Title: Desiring God
Scripture: Psalm 84
Speaker: Nate Pickowicz
Well, in 1986, Minneapolis pastor John Piper released his book Desiring God, a manifesto for something that he referred to as Christian hedonism. Borrowing a line from the Westminster Catechism, Piper argued that the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever. Before too long, the book became an international bestseller, and it served to launch Piper's ministry aptly titled Desiring God.
But the book was not without its detractors. For many, the idea of Christian hedonism was just too much, that they argued that our personal happiness should not be our ultimate focus, it really should be for the glory of God. But that isn't what Piper was saying.
Rather, he was seeking to tap into the Christian impulse that desires to draw near to God and find our joy in Him alone. He writes, joy is not a mere option alongside worship, it is an essential component. He adds, God is not worshiped where He is not treasured and enjoyed.
And that's the root issue. Our ultimate treasure, our ultimate longing, desire, and joy should not and cannot be found anywhere else, and all too many people try. It is only ultimately found in the loving arms of our precious Lord.
Of course, the idea is not new to John Piper. In fact, it was embedded in the heart of every earnest worshiper since the beginning of time. And we find such a longing in our text this morning, and so I would invite you to turn in your copy of Scripture to Psalm 84, Psalm 84.
Now we don't know who wrote this Psalm or when it was written, but we know from the superscription at the beginning of the Psalm, and most of your Bibles or all of your Bibles hopefully will have this recorded here, at the beginning of Psalm 84, we have directions that are original to the text. It says, for the choir director on the githith, a psalm of the sons of Korah. And so we know this was written for the choir director.
This is the ancient worship leader, so there would be a leader in the congregation that would be bringing this forward. It was to be accompanied by something called the githith. We don't know exactly what this is, but we surmise that it was a musical instrument, possibly a stringed instrument.
And then it was also written to be sung by the sons of Korah, which was a musical guild of temple singers. And so that was the original context here. But as the singers would have stood and opened their mouths and cried forth with a deep longing, this was their cry.
And again, it is the cry of every worshiper. Well, in your house, they are ever praising you, Selah. How blessed is the man whose strength is in you and whose heart are the highways to Zion passing through the valley of Baca.
They make it a spring. The early rain also covers it with blessings. They go from strength to strength.
Every one of them appears before God in Zion. O Lord, God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob, Selah.
Behold our shield, O God, and look upon the face of your anointed. For a day in your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
For the Lord God is a sun and a shield. The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.
O Lord of hosts, how blessed is the man who trusts in you. Now, many scholars have found different ways to outline this psalm. There are obviously two natural divisions that come in verse 4 and verse 8 with the word Selah included.
And each time we see the word Selah, again, we don't know exactly what this word is in terms of the translation. But many have regarded this as some sort of a pause or a meditation, something to note that you're supposed to stop and ponder the words that are being spoken. And so that's what divides up this psalm.
And so these two pauses here create three stanzas in the psalm, three specific movements of the psalm. The first stanza comes in verses 1 through 4 and describes the worshiper's passion for the house of the Lord. The second stanza occurs in verses 5 through 8 and presents the worshiper's passage to the house of the Lord.
And then finally, verses 9 through 12 portray the worshiper's praise in the house of the Lord. So very similar themes as we move through here. But all of this conveys a sense of deep longing for God, an earnest desire to be in His presence.
And again, this is a desire that all of us as believers share. I know that I certainly possess that desire and I trust that all of you do as well. And so first we encounter the psalmist's passion for the house of the Lord.
Look again at these verses with me, verses 1 and 2. The psalmist says, How lovely are your dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. In the Old Testament times, even before the days of Jesus, the Jewish believers, they would make their three annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem to worship at the temple.
This is something every Jew in Israel did. They would pilgrimage to the temple. And throughout the course of all of Jewish history, these were the dwelling places of God in the temple.
And these dwelling places were the most sacred places. First we see that the sacred place within the tabernacle, the tent that was set up as they were wandering through the wilderness, but even after they were established as a nation, they would travel, they would pilgrimage to the temple and that dwelling place or those places inside the temple, that would have been sacred. Now we know that God is not consigned to one place.
We know that He is spirit. He is omnipresent. And yet for the sake of accommodating humanity's needs, God assigned and designated an earthly place where He would sort of dwell with His people.
They would go to this specific place and He would meet them there. That's essentially what we do here as a church. We know that God doesn't live inside of the walls here.
