Psalm 84
Let’s hear God’s word together.
This is Psalm 84. It says, to the choir master,
according to the Gethsemane, a Psalm of the sons of Korah.
And it begins in verse one by saying, 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
in 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. Blessed
are those whose strength is in you and 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. O Lord, God of hosts, hear
my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob. 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. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the
one who trusts in you. Amen. God’s holy and inspired
word. May he bless it as we seek to
understand what it says. One of the teachers that I had
was interviewed several years ago and in his interview, he
was asked, what is the secret to your success? What is the
secret to the happiness of your ministry? And he said a little
bit about his upbringing. He said, I was brought up in
the church. I was brought up to go to church morning. I was
brought up to go to church in the evening. I went to Wednesday
prayer and my parents taught me the shorter catechism. A little
bit later, he talked about his success in ministry. It was because I continued to
go to church morning and evening and prayer and to study and know
the shorter catechism. And then they said, how did you
have success raising your children? Well, I took them to morning
church, evening church, Wednesday prayer, taught them the shorter
catechism and on it went. And so you get the hint. If you want to have a blessed
life, You long to be near God. You long, as Psalm 84 says, you
even faint to be in the house of God. You desire to sing for
joy to God. You say in your mind and in your
heart and with your actions, I would rather be in the house
of God than a thousand days elsewhere. We see sometimes people have
a sticker on the back of their car that says life’s a beach
or, you know, they got the little flip flops and they’d rather
be at the beach. They’re stuck here, but they’d rather be at
the beach and beach is nice. Of course, not this time of year.
We’ve seen some storms, but wouldn’t it be better if we had on the
back of our car, maybe a something or another that says, I love
to be at church. I love to be in the house of
God. The Psalmist also says he would rather be a doorkeeper.
He’d rather sweep the floors, be a janitor in the house of
God than dwell in the tents of righteousness. So how do you
have a happy life, a blessed life? How do you have joy in
this pilgrim way that we are on? Well, Psalm 84 can give us
a little help. And maybe the attitude ought
to be for us as we long to be in God’s house that when Sunday
is over and Monday comes, we have a little bit of sadness.
as we get away from the house of the Lord, as we get away from
God’s people, as we get away from the ordinances of the church.
Maybe on Wednesday, we’re restless. On Friday, we anticipate going
again to God’s house. And on Saturday, we’re making
our preparations to be in God’s house with God’s people on God’s
day. But you know, even a devoted
Christian in today’s world can be swallowed up by the busyness
of life. Some of you probably grew up
when there was a bit of a quieter time, maybe like some of us had
this week without internet in the house or without electricity.
Times were a little quieter. There were fewer distractions.
It was back in the days when you had to walk to school uphill
both ways and in the snow and all that good stuff. But you
had a simpler time. There was less tugging at you.
But for today, a devoted Christian, can hardly think of church even
on Sunday morning before he arrives. And so we have to be careful
to put ourselves in a frame of life and a frame of mind. We
must work at devoting ourselves to the love of the house of the
Lord. Some of you probably grew up even old school. Of course,
I’m preaching to the choir because here it is Sunday night and here
y’all sit and most of you are here every week. But there’s
something about the church gathering morning and evening and even
midweek. And in some cases, back in the day, churches would gather
on Friday or Saturday to make their prayers to God for Sunday,
that God would be worshiped and that the lost would be saved.
But today we live in a time in which hardly people even give
the Lord an hour. Sunday is no longer the Lord’s
day. It’s barely the Lord’s hour. And then it’s off to the races
as soon as 1201 or 1209 or whenever the preacher gets done,
it’s off to the races. But one of the things we have
to understand is that it is the job of the elders of the church,
it is the job of those who oversee God’s people to design and to
implement and to expect and encourage people to gather at appointed
times for worship. Now today, most churches, if
you drive by and see their sign, when do they worship? They worship
once. When do they gather? Just once. And any other time
they do gather, it’s for a climbing wall or some maybe fun but not
church-wide thing. It’d be wonderful. It’d be great.
