built structures.
So if you were coming towards Jerusalem and you found a house,
you found a friend that lived a little bit closer to Jerusalem than you,
you wouldn't go inside their house and sleep.
You would actually sleep outside the house in a tent or just on the ground underneath the stars.
And that's because you were there to relive the Exodus story.
You were there to relive the time in the wilderness.
You were there to relive the struggle.
So it was not meant to be easy.
It was supposed to be hard.
You don't sleep in a comfortable bed.
You sleep out under the stars.
And then the second thing to know then,
to really make sense of Psalm 122,
is Psalm 122 comes after Psalm 121, right?
I think that's a fact.
And that's important because the Psalms of Ascent,
they build on each other.
They grow.
And you remember, probably if you've been in the church at all for any time,
that Psalm 121 has that very famous line where the psalmist says,
I lift my eyes to the hills, and I ask, where does my help come from?
And then it's antiphonal, meaning a choir or somebody else sings back to him and says,
my help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.
He keeps me.
Now, why in Psalm 121 did they say that?
And it's because you're on the pilgrimage, and this is not,
oh, I lift my eyes to the hills, and I notice God.
I look at Arthur's seat.
I look at the best of the highlands, and I say, look at God.
He's amazing.
Look at how great the creation is.
That is not what it's talking about, though that's true.
When Psalm 121 says, I lift my eyes to the hills and ask,
where does my help come from?
It is because they're afraid.
They're sleeping outside.
The hills in the ancient world are a place of danger, not safety.
It's the place where you would get robbed, where bandits tried to hide out for you.
It was the place, often in the Old Testament, of the false gods,
where Asherah poles and Baal worship sites were set up all throughout the mountains.
And so they say, I lift my eyes to the hills outside of Jerusalem,
and I realize, if I'm going to make it from my home to Jerusalem,
where's my help going to come from?
So that's Psalm 121.
It's about the journey, and will my keeper keep me all the way to Jerusalem?
But then you come to Psalm 122, and the point is,
I was glad when they said, let's go to the house of the Lord.
And then verse 2, here it is.
Our feet are now standing in the gates of Jerusalem.
So you see that they've done the travel, Psalm 121, Psalm 122.
My feet are now, have arrived inside the gates of Jerusalem.
That's what David's saying.
I'm so thankful to have finally made it.
And there's a sense here that the psalmist is saying the pilgrimage,
the pilgrimage includes a sense of homelessness,
a sense of wandering, a sense of,
I'm on the journey, and I'm not yet home.
But then in verse 2 of Psalm 122,
but now when I come to Jerusalem, here I am.
I'm standing here.
I finally made it to where God has sent me, where I want to be.
And that tells us that in verse 1,
boy, this makes sense, verse 1.
Because in verse 1, what does David say?
I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the,
and we should expect there it should be temple of the Lord.
But that's not what he says.
I was glad when they said, let us go into the house,
or the Hebrew word is home, of the Lord.
And what David is saying is, when I go into Jerusalem,
and I get through the wilderness journey, the pilgrimage,
which is full of dangers and toils and snares,
and I finally am standing in the gates,
and I see the temple, he says, I just want to be home.
And in this psalm, he says that home is being in the home of the Lord,
where God dwells in the midst of the city of God in Jerusalem.
And that means that the point of this passage is simple,
and it's to just say this,
real home for the pilgrim believer is wherever God makes his home.
And that's what David's saying.
He's saying, I knew finally that no matter where I come from,
no matter where you come from,
that you will never be fully home
until you arrive at the place that God has made home,
where God calls home.
I, every single person in this room knows what it feels like
to come off the back of a long work day and come home.
And everybody in here knows what it's like
to come off the back of a long trip and come home.
And it doesn't matter how good a holiday is.
There are times on the best holiday you've ever had
where you think, I just want to be at home,
and I just want to get back to normal,
and I just want to get back to my routine.
And the relief that that is.
I can say, I did it a month ago,
that when you take five kids 32,000 feet in the air
across the Atlantic,
no matter where you land,
whether it's New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia,
it doesn't matter, Edinburgh, London,
wherever you land, you think, this is now my home.
I just want to be off the plane.
I just, you think, this is such relief.
We all have that sense, you know,
the existential reality of being relieved
to not be traveling anymore.
And that's what's being talked about here,
but it's being, in other words,
that feeling we get when we finally drop our bags
or we come home from work after the worst day.
And think, I'm finally home.
That sense of existential relief
is the tiniest, tiniest little shadow
of what's being talked about here.
And we can all say,
there is a home that I've yet to experience
that I really long for,
and this passage is telling us
that that home is wherever God makes home.
