Songs of Going Up: Psalm 132

Songs of Going Up: Psalm 132

Vicar Jon Marquardt

Psalm 132

A song of ascents.

1 Lord, remember David
    and all his self-denial.

2 He swore an oath to the Lord,
    he 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
    or slumber to my eyelids,
5 till I find a place for the Lord,
    a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob.”

6 We heard it in Ephrathah,
    we came upon it in the fields of Jaar:
7 “Let us go to his dwelling place,
    let us worship at his footstool, saying,
8 ‘Arise, Lord, and come to your resting place,
    you and the ark of your might.
9 May your priests be clothed with your righteousness;
    may your faithful people sing for joy.’”

10 For the sake of your servant David,
    do not reject your anointed one.

11 The Lord swore an oath to David,
    a sure oath 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.”

13 For the Lord has chosen Zion,
    he has desired it for his dwelling, saying,
14 “This is my resting place for ever and ever;
    here I will sit enthroned, for I have desired it.
15 I will bless her with abundant provisions;
    her poor I will satisfy with food.
16 I will clothe her priests with salvation,
    and her faithful people will ever sing for joy.

17 “Here I will make a horn grow for David
    and set up a lamp for my anointed one.
18 I will clothe his enemies with shame,
    but his head will be adorned with a radiant crown.”

"You promised!"

Those are the words of a little boy who had begged his parents if they could stop for ice cream on the way home. The "promise" in question was really, "We'll see, maybe." But what he heard was, "We shall do everything in our power to grant you your wish—no, your birthright: you shall feast on ice cream tonight!" And because of an unmet (perceived) promise, trust in his parents was broken.

"You said you would!"

Those are the words of a worn out stay at home mom who had asked her husband to pick up a few groceries on his way home. His answer had been more of a shrug than an oath, but what he saw as an optional side quest was really the determining factor in whether the kids would have lunches tomorrow. And because of his misplaced priorities, trust in her husband was broken.

"This wasn't supposed to happen again."

Those are the words you say into the mirror after falling short of yet another goal. You had made a promise to yourself that things would be different, that you would be better this time. But old habits die hard, and before you knew it, you'd slipped right back into the routine. You crumble at the thought of anyone else finding out. And because of a persistent losing streak, trust in yourself was broken.

There's a reason people say, "Don't make promises you can't keep." Even when we fully intend to follow through in the moment, sometimes we just fail. And the results can be devastating.

Because broken promises often lead to broken relationships. Breaking promises in the workplace can cost you your job. Breaking promises at home can cost you your marriage or contact with your child. Breaking promises to yourself can cost you your remaining scraps of self-respect.

What about broken spiritual promises? Even if you haven't made a vow to God, have you ever worried that you might somehow cross a line with him that costs you your relationship? That if you let him down one too many times, he might decide to give up on you for good?

What about the other way around—has God kept every promise to you? Or have you ever felt like he was pulling the rug out from under you when you thought you could count on him?

Sometimes we doubt how much God meant what he said. If God promised he would provide my daily bread, my every need, why am I still struggling to pay the bills? If God promised to keep me from all harm, how do you explain the backpain and heartache that worsens each year? If God promised to make me part of a family of believers, why do I still find it easier to connect with people who don’t go to my church at all?

Can we trust God to keep his promises? Or is he only as faithful to us as we are to him?

The psalm for tonight helps us understand what we can expect from God and his promises. Psalm 132 describes a time when King David made an oath to God—he wouldn't even sleep until he built a proper house of worship, a temple, for the Lord. And he meant it! David had the devotion and the resources to pull it off.

But God had other plans. He wasn't interested in promises that David could make to him—promises he knew David couldn't keep perfectly. God wasn't looking for someone to finally be as faithful to him as God was to them. Instead, independent of what David did, God promised he would build a house for David—one that would last forever.

The Lord swore an oath to David, a sure oath he will not revoke: "One of your own descendants I will place on your throne. If your sons keep my covenant and the statutes I teach them, then their sons will sit on your throne for ever and ever."[1]

That's a big promise! The Lord swore an oath, and a sure oath. If you think about it, why would God feel the need to swear an oath at all? He's God—what he says, goes. What he declares, is. If he said we're getting ice cream later, that's good enough.

But instead he says, "Listen up, David. I want you to trust without a shadow of a doubt that I will keep this promise."

And did he keep it? David's son Solomon built that temple and reigned on that throne—but not forever. His descendants sat on that throne for a few hundred years, but you can visit Jerusalem and see for yourself that only ruins remain from the days of David's dynasty. For centuries, it sure seemed like God had made a promise he either couldn't or wouldn't keep.

