On My Way Up | Psalm 134 - A Summer Pilgrimage in the Psalms of Ascent

You are listening to the Gateway Franklin Church podcast.

To learn more about Gateway Franklin Church, including our service times here in Franklin, Tennessee, visit us online at gatewayfranklin.com.

And now, here is this week's message.

There's still more psalms to go, and we're going to get to all those.

First, let me introduce myself.

My name's Charlie.

If we haven't met, I'm the lead pastor here at Gateway Franklin Church.

And if you're a guest with us this morning, I'm so uh grateful that you chose to spend uh this morning with us.

Um, the way we kind of begin relationship around here, if you get to the place where you're okay that someone knows your name, we're not always it takes us weeks to do that sometimes.

Uh you can do that in a couple ways.

One, you can tap the badge on the seat back in front of you.

There's a uh digital connect card, you can fill that out, or uh at the connect center right after service on the other side of these double doors.

And that's kind of the early permission that you know you can know us.

We we want to be known.

That's kind of how that process gets started.

All of the things that go on at Gateway Church, you can check that out on on uh uh on that platform as well.

We have one announcement October 25th.

Um we have baptism.

So uh if you new to the faith, um or or or maybe it's been a while, um we've we've baptized a number of people that have spoken to me and just have said that they're have spent a lot of years wandering away from the Lord.

And uh they were circling back.

And so um from from kids to 70 plus year olds um starting and renewing their faith through baptism.

So you can just let us know by um uh does it give you how to know?

Yeah, gatewayfranklin.com forward slash baptism.

So you can let us know we can get that schedule.

We baptize them both services 9 and 11.

Uh, if you've come to give today, you can do that digitally as well through that badge.

You can give uh in person at the uh receptacles in the back.

You can give online, you can text to give.

A lot of different ways in which you can uh worship God through giving.

Thank you for your generosity.

Um, week in, week out, month in, month out, year in, year out, decade in, decade out, um uh your expression of worship and gratitude to the Father uh that goes to ext expand the kingdom of God.

Um the the work on the line that uh will be uh on the sewer line uh will be starting in earnest this week.

So if you don't know why we're excited about a sewer line, just hang around afterwards.

I'll tell you tell you why sewer lines are are fun.

Uh my have you have you heard this phrase before, or have you used it half the fun is getting there?

I don't think that's true.

Right?

I think I think it's we something we we tell ourselves or we tell our kids uh because uh because of the trip in front of us.

Um my wife Gina does not like to travel.

Um I I think some of that is pegged that during our time in Atlanta, when I transitioned from being a student pastor to a missions pastor, my travel habits changed.

We had about 14 different high schools represented in our youth group in in Atlanta.

So um, and we so we had kids all over the map from cheer to band, um, to drill team to player, and the and the all of the the campuses were pretty condensed where they were, because the Atlanta area is pretty condensed.

So these high schools were so our our travel on Fridays, we would go to one particular game and we would stay one half, and then we would get in our car, and then we would drive to another game across town and to watch that second half.

That was the extent of our travel.

Um and then our daughter was born, and I transitioned to be a missions pastor, which then meant that 10 days out of a month for about five consecutive months, I was somewhere uh in the world away from her and Annie.

And back then, no world cell phones.

So the idea that you have a cell phone and you can contact someone did did not, well, yeah, I'm sure it existed, but like not on my salary.

You know what I'm saying?

And and then email, um, the earliest emails were CompuServe.

Anybody ever have a CompuServe adjust?

Had like 14, 16 random letters or whatever.

That was that was CompuServe, and um not a lot of communication that would would take place.

So it's why on our 20th wedding anniversary, and I suggested that we do something big, considering that our honeymoon was three days in destined, um, was let's go to Hawaii.

I mean, I grew up watching Hawaii 5.0 and Magnum PI, right?

I mean, it just looks amazing, so why wouldn't you want to go?

And um, so she asked me, how far is that?

And it's far.

Like, like you, in the same time you can get to Iceland.

You can get to Iceland, Portugal, Spain, Western France, Ireland, Scotland, all the UK in the same amount of time that it takes to get to Hawaii.

