SERMON SERIES NOTES:
Gathering with God’s People: Psalm 122
I. Narrative Structure
a. God’s heart for Jerusalem (pilgrim)
b. God’s plan for redemption (messiah)
c. God’s peace for [New] Jerusalem (shalom)
II. Passage Exploration (Exegesis)
a. Hebrew-English
III. Relevance (Hermeneutic)
IV. Application and Response
1. “In our qualitative interviews, we discovered that people don’t learn to follow Jesus simply by
having lots of great head knowledge about him (although having the right beliefs matters, as
we’ll see). Experiencing Jesus is found along a relational pathway with family, friends, and
other people who love and experience Jesus. We are loved into loving Jesus.” ― David
Kinnaman, Faith for Exiles: 5 Ways for a New Generation to Follow Jesus in Digital
Babylon
2. “There are no better “songs for the road” for those who travel the way of faith in Christ, a
way that has so many continuities with the way of Israel. Since many (not all) essential items
in Christian discipleship are incorporated in these songs, they provide a way to remember
who we are and where we are going.” (Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same
Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society
3. In Ephesians 2:13:15 “But now in Messiah Yeshua you who once were far off (Gentiles)
have been brought near by the blood of Messiah. 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…that He might create in Himself one new man in
place of the two.”
4. Hebrews 13:14 “for we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to
come.”
5. “without this language [Hebrew] there can be no understanding of Scripture, for the
selfsame New Testament, though written in Greek, is full of Hebraisms. Therefore it’s been
said: The Jews drink from springs, the Greeks from rivulets, the Romans, from puddles. – M.
Luther “Table Talk” Aug 9 1532
6. “Languages are the sheath in which this sword of the Spirit is contained. They are the case
in which we carry this jewel. They are the vessel in which we hold this wine. They are the
larder in which this food is stored. And, as the Gospel itself says, they are the baskets in
which we bear these loves and fishes and fragments. For we cannot deny that, though the
Gospel has come and comes every day through the Holy Spirit alone, it is through the
instrument of languages that it has come and has increased and must also be preserved by
them.” – M. Luther
7.
א שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת, לְדָוִד:
שָׂמַחְתִּי, בְּאֹמְרִים לִי– בֵּית יְהוָה נֵלֵךְ.
1 A Song of Ascents; unto David.
I rejoiced in (their) sayings to me: 'to the
house of the LORD we will go.'
ב עֹמְדוֹת, הָיוּ רַגְלֵינוּ– בִּשְׁעָרַיִךְ, יְרוּשָׁלִָם. 2 Our feet have taken a stand within
your gates, O Jerusalem;
ג יְרוּשָׁלִַם הַבְּנוּיָה– כְּעִיר, שֶׁחֻבְּרָה-לָּהּ יַחְדָּו. 3 Jerusalem, the built up, like a city
that is joined together;
ד שֶׁשָּׁם עָלוּ שְׁבָטִים, שִׁבְטֵי-יָהּ–עֵדוּת לְיִשְׂרָאֵל: לְהֹדוֹת, לְשֵׁם יְהוָה. 4 to which tribes go up; tribes of the
LORD; testimonies to Israel; to give
thanks to the name of the LORD.
8.
9. “…. I have loved you with an everlasting love…” Jeremiah 31:3
10. He lamented over Jerusalem “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones
those sent to her, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers
her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling! Look, your house is left to you desolate.
For I tell you that you will not see Me again until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the
name of the Lord.’ Luke 13:37-39
11. 1 Peter 2:5 “you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a
holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”
12. “A church should be one in creed and one in heart, one in testimony and one in service, one
in aspiration and one in sympathy. They greatly injure our Jerusalem who would build
dividing walls within her; she needs compacting, not dividing.” (Spurgeon)
13. “I will make Israel one nation…with one king…and they will no longer be divided.” Ezekiel
37:15-22
14. “Note that Israel was one people, but yet it was in a sense divided by the mere surface
distinction of tribes; and this may be a lesson to us that all Christendom is essentially one,
though from various causes we are divided into tribes. Let us as much as possible sink the
tribal individuality in the national unity, so that the church may be many waves, but one sea;
many branches, but one tree; many members, but one body.” (Spurgeon)
15. “And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Yeshua [Jesus], for yoshia [he
will save] His people from their sins.” Matthew 1:23
16. “And there is salvation in no one else, for there are no other name under heaven given
among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12)
17.
