The first verse of this “Song of Ascent” is familiar from a hymn that my mother often sang: “I was glad when they said to me, / ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord.’” Mom’s life was one of words and music. Toward the end of it, she had no words left to share, but she could still hum the tune.
The actual psalm is about Jerusalem, the city of peace, a place where the 12 disparate tribes of Israel could hike up — or ascend — Mount Zion to worship together. Spurgeon takes this psalm a step further, saying, “[T]hose who break the peace of the [Christian] church deserve to suffer.”
The old preacher mentions “[s]trife, suspicion, party spirit, [and] division,” in particular, within the church as being “deadly things.” But those “ingredients” — another term he uses — sound much like the hatefulness baked into every evangelical Christian church that I ever attended in my life.
The song ends: “For the sake of my brethren and companions, / I will now say, ‘Peace be within you.’ / Because of the house of the Lord our God / I will seek your good.” Don’t misread that last word as I did. It’s “good.” And if we can’t sing all of those words, maybe we can hum a few bars.