Psalm 84; Revelation 22:1-5
Turn in your copy of the scriptures to Psalm 84. Psalm 84 is a little grouping of Psalms in the 80s from, not the 1980s, but the 80s of the Psalms, from the sons of Korah. They were in the Levitical family, the sons of Aaron. And their job was to be the gatekeepers. Their job was to be doorkeepers or janitors in the house of the Lord.
And so keep that in mind, their perspective, as we hear from Psalm 84. Before we read God’s word, let’s look to him in prayer. Lord, we thank you that when you speak the world and everything in it comes to be. And when you speak, uh, what you made is upheld, but also when you speak, it tells us in Psalm 29, that you speak and the, the calf skips, uh, the trees break. And we know that when you speak, Sinners are saved and saints are comforted and built up. So put our faith now in you and may our confidence in your word be great because it is the word of the living and true God.
May it do its work. We pray in Christ’s name, amen. Psalm 84, to the choir master, according to the Gethsemane, a Psalm of the sons of Korah. Verse one says, 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. 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.
Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise. Selah. Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs. The early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength. Each one appears before God in Zion.
Oh Lord, God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob, Selah. Behold our shield, O God. Look on the face of your anointed. For 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. For the Lord God is a sun and a shield. The Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. Oh, Lord of host, blessed is the one who trust in you. Amen. God’s great and gracious word.
Back in February, if you can remember that far back, uh, the most watched college athletic event, uh, is usually as always the Duke Carolina basketball game. And some of you will remember with great glee that Carolina won that game in February. They beat Duke with a last minute buzzer beater, but somewhere around 5 million people will watch that game on television. Fast forward about 6 or 8 weeks later to March Madness and the Final Four, when I believe Michigan took out another Dukie, the Hurley, and UConn, about 20 million people watched.
Tonight’s fight that will be on the White House lawn will be watched supposedly by about 110 million people. So we’ve gone from five million to 20 million to 110 million. Well, how about the World Cup? That’s all the rage, isn’t it? And we haven’t even talked about the Knicks, who I think, are they NBA champs? Yeah, okay, I thought I saw that. We haven’t talked about them or the Hurricanes. I guess they’re still in it, aren’t they? Maybe, you see I’m with it.
Fast forward though to the World Cup, five billion, that’s a B billion. We go from five million Duke Carolina to five billion World Cup. That’s a lot of people watching. That’s a lot of people buying airplane tickets. That’s a lot of people eating food and staying in hotels that are inflated by 300% because the opportunity and the scarcity can get away with that kind of market.
Think about what lengths people will go to to get a ticket, to get a seat. I think this week at the New York Knicks games, you could pay something like $10,000 for a crummy nosebleed seat. There’s no telling what you would pay for a hamburger or a hot dog or a t-shirt. I remember taking Patrick the other year to the Final Four and I paid $26 for a $4 Chick-fil-A sandwich.
But that’s the way it goes. What lengths will we go to to go and to be there and to be in the throng and to be the pilgrim and to watch the game, to be there in person, to storm the courts, to lose our voice, We are fans, right? And that’s short for fanatics. We think about it, we sleep about it, we talk about it, we live about it, we dress about it, we’re nuts. Well, how about church?
Churches don’t see 5 million people. They don’t see 5 million people. It used to be about 10 years ago, maybe it was pre-COVID, 80% of churches in America were about a hundred people. Now COVID goofed things up. It’s shifted and sifted things. But post COVID, 80% of churches in America are 50 people average.
And so if you’re in a church that has about 50 people, our attendance now today, we’re, everybody’s gone today, but we usually are around 72 ish, something like that. So we’re, we’re, we’re like, like Wobbegon, we’re above average, right? Uh, good looking above average and extra strong or however that goes.
Uh, but anyway, uh, what links will people go to, to beat a church, to get in church? Just think about that for a moment. You know, if you have tickets to a sporting event, you’re going to go. You’re going to buy a plane ticket. You’re going to stay in a hotel. You’re going to get there and eat there and buy there, live there. You’re gonna do what it takes. And there’s no way you’re going to miss it.
But what about church? Just ponder this for a moment. What is your average yearly church attendance? And then think about why would you casually miss church? We had a lady in this congregation for years named Dottie Latta and she came from across town from the Presbyterian Church in America congregation where she told me over and over in her old age when she would work really hard to be here. She said, our pastor would tell us you better be in church unless you are providentially hindered.