And that will never really be home
until we get there.
Now, that's why I think,
in verse one,
David uses the word glad.
And glad,
the word glad here
is not really
the sense of
the modern word happy,
which is sort of a cheap word,
and we use that
in a really thin way.
But the word glad here
has a real thickness to it
and a depth to it
in the Hebrew text.
And I know this is a very old word,
but it corresponds
a little bit more
to something like mirth
or to be merry.
You know,
we stop saying Merry Christmas,
but that's the word merry,
mirth.
It's this real deep sense of gladness,
what the New Testament calls joy.
Joy is what's being talked about here.
One of the favorite moments,
one of my favorite moments
in The Lord of the Rings
is when,
in the third book,
The Return of the King,
Gandalf and Pippin
are facing a great battle.
And Pippin,
the hobbit,
looks up at Gandalf's face
in the midst of sorrow and trouble,
and it says,
in the wizard's face,
Pippin saw at first
only lines of care and sorrow,
though as he looked more intently,
he perceived that under all
there was a great joy,
a fountain of mirth,
enough to set a kingdom laughing,
were it to gush forth.
And, you know,
this life we live is sad,
it's hard.
Life in this earthly existence
we have so far
gives you a lot of wrinkles
and a lot of bags under the eyes,
like Gandalf had
when he was battling
in Minas Tirith.
But Pippin looked up at Gandalf
and said,
underneath it all,
I could see
that there was a joy,
a fountain of mirth,
that would burst forth
and make us all laugh
if it was just to let it go.
And here,
we're being told,
David is saying
something like,
when I step into the place
that God has made home
in this earth for now,
it creates for me
a fountain of mirth
like nowhere else.
What makes glad?
Being home with God
makes glad.
It's the only thing
that can bring
absolute gladness
to your life.
Secondly,
where is this home exactly?
Where is this true gladness
to be found spatially?
Now, the psalm turns
from verse 1 and verse 2
that the home
where the Lord,
the temple,
that's what makes me glad.
But then,
he does something
a little bit unexpected
and he turns
not just to talk about,
you expect him,
I think, David,
to talk about the temple
and the home of God
and say,
now I get to go
into the temple
and be in God's presence.
But instead,
in verse 3 and following,
he turns and he starts
talking about
the city as a whole.
He talks about
the city of God
in the Old Testament,
Jerusalem.
And just look at
some of the things
he said.
He says in verse 3,
Oh, Jerusalem,
built as a city,
bound firmly together,
to which the tribes
go up.
And one of the things
he's doing here
is he's actually
standing in the gates.
The temple is out
in front of his vision
above him.
But David is literally
looking around
and saying,
wow,
look at the architecture
of this great city,
how firmly
it's been put together.
And you can go through
and see how he talks
about this beauty
of the place
that he loves to be,
the city he loves to be.
And he goes on
from there
and says in verse 4,
this is the meeting place
of all the tribes
of Israel.
So he's thinking there
of the fact that
when you get to Jerusalem,
the city that makes glad
and the home of God
that makes glad,
you know,
it's like those moments
where you have
a reunion with family
that you've not seen
in a long, long time.
We got to experience
this summer.
We had,
I had a nephew
that I'd never met before,
a niece I'd never met before.
And this summer,
I went and we met them
and all the cousins
are together.
And you think,
boy,
I love being here.
How being here
makes me glad
because all the peoples
are gathered.
So you can imagine
that when you come
to pilgrimage every year,
as an ancient Israelite,
you are going to see
family members
that lived on the other
side of Israel
that you had not seen before.
You're going to see people
that you said,
oh,
I remember you
from the last Passover
and that you had met
and you come
and you greet.
And you see,
in other words,
David is turning
and saying,
true home
is being wherever
God is home.
And true home
is also being
in a physical,
gorgeous,
spatial,
embodied place
where the people
I love are here.
And so David looks around
and he notices that.
And this is really
an ode to true home,
an ode to that city
here.
And in verse 5,
the last thing he says
about it is he says,
there in that city
the thrones of judgment
are set,
the throne of the house
of David.
So he looks up
and he says,
this is a place
where at the center
is the throne
of the house of David,
the throne
that represents
righteousness
and justice
and safety
and peace
and that can never
be thwarted,
that is forever
by covenant of God.
And he's resting there
in the fact that
this place is a place
of justice
and peace
of rest,
of safety
after coming out
of the hills.
Now look,
we all know tonight,
if you are a Christian
tonight,
if you've read
much of the Bible
tonight,
you know that
David is here
talking about Jerusalem
yet this Jerusalem
is not ultimately
the city David
is talking about.
