Psalm 84:1-12
Good morning everyone. I’m so glad to be able to bring the word of God to you this morning. If you want to turn there, we’re going to be in Psalm 84 and when I was a youngster, I can say that now that I’m in the fifth decade of life a long, long time ago, at least it feels like that to me. One of the things that had a significant impact on my soul as a young person, a negative impact on my soul, was Henry Blackaby’s book, Experiencing God. This book had a part in my salvation insofar as it got me into God’s Word and studying it for myself, but it was this practice of experiencing God, which he taught in that book, that was greatly detrimental to my soul.
For instance, in that book he describes that you should, along with reading your Bible, you should pray to God, which I obviously agree with. But he recommends in that book, as you pray to God, go on spiritual prayer walks. And as you pray to God, you should also listen for him to speak to you in a still, small voice and over time, as you hear him speaking to you, you will learn to discern his voice from your own voice and your own thoughts in your own head.
Let’s just say it didn’t take too long before I thought that I had an answer from God, a very specific answer, only to see something very different to come to pass in my life. I was certain this thing was going to happen. And then something very different happened. I thought I heard God’s voice and heard his answer and needless to say I was very disappointed and I distinctly remember I am never going to do that again. Long story short, as I continue to read my Bible more and more and began to understand what it taught, namely Reformed theology, the sufficiency of Scripture, I came to realize that a lot of what I had been taught on how to experience God was really a bunch of hooey.
What I was taught as the experience of the Christian religion was nothing more than the experience of my own personal intuitions, the experience of my own heart. And I think for myself and for many others who came out of that kind of charismatic thinking, we might have the tendency to cringe at any mention of personal experience, as if experience is a subpar, lesser reality than the true and abiding Word of God. I think in Reformed circles, experience is a taboo word. In order to avoid looking like charismatics, we can really tend to be stoic and come off as cold and indifferent about the things that we experience.
I think we tend to think, heaven forbid anybody raise their hand in a Sunday morning worship service out of affection for God. But we as Reformed Christians, we really ought to have the deepest, widest, strongest sense, the most heartfelt, including emotions, the most heartfelt experiences, because we really do have the truth, and this truth should inform our every emotion and experience. In other words, we ought to experience God in a very real way as we come before him, and I know many of you do. And we should be free to express that without any fear of contradiction.
And the Psalm that we’re going to look at today, I hope will strike a chord in your heart to pursue this, to borrow a saying from Pastor Albert Martin, I want to strive to maintain a real and expanding and varied and original acquaintance with God, experiencing God in his ways. And I want you to do so as well. And we’re going to, I think, be encouraged by Psalm 84 to do just that. But Psalm 84 is a Psalm of the sons of Korah. They are responsible, the sons of Korah, responsible for some of the most memorable Psalms. You’re probably familiar with Psalm 42 and 43, “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul pants for you. Why are you downcast, O my soul, hope in God and others?” These Psalms from the sons of Korah are filled with some of the most vivid, maybe we could say, emotional language regarding a desire for a real, expanding, varied, and original acquaintance with God.
We’re going to be in Psalm 84. Let’s read verses 1 through 12. “How lovely are your dwelling places, O Yahweh of hosts! My soul has longed and even fainted, for the courts of Yahweh; My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. Even the bird has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she sets her young, At your altars, O Yahweh of Hosts, My King and my God. How blessed are those who dwell in your house! They are ever praising You. How blessed is the man whose strength is in You, In whose heart are the highways to Zion! Passing through the valley of Baca they make it a spring;”
“The early rain also wraps itself up with blessings. They go from strength to strength, Each one of them appears before God in Zion. O Yahweh God of hosts, hear my prayer; Give ear, O God of Jacob! see our shield, O God, And look upon the face of Your anointed. For better is a day in Your courts than thousand elsewhere. I would choose to stand at the threshold of the house of my God Than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. For Yahweh God is a sun and a shield; Yahweh gives grace and glory; No good thing does He withhold from those who walk blamelessly. O Yahweh of hosts, How blessed is the man who trusts in you!”
So I want to begin by explaining the superscription which reads, “for the choir director. According to the Gittith. Of the sons of Korah. A Psalm.” I want to explain this superscription in the background of this Psalm, because it really significantly effects our understanding of it. Several commentators, including John Calvin and Charles Spurgeon, they attribute this Psalm to David. More modern scholars, they deem this not a Davidic author, but someone unknown. And they say that this is a Pilgrim Psalm, much like the Psalms of ascent: Psalm 120 through 134.
They think it was written for those traveling to Jerusalem for feasts, those who had been absent, but they were going back for celebration and sacrifice. I, however, agree with James Boyce and others that this was written by one of the sons of Korah, as the superscription indicates. But more specifically, I think it was written by one of the gatekeepers who was assigned at the temple. But just briefly with me, so we can understand this a little bit better, turn to Chapter 9 of 1 Chronicles.
