Psalm 84 "Longing for the Courts of the LORD" January 7, 2007 Last week we started a miniseries on the Psalms. I like doing this sort of thing in between my regular pattern of preaching through books, because it is good to remember how important the Psalms are to the Christian life. As we closed our series on the gospel of Luke, we heard Jesus say that everything written about him in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, must be fulfilled. The Law consists of the five books of Moses. The Prophets consist of what we call the historical books and the prophetic books. The Psalms include all the wisdom literature, but focus on the 150 Psalms. How do the Psalms speak of Jesus? Some of them very clearly point towards his birth, his life, his death, and his resurrection. But all of the Psalms are truly Messianic Psalms, because all of the Psalms were sung by Jesus. Both in the synagogue and in the temple, Jesus would have grown up singing the Psalms. As you read the Psalms, it can be a very useful exercise to think of how Jesus sung them. When Jesus sang, "How lovely is your dwelling place," he understood better than anyone else how true that is! And throughout the history of the church, the Psalms have remained as a major staple of the singing of the people of God. Perhaps you have never been in a church that sang Psalms very much, but the elimination of the Psalms from the worship of the church is a fairly recent development. I once heard a worship leader on Moody radio say that contemporary Christian hymnody lacks much in the way of lament. There is lots of happy stuff being written, but very little that expresses sorrow and grief. He even went so far as to say that this was contradicted by the Psalms, because the Psalms have quite a blend of joy and sorrow. But when the interviewer asked him "what is the solution?" He answered, "I don't know." It is the one time that I wished I had a cell phone, because I wanted to call the program and say, "how about singing the Psalms!" So over the next few weeks, we'll be looking at a number of Psalms. I've selected them as representative of what I've called the Spiritual Theology of the Psalter. What is spiritual theology? Theology is simply the knowledge of God. And there are three aspects to theology: doctrinal theology moral theology and spiritual theology. Doctrinal theology is about what we are to believe concerning God. Quite frankly, doctrinal theology is all about the gospel what God has done in Jesus Christ for the salvation of sinners. Moral theology is about what duty God requires of man. In other words, moral theology is about our response to gospel how do we live the Christian life. But if all you have is doctrinal theology and moral theology if all you have is believing certain truths and doing certain practices, then there is still something missing. Because the knowledge of God is not merely a matter of believing certain truths. Neither is the knowledge of God merely a matter of doing certain practices. Knowing God also means experiencing God. You cannot divide the experience of God from doctrine and practice. Just try it! I'm not going to believe anything that God has said, or do anything that God has commanded, but I still want to experience God! That's almost the definition of modern New Age "spirituality." No, the experience of God is found precisely in the midst of our belief and practice. It is as we believe the gospel, and as we respond with faith, love, and obedience, that we behold the resurrected Christ seated in glory with his Father. It is precisely as we walk together as the body of Christ that we experience the power of the Holy Spirit, the presence of the exalted Christ with us! It is important to recognize that we cannot "drum up" the experience of God. We can manipulate our emotions our feelings but the true experience of God is not something we can produce. I mentioned in my pastoral notes that I was once the electric guitarist in a charismatic worship band. I know all about how very sincere, godly worship leaders try to use emotion to substitute for the true experience of God. And I remember well the people who would come to church week after week with smiles on their faces not a care in the world! God is good everything is good my life is fine because Jesus is in my heart! After six months of that, I began realizing that most people were playing a charade. The rest of the week they might be hurting but on Sunday morning, everything's fine! Psalm 84 provides a very different idea of the experience of God. Psalm 84 is full of emotion, but it is not driven by emotion. It is driven by the vision of the living God. 1. The Loveliness of God's House (84:1-4) How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. (1-2) Psalm 84 is a Psalm of the Sons of Korah. Korah was one of the ancestors of the Levitical singers of the temple, whom David had appointed. So the Sons of Korah were singers in the temple. There are eleven Psalms attributed to them: 42 through 49, 84, 85, 87, and 88. Most of these Psalms give a prominent place to Zion, to Jerusalem, or to the temple. That is not surprising, because the Sons of Korah dwelt in the temple in Jerusalem! But while the Sons of Korah write about things familiar to them, they do not write for themselves alone. Psalm 84 is designed to draw the people of God into the vision of the living God in the temple. Do we say this about God's dwelling place? How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! Does your soul long, do you faint for the courts of the LORD? At this point, I could say, "you need to long for the courts of the LORD like the sons of Korah!" And you should. But the point is