But God hadn't promised an eternal earthly king. He promised that one of David's descendants would reign forever. Just like he promised Adam and Eve that one of their descendants would defeat the devil once and for all. Just like he promised Mary that her son would save God's people from their sins. And in Jesus, David's greater Son, every single one of God's promises is kept.

God didn’t have to promise anything. He could have kept it all a secret, letting us wrestle with the uncertainty of our future and the status of our relationship with him. He could have left his options open in case he changed his mind about saving us.

But instead he says, “Listen. I want you to trust without a shadow of a doubt that I will keep my promises to you—from now until eternity.”

God wants you to know that you can count on him. He wants you to have the peace and the certainty that come from entrusting your whole life and eternity to him. He wants you to take his promises and throw them back at him, holding him to his word, so that he can show you just how much he meant it.

Yes, God actually wants you to tell him, “You promised!” He loves for his children to latch onto his words and fully expect them to happen just as he said. That’s why we dedicate whole seasons of the church year, like Advent and Lent, to asking God to keep his promises. Not because we’re afraid he won’t—but because we know he will.

And when it seems like there’s a promise he hasn’t kept, take it up with him. Find where God promises it in his Word, and take it boldly to him in prayer. Remind him of his commitments. Challenge him to do what he says he’ll do. But then leave it to him. Ask him for the wisdom to see where he has kept his promises in your life, and the humility to recognize what he has not guaranteed. Trust that God doesn’t make promises he doesn’t plan to keep.

In our songs on the way up so far, we’ve already meditated on God’s promises of mercy, and help. Over the next two weeks, we’ll consider his promises of restoration and rescue. But all of it centres on this: God’s faithfulness. Brothers and sisters, never forget that you have a God who keeps his promises. Amen.

[1] Psalm 132:11,12

Only Jesus Can Quench Our Thirst

Only Jesus Can Quench Our Thirst

Pastor Pete Metzger

John 4:5-26

5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

17 “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

Only Jesus Can Quench Our Thirst

In a small town, word gets around. On the one hand, that can mean that your tribe is there to celebrate with you when things are going well. On the other hand, if you do something wrong, everybody will have heard about it before you get a chance to get ahead of it. And then they look at you differently, and treat you differently too.

It’s no wonder that she went to the well at noon. All the rest of the women would have been there first thing in the morning, so that they could get ahead of the day, so that they could do their heavy lifting in the cool of the day. But those things weren’t as important to her as it was to avoid the glares of the other women and the comments they would mumble about her under their breath. She went there at noon to be alone, to get her work done without getting noticed, without having to talk to anyone or explain herself to anyone.

Today was different, though. There was a man there, and he clearly wasn’t from around here. He dressed differently. He had an accent. At a single glance you could tell that he was from north of the border, which was strange because most of the time people like him would avoid this place like the plague; they’d walk miles out of their way, add a week to their trip just to bypass this whole region. And, honestly, how could you blame them? There was such bad blood that weary, solitary travelers like him would sometimes get beat up and robbed and left for dead on the side of the road.

In the rare event that men like him would pass through, women like her wouldn’t dare talk to them. Apart from the history, there were the optics. A local lady talking to a foreign man by herself in a secluded place, what would people think? She was already the subject of so many rumours. Could her already battered reputation survive another?

And then he doesn’t have the decency to leave her alone. He draws her in. Asks her to draw water for him. What would people think if they saw it? What would they say? He doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, it seems that he wants more than a drink of water; he wants to have a conversation, of all things. Ordinarily she’d be prepared with her excuses; she’d say what she needed to say and be on her way, but there was something he said that piqued her interest. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she had to know more.

He was offering her something. At first, she thought that maybe he knew of a better place to get better water – not this storm runoff that gathers into a dusty well, but a spring of fresh water that’s always bubbling and never runs low, no matter how long it’s been since the last rain. It’d be strange if a stranger knew a better place to get better water in her hometown than she would, so she was skeptical, until he said what he said next.

Water that takes away your thirst forever. Now, that sounded good. Sure, it would take away the chore of having to haul water from this well everyday, but more than that, it would mean that she’d never have to rearrange her life and endure the heat of the day just to avoid the glares and comments anymore. She’d be free.

More than that, she’d be full. And that was appealing, because she had felt so empty for so long. Maybe that’s why she had had such a long string of bad relationships, i.e. why she had tried to find meaning and security and purpose in men who inevitably let her down.

But, hold on. How did this guy know that? He’s not from around here. There’s no one else at the well to warn him about her. Now he’s really got her attention. There must be something special about him. She’s heard about people like this – prophets, they’re called, i.e. guys who have a special connection with God, who know things that other people don’t. Maybe he knows the big things.