This is in one of those sections of Bible reading that we often grow tedious of lists of names. You may remember that when David’s throne was established and he had defeated his enemies, one of the things he did was institute formal, organized regular worship at the Tabernacle. And he appointed certain people to certain tasks, musicians, singers, gatekeepers, other attendants, the sons of Korah were some of those who were assigned specific tasks and 1 Chronicles gives greater detail as to what these people did for their tasks and this chapter in particular recounts what those did when they returned from the exile.
But it very clearly says, that they followed the assignments that David and Samuel had given long ago. So if you’re in 1 Chronicles Chapter 9, we’re going to begin at verse 17, and we’re not going to read to the end of the chapter, but we’ll read to verse 34. So 1 Chronicles 9:17. “Now the gatekeepers were Shallum and Akkub and Talmon and Ahiman and their relatives, (Shallum the chief being stationed until now at the king’s gate to the east.) These were the gatekeepers for the camp of the sons of Levi. Shallum the son of Kore, the son of Ebiasaph, the son of Korah, along with the other sons of Korah and his relatives of his father’s house.
“The Korahites, were over the work of the service, keepers of the thresholds of the tent; and their fathers had been over the camp of Yahweh, keepers of the entrance. And Phinehas the son of Eleazar was ruler over them previously, and Yahweh was with him. Zechariah the son of Meshelemiah was gatekeeper of the entrance of the tent of meeting. All these,” this is the sons of Korah, the Korahites. “All these who were chosen to be gatekeepers at the threshold were 212. These were recorded by genealogy in their villages, whom David and Samuel the seer established in their office of trust.”
As pre exilic, David and Samuel set these up and they’re reinstituting them. Verse 23, “So they and their sons were over the gates of the house of Yahweh, even the house of the tent, as those who kept watch. The gatekeepers were on the four sides, to the East, the West, the North, and the South. And their relatives in their villages were to come in every seven days from time to time to be with them; for the four chief gatekeepers who were Levites, were in an office of trust, and were over the chambers and over the treasuries in the house of God. And they spent the night all around the house of God, because the watch was committed to them; and they were over opening morning by morning.
“Now some of them were over the utensils of service, for they counted them when they brought them in and when they took them out. Some of them also were appointed over the furniture and over all the utensils of the sanctuary and over the fine flour and the wine and the oil and the frankincense and all the spices. Some of the sons of the priests prepared the mixing of the spices. And Mattithiah, one of the Levites, who was the first born of Shallum the Korahite, had the office of trust over the things which were baked in pans. Some of their relatives the sons of the Kohathites were over the showbread to prepare at every sabbath. Now these are the singers, the heads of father’s households of the Levites, who lived in the chambers of the Temple free from other services; for they were over them in their work day and night. These were heads of fathers’ households of the Levites according to their generations, the heads who lived in Jerusalem.”
So these sons of Korah, just as David had assigned them, they were gatekeepers. This entailed keeping watch over all four sides of the Tabernacle, Temple Mount, at this point. In the various gates, they were over all the different chambers and the treasuries guarding their contents. They spent all day and all night around the house of God. Regular night rotations. They were in charge of the utensils for the service, making sure nobody walked away with one.
Some were appointed over furniture and others utensils of the sanctuary. Others were entrusted the things baked in pans. Verse 33 also notes some among these were singers who lived in the chambers of the Temple, ready for service. In 1 Chronicles 15:21, there’s a man mentioned by the name of Obed. He was mentioned as a musician and then in verse 24, right after that, he’s also mentioned as a gatekeeper. So you could be a gatekeeper and a musician rotating in your duties. One day you’re a gatekeeper, the next day you actually get to participate inside in the worship, leading those things.
These people, they lived very near in proximity to the house of worship. It would really be like living in all the classrooms surrounding this room here, always being very close to the action, close to the worship, even standing night watch. So these men, they would spend hours standing at gates, guarding various entrances and exits, various buildings around, that held all the utensils. When they weren’t leading musical instruments, singing, they were on other duties near to the worship. But really, they lived there. That was their life, that was their job, that was their worship.
Turn back to Psalm 84 with me. Now James Boice says that these men also functioned as the janitors, so to speak. They were not just in charge of guarding, but they were also in charge of keeping it ready for worship the next day. Thus he calls this Psalm, the Psalm of the Janitors. But with that background in mind, understanding who the psalmist was, though we don’t know in particular the individual, that’s the kind of person he was, that was his duty.
Let’s read the Psalm again in light of that, as I think it helps inform a reading of it. You might think that somebody who just lived and that was their life, that was their job, but some of those mundane tasks of standing guard over a door, maybe those things would grow old. But that is anything, but the experience of this worshiper, this gatekeeper.
