SPEAKER_00: We're starting an Advent series called Songs for Weary Shepherds.
SPEAKER_00: And the idea behind this is behind this series, that we'll go now through Christmas Eve, is that there are the shepherds came to Jesus' birth and sang songs when he was born.
SPEAKER_00: And so we don't know what songs they sang, but we know that they had many of the psalms memorized.
SPEAKER_00: And so it is likely that the songs sung by those shepherds on that first Christmas morning would have been Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what psalms would they have been?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible doesn't say.
SPEAKER_00: But here's a fun little game.
SPEAKER_00: Try to guess.
SPEAKER_00: Given what you've known about the Psalms, try to guess what would be an appropriate song to sing at the birth of the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: And so over the next few weeks, we'll be doing this series of our best guesses for those songs.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'll be preaching one of the sermons.
SPEAKER_00: Alex, Dan, Ryan will all be preaching one.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end, you can tell us which one guessed correctly.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going first, so I get the low-hanging fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 132.
SPEAKER_00: But before we get into that, my goal in this is not just a cute little advent series.
SPEAKER_00: My goal in this is to help you appreciate the Psalter better.
SPEAKER_00: Because the Psalter being the book of Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: The Psalter is, for most people, probably their favorite book.
SPEAKER_00: If you were to ask a Christian, uh, what is your favorite book?
SPEAKER_00: What are you reading in your devotional time?
SPEAKER_00: What's a passage you turn to on your deathbed or the deathbed of a friend or in a serious trial or in serious joy?
SPEAKER_00: The answer's probably going to be a psalm.
SPEAKER_00: And in that answer, there's itself a bit of a tension because you recognize the psalms aren't written about you.
SPEAKER_00: They're the Old Testament guide for singing and congregational worship.
SPEAKER_00: And yet there's something in them that goes throughout the centuries and connects to our hearts and draws us into worship.
SPEAKER_00: And I hope just by this explanation this morning in us looking at Psalm 132 to help you understand why it is the Psalms are so precious to our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, understand this the Psalter, the book of Psalms, is sort of like the whole message of the Bible in one book.
SPEAKER_00: It's almost like the reader's digest or the Cliff's notes or Spark's notes or the Wikipedia notes of the whole Bible.
SPEAKER_00: You get the theme from creation to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: You get death and marriage and children and birth.
SPEAKER_00: It's your whole life, but you also have Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: There, you have a song Abraham described in the Psalter.
SPEAKER_00: You have a song written by Moses.
SPEAKER_00: You have the wisdom of Solomon in here.
SPEAKER_00: You have the law through Psalm 119 repeated.
SPEAKER_00: You have promises of the Savior to come.
SPEAKER_00: You get songs for dedicating the temple and ordaining a new king.
SPEAKER_00: The priesthood of Israel celebrated here.
SPEAKER_00: The prophetic power of Israel is in the Psalter.
SPEAKER_00: And so you have the whole book of the Bible condensed into the Psalter.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not just the whole theme of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that you embrace the Psalms as a book, not a collection of 150 random things.
SPEAKER_00: But recognize there is a cohesion to it, there's an order to it.
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms flow one to another.
SPEAKER_00: They're not arbitrarily placed, and in many cases, one psalm answers the question raised by the previous one.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a progress to it.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you the most obvious example of that.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 1 talks about the godly man who doesn't listen to bad counsel, he doesn't delight in the wicked, he trusts in the Lord and he grows deep roots and he meditates on God's law, and you wonder who is this person?
SPEAKER_00: And Psalm 2 answers that by declaring to you that God is going to set his son on the throne, who's going to rule over the nation.
SPEAKER_00: So it's almost like Psalm 2 answers Psalm 1.
SPEAKER_00: Or Psalm 22, you have the king who's being crucified and he prays for deliverance.
SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 23, he walks to the valley of shadow of death and the Lord restores his soul.
SPEAKER_00: That's the same word from Psalm 22.
SPEAKER_00: It's used again in Psalm 23.
