How Should I Feel about Going to Church? (Psalm 122)
Sermon Manuscript
Habits are either harmful or helpful. They are never neutral. Because a habit is always shaping and forming you. It’s always making you more of one thing, and less of another. That can be amazing and it can be dangerous, but it’s always transformational. We are designed to change and grow based on the things we regularly do, regularly think, and regularly feel. You can have habits of thoughts, habits of feelings, habits of behaviors, but all of them will change you.
Now, music is to habits what performance enhancing drugs are to sports. Minus the health risks and legal issues. Music has a remarkable ability to make mental and emotional habits easier to form. Even dangerously easier. That’s because music is compelling, memorable, and intuitive. So it’s basically a pattern, a rhythm, or even a habit, shrunk down into a pill form that you can ingest. That's why we learn to sing our ABCs long before we can even write them. Songs are literally just patterns of thinking and feeling that are designed to be internalized. They compel you to listen to them, they are easy to remember, and in many cases the more you sing them, the more they make sense. Like singing “Stressed out” by 21 pilots in high school was fun, and now it’s painfully relatable. Music has the ability to resonate with you, and to start to feel intuitive very quickly. It’s much, much easier to learn to sing along with a song than to memorize and repeat a speech or even a poem.
So habits form us, and music is a shortcut to mental and emotional habits. That’s one of the many reasons we take music so seriously around here. Why we are so intentional about what we sing and how we sing it. Why we went through a 9 month hiring process for our new worship director. Music matters because it creates mental and emotional habits that shape who we are on a very deep level.
Our culture doesn’t usually think about songs like that though - we tend to think about them like brief moments to consume and forget. We actually are impressed by songs that take longer to forget - which is why an artist staying on the charts for so many weeks at a time is a big deal. Modern songs are profoundly temporary. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t still formative. You pop a song like you would a pringle. And you can never have just one pringle, so it starts with one or two absent-mindedly while you’re working and next thing you know you’ve eaten a whole, uh… playlist. But, much like pringles, even if the impact of one is very little, the impact of many can be much more significant.
Now anybody who grew up in fundamentalism may have some anxiety building because I sound dangerously close to calling you all to throw out your secular music and please do not worry, I have no such intention. Much like pringles, or really any kind of food, consuming is fine as long as you do so with intentionality and moderation. I’m much more interested in thinking about the songs we don’t realize we are singing. Because those are often the ones that form us the most.
Remember, songs don’t automatically form us. Habits do. But songs are shortcuts to habits. Habits are things that you can do without thinking about. They happen automatically, whether you want them to or not. A habit of going to the gym doesn’t just make me better at the exercises I do at the gym, it actually makes me better at going to the gym.
Songs do that. Because they get stuck in our heads and in our hearts. And we sing them when we aren’t even thinking about it. This is literally one reason why I personally care that the music here sounds good - I want it to get stuck in your head. When I overhear my 6 year old playing in her room and singing “and you rose that I might be a new creation, I’m a child of God by grace and grace alone” I’m like YES. That’s what I want. I want earworms like that. I want those ideas subtly forming and shaping her view of herself for the rest of her life. I want her singing and thinking those songs by accident - when she doesn’t even realize it. Some of y’all are like “that’s indoctrination” I’m like “Yeah it is!” Music is indoctrination. For better and for worse.
But again, I’m not really concerned about your Spotify wrapped right now. So for crying out loud what am I talking about here? I’m really talking about the bigger, subtler, older songs. Especially the ones we don’t realize we are singing along to. Because those shape us the most.
God knows about songs. He is the first and greatest musician, and he taught the rest of us how to play. He knows how powerful songs are. That’s why he put a book of them in the Bible. And why they are full of some of the most important truths in the bible. If you look at all the statements about God in the Old Testament, most of them are in the Psalms. There are more things said about God in the Psalms than in any other book in the whole Bible. And he made sure they wouldn’t be a bunch of one-hit-wonders either, because he wove them into the cultural rhythms of his people. Three times a year you are to leave your home, your job, your family, and go up to Jerusalem to worship. And you are to sing on the way there, once you get there, and on the way back. The whole way singing. It’s a musical pilgrimage. This sermon series we are doing now is going through the Psalms you were supposed to sing on your way up the mountain to Jerusalem - the “Psalms of Ascent.”
So the idea was, if you’re an Israelite, you’re going to let these songs re-form you three times a year. You’re going to let them tell you who God is, and who you are, and why you exist. And they will get stuck in your head and work their way down into the deepest parts of you. These songs will teach you how to think and how to feel. And importantly, these songs will compete with and even drive out the songs of other, lesser gods. These songs will help reshape anything in you that has been malformed by other melodies.
