Psalm 132
Have you committed your life to Jesus Christ? How many times have you heard that question in church?
How committed are you to God? Surely you have heard that question in a call to persevere in the faith. The hymn book has many songs that express our need to be committed to God. “Who is on the Lord’s side …” being one of them.
The truth is, we talk about our need to be committed to God quite a bit – which is not a mistake. We do need to be committed to God. But there is futility in being committed to God if God is not committed to you. This is true in any relationship. If I want to marry a woman, no marriage takes place unless the woman also wants to marry me. If I want to buy a car, nothing happens unless the person who owns the car wants to sell it.
So being committed to God does nothing for us unless God is committed to us.
Psalm 132 begins by talking about David’s commitment to God. That’s the first half of this psalm. But then the second half of the psalm talks about God’s commitment to David and it is God’s commitment to us that I want to focus on this morning.
But first, a brief look at the psalm. This is the third of three psalms of David describing the ascent of the ark of the covenant up the hill to Jerusalem.
The ark was built by Moses at Mt. Sinai when Moses received the law from God. It was about a meter and a half long and a bit less than a meter wide and a meter deep. It was covered with gold and fitted with two sets of rings through which poles were inserted to make it portable. It contained the two stone tablets of the law that were given to Moses along with a pot of manna, the food provided to Israel during their forty years in the wilderness and the rod of Aaron that budded when Moses and Aaron confronted Pharaoh.
The ark led the procession of Hebrews on their march through the wilderness from Mt. Sinai to Canaan. Each morning when they broke camp and set out on their day’s journey, the ark led the way. When Israel crossed the Jordan River into Canaan, the ark led the way.
Being human, some Hebrews began to view the ark as a good-luck charm. In the days of Eli and his sons, the Israelites were losing a battle to the Philistines and rushed the ark to the battlefield, hoping to use it as a good luck charm to help them win the battle. This was not met with God’s approval and the ark was allowed by God to be captured by the Philistines.
The Philistines offered the ark to their god Dagon, but in the morning after putting the ark in a room with Dagon, they found Dagon lying down on his face in front of the ark. They set up Dagon again and the next morning, found Dagon in front of the ark with his hands and head broken off. Disease afflicted whatever Philistine town had possession of the ark and finally it was sent back to Israel.
The ark resided in a small town until David was king and brought it up to Jerusalem. David describes this final journey of the ark in Psalm 24 with the emphasis on the holiness of God, Psalm 68 with the emphasis on the great march of God and his mighty acts on behalf of Israel and his choice of Zion as his royal seat, and then today’s psalm.
Psalm 132 begins with David’s resolve. David swore an oath to the Lord and made a vow to the Mighty One of Jacob:
3 “I will not enter my house
or go to my bed—
4 I will allow no sleep to my eyes,
no slumber to my eyelids,
5 till I find a place for the LORD,
a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob.”
We appreciate David’s resolve, his dedication, his commitment but that is not today’s sermon. So we read on:
11 The LORD swore an oath to David,
a sure oath that he will not revoke:
“One of your own descendants
I will place on your throne—
12 if your sons keep my covenant
and the statutes I teach them,
then their sons will sit
on your throne for ever and ever.”
What does it mean for God to swear an oath to David?
To swear an oath in the ancient world meant to guarantee a man’s word. A higher guarantee was achieved by calling on the name of a deity, someone greater than yourself. To swear an oath indicated a need to verify that what you were saying was indeed true. But does God need to verify that what he says is true? God who is the source of all truth needs to verify that his words are true? That God swore an oath to David is incredible.
Our problem in comprehending what this means is that our view of God is too small. We have tamed God, put him in a box.
It is as if we are used to fire because we have a fireplace and enjoy the comfort the fire brings us on cool evenings. But in the Western United States, they are having a huge problem with forest fires. Firefighters have been killed because this fire can sweep down the side of a hill in a matter of a few seconds, engulfing the whole side of the hill in flames.