David here,
he knows
something more
and boy,
do we know more
and that's
that there
is nothing
but a shadow
of the true
city of God
that's being reflected
on in the psalm.
And that's even
in the psalm itself,
you know,
verse 6 to 8,
he turns to
other people
that are traveling
with him
and he says,
pray for the peace
of Jerusalem,
may it be secure,
those who love you,
peace within your walls.
The reason that
David has to say that
is because there
has not been peace
in Jerusalem
and we know
as you read
the rest of the Bible
there's not going
to be peace
in Jerusalem
and this city,
these walls,
this temple
is going to be destroyed
and it is not
a lasting city,
it's an earthly city
where God has chosen
to make a temple
a temporary home
and you could,
we won't do it,
but you could go through
the rest of the Old Testament
and look at the prophecies
about the city,
the true city
that this Jerusalem
points to.
I'll just mention
a couple of them
for you.
Ezekiel 36,
Ezekiel 36 says,
on that day,
the day of the city
of God,
the land laid waste,
Jerusalem laid waste,
will become
the Garden of Eden.
And so Ezekiel says,
the true city
that you should look for
is a city
that looks like
the very Garden of Eden
and in the Garden of Eden
it's a place
of peace,
of safety,
of rest,
but one of the most
distinctive features
is that when you
traveled to Jerusalem
in Psalm 122,
and you got to the
home of God,
the temple,
there's a veil,
there's a curtain,
and there is only
one person
in the whole city
that can pass
through that curtain
and be in the presence
of the living God
on earth,
only one.
But that's not what
the Garden of Eden's like.
In the Garden of Eden,
Adam and Eve,
the promise is that
you can walk
hand in hand
with God
as a friend.
You can know him
so intimately,
so securely.
And so we see
that this is not
the city,
that this is the city,
but it's not the city,
and that's why
I think one of the ways
to express this
is that every,
there's a hint of this
in the human experience
of nostalgia.
Nostalgia
sometimes really gets us.
I've had some nostalgia lately.
I got invited
to my 20th class reunion
for the high school
that I graduated from
recently.
I'm not going
to be able to go,
but you know,
you get something like that,
an invitation like that,
and it brings memories
of people that you
don't think about anymore,
you know,
memories of that time
with that person,
and you see the invitation
list and who's coming
and think,
man,
I forgot that that guy
existed,
but we used to be friends.
And there's a nostalgia
that comes with that,
and nostalgia is a really
tricky thing,
a funny thing,
because what nostalgia does
is there's something
beautiful about it,
but it always contains
a lie,
right?
Nostalgia always contains
a lie.
I haven't been back.
I don't know about you.
Most of you will probably
have a little more frequency
in maybe visiting the home
you grew up in
or maybe passing by it
if it's still around.
I haven't seen the home
I grew up in in many years,
but I remember after
about a 15-year hiatus
of seeing the home
I grew up in,
finally being back
in my hometown
and seeing it,
and it was exciting.
You know,
somebody else lives there.
I don't know who they are,
but you kind of stand outside
and you want to walk
on the property,
but then you think,
I shouldn't do that.
I'll get arrested
in America,
maybe,
and, you know,
I have to stay away.
But one of the experiences
I had was to say,
wow,
and yet,
the house was so much smaller
than I remembered,
and I could see
where my window had been,
and I thought,
it doesn't look great,
it needs a facelift,
it needs a little renovation,
but that is what we painted it,
you know,
and the grass is not as green
as you remember,
and the trees are not,
and et cetera,
et cetera,
right?
And you experience nostalgia,
and there's something
of a lie in it,
and that's because
no matter how much
we find a place
in this earthly life,
in these earthly cities
that we call home,
there is always
a reality
that there is a lack in it,
and you go back
to your home
from childhood,
and you say,
this was good,
but it's not actually
filling the ultimate need
that I'm looking for.
There's a word in German
that some of the German
philosophers use,
famously Freud
talked about this,
or someone like Heidegger
who's less well known,
and Unheimlichkeit,
and it's hard to translate,
but it's got this sense
of un-home likeness,
and it's a reference
to that feeling
that we sometimes get
where we are at the place
we're supposed to be,
but there's a strange sense
where we're also
not supposed to be here
at the very same time,
that we're not yet home,
that it's not fulfilling
all of our desires,
that it,
that's life in this world,
that's what they said,
and one of my favorite books
is C.S. Lewis' novel,
Till We Have Faces,
and this is the words
he puts in one
of the characters' mouth,
Psyche,
about coming home,
and I think he's got
the Psalms of Ascent
maybe in mind here.