not to make you feel guilty and then have to strive even harder for something that you don't really want. Because you don't really want to long for the courts of the LORD, do you? Where do you want to be? Is your soul longing to be sitting in front of a football game? Do you swoon over spending time with your beloved computer? We were created for God. He made us for himself, and so we have a God-shaped hole in the center our lives, and we try our best to fill that hole with something. At the center of your being, what do you long for? When you have seen the dwelling place of the LORD of hosts, you have no desire to be any place else. As the Sons of Korah reflected on this, walking through the courtyard of the temple, beholding the glory of the courts of the LORD, they saw something that caught their attention. There, high up on the temple, perhaps in the latticework around the courtyard, were birds' nests. Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young at your altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God. All creation draws near to God in the temple. Here in the courts of the LORD, even the birds find a home. Not a sparrow falls from its nest, but the Lord of Hosts sees. If the LORD of Hosts welcomes birds to nest in his courts, how much more will he welcome you. Because, as Hebrews 12 says, we have come to the heavenly Jerusalem; we have come to the courts of the living God, and we may now dwell in the house of the LORD forever! Because our Lord Jesus Christ has brought us through the veil of the earthly temple, and brought us into the holy of Holies, where we behold him. We see Jesus, crowned with glory and honor, sitting at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. That is what we do in our worship. As the headings in the bulletin suggest, we come into the very presence of God on the basis of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ we then hear his Word, read and proclaimed, we respond to his Word with praises and prayers, and then we are fed at his table and go forth with his blessing. But this is not merely an earthly assembly. When we gather for worship, we gather with all the heavenly hosts, with all the saints from all times and places, in order to sing the praises of our Triune God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise! If you take this literally, you might think that it says "blessed are the Levitical singers"-- because they were the ones who dwelt in the LORD's house and sang his praise every day! But the Sons of Korah did not write this to pat themselves on the back! And part two makes this clear. The Selah at the end of verse 4 appears to mark the end of part one. Since we don't know what Selah means, it is hard to know what it is doing here, but at the least it signals some sort of transition. 2. The Blessing of Having the Highway in Your Heart (84:5-8) Because verse 5 cannot be about the sons of Korah. You might not realize this from the ESV. The ESV opens verse 5, Blessed are those . . . But the Hebrew is quite clear that it is singular: Blessed is the man whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. So while verse 4 says blessed are those who dwell in your house, verse 5 proclaims a blessing on the one who has the Highways to Zion in his heart. In other words, the one who dwells far from God's house, but who longs to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem who has the highways to Zion in his heart. Three times each year, all the faithful were to gather in Jerusalem. As the people of Israel dwelt in their towns, they were to keep the road to Jerusalem in their hearts. And yes, we have the great privilege of worshiping every week in the heavenly holy of Holies; but that should not cause us to be forgetful of Zion throughout the week! On the contrary, our access to the holy of Holies (which we have every day in prayer!) should produce even great devotion to God than we see in the Sons of Korah! Because the real question is where do you find your strength? Blessed is the man whose strength is in you. Because while we have access to the holy of Holies, we don't dwell there at least, not yet. We are elect exiles chosen pilgrims, sojourners who are granted a glimpse of heavenly glory, but still walk by faith and not by sight. As we saw last time, Psalm 90 says that You have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. The LORD is truly our dwelling place our refuge and our fort but what we see around us is far from comforting! We see the Valley of Baca (verse 6). Now the pronoun shifts back to the third person. Having made it clear that the blessed one of verse 5 is in a different position than the blessed ones of verse 4, we are reminded that the blessed sojourner of verse 5 is also not alone! As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. The Valley of Baca is probably best translated "the valley of tears." Some old hymns use the phrase, the "vale of tears," as a reference for this life; well, Psalm 84 is where they got this phrase. As they go through the Valley of Tears as we walk on this pilgrimage to the heavenly Jerusalem they make it a place of springs. How? How do you transform the Vale of Tears into a place of springs? If your strength is in the LORD, then you may go from strength to strength. The pilgrim in the valley of the shadow of death still walks in the strength of the LORD. The pilgrim who appears before God in Zion arrives there in the strength of the LORD. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion. (Verse 7) The goal of your pilgrimage is to appear before God in Zion. And as you walk through the Valley of Tears the Valley of Baca remember that the LORD is your strength. Where do you find strength for the pilgrimage? You find strength as your soul longs and faints for the courts of the LORD. You find strength as your heart and your flesh sing for joy to the living God. Verse eight then concludes part two, as the sons of Korah proclaim, O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob! Because if God does not hear, then what is the point of walking through this valley of tears? But we can go forward, rejoicing towards the courts of the LORD because we know that God hears our prayers. Once again, the Selah probably signals the end of a section. 3. "A Day in Your Courts" (84:9-12) Because while part two ended with a prayer that God would hear, Part three opens with a prayer that God would see. Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed! The Anointed is none other than the Son of David the king/the Messiah. The sons of Korah declare that the Lord's anointed is their shield. As we've been going through the books of Samuel and Kings in the evening service, we've seen how the house of David was the Lord's anointed. And we've seen how the good kings of David's line were indeed a shield for God's people. But of course we sing this Psalm in Jesus the Christ the good king who is our shield and protector until the end. O God, when you look upon your people, do not look at our sins do not look at us! Rather, look on our shield look on the face of your anointed! As we walk on this pilgrimage, as we pass through the Valley of Tears, we ask that our God would look upon the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because it is that face that we adore! It is that face that we behold with unveiled faces as we look into the word of God, and see Jesus, exalted to God's right hand. For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. One day with God is better than three years anywhere else. Do you believe that? What we do here in public worship is designed to be a reminder of this. We hear God's voice speaking in his word. We see Jesus as he reveals himself in the breaking of the bread. We share in the joy of the Holy Spirit as we sing the praises of the living God. We come to the heavenly Mt Zion, the new Jerusalem, and we gather with all the saints from all ages, and we proclaim the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are three extremes to avoid when coming to worship: 1) first, the idea that worship is all about me what do I get out of it? You see this often in the entertainment-orientation of some modern worship. 2) but second, there is the idea that worship is all God what does God get out of it! This turns us into the performers and God into the audience. My friend Larry Wilson calls this "Reformed Deism" because it forgets that God is active in our worship. 3) and third, there is the idea that worship is all about us encouraging each other. But worship is not a social club. But at the same time, you can see that each of these three attitudes toward worship have understood something correctly. Because worship is a meeting of the Triune God with his people. A day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere! I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. I'd rather be a servant a doorkeeper someone who has to stay by the door and be ready for unexpected guests (a potentially tiring job when guests come in the middle of the night), than have be a master in the tents of wickedness. What is that famous saying that John Milton put in the mouth of the devil: better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven! The Sons of Korah would disagree! Even the most menial job in the house of the LORD is more glorious than anything else. For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. Here we can see clearly that the one who comes to worship the living God, comes with the expectation that God will bestow favor and honor. We come to worship with eager anticipation that our loving Father will speak to us, that our beloved Lord Jesus will feed us, and that we will be filled with his Holy Spirit. We need to believe that the Triune God does what he promises, and bestows favor and honor upon his people. And he does this by his Word and Spirit. He gives all good things to those who walk uprightly. Jesus reflects on this when he says that the Father will give the Spirit to those who ask. As you drive to church on Sunday morning, ask God to give good things to his people. If you are looking for how to more effectively prepare for worship, then use the Psalms, hymns, and prayers and readings from the Pastoral Notes (That's why I send them out as early in the week as I can!) O LORD of Hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you! Notice that we're back to the singular. The Psalm has flipped-flopped several times, switching back and forth from the singular to the plural. Verse 4 said blessed are those, while verse 5 and verse 12 say blessed is the man the one. This fits beautifully with what Jesus said about the Psalms that they speak of him. Because Jesus is the blessed man who trusted in the LORD of Hosts. He is the one who sang this Psalm throughout his life throughout his pilgrimage. He longed for the courts of the living God! He knew that a day in your courts are better than a thousand elsewhere. And because Jesus is the blessed man therefore God looks upon the face of his anointed, and grants his favor and honor to those who trust in Jesus. As you come to worship, come with longing! Come with joy because you know that here you will meet with the living God. Here you will gain strength in his courts so that you might journey from strength to strength, until the day that you appear before him in Zion.