It is as if we are used to working with molten metal and glass, making jewelry and glass sculpture, but then we step up to the side of a volcano and a lava flow sweeps down the hill, melting and burning everything in it’s path.
It is as if we love going to the beach and surfing on the waves, but then comes a tsunami, a tidal wave, which destroys everything along the beach.
God is far greater than any of our praise songs or hymns can communicate. We use the name of God casually. We pray to God easily, without comprehending who it is we speaking with. We can joke about the priest, pastor and rabbi who meet St. Peter and get a tour of heaven. But I tell you, when you get to heaven and come before the throne of God, you will not be singing “Jesus you’re my best friend baby”. You will be on your knees singing “Holy, Holy, Holy”.
God is all consuming fire, so pure and holy that only because of your relationship with Christ will you be able to endure to be in his presence.
God, the creator of the universe, who existed before the creation of the universe – a concept we have no hope of understanding. God swore an oath to David. This is amazing. This reveals how committed God is to his children. The angels must watch in amazement at God – who they know in all his glory – stooping down to the limited understanding of humans to nurture us and lead us along in his plan.
As a way of showing the depth of God’s commitment to us, I want to take a look at God’s covenant with Abram and then the new covenant revealed with the death of Jesus.
When God entered history in his relationship with Abraham, we humans began our covenantal relationship with God.
God called Abram from Ur to go to Canaan and made his first promise to Abram.
The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.
2 “I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”
4 So Abram left, as the LORD had told him
Then, as Abram and his nephew Lot came to Canaan, God repeated his promise to Abram.
14 The LORD said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, “Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. 15 All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. 16 I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. 17 Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.”
18 So Abram moved his tents and went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to the LORD.
God called Abram to leave the civilized country of Ur for the wilderness of Canaan and “Abram left, as the Lord had told him.” God promised Abram descendants as numerous as the dust of the earth and although Abram had no children, he believed and “built an altar to the Lord.”
After a battle in which Abram rescues his nephew Lot
the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision:
“Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield,
your very great reward.”
This is the third time God has spoken to Abram (at least that is recorded in Scripture) and after being promised by God two times that he would have numerous offspring, Abram finally has a question to ask of God.
But Abram said, “O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”
4 Then the word of the LORD came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
This is the pattern in Abraham’s life that makes him the father of our faith. God speaks and Abraham believes. “How can you reward me since I have no children?” And God shows him the stars and promises yet again that Abraham will have descendants.
God spoke again to Abram, promising again that Abram would occupy the land in which he lived. This too is a promise that has been made to Abram so he asks another question.
7 He also said to him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”
8 But Abram said, “O Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”
These are two logical questions. God promises over and over that Abram will have a son and that Abram and his descendants will occupy the land of Canaan. Abram believes and yet he looks around and sees no way for these promises to come true.
So he asks God how he can know that he will have many descendants and that he will gain possession of the land.
God has promised and promised and promised and now God, the creator of the universe, says to Abram, lets make a legal contract out of this.
Now, in Morocco, to make a contract legal, you go to the prefecture with the proper stamps and they legalize the signatures and make the contract legal.
In Abram’s time, a sacrifice was cut in half and the two parties walked through the cut animal as to say, may this happen to us if we break the contract. If either one of us breaks this contract, may we be cut in two.
Abram asks God how this could be true, that he will occupy the land around him when he has no children and God sets about making his promise legal.
8 But Abram said, “O Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”
9 So the LORD said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”
10 Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 11 Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away…
17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”
What I want to point out here is that in this covenant, Abram did not pass through the offering split in half. Abram did not make this a legal contract. Abram did not say, “May I be split in two if I violate this contract.” Abram did not guarantee anything because Abram did not promise anything. Only God passed through the split offering because only God made a promise. Only God said, “If I break my promise to you, may I be split in two like these animals being sacrificed.”
How committed to God was Abram? Abram was a remarkable man, worthy of being called the father of our faith. God promised and Abram believed and obeyed. But it is God who stands out in this incident. God, the creator of the universe, put himself on the altar to prove to Abram how committed he was to fulfilling the promise he made to Abram.