Well, then it took a lot to get there, right?

I mean, first of all, shout out to Costco Travel.

It was a big it was a great bundled deal.

So if you haven't ever traveled to Costco Travel, check it out.

This was a long time ago, but it was it was uh it's still uh a great place to to check pricing.

But so we had to, you know, we had to nail down the trip, then we had to save for the trip, and then um we had to get Gina's mom, Jean, we had to get her to from Atlanta to Nashville to watch Annie while we were gone because it was it was over over school time.

Um and then I what I remember Gina saying to me was, I sure hope this is worth it.

Right?

Because you know, you've been places, I'm sure, and it took a lot to get there, and it was underwhelming, right?

And so the her expectations were so high that she was really hoping it was worth it.

So if you've if you've flown into the main airport in Maui, not special.

Okay, so not special.

And so I don't know why you would place an expectation on an airport to begin with, but not special until you went downstairs and baggage claim was open air.

And her first thing she said was, I can smell the flowers.

And I can prove that to you because when you look over the all the pictures that we took, half of them were flowers.

She just would she would just stop and take pictures of flowers, like randomly stop and take pictures of flowers.

Um but it was one of those trips where you go, I'll never, I'll never regret that.

That was uh we're still talking about it.

So we went on our 20th, we went on our 25th, we went on our 30th, this is our 35th year, and we're going to Charleston tomorrow.

So this is what we're doing.

Um we started this Psalms of Ascent summer series.

We started on June 7th.

So that means this is the 19th weekend in the Psalms of Ascent.

Psalms of Ascent, if this is the first time with us, is 14 consecutive Psalms that um families would have sung, taught, learned, memorized on their three annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem.

And the part of the uniqueness is here is people would have traveled from all different distances.

Somebody would live close, some would have been the far-day way, someone had to start out real early in the morning, some would have had to start out real early the month before.

I mean, it was just, it would they had to plot out we need to be here at this time, and then you work backwards figuring out when are you gonna have to leave, what are you gonna need to pack, what do you got to do?

Right?

And and when they would finally get there, their arrival, this is the psalm we're gonna do today, is 134.

Their arrival really meant something.

It was a significant, it was a significant trip.

My goal with this series was to try to superimpose our 21st century life over against what this pre-first century kind of travel would have been, that their sentiments, what they were, what they were singing, what they were writing, what they would be, the history involved, that we would superimpose that and find the connecting piece between us and these psalms of ascent.

Uh, that's been that's been the goal of what the series was, because three times a year, all of Israel's energy was focused on this joint pilgrimage.

It was to a central location as the people of God, to be with the people of God, praising God in the place of God.

That was the motivation they had.

And those annual pilgrimages were purposeful, they were life-shaping, and they were future-altering.

Because each time they took this trip, it aided their remembrance of who they were, their identity, and infused hope for where they were, and it held out joy from where they were going.

And the bulk of those early psalms were very, very transparent in expressing the dryness of their current situation.

They were very transparent to the opposition and the danger they were facing, but they also carried this inherent hope.

Like they didn't ignore what was in front of them.

They didn't ignore the hard.

And yet, even through the expression, expressing how hard it was, there was always this holding on to this hope.

And so each pilgrimage added a new layer of who they were as a people each time they arrived, each time they left.

It was a new arrival into the presence of God.

And each time their praise and their worship strengthened their bond as God's children.

Now, I probably shouldn't have expressed it this way, but I did it, I did this kind of personally, what the Psalms of Ascent has stirred in me.

I don't know what it stirred in you, so that's why I didn't put we, I just put I.

Okay.

So I've connected with the hardship and the struggle of the early pilgrimages as I've as I've read these Psalms over and over and over and over again these 19 weeks.

I've connected with the fear of the moment, any moment, counteracted by the assurance of God's intervention.

I've connected with all the hope that they placed, they placed it in one basket.

I mean, isn't that isn't that the story if you're a follower of Christ?

We have put all of our hope in one person.

And today I want to connect with the praise that they offered when they arrived and the blessing they received when they have arrived.