SPEAKER_00: So there's so many of these Psalms, even the well-known ones, where one is answering the question raised earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Another thing to approach you about the Psalms as we get into it this morning is as you read it like a book and you recognize there's a sequence to it, there is one character who stands out above every other in this, and that is this king.
SPEAKER_00: He is seen time and time again.
SPEAKER_00: You see the king as ruling over the nations.
SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 2, for example, he is described as God's own son, and the nations will bow before him, and he will judge them if they don't worship him.
SPEAKER_00: In this talk, the king brings justice and righteousness, not just to Israel, but he brings justice and righteousness to the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: Even nature will clap its hands, the trees will applaud at the arrival of this king.
SPEAKER_00: He will be the fountain of them, he's the sovereign over them.
SPEAKER_00: And Psalm 20 and 21 says that he will rule the nations forever and ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 122 says that he'll rule them from Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 27 says that he'll rule them after defeating all of his enemies around the world.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot travel very far in the Psalter without bumping into the king.
SPEAKER_00: He is all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: And then one more detail about the king before we get into, I keep adding one more, one more, one more before we get into the psalm this morning.
SPEAKER_00: One more detail about the king and the Psalter that will help it all kind of click for you.
SPEAKER_00: Not only is the king the most frequent and common person in the Psalter, but almost everything you learn about the king is given to you in the Psalter through conversation.
SPEAKER_00: It's not an epistle like Ephesians is about Jesus or Colossians.
SPEAKER_00: But most of the time when you encounter the king and the Psalter, it is through conversation.
SPEAKER_00: What I mean by that is God talking to the king or to his son.
SPEAKER_00: God talking to the nations about his son.
SPEAKER_00: The nations talking to God about the son.
SPEAKER_00: The nations talking to the son to get to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Most of what you see about the King or the Son in the Psalms is through communication, people to each other, singing about him, praying to him, or talking to him.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it'd be very easy for the psalmist to say, God will appoint a time for his son to be on the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not how the psalm says it.
SPEAKER_00: It says, the Lord said to my Lord, the Lord says, Behold, today I've begotten you.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord says, I've put my son on Mount Zion.
SPEAKER_00: It's always given by communication.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not just communication either, it's always mediated communication.
SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is God the Father speaks to his people through the Son.
SPEAKER_00: And the nations speak back to God also through the Son.
SPEAKER_00: When they're talking to the Father, they're talking through the Son.
SPEAKER_00: He becomes the intermediary.
SPEAKER_00: He becomes the king who's ruling at God's decree over the nations.
SPEAKER_00: The nations pray to the Father through the Son.
SPEAKER_00: It becomes very Trinitarian.
SPEAKER_00: Like again, Psalm 2, Psalm 110 is the Father speaking to the Son.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 32 and 37 and 78 and others is the Father speaking to the nations through the Son.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 20, the people speak to God about the Son.
SPEAKER_00: And there's just so much of these prayers and songs and communication from the Father to the world through the Son, from the world to the Father, likewise through or about the Son.
SPEAKER_00: And this leads to the main problem or the main tension with the Psalms, which helps us resonate with it so well.
SPEAKER_00: The Psalms are written centuries before Jesus was born.
SPEAKER_00: Most of them at least 800 years before Jesus was born.
SPEAKER_00: Most of the Psalms are written by David, and those that aren't by him are generally about him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus even calls it the book of the Psalms of David, which is a fitting heading.
SPEAKER_00: And yet it is eight centuries before Jesus is born.
SPEAKER_00: And so think about all of these songs.
SPEAKER_00: All the description of the king, the Messiah, the Son of God who comes to earth to rule the nations, all these descriptions of them, and he's not there.
SPEAKER_00: So they're singing about him and praying about him and looking for him and they cannot find him.
SPEAKER_00: And so the context of all of the psalms, then, it's just serious mixed emotions, to say the least.
SPEAKER_00: Play ball.
SPEAKER_00: I know they don't say at the Super Bowl, DC.
SPEAKER_00: I know I know it's a baseball thing, right?