Yeah. We don’t think that way anymore though, do we? And we’ll think about it, about a sporting event. We’ll think about it, about our television program, that sort of thing. But, but, uh, when have we ever said, and I know some of you have and do, and I hope you continue.
When have we ever said, Oh Lord, your presence, Oh Lord, the meeting of God’s people in God’s house on God’s day with you, Oh God, is the one thing in the world I cannot do without. It’s the one thing in the world I cannot live without. It’s a lovely place. It’s a beautiful place to be at your house, in your presence.
We want today to think about that and to cultivate in our minds and hearts, a longing for the presence of God. We want our souls, our bodies, our hearts, our mind. We want our strength. to say without a shadow of a doubt and less providentially hindered, I will be in the presence of God. Now think about that for just a moment.
We just read Revelation chapter 22, one to five. What is the end goal of history? What is the end goal of salvation? What is our only hope? It is to be in the presence of God forever. You know, we talk about evangelism. You want to go to heaven? Yes. Well, what’s the significance of heaven? Is it the pearly gates? Is it the streets of gold? Is it crystal clear water?
I mean, all that is wonderful, but if you talk about heaven and don’t talk about the presence of God, you’ve missed the point. The point of heaven is to be with God. The point of heaven is that we have been reconciled to God through Christ. We who blew it by our sin, we who through our first parents, Adam and Eve, were banished from the garden of Eden and the presence of God, we now have been brought back to the living and true God.
And so our hearts, our minds, our souls, our strength ought to say, Lord, wherever you are, that’s where I want to be. Wherever you are, that’s where I’m going to go. Think for just a moment about the places we’ll get to, not just sporting events. We’ll run headlong after our children and whatever they’re up to. We’ll run headlong after the grandkids and whatever they’re up to. And we’ll move heaven and earth. But have we so ordered our weekends? Have we so ordered our Sundays where Sunday is the day of rest?
It’s the day of gladness. It’s the day to be in God’s house with God’s people because our hearts long, they faint to be in the presence of God. There’s this cycle in the Christian life. There’s this cycle in the scriptures where We come to church on Sunday, we get fulfilled with grace and we get back out in the world and we do the things God has called us to do. We do the things God has gifted us to do and sent us to do. We’re not sinning, but weekdays are worldly days. Sunday is a holy day.
And I hope that as you get into Monday and Tuesday, you’re filled with the strength of church, the strength of God’s grace. But I hope as the week goes on, you say, my tank is getting empty. And by Friday and Saturday, the light is on. Empty, need grace, need to fill up, need to be in the house, need to be with the people, need to be under God and his preaching and his ordinances. We hope that that is our mindset.
Well, the Korah, the Korites, the sons of Korah have written the psalm. They are the gatekeepers. They are the doorkeepers. They are the janitors or the fancy word. I think it comes from the Episcopalians. They are, they are the sextons. They are the ones who are caretakers of God’s house. They’re in charge of lights and lockup. They’re in charge of making the coffee. They’re in charge of, you know, being the church mice. And what did they say? They say, how lovely is your dwelling place?
Oh, Lord of host. My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. And that’s verses one and two. But if you look over at verse 10, for a day in your courts is better. thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
You read about the Porites in first Chronicles. I think it’s chapter 26. And that’s one of those chapters where it’s got a bunch of names. And it’s got a bunch of boring stuff. And you say all scripture is breathed out by God and is useful for teaching and rebuking and correcting and for training in righteousness so that the man of God is fully furnished to do the will of God. And you say, but not this chapter, not these names. But if you go sneak a peek at first Chronicles chapter 26, you will see that it says the sons of Levi known as the Chlorites were able men with great ability and they had what it took to maintain the temple of God.
When these things were written, they were setting up the tent, the tabernacle in the wilderness. And then when the tabernacle made its way to Jerusalem, eventually, after David took that city from the Jebusites, David had it in his heart to build a house for himself and then a house for God. But what did God tell him through the prophet? You’ve got too much blood on your hands. You won’t build me a house. So Solomon built David a house.
And when the, temple ordinances and the sacrifices and the praise and the gatekeepers and all the Levites and the singers and the instrument players were in full force. And just say it’s one of the big festivals in Israel, in Jerusalem. Church was a grand and glorious event.