Let’s just read it again in light of that, this gatekeeper writes, “O, how lovely are your dwelling places, O Yahweh of hosts! My soul has longed and even fainted, for the courts of Yahweh; My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. Even the bird has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she sets her young, At your altars, O Yahweh of Hosts, My King and my God. How blessed are those who dwell in your house! They are ever praising You. How blessed is the man whose strength is in You, In whose heart are the highways to Zion! Passing through the valley of Baca they make it a spring;”
“The early rain also wraps itself up with blessings. They go from strength to strength, Each one of them appears before God in Zion. O Yahweh God of hosts, hear my prayer; Give ear, O God of Jacob! see our shield, O God, And look upon the face of Your anointed. For better is a day in Your courts than thousand elsewhere. I would choose to stand at the threshold of the house of my God Than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. For Yahweh God is a sun and a shield; Yahweh gives grace and glory; No good thing does He withhold from those who walk blamelessly. O Yahweh of hosts, How blessed is the man who trusts in you!”
As we look at this Psalm, I think we have opportunity to examine our own experience of God. And we’re going to see the manifold blessings of God on those who have opportunity to dwell near to the place of worship, those who gather regularly at the place of worship. Also those who are detained from the place of worship, but on their way to worship and then finally, the blessing of the one who trusts in God regardless of where he is.
That’s really our outline for this morning. It’s going to follow those three blessings in the text in verse 4, verse 5, and verse 12. But the outline that I have for you this morning is tabernacling with God or tenting, if that’s easier for you. Tenting with God, referring to dwelling near to God. So tabernacling with God, point one, then traversing to God, and trusting in God. Tabernacling with God, traversing to God, and trusting in God.
Let’s begin with that first one, tabernacling with God, the psalmist says, “How lovely are your dwelling places, O Yahweh of hosts, My soul has longed and even fainted for the courts of Yahweh. My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.” What seems obvious here is the Psalmist who loves God very dearly, he has been detained and separated from those courts for a time. I agree with the commentators, Kyle and Delitzsch, their conclusion regarding this setting of this Psalm and when it was written, the time it was written in, though I probably wouldn’t speak with the same certainty, they would.
They say because of verse 9, in the petition made for the Anointed One, the King. They say beyond all doubt, and I don’t know if I could say that, but I do agree with the rest. They say we have before us in Psalm 84. We have before us a Psalm belonging to the time of David’s persecution by Absalom. Without a doubt, the petition they’re made for the anointed one of God is the reason they say this is because of David running from Absalom. He was in a dire time of trouble, in need of this prayer and this petition. I agree with their conclusion.
This means that this Psalm was written by one of the sons of Korah, one of these gatekeepers who fled with David into the wilderness from Absalom. If you remember, there’s a whole host of company that fled with David, even Zadok tried to take the Ark of the Covenant with them, but David turned him around and said, no, take it back, God’s going to bring me back to see it again. So there was a throng of folks who left with David, people who are faithful to God, faithful to David. And some of those among them were the sons of Korah, the gatekeepers of the Tabernacle. And I think, along with Kyle and Delitzsch, that it was one of them who penned this Psalm.
They fled unexpectedly from the place of worship. They were torn away from their everyday experience of joyful corporate worship and sacrifice, and thus remembering what they had been separated from, he cries out and laments and Pines. “O, how lovely are your dwelling places, O Yahweh of hosts.” Lovely here, it’s a word that’s only used a handful of times in Scripture. In every other instance, it is translated, at least in the LSB, as beloved. It refers to a beloved friend, in Psalm 127:2, and it refers to a beloved wife in Jeremiah 11:15. It refers to the pious with whom the Lord is pleased in Psalm 60.
It’s a very personal kind of love. It’s a word of deep, deep affection. A slightly different form of this word is used 30 times in the Song of Solomon. A majority of where this word is used as in Song of Solomon, where it’s a very personal and passionate love. And this word here is in the plural form which expresses in the strongest degree of love and yearning for Yahweh’s dwelling place, the Tabernacle, the place of corporate worship. He’s not making a mere observation of the loveliness of the courts and the Tabernacle and the buildings. They don’t just look beautiful. They’re not just lovely in appearance. The psalmist uses this word because he has the strongest, most affectionate feeling for that place.
We need to regularly run to him in our personal devotion, seeking him, loving him.” Bret Hastings
This word always refers to a person being loved, everywhere else. So here the dwelling places, they would be a autonomy for God that stands in place. Really, he’s talking about his love for God, but he experienced God at this place of corporate worship. But it was in those lovely dwelling places that he really experienced God and had a great love for God. He would have watched worshippers coming in daily with their sacrificial offerings, no doubt, music playing, regular sacrifices being offered, regular readings from the law, just regular, as we think of regular corporate worship.