SPEAKER_00: Play ball?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: We would definitely put a cloud over the game if you sang a song from a losing war and then kicked off or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Psalms.
SPEAKER_00: Until Jesus is born, you you feel a little bit like you lost.
SPEAKER_00: And you're singing some of them at the installation of every king, but that's not the messianic king.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon's on the throne.
SPEAKER_00: He's not Solomon's good and all, but he's not Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And most of the kings weren't even Solomon's.
SPEAKER_00: Most of the kings were losers.
SPEAKER_00: And you sing this song and you're like, God, I hope one of these days you'll give us this king.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's an emptiness to them as they're written in the Old Testament that hangs over them, that resonates with us when we're missing things in this world.
SPEAKER_00: When we're walking through the valley of the shadow of death, we recognize, yeah, it's in the senses about the Good Shepherd.
SPEAKER_00: We get it.
SPEAKER_00: But there's another sense in which it's, I need the Good Shepherd too.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Psalms come together then with this expectation and anticipation of the Savior coming.
SPEAKER_00: And Psalm 132, I would say, is, if not the best example, at least one of the top examples of this.
SPEAKER_00: And you can tell me December 26th, if I'm right.
SPEAKER_00: I'll read it now.
SPEAKER_00: A song of ascent.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, O Yahweh, in David's favor, all the hardships he endured.
SPEAKER_00: How he swore to Yahweh and vowed to the mighty one of Jacob, I will not enter my house or go to my bed, I won't give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids until I find a place for Yahweh, a dwelling place for the mighty one of Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, we heard of it in Epaphrah.
SPEAKER_00: We found it in the fields of Jar.
SPEAKER_00: Let us go to his dwelling place.
SPEAKER_00: Let us worship at his footstool.
SPEAKER_00: Arise, O Yahweh, and go to your resting place.
SPEAKER_00: You and the ark of your might.
SPEAKER_00: Let your priests be clothed with righteousness, and let your saints shout for joy for the sake of your servant David.
SPEAKER_00: Don't turn away from the face of your anointed one.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh swore to David a sure oath, from which he will not turn back.
SPEAKER_00: One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne.
SPEAKER_00: If your sons keep my covenant and my testimonies that I shall teach them, their sons also forever shall sit on your throne.
SPEAKER_00: For Yahweh's chosen Zion.
SPEAKER_00: He's desired it for his dwelling place.
SPEAKER_00: This is my resting place forever.
SPEAKER_00: Here I will dwell, for I've desired it.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: There I will make a horn to sprout for David.
SPEAKER_00: I have prepared a lamp for my anointed.
SPEAKER_00: His enemies I will clothe with shame, but on him his crown will shine.
SPEAKER_00: I called this once in Royal David's City.
SPEAKER_00: Because this is very much the kind of song that the shepherds would have sung, looking forward to the arrival of David's seed, David's son.
SPEAKER_00: To understand the flow or the cohesion of this psalm, you need a brief lesson in archaeology.
SPEAKER_00: So this is archaeology 101 right here.
SPEAKER_00: When God made a covenant with Israel in their wilderness wanderings, he manifested that covenant through the Ark of the Covenant.
SPEAKER_00: The Ark was basically a box with rods that came out of it so that it could be carried.
SPEAKER_00: In the box were three things.
SPEAKER_00: There was the law given to Moses on the two stone tablets, the Ten Commandments, that stood and represented the entirety of the law and spoke to the fact that God is a speaker and a lawgiver.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, in the box in the ark would be manna.
SPEAKER_00: Normally manna expired after a day, except if it grew on Friday, and then it was, you know, it had 48 hours to it.
SPEAKER_00: But the manna in the box in the ark was a special provision.
SPEAKER_00: It never went bad, and it forever would be in the Ark of the Covenant to reveal to you that God is a provider.
SPEAKER_00: He's not only a speaker, but he provides food and bread for his people.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, in the box is Aaron's rod.
SPEAKER_00: It was his staff, his walking stick.
SPEAKER_00: It was an old piece of wood that had been fastened into a walking stick.