And these guys may have stood back at a distance. They may have had a broom in their hand and the keys on their belt. They may have had menial tasks. But they said in their minds, they said in their hearts, and they said with their lips, this is a beautiful place, and the presence of God is the most wonderful thing that there is.
Now, you think about church a little bit. I think about it a lot. I’m here six, seven days a week. I’m in and out. It gets old. Let’s just put it that way. It gets old being in the church. And so a person like me, a person like the, Korahites, they could lose wonder. It’s just, yeah, here again.
But notice they don’t lose wonder. They love the place where God makes his dwelling. They love the place where God makes himself known. They love the place where his word is heard and read and proclaimed. They love the place where the sacraments are observed. They love the place where they get filled full because their tank is empty and they can go back out and serve in the world.
And one of the interesting observations, you know, the gatekeepers probably stood around and, you know, they probably looked around and this and that. And they had what I call the Home Depot experience. You know, you go in Home Depot or Lowe’s and there’s always the proverbial bird that’s up in the rafters, right? And it’s fluttering around up there in the top of Lowe’s or Home Depot. And that’s the experience that the Clorites had that they wrote about here. Verse three says, even the sparrow finds a home. and to swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young at your altars.
Oh, Lord of hosts, my King and my God.” Now, one thing I haven’t pointed out to you, and now’s a great time to do that, is that in this 12-verse Psalm, it makes reference at least 14 times to God. And the most common reference to God here is Yahweh of hosts, the commander of the army. This is God, the commander of his host of armies, who can whoop the Assyrians, who can lay bare Jericho, and who one day will vanquish all his and all our enemies, and they will be under the feet and under the judgment of Christ, the Lord of glory whom they killed. And this is our God in this Psalm. And so they are looking particularly at the great king of the universe, the great warrior, the great divine warrior.
And they say, even a sparrow gets to live in his house. Even a swallow makes a nest where they lay their young. Now think about a sparrow. A sparrow is a dime, a dozen, bird. And you think about in the gospels where Jesus says, I care for the penny valued sparrows. How much more do I care for you? Who finds a place in God’s presence? You do through Jesus Christ. But even the worthless sparrow, isn’t that an interesting observation?
And then there’s the swallow. Swallows are obnoxious birds. They’re the ones that hit your window, leave a mess on it. You’re sitting there in your living room enjoying your coffee and you know, bam! And your coffee slings because a sparrow has hit your window. Sparrows are flighty, we say. They just flit around and they’re obnoxious. They’re restless. And you think of ourselves before we come to our senses.
And by God’s grace, by his gospel call and by his spirit’s power, we come to him by faith and we are no longer restless. We are no longer flitting about and hitting windows and bonking our heads, but we find a nest in God’s presence. We find a home in God’s house. And so the observation of the Korahites, I don’t want to be anywhere else. The observation of the Korahites, even the little bitty worthless dime a dozen bird finds a home in God’s house.
That is so significant. Also in this Psalm, you’ll find three blessings, three beatitudes. You know, in Matthew chapter five, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteous. We call those the beatitudes. The blesseds, the happy are. And you find lots of blesseds in the Psalms. You find seven in the book of Revelation. But here you find three.
Verse four says, blessed are those who dwell in your house. You can be a sparrow, you can be a gatekeeper, you can be the high priest. Even Jesus enjoyed the house of the living God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house ever singing your praise.
You wanna have a blessed life? Come to church and sing. I kind of had to chuckle. Somebody wanted to sing more than verse one. That’s a wonderful thing. Um, I hate it when we don’t sing all nine verses, right? Uh, we, we shouldn’t be Baptist. We should sing them all. Um, but we had to just sing to the Trinity. That was enough, but blessed are those who dwell in God’s house ever singing your praise. Okay. So what’s the opposite of blessing curse? That’s right.
So if you don’t dwell in God’s house and you don’t sing his praises, Okay. So I’m not, I’m not picking on missing church. You know, we, we, we were providentially hindered from time to time, but if you don’t go to church, if you miss church, you will feel it. And you say, well, we turned on the TV and we watched, you know, Charles Stanley, we turned on the TV, but no, no, no. Okay. That’s great. Wonderful fills in a little gap. And we got this whole post COVID watch it online.