His love for God was not primarily, because of some individual experience he had out on his own, but his love was stoked by this full house of God with God’s people. That had been his daily experience, his communion with God, even if it was standing as a gatekeeper out on the fringes. In fact, we have a gatekeeper position here, somebody who sits right outside that door at the computer checking kids in. That’s the kind of thing he’s talking about here, out on the fringes. Even when that was experienced, he wasn’t leading Music. Man, he’d love to be there, but it was God that this worshipper really loved. His experience was in the temple, in the dwelling place of God with others for corporate worship, but he loved experiencing God there.
There’s this title of Yahweh of hosts in Psalm 24. It clearly conveys the concept of a glorious king. Although it has military overtones, it points directly to his rulership over the entire universe, that this one, this Lord of hosts, he continually rules, but at times he directly intervenes to secure his own victory and ensure the history of salvation of his people. It is this sovereign God who has power to intervene and change the circumstances that this worshipper is experiencing, a separation from the temple.
That’s where we quickly realize that there is a problem based on verse 1. You don’t get, that there is a problem in the life of the psalmist, but we quickly see that, where he says my soul has longed and even fainted for the courts of Yahweh, the Psalmist, he continues this very intense language. He longed for the temple. This word, longed for, refers to a painful yearning for something. He had been separated from this temple and he painfully yearned to go back to experience what he had experienced before.
This form is used only one other time in Scripture, this intensified form. It’s used of Jacob when he longed to go back to his father’s house. He was so homesick. He had been gone for two decades. He longed to return home and perhaps you, at some point in your life, you have longed for something so badly that it hurt, maybe physically, maybe metaphorically. And this psalmist, he longed deeply to return, and it was accompanied by fainting. His life was draining away from him. He was growing weak and feeble and frail, because of his separation from the place of worship. He longed to go back to the Lord’s courts, to hear the music again, to experience God like that again.
I know many of you, at least I experienced this. I know many of you also did during COVID when we were separated from each other for a time that sitting in our homes and watching church on TV, we weren’t gathered together. That’s not church. That’s what the word church means, assembled together and our souls were languishing apart from corporate worship. But while his soul was languishing and fading away. Note what his flesh was doing. There’s this contrast here. He says, “My soul longed and even fainted for the courts of Yahweh,” but what is he doing where he is physically? He is singing for joy to the living God. You can take the true worshipper out of church, but you can’t take the church out of the true worshipper.
He is going to sing for joy regardless whether he can get there or not. He longed to be in the house of God for worship and singing privately, personally was no substitute, but it would suffice to get him through. He was going to uplift his own soul, singing joyfully to the living God until he could return and do that corporately. But the psalmist, he then thinks back to his time standing at the gate and observing the temple complex, and he thought about how even he had observed the birds finding a home in God’s house.
Look at verse 3 again, “Even the bird has found a home and the swallow a nest for herself where she sets her young at the altars of Yahweh of hosts.” He remembers how those birds he had observed many times building nests in the eaves of the various structures around. He was envious of the position that these birds now had. He was cast out, separated, but the birds were still there. They got to overlook the altar of God. They got to observe from a distance the sacrifices being made.
He was envying, being reminded of sins atoned for on the altar, how they were cleansed to be able to come and worship God. The psalmist is reminded of that and he longs to return and even have the place that the birds did, not participating, but just being able to observe. Many commentators note that this mention of the altar refers to the ordinances. For us as Christians, we can think of ordinances, practicing those as communion, baptism and communion. So he’s saying, I’d just be happy to be able to go back and just be able to observe those things, not even participate in them.
He longed deeply for the worship, to return to the worship service to practice the ordinances, but he’s detained. And this leads him to declare in verse 4, “Oh, how blessed are those who dwell in your house. They are ever praising you.” The one who’s in the position of divine favor, blessed is the one who gets to dwell in God’s house, be there for corporate worship. This is the declaration of divine favor upon the one who gets to dwell there. Be there regularly.
The one who is in the enviable position of divine favor is the one who’s not detained from corporate worship. The one who is there is ever praising God through song, reading of scripture, prayers, sacrifices, etcetera. I think it’s appropriate at this point just to ask ourselves, do we feel this intently in love with our God? Do we long to dwell in the house of worship, so we don’t miss anything, to gather with the saints, to sing his praise, hear his word, observe the ordinances? Do these things create such an intense love in us as they have for these gatekeepers?
I mean, we have such a more full understanding having the New Testament of these things. Our salvation has been realized in Jesus Christ. Do we experience God and love him deeply through the corporate worship service, even if we don’t get to fully participate in it; if we’re serving on the fringes like a gatekeeper, when we’re detained and when we miss out on the singing, hearing God’s Word, the ordinances, being reminded of our salvation in Christ?