SPEAKER_00: It was not just cut down.
SPEAKER_00: He had had it for a long time, and God decides he's going to have the high priest come from Aaron's line.
SPEAKER_00: And so Aaron's staff, which again is old dead wood, blossoms.
SPEAKER_00: Flowers come out of it.
SPEAKER_00: To show that God can bring life by providing a priest.
SPEAKER_00: The line of the priest would come from him.
SPEAKER_00: That rod goes into the ark.
SPEAKER_00: And so you have God as a speaker, God as a provider, and God as a priest.
SPEAKER_00: He will be a priest for his people according to his will.
SPEAKER_00: That's in the Ark of the Covenant.
SPEAKER_00: That box followed the Israelites or led the Israelites really through the wilderness wanderings.
SPEAKER_00: Where it went, the Israelites followed, and they built a tent for it.
SPEAKER_00: It stayed in a tent.
SPEAKER_00: When they went out to battle, it went out to battle and they won.
SPEAKER_00: And then it went home at night after having victory over its enemies.
SPEAKER_00: And the Israelites finally crossed into the promised land and they have the tent there for the ark.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the days of the judges, and then it's, you know, the era of Saul about to become king, and they take the ark into battle with them, but they're not following the Lord anymore.
SPEAKER_00: They're not honoring the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: They treat it like a good luck charm, and they lose it.
SPEAKER_00: It gets stolen from them, which is disastrous, right?
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking, it's a high school kid.
SPEAKER_00: I remember borrowing my parents' car and just hoping nothing bad happens to this car.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't worried about me.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I was worried about me indirectly.
SPEAKER_00: I was worried about the car first and then what would happen to me if the car got damaged.
SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, you know, if a kid's been in an accident, they call their parents, and their parents are like, it's only a car, don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_00: But you don't think that at the time.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine crashing the ark.
SPEAKER_00: They took the ark off to battle and lost the ark.
SPEAKER_00: The Philistines take the ark, and of course, all the Philistines die and they send it back to some cows, and it gets just parked in a tent somewhere for a period of time.
SPEAKER_00: That's archaeology 101 right there.
SPEAKER_00: What happened to the ark?
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the Psalm begins with.
SPEAKER_00: It speaks initially of the ark lost and then found.
SPEAKER_00: The ark lost and then found.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, O Yahweh, in David's favor, all of the hardships he endured.
SPEAKER_00: It's speaking specifically about David getting the ark back to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: David became king, and this was a top priority for him.
SPEAKER_00: It was one of his campaign promises, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: Elect David king, and I know he wasn't really elected, but follow the logic.
SPEAKER_00: This is what he campaigned on.
SPEAKER_00: Elect me king, and I will get the ark back.
SPEAKER_00: And it cost him so much to do it.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember round one?
SPEAKER_00: They got the ark and they got all the who's who and everybody in the important outfits and they put their best suits on and they had trumpets and they had a whole parade to talk about how godly and how good David and all of his leaders are to get the ark back.
SPEAKER_00: And it was not about the Lord, it was about David and his men, and it did not go well for them.
SPEAKER_00: One of the oxen stumbled, the ark tottered, a person grabbed the ark to keep it from falling, and God struck him dead.
SPEAKER_00: And David gives up.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, puts the ark in the closest guy's house and walks away.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, fine, God, you deal with this problem, and goes away.
SPEAKER_00: And then eventually he came to his senses a few months later, and he decides he will move the ark back.
SPEAKER_00: And this time he does it the right way.
SPEAKER_00: The people repent from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: David's not wearing a you know business casual.
SPEAKER_00: He comes next time with a white linen ephod on, like an undershirt.
SPEAKER_00: And they they go six steps and they do a sacrifice for their own sin.
SPEAKER_00: And then a quick head count, and everyone's still alive.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: And they bring the ark to Jerusalem that way, with sacrifice and worship, and dancing, and prayer, and praise, not with pomp and circumstance, but with humility and worship.