Um without celebration uh of an arrival, life is will be reduced to just going from one hard thing to the next hard thing to the next hard thing.

Now, um I I I I was not much and still probably not much of a celebrator.

Um I want to solve the problem, fix the hard, and then I just want to say what's next.

Um I'm I've always been a very highly competitive person, but not not obnoxious competitive.

I mean, I guess that's for other people to determine.

But like I I don't want to thump you in monopoly, okay?

I mean, so but I'm not in a in any kind of sport competition, and then that translated to anything that I faced that was difficult that was going to take something.

I just nose to the grindstone, gritty, get after it, want to win, defeat it, put it to bed, right?

Uh I what I what I would what I would say was I I wasn't it wasn't that I loved winning, I hated losing.

Now there's a difference, and I've learned this over my years, but I didn't know this at the beginning.

Well, I didn't know it through three-fifths of my life.

That when you win because you hate to lose, you never enjoy winning.

You're just prepared for the next contest that you know you got to win.

If you like winning and you're willing to do what it takes to win, you get to celebrate.

You get to celebrate and win.

I um I can't believe I'm gonna mention his name from the pulpit, but there's a special on ESPN, six weeks on Nick Saban.

And I probably wouldn't have used this illustration if the game didn't go my way last night.

But he's just after they won the first their uh, I think it was their first national championship with them, he had a staff meeting.

So they win on sa they win, and then Monday morning staff meeting was 7 30.

7 30 a.m.

after a national championship win.

He had a staff meeting with his staff.

And he said, we we basically it's like we haven't arrived by winning a national championship.

It's kind of like um Kirby Smart says that they don't prepare to beat uh a single team.

They they're preparing to beat everybody.

And it's kind of that just that hard-nosed get after it.

For for years at Gateway when we'd have staff meeting once we got had a staff, um, we'd have staff meeting and we'd spend so much of our staff meeting kind of dissecting what we would have done different that week.

What we'd have done different on that Sunday, what what what should have gone this way, what should have gone that way?

And it will I found myself I had fallen into that same mentality.

Didn't matter how good a Sunday it was, we're gonna we're gonna nitpick it to death and figure out how to get better at it.

Now that's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but what I started realizing was I started hating Sundays.

Because I was hating staff meeting.

Because I was hating what I was gonna find that I wouldn't didn't go like I thought it should go.

And then we started shifting our staff meetings and we started celebrating wins.

We started asking each other the question what went great for you this week?

What did you invest in and you saw our result from?

And it changes the complete tenor of a staff meeting, which changes the complete tenor of how I look on a Sunday morning.

See, if our life is just gonna go from one hard to the next hard, and there's not gonna be any celebration, what kind of life is that?

How is that how is that going to impact really all of your life?

So there's no doubt that through pilgrimages there's hard and God doesn't waste any hard, and all the hard shapes us.

But I thought about this week the the adage that we've all used at some point in time or another.

Life is hard and then you die.

So I don't that doesn't tell the whole truth.

The whole truth is life is hard and God is our rock and our refuge and our deliverer.

Life is a good gift worth celebrating despite the heart.

This life will indeed end, but it is not the end of life.

Our dying breath here marks our eternal breath in heaven.

No doubt life is hard.

But there are arrivals we're celebrating, and we're at one today.

So here is Psalm 134.

Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord who minister by night in the house of the Lord.

Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord.

May the Lord bless you from Zion, he who is the maker of heaven and earth.

Their celebration was marked by vocal praise and a physical lifting of their hands in the sanctuary or towards the sanctuary, which tells me that praise is a total mind, body, spirit expression of adoration, adulation to God the Father.

I can I can see, again, depending on how far and how hard their trip was, that they had two simultaneous emotions when they got to Jerusalem.

One was we made it.

We got here.

But the other one was, we got here.

You know, that this is why we came.

We came as the people of God to be with the people of God, in the place of God, to worship God.

We're in the presence of God, and the being in the presence of God brought forth this praise.

And I I contend that praise is both a spontaneous and a learned behavior.

A spontaneous and a learned behavior.