When we miss out on those things, does our soul languish apart from that and long to gather again? Or have we grown dull in our love for God and gathering together with his people, we who are privileged to come and gather for corporate worship, we stand in the enviable position of divine favor. Let us not take that for granted, beloved. And in times of being detained, we know that it often does provoke these feelings. As I mentioned earlier about COVID, that’s what’s happening with the psalmist here. He’s been detained, and then he tells of his journey and what he thinks is on his way back to the place of worship to experience God as he had once enjoyed.
And that brings us to point two: Traversing to God, traversing to God. Here the psalmist speaks of the divine favor upon the one who finds his strength in God while he is detained and away, but on his way back to Zion. Look at verses 5 to 7 with me, “How blessed is the man whose strength is in You, In whose heart are the highways to Zion! Passing through the valley of Baca they make it a spring;” and “The early rain also wraps it up with blessings.” and “They go from strength to strength, Each one of them appears before God in Zion.”
It is in this section that makes many think that this is a Pilgrim song and clearly the psalmist is depicting himself on his way to appear before God in Zion. But it’s not just because of a typical trip for a feast. It’s a hardship that keeps him away. The idea of trial comes from this word Baca, which in the Hebrew is very close to the word for weeping. It’s also the word for a balsam tree, which they named balsam trees, because balsam trees would ooze this white substance that made them look like they were weeping.
However, the significance of the balsam tree is that they grow in very dry and arid climates where nothing else grows, like cacti in the desert. The valley of Baca is one of those places, but it’s not a specific place in Israel, no place was named this. It’s not too dissimilar to what David writes in Psalm 23, when he says, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” It’s not a reference to a literal valley, but metaphorically a trial.
Here, it’s not a trial of fear, as it was with David in Psalm 23, rather, this is a sandy, dry, arid valley, and this would call to mind an unpleasant place of adversity for the worshipper. It was an obstacle to get back to the place of worship. So this psalmist, he’s been separated from the place of worship, and he’s desperately trying to get back there, and he has to pass through this dry, arid desert, this place of adversity, to get there.
There’s a double reference for the blessed one here. It’s the man whose strength is in Yahweh, but it’s also the man in whose heart are the highways to Zion. It might suffice for the first reference to state the opposite, and that is, cursed is the one who trusts in himself. Blessed is the one who trusts in God, but cursed is the one who trusts in himself. When the way to get back to the house of God, to worship him, when it is fraught with adversity, blessed is the man who trusts in God, but cursed is the man who trusts in himself.
When you are detained, maybe in times of trial, do you rely on your own strength or do you seek his strength and rely on him? Do you just try to pull up your own bootstraps and get through the trial you’re in, or do you fall on your knees and seek strength and grace to help in the time of need?
The second aspect of this blessing is for the man in whose heart are the highways to Zion. What does that mean? You’ll notice to Zion there, if you have an LSB at the end of verse 5 is in italics. It’s really being supplied from the end of this section in verse 7. It’s the obvious reference, and so the translators move it back up. They duplicate it back up to the end of verse 5, and I’ll return in a moment to talk about that term, Zion.
But for now, we’ll suffice to say that Zion is another word to refer to where God dwells. So he’s saying blessed is the one in whose hearts there are highways to God’s presence. So the worshipper detained from the public place of corporate worship, he has ways of getting to God’s presence in his heart. And I would say this is the private experience of worshipping God. He can get to God’s presence via the highways in his heart. It is when he travels on these highways to God’s presence in his heart that the desert that he is in, it turns into an Oasis.
Look at verse 6, “Passing through the valley of Baca, they make it a spring.” The early rain also wraps it up in blessing. So the dry valley of Baca in the midst of personal adversity, it’s turned into a spring, when the worshipper finds paths to God’s presence in his own heart, when he worships God, even privately, personally, in the midst of adversity, in between being gathered together at the place of worship, he finds a way to God’s presence even in the highways of his heart.
So those highways to be travelled are, as he already mentioned in verse 2, personal joyful singing, no doubt personal recitation of God’s Word that he had memorized, personal prayer, that he’s going to get into next. Those are the highways of the heart to God’s presence and while it would seem he would languish in a dry and arid condition, separated from the house of God, he says such a one who finds highways in his heart to Zion go from strength to strength. They don’t languish. Their soul doesn’t continue to languish. They can turn that experience, maybe of trial or just being separated from the people of God, into an Oasis, because they find pathways to God’s presence in their heart.
So I want to just with that pause, and make maybe a correlation for us as New Testament believers. We gather for worship one day a week, typically. And as we go out and as we are separated from this gathering, we can make an analogy that we are passing through this valley of Baca. It’s a dry and arid place of adversity out there, and we traverse this arid land, crossing over every week back to Sunday to get back here.