God who is pure truth and cannot lie legalized his repeated promises to Abram by calling on himself to verify that he will fulfill his promise.
This is an amazing incident, but the extent to which God will go to demonstrate his commitment to us was not revealed until the new covenant.
We first read of this covenant in Jeremiah 31
31 “The time is coming,” declares the LORD,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the LORD.
33 “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
In the Abrahamic covenant, God passed through the animals split in two to legalize his promises made to Abram.
What more could we ask for than that God would legalize his commitment to us? But in the new covenant prophesied by Jeremiah and fulfilled through Jesus, in the new covenant, God in the flesh, Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus was himself the sacrifice. Jesus did not walk through the split sacrifice, he became the sacrifice that was slain for our benefit.
When I preach from Hebrews over the next couple months, we will go into this in more detail. But the price for sin is death. Our sin has to be paid for by death and Hebrews speaks at length about how Jesus is the perfect sacrifice, paying once and for all the price for our sins. Jesus died for us, for you and for me, so that we could live.
This is the commitment God has toward us, toward you, toward me.
It doesn’t matter if you are committed to God or not. Like with Abram, only God passed through the split sacrifice. Only God made a promise.
In this instance also, only Jesus died on the cross for your sins. You did not die for your sins. You may be indifferent to what Jesus did for you, but that does not change the reality of what Jesus did for you.
Psalm 132 is the 13th psalm of the Psalms of Ascent. As the Hebrew pilgrims neared Jerusalem, this psalm must have been a comfort to them. They remembered what God did for David. They were reminded of their need to be committed to God, but they were assured of the commitment of God toward them.
There is a line in a book called Absolute Truth by Susan Howatch that I like. It is printed in the bulletin this morning and it speaks about God’s commitment to us.
“The skill of the divine potter is an infinite patience of improvisation. No sooner has one work gone awry than his fingers are pressing it into the form of another. There is never a moment for the clay, when the potter is not doing something with it. God is never standing back and watching us; his fingers are on us all the time.”
As you sit in your pew this morning, God is at work in you. You may or may not be aware of it, but God is at work in you. God is committed to you. God has given his life for you.
Are you committed to God? I hope so. But I have good news for you. Whether you are committed to God or not, God is committed to you. God is not a philosophical system, one alternative in the variety of philosophical systems available to us. God has entered history and made us promises and guaranteed them with his own life.
If you are not a Christian, then it is time for you to sit up and pay attention and accept the gift graciously given to you. With the magnitude of God’s commitment demonstrated to you, can you really sit back and ignore it?
If someone spends their life savings to buy you a present, can you look at it and say, “So what?” When you are on death row and someone takes your place so you don’t have to die, can you really continue to be indifferent to that sacrifice? If you are not a Christian, this morning is the time for you to finally express appropriate gratitude for the sacrifice of Jesus for you. It is time for you to give control of your life to God.
Do you have doubts? Are you sometimes an unfaithful Christian? Do you find yourself being disobedient over and over again? The good news for us is that only God promised. Only God became the sacrifice for us. God is always faithful. God’s promises to us are never broken.
Let me read another quote from Absolute Truth.
“Life is open-ended. Human beings are fallible. They crawl forward, then slip back before crawling on again. Catastrophes lurk to ambush them. Tragedies erupt unexpectedly. ‘The whole creation,’ St. Paul wrote, ‘groaneth and travaileth in pain,’ but nothing worthwhile can be created without blood, sweat and tears, and at least we know that our Creator is alongside us, sharing our suffering and never abandoning that enormous struggle to ‘make everything come right.'”
We struggle with the confidence that God is at our side, always faithful, always helping us along toward the time when we will be with him for eternity, face-to-face.
Some day when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, we will have a deeper appreciation of what it means for God, the creator of the universe, to make promises to us, to swear an oath to us, to die for us.
Until then we do our best to grasp what is incomprehensible to us and we live life with the assurance that we are loved and cared for by God.