The sweetest thing
in all my life,
she says,
has been the longing
to reach the mountain,
to find the place
where all the beauty
came from,
my country,
the place where I ought
to have been born.
Do you think
it all meant nothing,
all the longings,
the longing for home,
for indeed,
it now feels
not like going,
but like going back
to where I belong.
All my life,
the God of the mountain
has been wooing me.
Oh, look up once,
at least before the end,
and wish me joy
in these final days.
I am going to my love.
And he's reflecting there
on the fact
of what David's reflecting on,
and that's that
there is no earthly city,
no earthly home,
no earthly experience,
no success,
no relationship,
no person,
as good as it all is,
that can be
absolute home for us,
that can fill
the desires of the heart,
that can really,
really fill the gap
deep down
at the bottom
of our soul.
And that's why
700 years later,
700 years after this moment,
there was another pilgrim,
and that pilgrim
was coming to Jerusalem
for the feast of Passover,
just like in Psalm 122.
And that pilgrim
stood above
in the hills
outside the city of Jerusalem,
and he looked down
at the city of Jerusalem.
And what did he say?
It says that,
we're told in the Gospels,
Jesus wept for Jerusalem.
And it says,
would that even you,
Jerusalem,
had known on this day
the things that make for peace.
Would you be willing
to receive peace,
but now they're hidden
from your eyes.
And the reason Jesus
was weeping
is because he knew
that just like
every other place,
Jerusalem is a city of man.
It's an earthly place.
And he knew
that when he entered in,
he would not be glad
when he entered the gates.
He would be rejected.
He would suffer.
He would die.
He would be,
in other words,
you know,
we can say the same thing.
It's anachronistic,
but Edinburgh rejected him.
Glasgow rejected him.
Jerusalem rejected him.
Natchez, Mississippi,
where I'm from,
rejected him.
Humanity rejected him
when he came
because no earthly city
could be true home
unless the Son of God
become the builder
and he established a city
whose foundations
come from the Lord.
And that's why tonight
in a minute
we're going to sing
the Charles Wesley hymn
and Can It Be
where it says,
he left his father's home
above so free,
so infinite his grace,
he emptied himself
of all but love
and he bled
for Adam's helpless race
in order to be able
to give us true home again.
And so tonight
we can say that
because Jesus Christ bled,
the veil was torn.
And because the veil was torn,
we really can,
in this earthly pilgrimage
we're experiencing right now,
know that if you're struggling
and saying,
I'm just not satisfied
with where I am,
well, let me say,
that makes sense.
You're not home.
You will not be satisfied
with where you're at,
not fully,
not until God brings you
all the way to the mountain.
And he can do so
because Jesus Christ bled
for Adam's helpless race.
So let me conclude
with this finally,
briefly.
How can you,
in this life right now,
you know,
you say,
well, look,
that's all future.
What am I to do
with this today?
What can you do
with this today?
Let me say two things
as we close.
First,
today,
in order to bring this home
to us right now
in this moment,
in 2025,
in our city,
first,
we have to realize
and recognize
the city of God,
true home,
is not yet.
And what I mean by that
is we've got to grapple
in our hearts
and in our minds
with the objective reality
that the city of God,
first,
is a real destination.
So where do we see
this moment,
Psalm 122,
fully fulfilled?
And that's in Revelation 21,
where Jesus Christ
brings down
the new Jerusalem
to this earth.
and he builds
a physical,
embodied space
where all the tribes
gather with him.
That's true home.
And one of the things
I just want to invite you
to do tonight
is I want to ask you,
is the new Jerusalem,
the city of God,
a real destination
in your heart and mind?
It is real objectively,
but are you grasping
hold of that subjectively?
And we sang tonight
at the beginning
about hope,
and the Bible talks
about hope,
hope in the city
that is to come.
And boy,
that makes all the difference,
the fact of the new Jerusalem,
the reality of it.
C.S. Lewis one more time.
He says,
creatures are not born
with desires
unless satisfaction
for those desires exists.
A baby feels hungry,
well,
there's such a thing as food.
A duckling wants to swim,
well,
there's such a thing as water.
And if I find in myself
a desire
which no experience
in this world
has yet to satisfy,
the most probable explanation
is that I was made
for another world,
another city,
another home.
If none of my earthly pleasures
satisfy,
it doesn't prove
that this is all a fraud.
Instead,
it points me to something
beyond this earthly city,
beyond this earthly life.
So the first thing
is to say,
the city of God is coming,
it's real.
