Amen.
Well again, good morning.
It's good to be with you today.
My name is Sam, as Russ mentioned, and I do serve here as Pastor of Students.
I like that title.
I've always been called student pastor, but pastor to students sounds very official.
Well, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving.
If you're anything like me, I know uh family time can be really rich and beautiful.
Um, and then also for many of others of us, family time can be uh a little messy, a little bit more complicated.
Um since the sudden death of my own father a few years ago, holidays just feel a little different to me now.
Um they seem to have lost some of their luster a little bit.
Um they don't feel as bright as they used to, or as commercials sell that they will.
And maybe you can relate to that.
Uh and even this morning you might find yourself weary.
You might find yourself longing for life to look a little differently, for a relationship to be different, for family to look a little different.
In your mess, you are in good company here.
Now, today is the first Sunday of Advent.
And Advent is the season in the church calendar that marks the four Sundays leading up to Christmas Eve.
And since it's beginning in the fifth century or so, it has three meanings for us, this journey of Advent.
Number one is remembering and commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.
This is as we gaze back as our Lord took flesh and was born as a human being.
We gaze upon the past of the birth of Christ.
And then the second is the present reception of Jesus in our own hearts and lives today.
So we look back and then we look to today and we invite the presence of our Lord into our hearts and lives today.
And then number three is the longing anticipation of Jesus Christ's return.
As we look to the future where God and Christ will make all things right.
All of your tears, all of your sorrow, all of your sadness will one day be made right as our Lord comes back.
So Advent is all three of these combined.
As we look back, we look to today and we look to the future.
Now, this morning we find ourselves in this first Sunday of Advent.
And we're gonna begin this journey from today until Christmas morning, and it is a journey.
And the scripture we're gonna be in is Psalm 122.
And in this psalm, the people of God are too on a journey.
This psalm is right in the middle of what is called the Psalms of Ascent.
And the Psalms of Ascent are all of the Psalms between Psalm 120 and 134, as the people of God, hundreds of thousands of them, are coming from all over the nation of Israel and ascending up the hills to Jerusalem.
And as they would climb these steps, they would sing these very psalms that we just read.
The people of God, all of them who were able, would come from all over the country.
And they would several times a year come to Jerusalem.
And there's a big reason for this.
Right, we from John 4 know that we worship God in spirit and in truth, but in the time of the people of Israel, because of the ministry of King David, Jerusalem was where God was.
So yes, you could pray in your home.
Yes, you could retell the great stories of old, like the crossing of the Red Sea, but if you wanted to be where God was fully, you go to Jerusalem.
This is where the Psalms of Ascent come in.
Psalm 122 finds itself, the people would be singing this psalm as they ascended the hill to Jerusalem.
The pilgrimage would look something like this picture.
Shout out ChatGPT for that.
Um you can use chat for beautiful, godly things like this.
Um, it would look something like this.
They would be ascending the hill, they would be descending the hill, and all of it.
They would be singing these songs together in remembrance of who this God that they worship is.
Saint Augustine, this fourth century African bishop, in his commentary on the Psalms, wrote, The soul travels by its affections.
And so my question for us today on this dreary, brutal weather outside day, where is our soul traveling?
Where are our affections, our longings, our deepest desires, where are they taking us in our life?
Christmas and the now, what we are sold on TV and in stores and online is that Christmas and the joys of it will heal your soul.
Right?
That whether that's a new GMC or the perfect Christmas Eve meal, the perfect present, the perfect time spent with family, the sales pitch is right.
Marketers know this.
They know that we are hungry people, they know that we are starving for connection, they know that we feel incomplete, and so they think a commercial will sell us, and it does sometimes.
I was watching a chewy commercial yesterday and it made me cry.
Because I need my puppy to have better treats.
And it literally made me cry as I'm watching uh the Alabama game.
Dr.
Kurt Thompson in his book, The Soul of Shame, says, You were born looking for someone looking for you.
Now, what I know to be true is that every single morning I wake up, I wake up with a longing in my heart.
Whether it be because of my own shortcomings, something wrong in my life, another thing on the news, the chaos within my mind won't quiet, the fact that my father is still in the grave.
I wake up longing.
Maybe you do too.
Now, what we are ultimately longing for is peace.
And what I want to sell you today, what I want you to leave convinced of today, is that there is a place you can find it.
Now, if we're honest with ourselves, there are three typical ways that we try to fix this longing in ourselves, and we're gonna find that they don't work.
So, number one is controlling.
Right?