SPEAKER_00: And the ark gets to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And then David wants to build a house for it.
SPEAKER_00: And God tells him no.
SPEAKER_00: This is archaeology 102 now.
SPEAKER_00: God tells him no, you don't get to build a house for the ark, because you're a man of blood.
SPEAKER_00: Your son, and check this out, he says, your son who will come from your body, he will build a house for me.
SPEAKER_00: And his kingdom will never end.
SPEAKER_00: There's language in the promise that his son will be sinless, but also language in the promise that his son will be disciplined for his people's sins.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very odd promise.
SPEAKER_00: David buys the land for the house for the ark to be built on, the temple to be built on, but he goes to his grave without ever seeing it.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of difficulty in verse one that David endured.
SPEAKER_00: But David in verse two swore to Yahweh, swore to the mighty one of Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: Here, God is called the mighty one of Jacob because David is acting as the head of all the people, not the head of David's line, not the head of Judah, not even the king in Jerusalem, but the king over all of God's people.
SPEAKER_00: All the tribes came from Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: David vowed on behalf of all of them that he will not enter his house or go to sleep or give sleep to his eyes or slumber to his eyelids until he gets a proper place for the ark.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit hyperbole, of course.
SPEAKER_00: It was a few months that went by.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure he slept in those few months.
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of, a little interesting tidbit here, we don't know who wrote this psalm, but the language in verse 4, sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, is in Proverbs 6 as a proverb written by Solomon.
SPEAKER_00: So as a parent of a teenager right now, I like that I'm just imagining.
SPEAKER_00: How did Solomon learn this proverb?
SPEAKER_00: His dad told him, No sleep for your eyelids until your work is done.
SPEAKER_00: All the time, apparently, and it became a proverb.
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
SPEAKER_00: And now it's here in Psalm 132.
SPEAKER_00: David said that proverb to Solomon, he says it to himself until he gets a tent or temple made.
SPEAKER_00: That's the promise.
SPEAKER_00: And they hear about this promise everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: We heard of it in Epaphratha, which is Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: We found it in the fields of Jar, which is a family that lives outside of Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the tent, that's where the ark stayed for those three months until David could bring it home.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to his dwelling place.
SPEAKER_00: Let us worship at his footstool.
SPEAKER_00: Such a prayer and promise.
SPEAKER_00: They found the ark and they wanted it back in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And David vowed to get it done.
SPEAKER_00: However, comma number two, the ark was not around anymore.
SPEAKER_00: David dies and it doesn't get a home.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's gonna go to one of his sons, he'll build the home for the ark, but I mean that would that handoff wasn't exactly handled flawlessly either, was it?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you remember when David died?
SPEAKER_00: He accidentally ordains the wrong son as king.
SPEAKER_00: It's a whole fiasco.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, Solomon builds the temple and dedicates the temple to the worship of God.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, verse 8 and 9 is a quote of Solomon's prayer from 2 Chronicles.
SPEAKER_00: So Solomon, when he prayed to dedicate the temple, apparently either knew this psalm and quoted It or the psalm was written as a result of what Solomon said in his prayer.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know which is the first here.
SPEAKER_00: Arise, O Yahweh, and go to your resting place.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I mean by there's this unrequited hope around this psalm.
SPEAKER_00: This is Solomon praying, God, we've built you the house now.
SPEAKER_00: So come on.
SPEAKER_00: Stand up, God.
SPEAKER_00: Come be with your people.
SPEAKER_00: You in the ark of your might.
SPEAKER_00: Let your priests be clothed with righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Let your saints sout or shout or the word sing here.
SPEAKER_00: Let your saints shout or sing for joy.
SPEAKER_00: For the sake of your servant David, don't turn your face away from him.
SPEAKER_00: This phrase, don't turn your face away from him.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the king is locked out.
SPEAKER_00: The Messiah, the anointed one is the word for Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the Messiah is locked out.
SPEAKER_00: They're having a party to dedicate the temple for the ark to be in it, but the Messiah can't get in.
SPEAKER_00: Like they forgot one person on the guest list.