ה כִּי שָׁמָּה, יָשְׁבוּ כִסְאוֹת לְמִשְׁפָּט: כִּסְאוֹת, לְבֵית דָּוִד. 5 Because there are set thrones unto
justice, thrones unto the house of David.
18. Luke 1:33 “and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no
end”
ו שַׁאֲלוּ, שְׁלוֹם יְרוּשָׁלִָם; יִשְׁלָיוּ, אֹהֲבָיִךְ.
6 Demand peace (for) Jerusalem; may they
prosper who love you.
ז יְהִי-שָׁלוֹם בְּחֵילֵךְ; שַׁלְוָה, בְּאַרְמְנוֹתָיִךְ. 7 Have peace within your walls; prosperity
within your citadels.
ח לְמַעַן, אַחַי וְרֵעָי– אֲדַבְּרָה-נָּא שָׁלוֹם בָּךְ. 8 For the sake of my brothers and my friends I
will say: 'Grant peace in you.'
19. The LORD said in 1 Samuel 8:7 “…they have rejected Me from being king over them…”
20. Romans 9:3-4 “I could wish that I myself were accursed, cut off from Christ for the sake of
my kinsmen according to the flesh, the Israelites…” the same love that Jesus has for his
people is etched into Paul’s own heart that he would give up his own salvation for the sake
of fellow Jews. That’s how much he wanted them to know their Jewish Messiah and for
Israel to come into the peace of the LORD Jesus.
21. Yehuda Amichai, Israelist poet said this about the uniqueness of Jerusalem “port city on the
shore of eternity” It is like a portal to that which is beyond this material world, up into the
heavenlies. Why? Is Jerusalem a super-spiritual city? Not in and of itself, no. God
was willing to destroy it, along with his own temple more than once. But it is holy because
God chose it. Like his own chosen people. God chose Jerusalem to be the geographical
location from which he would redeem the world; it is the location of the death and
resurrection of the Messiah. That event happened in a specific time and a specific place, but
the results flow into eternity. It is also the place he is coming back to! So Jerusalem is God’s
chosen city in real time and space, but the significance and effect is eternal.
22. “Jerusalem is supposed to be a city joined together to itself both physically and in terms of
relationships. Today it is a global byword for division, the very opposite of God’s stated
desire, but when Yeshua comes to rule and reign, it will be as He purposed it to be – a place
vibrant with reconciliation between God and man, and also between us as people” – Ronen
Neubert, One for Israel
23. Paul says in Romans 9:13-15 “I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle
to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in the hope that I may provoke my own people to
jealousy and save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what
will their acceptance be but life from the dead?”
ט לְמַעַן, בֵּית-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ– אֲבַקְשָׁה טוֹב לָךְ. 9 For the sake of the house of the
LORD our God I will seek request good
unto you.
24. “There is no such oneness in all the world as among true Christians; and this the very
heathens observed and commended. As the curtains of the tabernacle were joined by loops,
so were they by love. And as the stones of the temple were so close cemented together that
they seemed to be all but one stone, so was it among the primitive saints.” (John Trapp,
English Puritan)
25. Hermeneutical Approach Christological and Ecclesiological relevance
a. In Ephesians 2:13:15 “But now in Messiah Yeshua you who once were far off
(Gentiles) have been brought near by the blood of Messiah. 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…that He might create in Himself
one new man in place of the two.”
b. Hebrews 13:14 “for we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city
that is to come.”
26. Application and Response
a. Consider our unity in our adoption
i. Paul wraps it up this way: Romans 11
22 Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to
those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his
kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. 23 And if they do not persist in
unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in
again. 24 After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature,
and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much
more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own
olive tree!
b. Pray for all of our Shalom
i. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through
their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in
you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have
sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they
may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may
become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and
loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you
have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have
given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O
righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and
these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I
will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me
may be in them, and I in them. John 17:20-26