Strength to Stand – Willing to Leap

Psalm 132
A Song of Ascents.
1Remember, O Lord, in David’s favor, all the hardships he endured,
2how he swore to the Lord and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob,
3“I will not enter my house or get into my bed,
4I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids,
5until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.”
6Behold, we heard of it in Ephrathah; we found it in the fields of Jaar.
7“Let us go to his dwelling place; let us worship at his footstool!”
8Arise, O Lord, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might.
9 Let your priests be clothed with righteousness, and let your saints shout for joy.
10For the sake of your servant David, do not turn away the face of your anointed one.
11The 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.
12If your sons keep my covenant and my testimonies that I shall teach them, their sons also forever shall sit on your throne.”
13For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his dwelling place:
14“This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it.
15I will abundantly bless her provisions; I will satisfy her poor with bread.
16Her priests I will clothe with salvation, and her saints will shout for joy.
17There I will make a horn to sprout for David; I have prepared a lamp for my anointed.
18His enemies I will clothe with shame, but on him his crown will shine.”

This song of ascents contains two main themes – strong knowledge of God’s faithfulness in the past and His brilliant promises for the future. We need both if we are to experience our faith to the fullest. The example for this object lesson is the Ark of the Covenant and the Temple. David was so filled with gratitude toward God for all that He had done for David and for the nation that he wanted to build God a wonderful Sanctuary in which to reside. He had already recovered the stolen Ark and believed it was time to put that Ark into a permanent structure.

The two main parts of the psalm are based on David’s promise to the Lord and the Lord’s greater promise to David. The establishment of the temple in Jerusalem was a three-step process: David brought the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem, David made preparations for the building, and finally Solomon built and dedicated the temple. The people of Israel joined in all three phases of the project.
Brug, J. F. ©1989. Psalms 73–150 (p. 235-236). Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Pub. House.

While David was prohibited, by God, to build that Temple, it was accomplished by his son, Solomon. But at a deeper level, we find something for our own faith today. We probably won’t be involved in rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem and no one (not even Indiana Jones) knows what happened to the Ark of the Covenant. But we can appropriate the importance of these words for our own lives. We can be grounded in the realities of the faith while holding onto the promises of God’s grace in the future.

The psalm does not retell Israel’s entire history, it only remembers the history. There is only enough here to trigger the historical memories of the people. For the rich symbolism of the ark was everyday stuff to them. Its extensive and intricate history was common knowledge, much as the story of Jesus is to Christians. A Christian who has David in his bones, Jeremiah in his bloodstream, Paul in his fingertips and Christ in his heart will know how much and how little value to put on his own momentary feelings and the experience of the past week. If we define the nature of our lives by the mistake of the moment or the defeat of the hour or the boredom of the day, we will define it wrongly. We need roots in the past to give obedience ballast and breadth; we need a vision of the future to give obedience direction and goal. And they must be connected. There must be an organic unity between them. Memory is a databank we use to evaluate our position and make decisions. With a biblical memory we have two thousand years of experience from which to make the off-the-cuff responses that are required each day in the life of faith. If we are going to live adequately and maturely as the people of God, we need more data to work from than our own experience can give us.
Peterson, Eugene H. A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society. InterVarsity Press.

So we read Psalm 132 with our past learning about the Lord intact, along with our hope (confident expectation) of what God will do in the future. We may not have an Ark or an elaborate golden temple, but we do have the stories of faithful forefathers and the certain knowledge of Christ’s return when the time is right.

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