Have you let that really
get down into your heart
and shape your experiences
in this life,
your hope,
your expectations,
and settle your expectations
for the kind of satisfaction
you can actually experience
in the earthly city.
One pastor I came across,
I got this illustration from him,
I thought it was very helpful.
He says that,
imagine two men captured
in a raid of their city,
their city burned,
their city destroyed,
and these two men are captured,
they're imprisoned,
they're thrown into a pit,
and they both saw the city burn,
but the first man believes
that his family's still alive,
and that there are people
out there looking for him,
and the second man is told,
there is nothing left,
everyone's dead,
and they're both given
a 10-year prison sentence.
How did each of them deal
with the sentence?
One man is trying every day
to wake up and press on,
right?
But the other man
finds himself in a place
of hopelessness.
In other words,
the expectation
of what's on the other side
means everything
for how you live your life today.
The expectation
of the city of God to come
means everything
for how you live your life today,
and so the expectation
of true home that is to come
helps us so much
to simply do this,
it helps us to not make
all the little creaturely things
in this world
into the gods
that we think can be to us
the city of God.
Expecting that our home
is not yet helps us so much
prevents us from letting
all the crummy little
and sometimes beautiful things
in this life,
it prevents us from turning them
into the city of God
in our hearts.
Lastly,
and we'll finish with this,
not only do we have to know
that the city of God
is not yet,
but today we've got to know
that the city of God
is also now.
And what I mean by that
is very,
at the end of this passage,
David says,
pray for the peace of Jerusalem,
pray for peace in its walls.
How can a Christian say that?
What do we mean by that today?
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem,
and of course we can pray
for physical peace
amongst human beings today
in the midst of conflicts,
but something more
than that's going on there,
and that's this,
that how,
in other words,
we could say,
how is the city of God
present today?
And this is a complicated theology,
but I'll simply say this.
The city of God
is present today
in the fact
that God's people
are citizens
of the city of God today.
And so what the church is,
is when we gather,
when this group
gathers together,
we are a one-hour
momentary glimpse
of the city of God
that is to come.
That's what this means
when we gather together
for worship
week in and week out.
And so,
if you are a member here,
if you're a member of a church
in the free church,
you will have taken a vow
that says,
do you promise
to seek the peace
and prosperity
of the church?
And in Psalm 122,
verse 7 and 8,
when it says,
pray for the peace
of Jerusalem,
you can say,
that means to me today,
pray for the peace
of the church,
for its prosperity,
for its unity,
for its protection.
And this is the last word.
Boy, David,
he comes into the city
of Jerusalem
where God has made his home
and he said,
it made me so glad
to be there.
And he looked around
and he saw his cousins
and he saw the people
that he hadn't seen
in a long time
and it gave him
the biggest amount of joy.
If there is
the smallest
in our hearts tonight,
the smallest,
a little bit of joy
when you come into church,
a little bit of joy
and you look around
and you say,
the people of God,
my spiritual cousins,
brothers and sisters,
being with God's people
in God's presence,
in God's place
makes me glad.
If there is a little bit
of that for you,
how,
can you imagine
what it is going to be like
when you step foot
into the true home,
the city of God,
when Revelation 21 happens
and you first enter the city?
And Ligon Duncan,
he puts it this way,
if God in that moment
were not holding
the hearts of all his people
steady,
we would explode with joy.
Rest tonight
and be glad
in the midst of a tough life,
hard life,
sad life,
lots of trouble,
with the words of the psalm.
Let me finish
with Psalm 87.3,
a parallel psalm
and it says this,
glorious things
are said of you,
O city of God to come.
Glorious things
are said
of the city of God.
Let's pray.
Father,
we ask for hope
in that reality.
We want
to experience
just a taste tonight
of the joy
of the city of God
that is to come.
And so,
sometimes it can be hard
to come into church
on a Sunday night
and feel joy,
Lord,
but that's what we're here for.
Give us that,
we ask,
in the midst of trouble
and sad
and bags under our eyes
because of hardship.
As we read about earlier,
we come,
Lord,
and ask for this gift
of hope and joy.
Set our eyes tonight
on the new Jerusalem
and on the time
that is ahead of us
in the city
that makes glad.
Lord,
we want to even imagine
what it must be like
to be in a place
where there is
no more sadness
or anxiety,
no more trouble.
And that's what
you promise us,
Lord,
so give us a taste
of that
as we sing
this classic hymn
tonight before you
and Can It Be.
We want to bring
these words to you,
Lord,
touch our hearts
to bring these words
to you,
Lord,
and we pray that
in Jesus' name.
Amen.