SPEAKER_00: But they're praying to God, God, let the Messiah in, let him come.
SPEAKER_00: Don't turn him out, don't turn him away.
SPEAKER_00: It's such a milieu of mixed emotions, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Like they're excited for the temple, but where's the Savior?
SPEAKER_00: We don't see him.
SPEAKER_00: You know from this that God has chosen to dwell with his people.
SPEAKER_00: You know that when he comes, there will be power and blessing.
SPEAKER_00: You know that when he comes, he'll come through the line of David.
SPEAKER_00: You know that he will come as the Davidic king to rule over the nations from Jerusalem in his temple.
SPEAKER_00: But he's not here.
SPEAKER_00: He's not here.
SPEAKER_00: They want to sing for joy.
SPEAKER_00: But they can't.
SPEAKER_00: Which leads to the third stanza of this poem.
SPEAKER_00: The ark eventually comes down.
SPEAKER_00: So the ark was lost and found.
SPEAKER_00: The ark was not around, and the ark came down.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 11, Yahweh swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back.
SPEAKER_00: One of the sons of your body will sit upon the throne.
SPEAKER_00: So when the psalm is written, the psalmist has not seen the sun yet.
SPEAKER_00: He hasn't met Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's centuries before Jesus comes, but he's speaking of it with such confidence, isn't he?
SPEAKER_00: He knows that God promised the Savior would come.
SPEAKER_00: God promised.
SPEAKER_00: So certainly, if God promises, it will happen, right?
SPEAKER_00: God's not going to promise and not do it.
SPEAKER_00: And so the psalmist talks about it as if it is a certainty.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh swore to David, he will do it.
SPEAKER_00: And it will come from the line of David's body.
SPEAKER_00: That son, singular, one of verse 11, one of the sons will be set upon the throne.
SPEAKER_00: But look at just the craziness in verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: All of the sons of David who keep the covenant will sit on the throne forever.
SPEAKER_00: So what kind of throne is that?
SPEAKER_00: The seats, a bajillion people.
SPEAKER_00: You recognize the throne is occupied by one person, one of the sons, but all those who keep the covenant will be reigning with him.
SPEAKER_00: There's this corporate element to this dedication.
SPEAKER_00: There's a corporate element that when the Son comes, he's bringing all of the faithful people with him.
SPEAKER_00: And they will reign forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: All those who keep the covenant, all those who trust the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, when the Savior does come, he keeps the covenant on behalf of his people.
SPEAKER_00: So those with faith in the Savior will reign with him forever.
SPEAKER_00: Where is this going to take place?
SPEAKER_00: Well, verse 13 answers that it will take place in Zion.
SPEAKER_00: That's where God has chosen.
SPEAKER_00: He desired it.
SPEAKER_00: This is my resting place forever.
SPEAKER_00: No more wandering in the wilderness, no more living in a tent in Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: No, forever he will live in Mount Zion.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because I have desired it, God says.
SPEAKER_00: This is first person.
SPEAKER_00: God's speaking again, God's speaking about this.
SPEAKER_00: I have desired it, God said.
SPEAKER_00: What a great answer.
SPEAKER_00: Why does God, why did God choose Israel?
SPEAKER_00: Because he wanted to.
SPEAKER_00: And you think that's not a very good answer.
SPEAKER_00: Have you been a parent ever?
SPEAKER_00: That's the best answer possible, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Why, Dad?
SPEAKER_00: Because I want to.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great answer.
SPEAKER_00: That's what God says.
SPEAKER_00: I've chosen Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: I've chosen Mount Zion.
SPEAKER_00: Mount Zion is where God spoke to Abraham and said, I'll provide a substitute so you don't need to sacrifice Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: I mean Isaac.
SPEAKER_00: That's it to happen to Mount Zion.
SPEAKER_00: Mount Zion is where David established his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Mount Zion is where David bides the field to build the house for the temple, and Mount Zion is where Solomon builds the temple, and Mount Zion will be where Jesus dies on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: All that happens right there.
SPEAKER_00: God desired it.