It’d be incredible, I think, if the church in America, if
the church in the world would center its life around the ordinances
of the church. As often as God’s word is opened,
we’ll be there. As often as God is to be worshiped,
we’ll be there. As often as we’re to be discipled,
we’ll be there. As often as there’s prayer with
and for one another and for the world or for our missionaries
or for our brother Andrew, we will be there. So there’s something
about Psalm 84 that would take a little bit of work from us,
both to design and implement and expect and encourage and
also participate in the life of God’s house. So what’s the
secret to a blessed life? Well, you might say it’s going
to church morning and evening and to prayer meeting and to
learn your shorter catechism. That’s a little bit difficult
for some. You know, we fill our lives up with busy things and
to say no to one thing and say yes to another is often a difficult
thing. But we as God’s people ought
to pattern our lives around the house of God. And I think from
Psalm 84, we’ll see that there’s great blessing in it. In fact,
if you look through Psalm 84, you’ll see three blesseds, three
beatitudes. Verse four, blessed are those
who dwell in your house. Verse five, blessed are those
whose heart are the highways to Zion. And then verse 12, blessed
is the one who trusts in you. Those three blessings, those
three beatitudes are one of the ways we can take a peek at this
Psalm. Also, there are two very important images. in Psalm 84,
the image of the sparrow and of the swallow. Very often when
the elders are sitting down to interview new members, we read
Psalm 84. If it’s not 84, sometimes it’s
Psalm 87. The Lord loves the gates of Zion
more than the dwelling places of Jacob. But very often we read
Psalm 84 because it says even the swallow, even the sparrow
finds a home and builds a nest for her young at the altars.”
And so these two images, the sparrow, a rather worthless bird. The psalm even seems to indicate
that you could buy a couple sparrows for about a penny. And then there’s
the swallows, a bird that is sort of attention deficit disorder.
Bird, it’s restless, it flutters around. And what does it say
about the sparrow that is worthless? It finds a home in God’s house.
What does it say about the sparrow that is restless, or the swallow
that is restless? It finds rest in God’s house. And so how much more can we find
rest when we go to God’s house? So let’s follow the blessings
for just a moment. Verse four, blessed are those
who dwell in your house. This would be the church staff,
so to speak. And my kids would say it’d be
the preacher’s kids. We’re always at church, always stopping by
church, always running by church, we’re always at church doing
something. But it’s the doorkeepers, it’s the gatekeepers, it’s the
Levites, it’s the sons of Korah, they are in God’s house, they
are serving in God’s house and they are excited because they
are not exiled. They are not banished. They are
not somewhere away from Jerusalem, but they live and work in the
midst of the excitement. You can imagine as a gatekeeper,
a doorkeeper, as a Levite, as a janitor in the house of God,
they saw a bit of everything. They tasted and could see the
work of God in the lives of his people, and they were blessed
by that association. They were blessed by that continual
presence in the house of Almighty God. And so in a sense, verse
four says, blessed are those who are dwelling in God’s house,
because why? Because God himself dwells there. Don’t you think it would be good
of us to desire to be where God is? And that’s the hope of heaven
is that we who love God will dwell with him forever and ever. So blessed are those who live
and work and serve and are ever present in God’s house. So that’s the first blessing
or beatitude. The second one we find in the
next verse. Verse five says, blessed are those whose strength
is in you, in whose heart are the highways designed. This is,
maybe instead of blessed are the staff, or blessed are the
church workers, this is blessed are the pilgrims. Blessed are
those who are on their way up to Jerusalem. Blessed are those
who have heard the cry, heard the call, and are making their
way to Jerusalem to worship God. that in their heart, verse five
says, are the highways to Zion. And verses six, seven seem to
say that as they make their way to Jerusalem, which could be
a week-long trip for some, on their way up to Jerusalem, they
may pass through dark places. They may pass through as it says,
the valley of Baca, or as we sang from our Psalter, the valley
or veil of weeping, they may pass through dark places, but
as they do, because they are on the way to Zion, they bring
blessing to the places where they pass through. They can take
a dark place like Baca and they can make it full of springs. And there’s a, There’s a greater
sense of that as maybe the pilgrims made their way to Jerusalem.
We think about how we are making our way to the new Jerusalem.
And as we are pilgrims like Abraham and everybody else, the book
of Hebrews 11, chapter 11 list, as they are making their way
to the greater Zion, we’re making our way to the greater Zion.