We know we feel this ache within us.
We know things aren't exactly how they thought we should it should be or how we dreamed our life to look like, and so we try with all of our might to control every little detail, right?
We know we can't control our emotions or our situations broadly, but we're gonna get into the nitty-gritty and we can control those things, right?
We can control our kids, our schedules, our spouses, our plans, our grades, that relationship, right?
Or even where Lane Kiffin is gonna go.
We can't control anything, right?
Now, control gives us a false sense of security and peace.
We are believing in our minds that if we can control this, this, and this, that finally we can breathe.
And yet, if we're honest with ourselves, what we're gonna find is that the more we try to control our life, the more anxious we're gonna become.
Because we're the more we're gonna find out that we actually can't control anything.
So, number one is controlling, number two is pretending.
One of the great schemes of Satan, that ancient serpent, is to keep us wearing rose-colored glasses.
Because he knows that the more we recognize that we're more broken than we originally thought, the more we recognize that, the more we're gonna see our great need for our Lord Jesus Christ.
And so what he wants to do is distract you from you.
He wants us to put on the good face, to act like everything is going great, even though we each are messy.
Many of us are operating like this picture.
Um, maybe you've seen this meme.
This girl is known as Disaster Girl in the meme world.
Um, and she's standing kind of menacingly in front of this house burning down.
I don't know why she's doing that.
Uh man, many of us probably aren't menacingly smiling in front of our pain.
But we show up to church, we take the sacraments, we go throughout our weeks, we try to hold it all together, we post the great things on Instagram, right?
We try to put a smile on.
We go about life often just pretending that the mess underneath the surface isn't there.
And I'd be willing to bet, if you're living like this, I bet you're finding yourself exhausted.
I even find myself showing up to counseling doing this.
And I sit before my counselor paying money, uh, and he's like, hey, how are you, man?
And I'm like, brother, I'm doing great.
And I'm at counseling.
No, I'm not.
Even I want to I want to impress my counselor.
Right?
So we got controlling, we got pretending, we find out that they're not working, and so maybe number three will be relatable.
We self-medicate.
Whether this is through binging a TV show, scrolling mindlessly, obsessing over the news, or grabbing just one more cookie or one more drink.
We all seek to numb the pain we face.
And at the end of the day, all of this is just a search for peace.
I saw this picture on Facebook, and I do scroll Facebook uh this week, uh, which I thought was funny.
Motherhood powered by love, fueled by coffee, and sustained by wine.
And many of you mamas might want to yell amen to that, right?
And honestly, I do think it is funny.
And of course, alcohol is not in and of itself sinful or bad.
I love a glass of bourbon meat, as the Lord intended.
Uh but what I think pictures like this, without explicitly saying it, what they implicitly say to us is that the pains of life, the pressure and exhaustion of being a mother or a father, the grief of losing a family member, all of it, what that's telling us is that we can't deal with that apart from numbing out.
If it's not an extra glass of wine or another episode or another Oreo, I bet it's something.
And then inevitably the next morning we wake up with the same ache and didn't actually the same exhaustion, the same longing, because we found that this self-medication didn't actually fix what was wrong.
Right?
And so if these three attempts, controlling, pretending, or self-medicating, if they don't actually work, what will?
And what I want to argue this morning through Psalm 122 is that we find the peace we long for in three ways: the presence of God, the healing experience of the church, and the justice of the cross.
Look at verse one with me.
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.
So, point number one, we find true peace in the presence of God.
Now, I doubt that this morning, especially you families with younger kids, I doubt that as you're getting your kids dressed, getting all of them ready, I doubt that any of your kids looked at you with joyful tears and said, Mom, I'm so glad we're going to the house of the Lord today.
Frankly, there are mornings where I wake up and I'm feeling tired too, and I'd rather stay in my bed as well.
I have friends who, if they got invited to church, they would scoff at me and maybe even laugh.
Maybe because of past church hurt, maybe because they're part of the LGBTQ community.
Because in many of their minds, when they think of an invitation to the church, they think they're gonna go somewhere that they're gonna be shamed or condemned.
And that's not somewhere that the church ought to be, right?
Now I'm confident, pretty confident, that King David probably some days didn't feel like this.
Verse one.
He probably felt pretty lukewarm about this long journey to Jerusalem.
But here he is genuinely happy.
He's really happy at the thought of being in God's house.
So the question, of course, is why?
It's primarily because of who he's gonna find there.
The covenant God of Israel.
And many people in our culture today have a lot of presuppositions about what the Christian God is like.