SPEAKER_00: He chose it.
SPEAKER_00: And now, verse 15 and verse 16, we're going to move through the contents of the ark.
SPEAKER_00: I will bless her provisions, speaking of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: I will satisfy her poor with bread.
SPEAKER_00: That's the manna.
SPEAKER_00: God will give bread to his people through this ark.
SPEAKER_00: Her priests, I will clothe with salvation.
SPEAKER_00: This is the rod of Aaron will blossom and people will sing about it.
SPEAKER_00: The saints will sing for joy.
SPEAKER_00: I will make a horn sprout.
SPEAKER_00: You thought it was odd the staff sprouted.
SPEAKER_00: What about when a horn sprouts?
SPEAKER_00: I prepared a lamp for my anointed.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're moving into the furniture in the Holy of Holies.
SPEAKER_00: In the middle of the Holy of Holies is a lampstand that sits over the ark.
SPEAKER_00: The angels touch their wings over it.
SPEAKER_00: The mercy seat is there that is sprinkled with blood.
SPEAKER_00: And here you have the priest doing priestly work through the lampstand.
SPEAKER_00: And this priest in verse 17 is my anointed, it says, the word for the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: His enemies will be clothed in shame, but on him his crown will shine.
SPEAKER_00: That mention this is written centuries.
SPEAKER_00: Anywhere between 800 and 400 years before the birth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Probably closer to 800.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know how this is going to play out.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know how all the tensions in this, how is one person going to be God's son, yet also the Messiah and the anointed king?
SPEAKER_00: How is that going to happen?
SPEAKER_00: How is this one person going to be the ark and also the contents of the ark and the lampstand and the mercy seat, sprinkling everybody with blood?
SPEAKER_00: How's that all gonna come together?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean that the ark was in Bethlehem first for three months before it finally made it to Mount Zion?
SPEAKER_00: They don't know this.
SPEAKER_00: They just know at verse 18 that they're gonna win.
SPEAKER_00: God will carry out his word.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus is born, of course, he's not born in Mount Zion.
SPEAKER_00: He's born in Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: Mount Zion is where God's throne is, where his temple is, where the enemies are vanquished.
SPEAKER_00: Bethlehem is where the manger is and where poverty is and where shepherds are.
SPEAKER_00: It's vulnerability.
SPEAKER_00: We sing the song once in Royal David City, but maybe you sing it so often you don't meant you don't maybe realize what's off about that first line.
SPEAKER_00: Once in Royal David City, there was a cattle stall in a manger.
SPEAKER_00: Where were those things?
SPEAKER_00: They were in Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: Where's the royal city?
SPEAKER_00: It's Zion.
SPEAKER_00: But when the king comes, he doesn't go first to Zion.
SPEAKER_00: He goes first to Bethlehem, the lowliness part of his advent.
SPEAKER_00: He enters through with the manger and the oxen.
SPEAKER_00: He enters through in lowliness and humility.
SPEAKER_00: Why does he go to Bethlehem?
SPEAKER_00: Because that's where Ruth was from.
SPEAKER_00: That's where where Ruth, who was on the verge of starvation, marries Boaz and the line of David begins in the place of vulnerability, the fields, not the fortress of Zion, the fields of Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, providentially there's reasons that Mary and Joseph go there.
SPEAKER_00: Of course there are.
SPEAKER_00: They had to go for the census and they had to go back to where their family is, you know, last registered to the vote or whatever the right idiom would be.
SPEAKER_00: That's where they had to go back to.
SPEAKER_00: But you recognize that this is nothing to do with the census here.
SPEAKER_00: This is because God, when he came to his people, came to them first through Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in Luke, Luke 1 and 2 draw so much from Psalm 132.
SPEAKER_00: It says, three times that Mary went to Bethlehem because she was of the house of David.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph was of the house of David.
SPEAKER_00: David, David, David.
SPEAKER_00: Three times there, which is drawing, of course, from Psalm 132, that the Savior would come to Bethlehem to the line of David.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 132 says the ark is a sacred place.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus comes, he comes as a sacred person.