And how does the little saying go? We want to be a blessing
as we pass through. And so we consider this as part
of our lives as we’re making our way to the heavenly Zion.
We want to be a blessing even to the dark places of this world,
the sin-filled world, as we pass our way through it on the way
to heaven. We want to bring a piece of joy
in heaven to earth. Blessed are those whose strength
is in you, whose hearts are the highways to Zion. It says, and
then there’s another beatitude we find in verse 12, the very
last verse, blessed is the one who trust in you. So you got
blessed are the church workers, the staff, blessed are the pilgrims. But this one in a sense says,
blessed are the believers. Blessed are those who know their
need of a savior. Blessed are those who found their savior.
Blessed are those who are found in Christ. What do you think
this means? This is a person who has a worldview
that’s right. This is a person who says, better
is a day in your courts, better is a Sunday in church than six
other days of joy and money making and revelry and sports and championships
and success and work and straight A’s in school. All those are
fine things we understand. But this is a person whose worldview
says, I’d rather be in God’s house one day than a thousand
days elsewhere. I’d rather be one day in the
house of God and to dwell in the tents of wickedness. This is a person who knows where
he or she is headed, how they’re gonna get there, what they need
to forsake, and what they need to treasure. This is a person
whose worldview is give me Jesus, give me eternity. This is a person
who knows what to forsake, but also what to hold onto very dearly. Their bumper sticker on their
car says Zion or bust. Right? Not City of Man, not Babylon,
not New York City, not some great achievement in this
world, but it’s Zion or bust. It’s heaven or nothing. And so blessed is the one who
trusts in you. Now, when you’re a Christian,
And you go to work, or you’re out in the public sphere, and
you tell somebody how you spend your Sundays. Well, I go to church
Sunday morning, I go to church Sunday night, I go to prayer
meeting. They probably think you’re maybe a religious wacko.
And you are, but that’s actually a good thing. You may be worthless
in the world’s eyes, but what you do will last forever, and
it will have eternal consequences. You know, the writer of Ecclesiastes
seems to say we can work, work, work. We can save, save, save.
We can pile up, we can store up and we can have successes.
But guess what? You’re going to die. But we can
follow the Lord. We can serve him. And these are
things that we can never, ever lose. The world cannot take these
things away from us. And there seems to be maybe a
kind of a Romans 8.28 sense here in verse 11. Who is the he? It’s
the Lord of hosts. It’s the Lord God. uprightly. And then we have the
three blessings, the three beatitudes. You know, the world may be shiny,
the world may offer things, the world may have some benchmarks
that say this is how we determine whether or not you are successful.
But Psalm 84, I think, gives us a better way. Instead of being
restless, like the swallow, instead of being homeless, maybe like
the sparrow, even worthless like the sparrow, we find rest in
the house of God and we find blessing there. And so this ought
to give us great encouragement that if we find ourselves every
week centering our lives around the means of grace, around the
word, and the worship, and the sacraments, and the fellowship,
and the joys, and the ups and downs, and even the hard work
of the church. God will bring us great blessing,
but it will ease us into eternity very well. Let’s pause and ask
for God’s grace. Lord, we are grateful that your
house is open to us. We’re grateful that through Christ
Jesus, we have access not only to your throne of grace, but
we have access to our future, our final, our eternal and heavenly
home. We give you thanks that through
Jesus, we can enter in your presence. And like the swallow, like the
sparrow, we can find a nest. at your altars, where your people’s
praises rise up before you. We give you thanks for this.
We pray that our values would surround these great truths,
and that we would, week after week, love to be your pilgrims,
love to climb Mount Zion, love to be in your house, and we long
for the day when we will be in your eternal house. Give us your
grace, we pray in Christ’s name, amen. ♪ God’s plan to fill our
land ♪ we are standing of David ♪ There for royal justice stand
♪ ♪ There for royal justice stand ♪ ♪ May your peace, the peace
of Zion ♪ ♪ Prosper those who love you well ♪ ♪ Peace be in
your hearts forevermore ♪ in your towers dwell. Peace and safety, peace and safety
in Jerusalem abound, in Jerusalem abound. For the Savior Oh Amen. Go in peace.