Description / Transcription
We have been going through on Sunday evening here in our normal services through a series of psalms. Psalms is the biggest book in the Bible, at least by chapters. There’s 150 of them and it’s right in the middle of the Bible. A psalm, with a p-s-a-l-m, is just another word for a song. These were the hymns that Israel sang and this would have been the hymnbook that Jesus and His disciples sang.
Toward the end of the psalms there are a number of them, from Psalm 120 to Psalm 134, which are called Psalms of Ascent, like walking up. They were called that because they were the songs that the pilgrims sang every year, probably multiple times a year, as they had to make their required pilgrimages to Jerusalem for a series of annual festivals. Because it was going up, literally it was a higher elevation, the pilgrims would sing these songs. They recount the various longings that they have for home and the full range of human emotion.
This psalm in particular tonight, Psalm 132, speaks about Mount Zion, that’s another name for Jerusalem. This is the place where King David, when he was the king, longed to build a place and a palace for God, that He might have a home. Now God doesn’t really need a home, God’s God and He doesn’t need anything from us, but that earthly representation was the temple, just like it had been the tabernacle. That is where the Ark of the Covenant would reside. This psalm in particular is about David’s longing for a place for God to have a home.
I want you to listen to it. Psalm 132, a Song of Ascents.
“Remember, O Lord, in David’s favor,
all the hardships he endured,
how he swore to the Lord
and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob,
“I will not enter my house
or get into my bed,
I will not give sleep to my eyes
or slumber to my eyelids,
until I find a place for the Lord,
a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.”
Behold, we heard of it in Ephrathah;
we found it in the fields of Jaar.
“Let us go to His dwelling place;
let us worship at His footstool!”
Arise, O Lord, and go to Your resting place,
You and the ark of Your might.
Let your priests be clothed with righteousness,
and let your saints shout for joy.
For the sake of Your servant David,
do not turn away the face of your anointed one.
The Lord swore to David a sure oath
from which He will not turn back:
“One of the sons of your body
I will set on your throne.
If your sons keep My covenant
and My testimonies that I shall teach them,
their sons also forever
shall sit on your throne.”
For the Lord has chosen Zion;
He has desired it for His dwelling place:
“This is My resting place forever;
here I will dwell, for I have desired it.
I will abundantly bless her provisions;
I will satisfy her poor with bread.
Her priests I will clothe with salvation,
and her saints will shout for joy.
There I will make a horn to sprout for David;
I have prepared a lamp for my anointed.
His enemies I will clothe with shame,
but on him his crown will shine.””
There’s a lot there. You can hear the language of David and Zion and the longing that he had to build a house, a temple, for his God. But I want us, in just a couple of minutes, I promise, to just think on these two verses in the middle. Let me read them to you again, verses 11 and 12.
“The Lord swore to David a sure oath
from which He will not turn back:”
And then here’s the promise, the promise that the Lord makes to David:
““One of the sons of your body
I will set on your throne.
If your sons keep My covenant
and My testimonies that I shall teach them,
their sons also forever
shall sit on your throne.””
That is a big promise that the Lord makes, and notice it says he even swore an oath.
Now we all understand that there are different gradations of guarantees. We try to express the surety of our promise based on the way we explain ourselves. So, for example, if my kids ask as they have been wont to do, “Can we go to Target tomorrow? Please, please, please, can we go to Target?” If I say, “We’ll see, we might be able to do that,” here’s what I mean as a parent. I mean there is probably less than a 50% chance that we will do that, but it’s not completely impossible, and if everything turns out just right, I suppose we may in fact go to Target. That’s what I mean as a parent.
Here, however, is what my children here: Upon pain of death, I solemnly vow upon all that is holy in this world, with God as my witness, as surely as the sun rises each morning, so surely do I give you my resolute promise that we shall henceforth travel to Target before the clock strikes midnight tomorrow.
We have run into this many times. “You promised!” “No, we said maybe.”
We have conspired more than once, my wife and I, to say, “You know what? We should always say absolutely we will never do the thing that you ask, and then on those occasions we do, what a joy it will be.”
We try to intuit these things. What sort of guarantee are we giving, and even sometimes as adults talking to each other we do it as a sort of way of being polite and kind, or southern, to one another, and we say some things. “I’d love to get together,” p.s. please don’t ever ask to get together.