She’d always wondered why her people worship on Mt. Gerizim, where Joshua blessed the Israelites after they entered the Promised Land, but his people insisted on worshiping in Jerusalem. Who was right? She expected him to toe the party line, to give the stock response, but he said something she never could have seen coming, “True worshipers worship the Father in spirit and in truth.”[1] It didn’t matter where you worship, but whom and how.

She thought she knew the answer to the first. She had grown up reading the books of Moses. She had heard promises of a Saviour going all the way back to Adam and Eve, i.e. the Messiah, the Christ. And then he had his mic-drop moment: “I, the one speaking to you – I am he.”[2]

Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine she would the meet the Messiah, but there he was. She did not have it on her bingo card that morning that she would quench the thirst of her Saviour, but then again, he had quenched a thirst in her she didn’t even realize she had. All that time searching for meaning in relationships – all that time avoiding furtive glances and mumbled comments because it caused her to question her own worth and value – all of it had been because there was something missing in her life, i.e. this cross-shaped hole in her heart. But now Jesus filled it, and in so doing he gave her meaning and purpose and an identity that wasn’t rooted in what she had or hadn’t done, but was based on who he was and what he had come to do for her. He came to associate with undesirable people, to provide a spring of living water in her soul that would well up to eternal life, to forgive her sins and assure her of her salvation, and even to show her what true worship looks like.

And that’s what Jesus has come to do for you too.

Maybe it’s not quite as drastic for you as it was for this Samaritan woman. Maybe you’re not a complete social outcast who avoids other people like the plague. But I’m sure that you’ve felt that sense of isolation before. You don’t fit in. You haven’t found your people. You did something that makes you ashamed to meet other people’s gaze. They’ve hurt you by the way they look at or talk about you, even if you did contribute to the problem.

Worse, of course, is our status with God. He knows everything. Sexual immorality takes many forms, not just the serial monogamy of the Samaritan woman who hopped from one sexual partner to the next. We can be guilty of adultery just by using our eyes and our imaginations. And that’s just one of the 10 Commandments. There are so many more that we break every day and God knows them all. He knows how guilty and undesirable we should be. But he chooses to be with us.

In fact, we didn’t read this, but the verse before our text for today provides so much meaning in 7 short words: Now he had to go through Samaria.[3] Jesus didn’t have to do anything. Most Jews avoided Samaria at all costs. There were well-worn paths along the Mediterranean Sea coast on the West and across the Jordan River on the East. But he had to go through Samaria because she was there. Because there was a sinner who needed to know her Saviour.

And that’s what God did for you. There was nothing that we could have done to force him to come, but from his perspective, he had to leave heaven and come to earth, to live and die on a cross, to rise from the dead and ascend back into heaven, so that these sinners could know their Saviour too. So that you could hear these words and know that God is speaking them to you too.

The Samaritan woman wasn’t the only one with a cross-shaped hole in her heart. We all have that thirst for something more. And the thirst isn’t bad, as long as we look to fill it with Jesus. It’s when we try to fill it with other things that we go astray. And none of them are neutral. If we look for meaning and purpose and identity in our occupation, in our relationships, in the activity of our lives – or even if we just try to escape it all by numbing ourselves to reality and distracting ourselves through life – then we may as well be drinking salt water. Our thirst will never be satisfied; it’ll just grow and grow and grow.

But, if we know the gift of God, and if we know who it is that speaks to us in his Word, who offers us living water, then we will never thirst again, then the water he gives us will become in us a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

Of course that doesn’t mean that we stop coming back to the well. That doesn’t mean that we’ll never have questions or cravings ever again. What it means is that if we find our meaning and purpose and identity in Jesus, then we won’t feel the need to seek it from anywhere, anything, anyone else. Then it doesn’t matter where we live or what our history was. What matters is that we continue to worship our God in spirit and in truth.

And isn’t that an amazing thing? The supreme being of the universe is not some distant, inaccessible deity. Not only did he become man and breathe the same air we breathe, but he is spirit just as we worship in spirit. In other words, we don’t have to jump through hoops. We don’t have to worship in Jerusalem or on Mt. Gerizim. We don’t have to observe the Day of Atonement or offer Passover sacrifices. We can worship our God and Saviour anywhere at any time and in so many ways. As long as those ways are grounded in his truth.

And by his grace, they are. We’re not like the Samaritan woman was anymore. We worship what we know, that Jesus is our Saviour, who willingly associates with undesirable sinners, to give us his living water so that our hearts can overflow with the living water of his love through this life and into eternity.

It’s Jesus who quenches our thirst. Amen.

[1] John 4:23

[2] John 4:26

[3] John 4:4

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