Let me show you what I’m talking about. One way to really understand a Psalm is to write out your own version of it. Go one line at a time, figure out what it means, and then write a new psalm from your perspective, using your own thoughts and feelings. Not to replace the original, but to understand the original and apply it to your life. Just an exercise, you’re not writing new parts of the bible or anything, don’t worry. You can toss it when you’re done. But the exercise can help you understand the original. In fact, you can go a step further if you want, and write out an anti-psalm. Please don’t freak out, lemme explain. I’m saying you can get a better feel for what the actual Psalm is saying by trying to think of what would be the exact opposite. This is actually a super old hermeneutical trick and it works in way more parts of the bible too. But check this out. I did this with Psalm 122 and I want us to read it. The original unaltered text that we read earlier is on the left for comparison.
“I was anxious when they said to me, “Let’s go to church.” My feet have been continually moving. In and out of shopping centers and office buildings -
that endless hustle where each person builds their own empire. Where people drift apart from chasing their own success, as they have decided for themselves, in order to take credit for their own achievements. There the courts of justice are always changing. Determined by platforms of influence – by whoever can gain and hold the most attention.
Pray for the victory of my party! May they be secure who agree with me. May peace be inside my circles, and suspicion follow those outside of them.”
For my own comfort I will say, “let each do as they please.” For the sake of my pursuit of happiness, I will seek my own good.
Now… I had a couple thoughts after I finished writing that and looked down. The first thought I had is, “I know that song.” And the second thought I had is, “I see why I needed to sing the original.” This “Anti-Psalm” is an example of the kind of cultural songs I’m talking about. Not the ones we are aware of - the ones we aren’t. The ones we didn’t know we were singing. These subconscious songs can cause us a lot of problems in a lot of areas of life. And based on Psalm 122 - there’s one area in particular I want to focus on today - they can influence how we think and feel about going to church. Now I know that was a long intro - I like those. So just two short points and we’ll be done. First, I want to talk about
Point 1: Reasons to love church that aren’t big enough to keep you there.
Psalm 122 presents a picture of what it looks like to delight in going to worship with God’s people. It shows a portrait of both the source and the result of that delight. “I was glad when they said to me, “let’s go to the house of God.” And then it explains why that idea made the Psalmist glad, and what it caused him to do and feel as a result of that gladness.
But in looking at that - the first thing that stands out to me is how different his gladness is from much of what we tend to think and feel about church. This song is not like the songs our culture sings about church. Here in this Psalm you see him primarily taking joy in God, God’s people, and the unity between them all. But even inside of contemporary western Christian culture, that is not our attitude towards church. Sure, we know enough to know that’s how we should feel. But if those were the primary sources of enjoyment for us in church, then we’d stick around a church as long as those things were there.
But what are the main reasons people leave church? Political differences… Didn’t like the small groups, didn’t like the preaching, didn’t like the music, didn’t like the kids ministry or youth ministry…. And when people tell me what they love about their church, so often those are the first and even only things that come up. Come check out my church - we have an awesome youth ministry. Come check out my church, the music is great. Come check out my church, the preacher is really enjoyable to listen to.
Now hopefully it’s clear up front - I am not saying it is wrong to love and value those things. I started out the message talking about how important I think music is. And I'm the Executive Pastor - so most of my job is spent working on the other stuff I just mentioned. I’m just saying, if I were to write my own psalm that started out, “I was glad when they said to me, let’s go to OGC.” What would be the first things that come to mind? And if, one day, I was no longer glad when they said that, what would have changed?
In no way am I saying you cannot or should not love and value all the other good things that a church has to offer. What I am saying is, if a change in preaching, or a change in small groups, or the loss of a program, or a damaged relationship, or a staffing change, or a political difference, or a frustration with how children’s ministry works, or a change in the style of music can make you no longer glad to go to church then you were only glad for weak reasons. If your joy in Christ's church was able to be carried away so easily it cannot possibly have been heavy enough.
At OGC we are, obviously, very concerned with dechurching. Jim and Mike literally wrote the book on it. Dechurching doesn’t mean people changing churches, it means people leaving churches for good. And what I’m saying is that there are lots of reasons to be glad to go to church that aren’t wrong at all, but are definitely not big enough to keep you in church. Short term gladness often produces long term sadness. Part of working on the problem of people leaving church is working on why they ever went to begin with. The issue is that we have lots of cultural songs that subconsciously teach us to enjoy church primarily for wrong or weak reasons.
Songs of consumerism that teach us we should never tolerate something that doesn’t immediately make us happy. Songs of remote and digital relationships that teach us faces only matter if they are giving us good content - and that being physically and relationally close to someone isn’t all that necessary. Songs of internet forums and block buttons that teach us we should never have to talk with people that we don’t completely agree with. Songs of social media that teach us to only show others our best selves. Even songs of the free marketplace which teach us to continually shop around for the best value and leave as soon as we aren’t completely satisfied. If you bring those songs into your experience of church, i guarantee you won’t be satisfied for long.
So what does this Psalm actually want us to be glad about?
Point 2: Reasons to love church that are big enough to last a lifetime
The Psalmist says, “I was glad when they said to me let us go to the house of the Lord,’ but then he explains what he loves about the house of the Lord. And to understand what he loves about it you have to understand that back in those days, the government, the church, and the culture were not separate spheres like they are today. They were all essentially one and the same. The Temple wasn’t really all that distinct from the city, or from the throne of the king. To think about one was really to think about the others with it.