And often many of them are wrong.
So the question is, what is the covenant God of Israel like?
I thought of five, we could do many more, but these five.
He is a God slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He is a God who redeemed Israel from their oppressors, he is a God who sees his people hurting and intervenes.
He is a God who forgives sin through the blood of sacrifice.
And lastly, he is a God who becomes friends with sinners.
To Aristotle, God can never be a friend with you.
But to Christianity, he certainly can.
So the first and most important question as we think about the church, as we think about God, does the presence of God make you want to cower away in fear and shame or find great relief?
When you showed up through these doors this morning, did you feel shame at the thought of God?
Does Christianity feel like a set of burdensome rules upon you or shame on you?
Maybe because of your past or present experience.
I love how Tim Keller, uh brilliant man, separates Christianity from all other religions.
It was in a sermon I saw on YouTube.
I'm paraphrasing a bit.
He said, all other religious systems add burdens.
All other religious systems are driven by good works in hopes that God will accept you.
Christianity is the only faith system, not of good works, listen, but of good news, where God takes your burdens from you and accepts you fully by faith.
So, friends, as you consider the God of the house of Israel, I pray that you are convinced that Christianity is not a religion of added burdens.
If that was the case, David would have no reason to rejoice like this.
The only way for David to rejoice, along with the hundreds of thousands of Israelites, was because they showed up to the house of the Lord and found forgiveness, love, and relief.
The presence of God can only bring us peace if we have a right view of who He is.
Just as the Israelites would meditate on all that God had done for them, the crossing of the sea, the Ark of the Covenant, the Day of Atonement, we too are invited to do the same.
Christianity doesn't exist in just random space, it exists in history to reflect on the reality that God left heaven, was born as a human baby, lived a perfect life, and then willingly put himself on the cross to die for those who were nailing him to it.
That's the God of Christianity.
And it's in that presence that you find the healing and relief that your soul most desperately needs.
Look at verse 3 with me.
Jerusalem.
Some translations put O Jerusalem almost like it's a romantic letter.
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.
Point two, we find true peace through the healing experience of the church.
Now here's the great problem, friends.
The church is full of people like me who are selfish and sinful and who want their own way.
It is impossible to spend your life in a local church in deep community with people and not get hurt.
It's impossible.
Maybe the hurt is huge, maybe you've walked through big church hurt, or maybe the church is smaller, but we will inevitably hurt one another.
So what do we mean by the healing experience of the church?
And is it possible?
Well, David gives us two descriptions of what Jerusalem or the church is.
Number one is security.
It promises security.
He says it's built as a city that is bound firmly together.
Verse three could really be translated as built as a city should be.
Right?
Built as the ideal city.
Right?
Think about it.
Jerusalem was built on a hill.
So you had to get up one way.
It had huge, perfectly built walls all around it to keep enemies out and to keep the people safe within.
Right?
So down the hill was the barren village world that was full of chaos.
And so Jerusalem, up on the hill, was a city of light.
A city of refuge.
And man, doesn't our world feel chaotic?
The church can be the one place for us where true peace is felt.
Where we show up together, where we gaze upon the beauty of Jesus.
Right?
The design for the church is meant to be a refuge to broken people.
It's meant to be a hospital for the sick.
So, first is security.
The second thing we find in the church is unity, to which the tribes go up to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
So you notice, of course, there it's plural.
To which the tribes.
These would, of course, be referring to the twelve different tribes within the nation of Israel.
Each tribe had a unique culture.
They were different, they weren't uniform, they were different.
And yet within the house of the Lord, they rallied together around the same purpose to give thanks to the Lord.
So we too today show up as different tribes, right?
Different skin colors, different backgrounds, different politics.
And what social media is driving into us is that differences are horrible.
That it's us versus them, right?
But what we find in the church, in the cross, is a unity that the world does not understand.
Yet can be a testimony to the world.
To see people like us who are fully different, different backgrounds, different politics, different socioeconomic statuses, different beliefs, and yet we still rally around the same cry of the cross.
Christopher Ash says, commentator, he says, only tribes who worship together remain together.
The church can be a healing presence to you and to your unbelieving friends and family members and neighbors as she practices security and unity within the walls.
Look at verse 5 with me.
David says, There, thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David.
Point number three, we find true peace through the justice of the cross.
I'll be honest with y'all, uh, one of the great vanities and vices in my heart are golf course logos.
Um maybe uh that's not your thing, uh, but I joke with my friends that I play golf for the merch.