But when we’re out there, we’re away from all the joys of corporate worship. And as you’re out there, away, are you traversing highways in your heart to God’s presence? What is the state of your private worship or private devotion to the Lord? Is your mind and your heart on the Lord to get to his presence regardless of where you are? Or are you just trying to put your head down and persevere and get through the week to the next Sunday? Or in the midst of that dry and arid place of adversity, are you also there seeking to have a real an expanding and varied original acquaintance with God, an experience of God in his ways.
As you walk through those valleys that the Lord has you traversing through, making every day, as the psalmist says here, away from corporate worship, turning every one of those into an Oasis, because of your own personal worship with God. And as we are in those dry and arid places, trials and adversities, they really do drive us to God, do they not? They create new paths in our hearts to Zion. They teach us God’s ways.
But I fear for the many of us who have little adversity, those with whom most of their life is characterized with ease, which I think is really a lot of us, myself included most of the time. The danger is that the monotony of life and the lack of trials to press us to have those kind of experiences with God, to turn to him, to love him and rely on him. Because of our ease, this often creates a coldness of the things of God, a dryness of the Spirit, a distance from God.
We’re not traveling on those highways in our heart to God to love him, to experience him in private worship. John Bunyan writes of some of these, you know, maybe we could say valleys in his own life. He writes about his own experience in his book Abounding Grace. But he writes this and I quote, “I have sometimes seen more in a line of the Bible than I could well tell of how to stand under it.” That is, he’s being refreshed by so much he can’t even stand up under it.
And he goes on and says, “And yet at another time the whole Bible hath seen to me as dry as a stick, or rather, my heart hath been so dead and dry unto it, that I could not conceive the least Dracoma, the least little bit of refreshment, though I have looked for it all over. End Quote.
When we aren’t travelling the highways in our heart to Zion regularly. When we aren’t turning just the day-to-day life of traversing through the arid land of adversity, we can begin to become complacent and distant to God. Our love for him can grow stale. We find no refreshment when we go to him.
Beloved, we need to be instructed by this Psalmist. His love is affection for God. And if you’re not there, which we’ve all been there, we need to beg the Lord to renew a steadfast love within us. We need to retread those paths in our hearts to God’s presence. We need to regularly run to him in our personal devotion, seeking him, loving him. We need to beg him to, stoke in us a love for him that we once had. When we do this, we can turn every day into an Oasis when we tread those paths through our hearts to his presence.
We don’t just wait and hope one day again we feel that way. Or even just waiting throughout the week to gather again to feel that here, we have to tread those paths every day. And yet particularly for those who are in the midst of trials, who feel that they are, when am I going to get back to that? When am I going to get there? We have the great promise at the end of verse 7, “Each one of them appears before God in Zion.” That’s an imperfect in the Hebrew, we might say each one of them will appear before God in Zion.
He prayed to God because God is a sun. He is the source of light and life and joy. He’s a shield.” Bret Hastings
Those whose hearts are in Zion, in their heart they are on their way to Zion. And it is those who have this promise that they will appear before God in Zion. This term Zion, it’s used by biblical writers in a variety of ways. Many of the psalmist used it to refer to the temple built by Solomon. It was used to refer to the entire nation. It could stand for the capital of the nation in Judah. But the most common usage of this word, Zion, referred to the city of God and in particular the city of God in the new age.
The hope we have that while we may be traversing even deep, deep trials in this life, separated from God’s people, maybe physically, metaphorically, we have this promise that regardless of what happens in this life, that we will appear before him in Zion. The psalmist trusted the Lord to bring him home through his adversity. And whether or not the Lord delivers us through the adversity that we’re in, in this life, we know, as David said in Psalm 23, we sung about it earlier, that he withholds no good thing from us.
He will deliver us ultimately, one day. We will dwell in the House of Yahweh forever. Whether we make it through the adversity of this life or not. We have this hope, one day we’re going to stand in the presence; we’re going to feel this way that this psalmist feels here for the rest of eternity. We’re going to have this kind of love for God, even though it waxes and wanes in this life, we’ll feel it perfectly in eternity to an even greater degree than this psalmist writes here.
We have that hope. So press on, beloved, through this life, but don’t just put your head down and try to get through. Turn every day into an Oasis through your own personal worship and gathering together for times of corporate worship. And that brings us to our third point: the blessing of trusting God. We’ve seen the blessing of tabernacling with God, or those who get to dwell near to God, gather together for corporate worship. We’ve seen the blessing of those who are traversing to God, trying to work out their private worship of God.
And now those who are trusting in God point three, look at verses 8 to 12. Again, “O Yahweh God of hosts, hear my prayer; Give ear, O God of Jacob! See our shield, O God, And look upon the face of Your anointed. For better is a day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would choose to stand at the threshold of the house of my God Than dwell on the tents of wickedness. For Yahweh God is a sun and a shield; Yahweh gives grace and glory; No good thing does He withhold from those who walk blamelessly. O Yahweh of hosts, How blessed is the man who trusts in You!”