Church is a dynamic event where you are meant to be in God’s house with God’s people and to be there live and to touch it and to taste it and to smell it and to be there and to be hugged and greeted and holy kisses and all the rest. Blessed are those who dwell in your house ever singing your praise.
My grandmother had this little saying, people gets to where they want to go. and people paid $275,000 to sit courtside in a New York Knicks game, right? But you’re Jerry Seinfeld, you can afford it, right? People gets to where they wanna go. We get to work somehow five days a week for 40 years and get our gold watch. Do we wanna be in the Lord’s house ever singing his praise? If so, good thing, we’ll receive the blessing. Well, there’s a second beatitude in verse five. Blessed are those whose strength is in you. in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
Where did most people live in Israel? They did not live in Jerusalem or near the temple. They had to make the pilgrimage. You remember Jesus got lost on the way home. He was going back to Nazareth with his family. Mom and dad couldn’t find him. Where’d they go? They went back to the temple. There he was. Why are you looking for me, mom and dad? Didn’t you know I would have to be in my father’s house? He’s the only kid that didn’t get smacked. for that kind of response to his parents. Joseph probably said, he’s Jesus. It’s okay, Mary.
But remember the going and the coming, the pilgrim way. If you’re with us on Wednesday evenings in our prayer time, we’re going through Psalms 121 to 134. Those are called the Psalms of Ascent. There’s a distance from Jerusalem and life isn’t so great. And there’s a closeness to Jerusalem. and life is good when you’re near God. So blessed are those whose strength is in you. If you want to have a strong life, a blessed life, be connected to a church. Be connected to a body of God’s people that know you and love you.
I think this week being away at Synod and we’re up there at Von Clark and we’re stuck in meetings, we got no internet. I was telling somebody earlier, it was bad mattress, bad coffee, bad chairs, bad internet. The only redeeming thing was I saw friends. But other than that, it was tough. But a lot was going on back here at home. Somebody had a significant surgery and guess what? Y’all took care of them.
Things go on in the life of the church, and this is a mature, happy place that has strength within itself. It’s God’s strength, but it’s the strength of the body of believers. So blessed are those whose strength is in you, but also in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
Remember the Zion song, I was glad when they said to me, Let us go to the house of the Lord. The psalmist is thinking of getting in the pilgrim group that will march and walk and make their way to Zion where God is. Well, the fourth beatitude comes at the end. It’s at the very end of the psalm at the very end of verse 12.
Blessed is the one who trusts in you. You want to bless life, trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will direct your path. And so there is a need for us to cultivate a desire to be in the presence of God, to be with God’s house, in God’s house, with God’s people on God’s day and receive that strength and that courage and that grace. But we also need to be those who seek God’s blessing, be in his house, sing his praises, In our hearts are the highways to Zion. We love to be there, but we also trust in God, a deep and abiding faith. It’s a wonderful gift that will bring great blessing. Well, one last thing to think of in this psalm. There are three people in this psalm with different or variant nearnesses to God.
There’s the Korites, and where are they always? They are by the gates. Where are they always? In the church. Where are they always? In there with the broom, with the key to the gate. They’re there to take care of the place where God is worshiped and sacrifices are made. So there’s those who are always in church.
And what do we say? Speaking to the choir. You know, if ever on Wednesday night or Sunday night, I say something, I say, okay, I’m speaking to the Wednesday nighters. I’m speaking to the Sunday nighters. Y’all are, y’all are the choir. Y’all come early. You stay late. You’re there when the doors are open. You’re excited to be there. You love the Lord’s house, the Lord’s people. When the doors are open, you’re there. So that’s the Corites. They’re always there. But then you’ve got the pilgrims.
You know, we, You know, don’t hear me yelling at you if you miss church. Let the Lord do that. But there are times because we are pilgrims, there are times because we live in a busy world that we don’t get to church. We’re sick. There’s just stuff where God has providentially hindered us. We ought to try to reduce that as much as we can.
But there’s a second group of people. They are the pilgrims. They live far away. And for them to come to church is a journey. But when they come, boy, are they happy that they are there. And then you read verse five, or I’m sorry, verse six. It says, they go through the valley of Baca. They make it a place of springs. The early rains also covers it with the pools. They go from strength to strength. Each one appears before God and Zion.