When you get where you're going or you get in the room of someone significant, whoever that might be in your life, there is this, there is this thing that happens where you're just so excited to be there or be with them that it naturally elicits some kind of emotion.

That is a spontaneous emotion.

Um, but then there also there's learned behavior.

When we start learning the weight of who we are in the room with, then that praise kind of it changes a little bit.

Um it becomes more weighty.

It's not just this kind of spontaneous response, where it's a it's a thought through, and I need to respond like this.

Now, I I grew up, my my mom, my mom was an unbelievable Bible teacher.

If you ever wonder why does Pastor Charlie use so much history and context when he preaches, you can blame her.

I mean, she would dig for context and historical uh context and reference when she would teach.

And somewhere along the line, it just stuck in me that this is what you do and this is what adds weight.

But my mom hated singing in church.

I mean, like to her, it was the biggest waste of time.

Right?

I mean, so would you just move and so let someone open the Bible and preach the Bi I want the Bi don't want music?

And so I I kind of grew up that way.

It's you know, like, when are they gonna stop singing?

You know, when are they gonna matter how good it was, when are they gonna stop singing?

Um and I I kind of held on to that all the way through school.

And then uh a job I had in Texas as a student pastor, the um the worship pastor and his wife kind of took me and then took Gina under her wing.

We were newly married and they fed us.

Uh they how they housed me when I was single, and they they fed us.

And and what would happen is on Wednesday, on Wednesday we had uh for some reason our senior pastor had staff meeting on Wednesday morning, and we were all there until about 10 o'clock that night.

So we had staff meeting for the morning, never left.

But we would all go to eat Mexican food for lunch, and um, and then the Mexican food kind of hit you and you want to take a nap.

And because we would eat a lot of food at this place called La Posada.

And uh he would go into the sanctuary and he would start playing the keyboard and singing.

And I started realizing that's where he went.

And so I would go in the back and I would lay down on the pew in the back, and I would just listen to him empty sanctuary, 1200 seat sanctuary, empty, him just playing and singing.

And I found myself laying on that back pew and I started to cry.

And I stopped trying to parse God into neat phrases and teachable circles and squares and started to experience the God that I had parsed for so many years, and then my worship changed.

I brought this high value of God without an enjoyment of God.

So so all of my work and behavior was always molded to honor God, but never to fully enjoy God.

And so now my worship looks a whole lot different.

Now I I I bring that up because um our worship in here is all over the map in the sense of how it's expressed.

So highly charismatic people from charismatic backgrounds don't like our worship.

We don't we're not enough.

We're not enough for highly charismatic people.

And then for our former Catholics and Presbyterians and Lutherans, and we're a little much.

It's just just it's just a little it's a little much.

And so you what I what I was funny in one of the first songs earlier this the in this in in their worship, um, like people's tried to try to like clap with the song in the first service.

And I always laugh at this because in our 20 years of gateway life, we've never been able to sustain any kind of clap and rhythm uh in to any song.

It kind of it kind of goes and then we and then it just stops.

Um and then I just think men in general, this the idea of standing in a room and singing out loud is just weird.

Right?

So here's what men do with their hands in worship, because I still do it.

This is what we do.

Now we might do a little of this.

It's funny because I'll stand in the back and watch you.

And so there might be some people with their hands in the air and different things, but then then there's a lot more people just doing this.

Praise is something that so it's it's a it's a word that's translated both bless and praise.

Uh the Hebrew word is is barak.

And we'll sing a song in a moment talking about bless God.

And that never really connected with me because generally you bless someone that like you have something they don't, and you bless them with it, right?

Well, why would we we how do you bless God?

I mean, He He has everything, right?

So He has everything.

So that's where the the praise seems to make more sense to our Western mind that we we praise God.

Now, what does praising God do?

Well, one, it's an it's an honoring of who he is and his stature, for sure.

But what my experience has been is praising God does more for me than it does maybe for him.

Because when I praise him, I become whole.

See, see, in my praise for him, the holes that I have in my identity get exchanged for his identity.

When I identify, I'm like, if you're going to identify with somebody praising them, there's a close connection there, correct?