This section, like the first, ends with the blessedness. The blessedness here is of the one who trusts in God. So whether you are dwelling in God’s house, you’re experiencing the joys of corporate worship, or whether you’re anywhere in between there, in the desert of affliction on your way ultimately to Zion, in the end; whether that affliction is light or it’s heavy, blessed is the person who trusts in God. You stand in the position of divine, enviable favor with God. No matter your life circumstances, if you trust in God, you are blessed.
If we trust in the Lord, our life circumstances matter not in the grand scheme of things and this is because of what he just declared. One day we’re all going to appear before God in Zion. So I want to just zoom out, look at the text of Psalm 84 and make an observation, here. The psalmist, he’s taken us from the heights at the beginning, the heights of his love for God, down in the middle section, down into the Valley of Baca, but here he’s trying to bring us back up, rise back up to the glorious heights, and remind us that no matter where we are, if we trust in Yahweh of hosts, we are blessed.
And one of the primary indicators as to whether we are blessed, whether we trust him, is whether or not we go to him in prayer. The one who trusts in him prays to him. “O Yahweh, God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob.” There’s an, A B B A pattern, here in this verse. That is, the beginning corresponds with the end, and the middle portions correspond with one another. So “O Yahweh of hosts, O God of Jacob,” their bookends, and then the center is his prayer. “Hear my prayer, give ear.”
Again Yahweh of hosts, this divine name recognizes God’s status as king of the universe. This one also, we’re reminded from earlier, intervenes in the world to bring about his will and the salvation of his people, that’s why this psalmist is invoking this name. He wants to see, they need salvation. They are in the wilderness fleeing Absalom. All of them are expecting to die. And if it wasn’t for God’s divine intervention, they would have. So he says, “Hear my prayer, give ear, O God of Jacob.”
So he’s also invoking the name of the God of Jacob, indicating that this is the eternal and living God. He’s the covenant God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who’s going to be faithful to his people, that is this living and eternal and sovereign one, that the psalmist prays to in his time of affliction. But in all of this, he’s reminding himself of who God is, for his own heart to be buoyed up, to go from strength to strength.
And what’s quite remarkable about this prayer is the brevity of it. In verse 9 alone, he says, “See our shield, O God, and look upon the face of your anointed.” See and look, those are the two imperatives here which are urgent requests made to God. This is his very concise prayer, but it builds on the urgency and the intensification when it says, see and then look.
Look is a intensified form of it. It’s to look intently at something. See our shield, look upon the face of your anointed, which almost every commentator, I read, said this is talking about David, not the messianic figure, the divine Messiah, but David. David’s in trouble. David the anointed king needs deliverance and if this was, as I think it was, when they were on the run from Absalom, and this Korhite psalmist, this gatekeeper, he’s with David.
He sees David as the human shield, the human protector of the nation, and he prays intently for his king; his anointed king is in distress. And while he, the psalmist, is also obviously in distress, because we read it in the Psalm, in the valley of Baca and affliction, longing to go back. Such a one, he sees as king there as well. And what I find remarkable is that his petition is not, first and foremost, for God to bring him back.
I mean, we sense throughout this entire Psalm his longing to go back, but that’s not his first request. His first request is for the king. The King’s also been detained from the house of God. He knows how much David also loves God and how much he’s distressed by being away. He also knows that his life is bound up with the king and even if he were to return, if the king didn’t, it wasn’t going to be the same place.
He knows that a return to the house of God under the leadership of Absalom, well, that wasn’t going to be the kind of worship he enjoyed with somebody like that in charge. So the psalmist, he knows the situation that they’re all in and he knows if God would just look upon his anointed David, he knows God’s going to do exactly what he needs to do. So his prayer is concise, it’s short. He just says, God, look upon the face of your anointed with favor.
That’s his prayer, but then he gives a couple reasons why he prays this. The first is very personal. He is not indifferent to his own desires, his own needs, but he just puts the kings first. One of the reasons he says that he prays is verse 10. Look at verse 10, “For better is a day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.” He says, “I would choose to stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.”
Be reminded this is one of the gatekeepers who has probably moved all around, stationed to different places within the temple court. He so longed to return to those courts, he longed just to spend one more day there rather than a thousand elsewhere and not just a day in the court, over a thousand in the desert of affliction where he was. I mean, that would be obvious to anybody.
Anybody would rather go there than be in the desert, but he’d rather spend a day there than anywhere else. He’d rather spend one day back in corporate worship than a thousand anywhere else. Is that true of you, beloved? Is that true of us? Would we rather spend one day at church than if we had a thousand anywhere else doing everything else that we like to do? And he goes even further than that and he said, “I would choose to stand at the threshold of the house than dwell in the tents of wickedness.”
