Day 21 - Let Us Go To the House of the Lord

I confess, I don’t like the phrase, “go to church”.  There are reasons, and in short they are biblical and theological.  “Church” is not a place, but a people.  We don’t go to people, we come together to be with people.  

OK, I know, I won’t get many who say “Amen, brother”, but it’s an important distinction.  We are called to relationships – with God and with His people – and that can happen in many different “places”.

Now that I’ve shown my preferences, let me add that I’m a believer in “place”.  I love meeting together with other believers for worship, instruction, fellowship.  Place has it’s purpose and on Sunday I gather with a group of faithful believers in Church.  I love that people want to gather and don’t feel they are compelled by guilt or duty to “have to go to church”.

Psalm 122 is the journey of the believer up to Jerusalem to meet with other believers to worship, and it’s obvious that he wants to go.

Psalm 122:1-9

¹  I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD!”
²  Our feet have been standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!
³  Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together,
⁴  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.
⁵  There thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David.
⁶  Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! “May they be secure who love you!
⁷  Peace be within your walls and security within your towers!”
⁸  For my brothers and companions’ sake I will say, “Peace be within you!”
⁹  For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your good.

Did you notice how he begins:  “I was glad”.  Worship is exciting and never boring.  If it becomes boring it is not worship.  Worship is never forced, it’s something we want to do, not have to do.

If you think about it, all we have to do is open our check books, our calendars (remember Daytimers?), our schedules and look at what we do.  It is here that we discover what we desire and want to do when no one is looking and were free to make our own choices.

“I was glad”…  Why?

Because all of us need to go to the Lord…all of us need grace, mercy, forgiveness, help.

Jerusalem with all of its beauty and grandeur represented the place of God’s meeting with his people under the Old Covenant.  But under the New Covenant all of that has changed.

Hebrews 8:1-2 ¹  Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, 

²  a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man.

Hebrews 9:15  Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance...

Hebrews 9:28  so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

We journey through Lent with this confidence….it’s not a place, it’s a person we come to.

Peace