So when I'm praising God, I am connecting with God.

Who am I connecting to God as?

I'm connecting to God as my father.

Well, if he's my father, then I'm his son.

So praise them changes something inside of me that's significant.

Listen, when sin happens, nature gets corrupted, nature falls.

One of the things that gets corrupt in that is our identity.

So the way in which we end up feeling better about ourselves, feeling good about ourselves, is through someone else's praise of us.

Is this right?

When someone, I had a bad habit always of looking to the person who disliked me the most, that if I couldn't get their approval, I didn't think I had anybody's approval.

And it's happened all my life in playing sports.

I picked the guy out on the team that was the most advanced, and if I didn't get a high five from him, it didn't matter what I did.

I never thought I measured up.

The problem with that kind of life is your value and your self-worth, if it's dependent on somebody else's approval, it will always leak.

Your self-worth and your value will always leak if you are placing it dependent on somebody else.

It's why pro athletes and people, uh actors, actresses, singers, that kind of stuff, that sometimes they have go through withdrawal, not getting that kind of public applause.

Because it's a sugar high, it's not real.

So it naturally you got to keep feeding that because it's gonna go in, it's gonna just go in you and out you and out.

But when I praise God, my father, that is something that fills and sticks with me and it cements my identity.

This is why then praise, praise happens, and the value of praise, um, the value for me is it makes me more whole.

Listen, the enemy, Satan, he falls from heaven, well, I didn't fall, tripped, right?

He gets gets kicked out around worship.

And he's pretty daggone persuasive persuasive because a third of the angels leave with him.

See, if he doesn't care who you worship as long as it's not God, you can worship yourself, you can worship another deity, you can worship another idol, you can it don't matter to him who you worship as long as it's not God.

Why?

Because only God fills us and makes us whole.

Everything else just keeps sucking the life out of us.

So if he can get you to eyes and worship other stuff, he doesn't care.

Worship away.

So when I don't worship God, I limit myself and I limit others.

Because God is seen by others through my worship.

Not just standing in a room, raising a hand, that kind of stuff.

But whenever I I worship the Father in adoration, and I value who he is through what I say, do, whatever, he is honored, and people see that that's that's praise.

So that's the first thing they do.

They get there, they pray.

It's it's spontaneous praise.

But it's not just spontaneous praise, just learn praise.

They know why they they know why they went there, they knew who they were going to see, and they praised and they lift their hands sexually.

All right, so then here's verse three.

This is this is also what happens.

May the Lord bless you from Zion, he who is the maker of heaven and earth.

A blessing.

The impact of a blessing is lost on Western culture.

For Eastern cultures, a blessing wasn't a sappy sentiment or a mere wish.

It was a tangible release of divine power and authority that marked one's identity and determined their future.

A blessing wasn't offered flippantly.

Once a blessing was pronounced, it could not be retracted.

So this is an old story.

Some of you might not know this story, others might.

Um, so we have God described as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Uh uh, Isaac has two sons: older son, firstborn Esau, secondborn Jacob.

All of Isaac's blessing, his blessing was to go to Esau.

Esau, in a moment, trades his future because he was hungry.

And Jacob jumps on that and says, I'll take that blessing.

Years go by.

Years go by, Isaac's ready to die.

Jacob conspires with his mom of presenting himself as Esau, because nobody knows this, right?

I mean, this is between Jacob and Esau.

Well, Jacob's mom.

And so Isaac then bestows this blessing on Jacob.

And not long after that, Esau comes into the room.

Now, look, if it's me, I'm not from that culture, right?

I'm an American.

I go, oh, Esau, that wasn't you.

That was you, go get your brother.

Bring your brother in here.

I want to see you both of them.

Both get in there.

I go to Jacob and say, Jacob, that ain't yours.

That's Esau's.

Let's set this straight.

Here's Esau.

That's not what Isaac does.

Isaac says to Esau, I have nothing left to give you.

I've given it to Jacob.

Dad, you got to give me something.

I can what I can, you know.

I gave it all to Jacob.

So our culture doesn't understand the power of blessing.