So there’s those who don’t live and work and dwell in the house of the Lord, but they are pilgrims. And they come in and they go out. They travel in, they travel out. And I want to point out that this just isn’t a little phrase about going to church and going back home.
It’s also a picture of our life on the way to heaven where God’s presence ultimately is. Think about Psalm 23. Psalm 23 is a season year round little trip through the pastures and the valleys and the peaks and the dangers and the toils and the snares, but also the blessings of God. But how does Psalm 23 end? And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Very good. What’s the goal of Psalm 23 is to get safely home. It’s to make it through the enemies and the pasture land and the still waters and the dark valleys and make it safely home.
Well, between our trips to church, what is our week like? We may be sick. We may be in the hospital. We may be at doctor’s offices. We may be at the CPA getting bad news. We may be at the school dealing with our children. We may be going to work. We may be losing a job, getting a job. We may have all these ups and downs and losses and crosses.
And it says in verse six, the pilgrims on the way to church, they go through the Valley of Baca, but what does God do? So the Valley of Baca is like a dark place. God makes it a place of springs. And so as you live life filled full on Sundays and you’re living through life and it’s full of ups and downs and hardships and losses and crosses, the things that you remember, the things that you were fed will make it seem as an oasis in the desert. This is like Isaiah 35, where God says the exiles returning from Babylon, the exiles returning from a dark place will come through the deserts. back to Jerusalem and to Judah to rebuild it. And as they pass through the deserts, there will be little oases, there will be little springs, little palm trees, little respites. And so as we live life as pilgrims, aliens and strangers on the way to our heavenly city, God gives us little blessings along the way. There may be hard things, but there is rain and pools and refreshment.
And it says in verse seven, we go from strength to strength, or we go from one degree of glory to another, and then each one appears before God and Zion. You know, our goal as a church is really simple. It’s to get each person safely to heaven. That’s our goal. We want you to know Jesus and we want you to live the Christian life well. and God will bring you home one day.
You will appear before God and Zion, but first it will be through the Valley of Baca. It will be through hardships and sometimes there will not be a desert oasis. Sometimes there will be jackals and thorns and thistles and well, like we’re going through now, no rain and there will be a dry and weary land, but God will get you safely home and you will appear before him and he will give you the strength for the way. 1,000 days in God’s court is better than 1,000 elsewhere.
So we’ve thought about the first two people, the ones who live in the church, the Quorites, the ones who make their way to and from church. But there are also those who cannot come. You know, in our prayer list, we have a list of homebound people. I particularly think of Judy, my mother-in-law. She’s not been able to come to church much, if at all, in the last couple months. And she wants to be here, but she just can’t.
And we pray in our prayers sometimes, or we’ll say, let’s remember our shut-ins, let’s reach out to them, and let’s ask that God will give them an extra special measure of His grace and presence. They can’t be here, but He can be there. He can be gracious to them in their place. No good thing does God withhold from those who walk uprightly, verse 11 says, Lord of hosts, Blessed are the ones who trust in you. There are times when we live in the church, sometimes we go and come, and there are times when we can’t be there. And I know each of us has experienced maybe various ones of these stations, but God promises to be a God and to be with us. So what do we think of Psalm 84?
Do we say, oh boy, those Korathites, they are just fanatics. You’re like those Duke fans, those Carolina fans, those Nick fans, those hurricane fans, those soccer people. No, that should be us. We should have the painted faces. We should have the jerseys. We should know the stats, right? We should be fanatics of God and his house.
And so the question I want to leave with you is through faith in Jesus Christ, have you been brought near to the presence of the living God? And is it the one thing that you never, ever, ever want to do without? That’s what this passage is calling us to think and to feel and do. Let’s ask for God’s help, pray with me.
Lord, we thank you for the chance to be reminded of your house, your presence, and the blessings that come with it. Perhaps we’ve gotten into a attitude of ho-hum, I’ll get there as I can. Maybe we’ve got other things that we value more or have become important to us. May we reprioritize, may we center our lives as the people of old have done around your house, your people, your day, so that we are filled full of grace and we can make it through the Valley of Baca with the pools and the strength until we land in your presence. or bring us safely home, we ask in the name of Jesus, our God and our savior. Amen. Let’s respond to God’s goodness and our love for his kingdom. Number 405.