But God wants to make an absolute guarantee. The Lord swore to David a sure oath. Think about it. If there is anyone who does not need to swear an oath, it’s God. God is God. His word is His word. If He were to say, “Yup, Target tomorrow,” that’s good enough. You’re going. But here we have recounted that the Lord, not because He needed it, not because His word was not sure, but for David’s sake, and for our sake, He says, “I want you to listen up. Not only am I making a promise, but I swear to you in an oath,” just like you might have to do in a court of law and you put your, which one do you do, your hand on the Bible and you swear. You’re making a solemn declaration, I ought to tell the truth at all times but now I want you to hear and I want you to be absolutely certain that this promise will not fail.
And what is the promise that the Lord makes to David? One of your sons I will set on your throne. Indeed, if you keep My covenant, you will never fail to have a son to sit on the throne.
Now like almost all promises and prophecies in the Bible, there’s a near and a far fulfillment, so the near is David would have a son named Solomon and his kingdom would be even grander and more glorious than David’s. He would sit on the throne. But it was only one son later that the kingdom divided with Rehoboam and Jeroboam. Then it would last in Israel for a couple of hundred more years and in Judah for a little bit longer than that.
But you can go to Jerusalem, some of you have, there is no earthly king sitting upon a throne in some earthly temple. You can visit the remains and a wall. Has God’s promise failed to David?
Well, it is impossible for God’s promise to fail, which is why we must understand as the people of Israel even did in their time, that this was not simply about a son, a literal son of David. They understood that this was a promise about the Messiah, about the One who would come, predicted from the very beginning of the Bible in Genesis chapter 3, at the first sin there was a promise that the woman would have a child and the serpent would grasp at His heel and that Son would crush the head of the serpent. He would be a promised child of Abraham. He’d be a son of Jacob. He’d be a lion of the tribe of Judah. He’d be a prophet like Moses. Yes, indeed, He would be a son of David.
Now we celebrate and we sing all of these wonderful things at Christmas, and in just a moment they’re going to sing “For Unto Us a Child is Born” and for many of us it’s all very familiar. But just imagine, for years, decades, centuries, millennia, God’s people told these stories. They scarcely understood all of it, and yet they understood some of it, and passed around to their children, much like perhaps you do to your children or grandchildren, the story that yes, a child would be born. “Mommy, Daddy, is it true? What happened to King David? What happened to our temple? What happened to Jerusalem?” “I know, it looks grim. But God will always keep His promise.”
It must have seemed for so many of those years that they were just telling to each other idle tales, just make believe, and yet we celebrate and remember at Christmas that it wasn’t make believe. It happened. Not in some fairy tale, in actual history, real blood and guts, the Virgin Mary pushed out the Son of God into the world.
God always keeps His promises. Which means we not only look back that God kept this promise, but it means you can trust God for all of His promises. I wonder, whether this is your church or this is your first time ever in church, can you believe the promises of God?
Listen to what Jesus Himself promises: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16. That’s a promise from Jesus.
Or John 6:37: Jesus says, “All that the Father gives to Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never cast out.” That’s a promise from Jesus. He will never cast you out when you come in faith and repentance to Him.
Or John 14:3: “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to Myself that where I am you may be also.”
See, this child who was born, who then grew and taught and performed miracles and suffered and bled and die and three days later was raised from the dead, ascended into heaven, this same Jesus Christ says, “I will come back for you.” That, too, will happen. Though there may be times as we tell the story to one another and our children and our grandchildren that we scarcely believe that it will really happen, but just as that Child one day was born, so that King shall one day return.
Do you believe the promises of God?
It may sound sort of trite, but it’s true. We are all on an earthly pilgrimage. Not with set festivals and feasts to Jerusalem, but no doubt to an eternal destination. As you make your way through this life on this pilgrimage, what songs will you be singing? What will you be believing? And in whom and upon whom will you place your trust? All of the promises that God made about Jesus were fulfilled, and all of the ones that He makes about the coming Christ will also be fulfilled. Let us sing these songs on our pilgrimage, not to an earthly city, but to a heavenly one.
Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we give thanks for Your many blessings. We give thanks on this night and this season to recall that unto us a Child was born and to Him has been given the name above all names, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. In Him we trust, and in His name we worship, knowing that there is no other name given among men whereby we must be saved. In Jesus we pray. Amen.