I'll tell you what you do understand is you know the power of cursing.

You know the emotion of being cursed.

See, and we we live in a culture of cursing, and God offers us, God offers us a relationship of blessing.

And so, and and if you're gonna be blessed by someone, let's choose the maker of heaven and earth, shall we?

Let's choose, let's choose that blessing.

So think about it.

Now they're making this trip, they finally arrived, they get there, and there's a spontaneous act of praise because they know that on the back half of this praise, there's gonna be a blessing.

That they're going to be blessed by the maker of heaven and earth.

What was that blessing bestowed?

Um, I pronounce it over you every Sunday.

It sounds like this when I say it out of the NIV.

The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make his face to shine on you and be gracious to you, the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.

I read it out of the message this week, and it's it's more succinct.

Maybe it hits you differently.

God bless you and keep you.

God smile on you and gift you.

God look you full in the face and make you prosper.

This isn't this isn't a man's blessing.

It's not a Charlie blessing when I pronounce it over you.

It is the blessing that God tells Aaron, the first high priest, to pronounce over the people.

The maker of heaven and earth gives this blessing.

It is the most priestly thing I do every single week.

I love to preach.

I enjoy opening up the word and digging in.

I love it.

But it is nothing like standing in front of you on every single week and to pronounce a blessing from the maker of heaven and earth, knowing, knowing that the odds that anything or anybody has blessed you that week is low.

And the odds of being cursed this week was high.

But when we get into this room on this day, I know I will stand in front of people and I will pronounce a blessing from the maker of heaven and earth.

On the back part of that, take out of something from one Psalm 121, where Micah read that psalm earlier.

The last verse in that psalm says, the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

It's it's it's very Jewish, this idea that so I'll say, uh, and you're and you're rising up and you're laying down, you're going out and coming in both now and forevermore, has been my vernacular, right?

In essence, what that's saying is all of your life.

Every part of your day.

You get up, you go to bed, you go out, this blessing rests, this rests on you.

Um we were um we put this in place early on in Gateway's life because I didn't know how to end a service.

I mean, we're in an elementary school gymnasium.

Most of the people coming didn't couldn't spell church.

The others, they moved here and they moved away from family and they were trying to some find place, and we were around the corner or whatever, and they they came in.

And like, how do you end a service when you're standing on a parquet floor?

And our our pastor in Atlanta, I remember him, he ended the service with a blessing, and I sat there and I received it every single week.

And for somehow, that just escaped me in the logistics of pulling in trailers and unpacking stuff and setting it up and and preaching and then changing clothes and putting it back together, like the logistics of it, just the here comes this blessing.

Um now we respond to this blessing with another psalm, Psalm 19.

Um, uh may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

Why do we do that?

Well, Romans 12 tells us that our acceptable worship is giving our entire lives to Him.

That the only thing that measures up to the response of receiving the love of God is to give our whole lives to it.

And so what I thought was there are plenty of times in a week that I have to check the meditation of my heart.

And there are plenty of times where I have to go, I'm not sure that God would validate what I just said.

So for me, when we end our service, and I am able to stand over you not as Charlie, but as the priest of this house.

And to take the words of God given for centuries that cannot be retracted, to give that over you is a high-end distinct honor.

Harry and I used to wrestle over who would get to do it.

Because he when he was preaching, sometimes I'd say, Well, you preach, but let me no, no, no.

If I'm preaching, I'm doing the blessing.

That's what he would say.

And then when we give our response, it's something I hold on to all week long as my gauge about what I'm thinking about and what I'm talking about.

That my life needs to honor that blessing.

So, Israel has arrived, and we have to.

I know Monday's gonna look like Monday.

Monday's gonna look like Monday.

But I hope it looks a whole lot different because of Sunday.

Because of your praise, and because of his blessing.

So we're gonna finish up reading the Psalms, we're gonna finish in praise, and we're gonna end with our blessing.

Stand with me.

Let's continue worshiping.

We hope you were encouraged and challenged by today's message.

Again, to learn more about Gateway Franklin Church, find us online at gatewayfranklin.com.

Thanks for joining us today.