The Songs of AscentSample

Praying for the Peace of Jerusalem and...

Psalm 122

Back in Psalm 120, we met the psalmist in a distant land. In 121, we found him on the road. In Psalm 122, his “feet are standing in your gates, Jerusalem” (v. 2). He has arrived.

This, the third psalm identified as a psalm of ascent, is all about the destination, the city where God chose to live among his people: Jerusalem. It’s the place “where the tribes go up—the tribes of the Lord—to praise the name of the Lord according to the statute given to Israel” (v. 4; see also Deuteronomy 12:5–6). Jerusalem is also where the central battle in the war for our souls took place. It was where Jesus was beaten, bloodied, and nailed to a cross for our sins. It was where he rose from the grave and where death began to unravel.

Long before Jesus came, the city was already cherished in the minds and hearts of God’s people. It was where the temple was, where ordinary people could draw near to the living God. This same God called Jerusalem his earthly home, inviting the faithful to come close and worship him. This is why the psalmist tells his first readers and many generations to follow, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: ‘May those who love you be secure” (v. 6).

Things have, of course, changed, though I don’t mean to suggest that we should not pray for Jerusalem. Indeed, we should lift to God the city where so much of redemption history played out, a place where future events connected to the Lord’s coming are sure to unfold, but the Jerusalem of today is not the same place it was when Psalm 122 was written.

Back then, Jerusalem was an outpost of heaven in our world. The holiest place within the temple complex was where God’s glory lived. God’s plan for this world has always been for his glory to fill every last inch of creation (Habakkuk 2:14). God made the earth a place where God dwells with his people. When God told the first human beings to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28), he commissioned them to spread the garden’s goodness, truth, and beauty to the four corners. Eden, and later the temple in Jerusalem, was never supposed to be quite so unique.

If the world is filled with God’s glory, a single temple will not do, so God sent his Spirit to live inside followers of Jesus. At Pentecost, the Spirit descended in tongues of fire and filled 120 disciples who were praying in the Upper Room in—you guessed it—Jerusalem. From that time forward, every disciple of Jesus becomes a living temple, a mobile embassy for the kingdom of heaven.

The psalmist’s prayer for Jerusalem closes, “For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your prosperity” (Psalm 122:9). Reading these words in light of Pentecost and all that Jesus has done, it’s no longer enough to pray for Jerusalem. The house of the Lord is no longer contained within the limits of one city. We must pray for our brothers and sisters everywhere, near and far. I suggest a version of Jesus’ prayer in John 17 as a starting point: “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (v. 21). There are echoes of Eden in these words of Jesus, but instead of pointing us backward in nostalgia, they remind us that God will have his way.