A Word in Season: Gladness in God’s House (Psalm 122:1)

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How are things with your soul today? One of the surest ways to take the spiritual temperature of our hearts is to ask about our attitude to the worship of God.

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That will show itself to some extent in our thoughts about private devotion, whether or not we have any appetite to hear

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God's word, hear God's voice in His word, to pour out our hearts in prayer to Him, to lift up our voices and our souls in songs and psalms and hymns, those things do show something of our disposition.

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Also family worship, many of us gather in households where we have the opportunity and we engage there in acts of worship on a smaller scale.

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But perhaps one of the clearest indications of the state of our heart is our disposition toward the gatherings of the church for the worship of God.

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That's always been the case. In Psalm 122, in a psalm of David, he said

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I was glad when they said to me, let us go into the house of the Lord. Now David being a king might have had any number of excuses as to why he would exempt himself from these duties, he might have said that being a king he wasn't going to be summoned by anybody, but no, when he heard the call to go and worship,

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David's heart was thrilled and so were the hearts of those who like him longed to know

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God in the worship of Him. There's an eagerness for the expression of unity in this song of ascent.

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The tribes would have sung it going up to Jerusalem and they're eager for the people of God to gather together.

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It's a statement of their covenant fidelity in the place where their covenant

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God makes himself known. It's the place where they see and enjoy the true prosperity and peace of Jerusalem.

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It's not first and foremost for them, although the symbols are there, about the greatness of Jerusalem.

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Indeed, if David wrote this psalm early on in his experience, Jerusalem may not have had a great deal of outward glory, but it's the place where God's king has been established.

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It's the place where God's name is exalted. It's the place where God himself made his dwelling upon earth.

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And so they pray for the peace of Jerusalem. They're hoping that they will prosper as the ones who love

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God and who love the place where he makes himself known. For the sake of all of them together, they're going to say, peace be within you, because of the house of the

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Lord our God, I will seek your good. So how are things with your soul or with mine?

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For some of us, we cannot easily go to the house of God. Remember not now the church building, certainly not

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Jerusalem of old, but the gathering of the saints in that living temple. I know that there are people in the congregation which

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I serve who are sick. They are suffering and struggling with particular afflictions, and yet some of them would crawl on their hands and their knees to be able to gather with God's people to worship him.

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How much more than those of us who have freedom and liberty to express that appetite.

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Is there that then desire in your heart? Do you have this eagerness to meet with God's people in God's presence?

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During the pandemic, many of us have been cut off from these ordinary means of grace, and it's been a deep grief and sorrow to our souls.

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And as perhaps for some of us, the opportunity to gather opens back up again.

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What is our disposition? Let's not become content with the isolation and the dispersion that we've become accustomed to over these months.

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Our souls should be thrilling at the prospect of being able to gather before God with his people.

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There's something particularly sweet about this, and our praises and our prayers ought to be engaged and primed with an eye to these things.

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So whether or not it's this Lord's Day or any Lord's Day, let us be glad when they say, let us go in to the house of the

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Lord. We have this wonderful privilege of gathering with one another, going up together into the very presence of God to worship him and to enjoy his smile upon us.