Um and maybe it golf course logos aren't your thing, but maybe it's a brand, a certain style, a new mahjong set that you just obsess over, right?
Um see, brands and logos represent something.
So for the golf course, if I see a guy who has a you know, Holdner's in born hoodie on or whatever, and it's has a cool logo, like I want to go talk to him, I want to go see how he got there, and I want to get that invite too, right?
And so this is what's so upside down about our faith.
The logo of Christianity is a cross.
We see this logo everywhere, don't we?
We get used to it.
On necklaces, church steeples.
And if we really slow down and contemplate it, the symbol of our faith, animating force behind the 2,000 years of church history.
In the first century, Romans would make fun of Christians for believing in a cross.
And on this, God Himself would willingly put himself for the sake of sinners.
And the question is why?
John Stott says it this way He says, Moved by the perfection of his holy love, God in Christ substituted himself for us sinners.
That is the heart of the cross of Christ.
Here's why this is where your true peace comes.
If you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, you are no longer under the judgment of a holy God.
Because you were born under judgment.
But God judged Christ in your place.
Christ was the substitute on your behalf, and so now under the thrones of judgment, you stand innocent.
And there's nothing that can take away from it, there's nothing that can add to it.
Yes, you might feel guilty over a particular sin, like we confess week in and week out, and that's okay.
But on the cross, your debt was paid.
Bill's it's signed.
Because the thought, the throne of judgment in the line of David is set.
Jesus, the better David, sits on the throne, judged on your behalf.
The judge has been judged.
So why can we be glad about going to the house of the Lord?
Because in it we're reminded that we're free, that we're no longer slaves.
We have, again, three points: the presence of God, the healing experience of the church, and the justice of the cross, and those three reasons are why we can find peace here.
So, what's David's final instruction to us?
Verse 6, 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.
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.
So if the church is where the chaotic world and our chaotic minds find relief and true peace, then the instructions from King David here make perfect sense, right?
Pray for God's church to be a place of peace.
You notice there's a word repeated three times in those three verses.
It's not the word without out there, it's the word within.
In light of everything David has said here, the final prayer is for there to be peace within the walls.
There's gonna be chaos out there.
We know that to be true.
But within the walls, there can be peace.
So there's three things we're praying for as we pray for the peace of the church.
One, the present peace and health of the local church, the Redeemers, the other churches in Marietta, the churches in Atlanta, right?
Number two, the peace of the global church, the 2.4 billion Christians around the world, many of whom are being persecuted.
And number three, the return of Christ, which will bring the new Jerusalem here on earth.
Now, the third point might be surprising for you.
But as we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we are praying for Jesus to come back.
For Jesus to come back and renew the world.
For Jesus to come and wipe your tears away.
For Jesus to come and renew everything and make all sad things untrue.
Where one day we'll be united with friends and family again, where we'll gaze upon the beauty of our Lord Jesus Christ.
John in the book of Revelation describes it this way.
He says, Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb, talking about us.
Verse 10, and he carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, bright as crystal.
Beloved, as we reflect upon Christmas, we reflect upon the thousands of years of history of God working and redeeming his people.
We reflect upon God being born as a man, Jesus Christ.
We reflect upon his cross, where all of your sin, past, present, and future, was nailed.
We reflect upon the Pope of the future.
Where we can actually confidently believe that death has lost its sting.
Because one day all things will be made right.
So the invitation this morning.
Over this Christmas season, busy as it will be, last minute gifts, stress of family, all of it.
Let us be slowed down by the cross, by the hope we have in Jesus, the peace we find in him, and in the hope of the new Jerusalem to come.
Let's pray.
Father, apart from your word, we find ourselves hopeless.
Apart from your cross, we find ourselves judged.
And apart from the hope of the future, we find it hard to keep going.
So, Father, I pray for everyone in this room this morning, all those who are weary or tired or anxious, lonely, ashamed.
Father, would they gaze all the more upon Jesus and his cross this morning?
Would you fill us with a great hope that all is not going to be wrong forever?
But that one day, Jesus, you are going to make all things right.
Father, as we gaze upon the birth of our son, of your son Jesus Christ, Lord, help us be humbled that you took the form of a servant.
That you are acquainted with us, that you're not a who has never placed God, but that you are active and present in our lives.
Father, I pray if there's anyone in here who has never placed their faith in Jesus, would you show them their need?
Would you show them that Jesus is enough for them?
And for all those who do believe, Lord, help us find our purpose, our validation, and our peace in Christ alone.
And it's in his name we pray.
Amen.