So if you start thinking about what you love about church you probably aren’t also going to think about your favorite holiday and the leader of your political party at the same time. That’d be weird. But that was life in ancient Israel. David thinks about going to worship God in the temple and the first thing he thinks about is walking into the gates of the city. You know what it feels like to pull off the interstate into the town you grew up in? And then he looks at the buildings, all “bound firmly” or “compacted” together. It’s like New York City - everybody’s living on top of everybody. And like many New Yorkers I’ve met, he actually loves that.
And he talks about it as the place that all 12 tribes go up - talking about those annual pilgrimages. These are like holidays where you see friends and family you haven’t seen in forever, and you sing your favorite songs and eat your favorite foods and observe your favorite traditions. And the thrones of judgment are set there, for the house of David - which in that day meant that there was justice done in this city. It’s like moving to Florida and finding out there’s no income tax but like WAY better. Imagine if you went to a city and there wasn’t a bunch of corruption and partisan politics but the government worked and justice was done equally and for everyone.
And David sees all this and he loves it. It makes him glad. And he recognizes that it’s good that it is that way, but it also doesn’t have to be that way - it could easily stop being that way! So he immediately turns to praying that it would stay that way. He prays to God for the peace - the Shalom of the city. That those who live within it would flourish. That they would maintain this unity - that all the tribes would continue to go up, that people would continue to live tightly together, that peace would continue to thrive in this city. And he doesn’t ask it for his own sake, he asks it for the sake of his family and friends who live there, and for God’s own sake as they are all ultimately members of his house.
Taken in this light, it sounds remarkably like Paul’s prayer for unity in Ephesians 3, when he says “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom wevery family3 in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to xthe riches of his glory yhe may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit zin your inner being, 17 aso that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being brooted and cgrounded in love, 18 may have strength to dcomprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and eheight and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ fthat surpasses knowledge, that gyou may be filled with all hthe fullness of God.”
Thousands of years apart and the leaders of God’s churches are still praying the same thing. That the church would be a place where people are unified in Christ, to the praise and worship of God. May that be true of us and may we be glad about it. But notice what the gladness produced in David. He didn’t just sit back and think “man I love my church.” He prayed for it. And not for his own sake, for their sake. Loving the church primarily for the right reasons will give you a sacrificial attitude towards others. Their good will become more important than your own.
By contrast, taking joy in church for the wrong reasons will make you very defensive and bitter towards anybody who threatens what you love about church. If your main thing is the music, your least favorite person will be whoever likes or introduces a different style. If your favorite thing is how small it is, then every new visitor that walks through the door will be a threat to the version of church you love. If your favorite thing is your community group, those are the only people you will want to talk to on Sunday, and a conflict within that group will make the whole church feel broken. If you are glad to be at church primarily because you want to be around people who think like you, act like you, or look like you, then you will spend all your time with them and if they leave then so will you. If your favorite thing is hearing your favorite doctrines then you will grow to resent every other topic that’s preached. That’s what happens when you go from enjoying those things to making church about those things.
Conclusion:
Listen, I get that looking back at Psalm 122, it can feel hard to relate to at first. Our culture is different. Our church isn’t perfect. We aren’t always glad to be here for the best reasons. But if you sing along with this Psalm you see the answer isn’t bitterness, it’s prayer. That’s the impulse, the habit that this song is trying to form in us. Sure, OGC isn’t everything that Jerusalem was in many ways. We aren’t the government, we aren’t your home town, and we probably aren’t your favorite holiday. But we are meant to be a community where the people live very closely together. Where justice is loved and carried out in love. Where people from every tribe can go every week, celebrate a very special and holy meal, sing some wonderful songs, and worship the true God. In many ways, the modern church isn’t like Jerusalem, it’s better.
Look at how the author of Hebrews compares the church of Christ to the old covenant:
“For you have not come to zwhat may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest 19 and athe sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words bmade the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them….
But you have come to eMount Zion and to the city of the living God, fthe heavenly Jerusalem, and to ginnumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to hthe assembly1 of the firstborn who are ienrolled in heaven, and to jGod, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, kthe mediator of a new covenant, and to lthe sprinkled blood mthat speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”
Abel was the first person who was ever murdered. He was killed because his brother Cain loved the worship of God for the wrong reasons. And when he died his blood cried out against his brother for vengeance.
Christ is your brother and his blood hit the ground for your sake. But His blood doesn’t cry out to God for your condemnation. It prays for your forgiveness and your unity with your brothers and sisters in Christ. At the last Supper, Jesus prayed for the Church. Right before he went to the garden to shed blood in prayer, and to the cross to shed blood in atonement. And the last thing He asked the Father was:
“[May] they be one even as we are one, 23 zI in them and you in me, athat they may become perfectly one, bso that the world may know that you sent me and cloved them even as dyou loved me.
If you love the church, pray like David, pray like Paul, and pray like Jesus.