He says, basically, if, if even I could just stand outside the door and listen in to what was happening, that’s even better than being anywhere else, even in the lap of luxury and wickedness. I’d rather be standing outside the front door at the threshold, just catching a little bit of what’s happening inside. Do we, beloved, treasure corporate worship like that? So the, the psalmist, he prayed for God to look upon the king with favor because he knew his life was tied up with the kings.
And he desperately wanted all the people, all the faithful people who fled with David to return to the house, because he knew it wouldn’t be the same if he went back by himself. But he also gives another reason for his prayer in verse 11. He says, “For Yahweh, God is a sun and a shield. Yahweh gives grace and glory. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk blamelessly.”
He prayed to God because God is a sun. He is the source of light and life and joy. He’s a shield. He’s the divine protector of the nation and the divine protector of his own glory. It is God alone who gives grace which is a help in time of need and these they were in desperate need and beyond physical deliverance. They needed grace for their souls not to faint and grow weary. But he knew that this Yahweh is the only source of such grace. Yahweh was the only one that was going to be able to help them.
Even though David was the greatest king they had had, he knew that this was in God’s hands. So he goes to him. Yahweh gives glory. Absalom had taken the throne by deception, by wickedness and this psalmist knows that it is God who gives, and it is God who takes away. God will lift up and give glory to whom he wills. And so he’s asking the Lord to do that for his anointed.
Then the psalmist knows that there is no good thing that God withholds from those who walk blamelessly. He has David in mind. He knows David’s walked blamelessly before God. So as we draw this to a close, whatever we’re going through, this is a blessed truth. He withholds no grace. He withholds no mercy. He withholds no patience. He withholds no good things from you, even when you are in a deep, deep trial, even when you’re separated from God’s people and when you are in a place like that, cry out to him in prayer, as this psalmist does.
Trust him to carry you through the trial, not just to put your head down and go through it, but to go from strength to strength. Have your soul lifted up as you worship God and are strengthened in your relationship with him. This is why the psalmist can declare blessed is the man who trusts in God. Doesn’t matter our circumstances. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in our life. Doesn’t matter how good we have it or how bad we have it. Blessed is the one who trusts in God. Do you trust in Him, beloved?
In conclusion, we might just turn these three points of blessing into three application points. So first, blessed is the one who dwells in God’s house, tabernacles with God. The imperative might be love God’s house, love corporate worship, love church, love to be a part of the service to make corporate worship happen. Love it even if you are a gatekeeper or someone who just gets the snippets of what’s happening, because you are serving in order that everyone else might be able to partake of corporate worship.
Loving it means sometimes you serve to let others be the ones who are closely attending. And if you don’t have that kind of love, ask God to give it to you. Ask him to stoke those flames in your heart. Maybe there’s sin that needs to be repented of that’s keeping you from drawing near and loving him.
Second, blessed is the man in whose hearts are highways to heaven. Don’t be content passively waiting to return to corporate worship. Let your heart be filled with personal worship and devotion to God while you are detained from corporate worship. Don’t be content in the dry and arid afflictions of life apart from worship, but cut new roads to Zion in your heart, to worship him all the time. Turn those times away from corporate worship and separation of God’s people into an Oasis by travelling to worship God in your heart.
And thirdly, blessed is the man who trusts in you. Trust God no matter what your life circumstances are, and express this trust by running to him in prayer. And if this is not you, if you don’t feel the same way this psalmist feels, run to him in prayer and ask him to do this work in you and pray for, as he prayed for his anointed, you, also, pray for your leaders. It’s our job to help stoke these things in you. It’s our job to make sure that we have a real acquaintance with God, that we might present that before you, to stoke these feelings in you, to help you experience God as you should through proper worship.
So pray for your leaders. Your life is bound up in ours. Trust God. Pray to him as he is the source of life and light and joy. He is your protector. And pray to him because he alone gives you the grace that you need to traverse this life. And when we seek to live this way, beloved, he will withhold no good thing from us. Let’s pray.
Father, we have all gone through times of complacency towards you. This has not been our heart’s desire. This has not been the deep, deep affection for you. We have not always had. But I pray, Lord, that you would stoke in all of us this kind of desire and love for you, that we would experience you, as this psalmist did, that we would love you, as this psalmist loves you. And for many, maybe it’s just a coldness that is set in the mundane things of life. Maybe for some, they have fallen in love with the world.
We pray, Lord, for a return to this kind of love for you, a love for the gathering of corporate worship, a love for turning to you every day; in between those things, to worship you privately and for some they have never had this kind of experience. They have never known this kind of love. We pray Lord, that you might open their ears to hear, their hearts to see, to love you for the first time. We pray that they would repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice, that they might have these feelings today, Lord, and for all the rest, that we would walk out longing only to return again. And every time in between pursuing you to have a real and growing acquaintance with you, Lord. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.