SPEAKER_00: The ark belongs in the temple, but when Jesus comes, he comes in a body.
SPEAKER_00: The horn in verse 17 sprouts, bringing life and light to the world.
SPEAKER_00: This is the verse the angel quotes to Mary when he tells, when Gabriel tells Mary she'll be with child.
SPEAKER_00: The angel quotes verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: The horn will sprout for David.
SPEAKER_00: The Savior will come.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 132, God says, I will prepare a place.
SPEAKER_00: I'll prepare the horn.
SPEAKER_00: In Luke 2, the horn is born.
SPEAKER_00: In 2 Samuel 6, David goes out to the hill country of Bethlehem to get the ark.
SPEAKER_00: In Luke 2, Mary travels to Bethlehem to spend time with Elizabeth.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, how long was the Ark in Bethlehem?
SPEAKER_00: Three months.
SPEAKER_00: How long was Mary with Elizabeth?
SPEAKER_00: Three months.
SPEAKER_00: What did David do in front of the Ark?
SPEAKER_00: Dance.
SPEAKER_00: What did John the Baptist do in front of the new ark in front of Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Danced.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it was the Trump dance or not, but that was the only dance I had right there.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to read the narrative in Luke 1 and 2 and go, I've seen this before.
SPEAKER_00: Where was the ark in Bethlehem?
SPEAKER_00: Where was the dancing before it?
SPEAKER_00: 2 Samuel 6, Psalm 132.
SPEAKER_00: The Savior is coming through Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: The Savior will be the Word of God, the Word made flesh, just as the Ark showed that God was a speaker and a lawgiver.
SPEAKER_00: The Savior will be the bread of life, just as the Ark had the manna presented in it.
SPEAKER_00: The Savior will be the high priest, just as the Ark had Aaron's rod that budded in it.
SPEAKER_00: The word became flesh and dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't come with tablets of stone, but he comes with a new law and a new nature he can write on tablets of flesh on our own hearts.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't come with manna that has to be gathered every day.
SPEAKER_00: He comes as the bread of life that dwells in his people.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't come with the rod that only goes through Levi's lineage, but he comes as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek, a better priesthood than Levi, even.
SPEAKER_00: Forget Aaron, a better priesthood than Levi.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' birth shows that God is a lawgiver, a provider by the bread of life, and a priest who will give life.
SPEAKER_00: He fulfills all three.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 9 and 10 wraps this all up by saying he basically fulfills everything in the Holy of Holies.
SPEAKER_00: He is the light of the world, he is the mercy seat, he sprinkles blood to atone for his people's sins.
SPEAKER_00: The horn will indeed sprout for David on that first Christmas morning.
SPEAKER_00: So what would the shepherds sing as they come?
SPEAKER_00: Well, as they sing, notice that they are fulfilling even verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: Her saints will shout for joy.
SPEAKER_00: When the Savior comes, the saints will shout and they will sing.
SPEAKER_00: The tension of Psalm 132 is answered when Jesus comes to his own.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're grateful that your word comes from heaven to earth.
SPEAKER_00: It became flesh and dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_00: We behold your glory, the glory of the only begotten Son and the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There's so much emptiness because of expectation, and there's so much fulfillment in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Our hearts are truly ministered to by these psalms.
SPEAKER_00: We too find a nearness to you in difficulty and trial, knowing that we are with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: If he lives, we will live also.
SPEAKER_00: If he kept the covenant on our behalf, then we will reign with you over the nations.
SPEAKER_00: You give it to all those who overcome.
SPEAKER_00: A new name, a white stone, a rod to rule the nations with you.
SPEAKER_00: Came to Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: You know next time you come back, it will be to Mount Zion.
SPEAKER_00: You'll split the Mount of Olives and you will establish your kingdom and rule over the nations.
SPEAKER_00: All these so-called kings and rulers that we have today will bow their knee.
SPEAKER_00: As you are exalted over all.
SPEAKER_00: It's in your name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBc.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.