God is not contained in the space of our worship space here. But we understand that when we gather together and we're worshiping God, there is a sense in which we feel God's presence here with us. We know He's everywhere with us, everywhere we go, but there is an identifiable location to the worship place where we encounter our time, our communion with God.
And so again, God doesn't need a place to dwell, but He knows that it would illustrate to us and it illustrated to the people of Israel these very basic principles of communion and intimacy with God and even holiness, a place that is set apart to worship Him. And so that's what the worshiper declares in verse one, how lovely, how lovely are your dwelling places, O Lord of hosts. This is the first of four references to the physical aspects of the temple in this Psalm.
The first one simply refers to the dwelling places. The dwelling places here in verse one. Verse two mentions the courts of the temple.
There were four courts in the temple designated as various worship spaces for various peoples. We also read about the altars in verse three and then a reference to just generally the house in verse four. So we're meant to see this building place in the Psalm.
Once again, the Lord doesn't specifically dwell in these places more than other places, but the temple is symbolic of the presence of the Lord. This church building is symbolic of the presence of the Lord, even though the true temple is us. The Lord resides within us as believers.
But here we see that the presence of the Lord is associated with the temple, which is why the worshiper considers all of these places to be lovely. Again, not because of the architecture or the design of the building itself, but rather it's lovely because God is there. Lord, anywhere you are is lovely to me.
And what is the name that is used here? We know this name Yahweh Sebaoth. Yahweh is the personal name for God. Some people render this Jehovah.
The old version of this word is Jehovah. But it's the name that's uttered to Moses in Exodus chapter three when Moses asked, Lord, what do I call you? What's your name? He says, I am who I am. This name speaks of the self-designation, the self-existence, the uniqueness of God.
He doesn't need to be named differently than some other deity. There's only one. He is who he is.
And so, therefore, he says, I am who I am. And so the name of the I am, that is Yahweh. Again, not the generic name for God, but a precious and personal name, a covenant name for God, the name Yahweh.
And then attached to his name is a designation, Sebaoth originally, which literally conveys the idea that the Lord is the Lord God of all the hosts or all the armies of heaven. The hosts of heaven are the angelic armies that reside there. In this name, Lord of hosts, Yahweh Sebaoth, Lord of hosts, is repeated in this psalm in verses one, three, eight, and twelve.
It punctuates this psalm here. And it conveys a sense of God's power. It conveys a sense of God's might that he is in control of all the armies of all the heavenly realms.
He is the sole general over thousands upon thousands of angelic warriors which can be dispatched at any time. God possesses all power, all authority, all might and strength over all the hosts of heaven. And we think about this even in the time of Hezekiah when the Lord dispatched one angel to dispense with the entire Assyrian army of 185,000 human soldiers.
That's just one angel. The Lord is in control of a heavenly host, a multitude of angels. What kind of power and authority and might does he wield? And so we understand that this designation, Lord of hosts, this has also been translated or interpreted as God Almighty.
God Almighty. The one who has complete power over everything in creation. And this is going to become very important as we consider what is said later on in the psalm.
This is the God whom the worshiper desires to commune with. And so he expresses it in verse two. He says, My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the Lord.
My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. We see here these two words express the sense of ache in the soul. I know you've experienced this yourselves before.
A longing, a yearning here. A longing is a sense of pining away. Pining away, yearning is sometimes translated fainting.
We read about this in Psalm 42, as the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God. He says, David says in Psalm 42, my soul thirsts for God, for the living God. Then he says, when shall I come and appear before God? There's a sense of thirst, of longing.
It's Lord, my desire is so strong for you, I could taste it. It's like I'm parched. I want to be near you.
That's the sense of this. There's a deep longing and a yearning to be close to God. And we know, again, as believers, all of us have a sense of this, don't we? That's something that marks out the heart of a Christian, someone who desires to know God and be near Him.
It's a soul that's dying of thirst, and God is the living water. For the Jewish worshiper, that longing was satisfied, they would go to the temple. That was their longing.
I want to go. David, when he was far off, he was longing, Lord, I just want to go and be in the temple and worship you. Even Jonah, when he's entombed in the belly of the whale, he's underwater, he has this desire to go and worship God at temple.
I want to be close to you, Lord. I'm far away, I want to go back to you. That's the sense of it.
And they would go, and they would appear in the courts, and they would make sacrifice for sins, they would offer praise, and that's what he says next. He says, my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. That's what we do when we gather together as worshipers.
We sing for joy. We contemplate deep truths, we express longing, sometimes we weep. We weep for sadness, we weep for joy, we sing out to God.
That's a common experience of all worshipers, is that we sing for joy, sing for praise. This isn't a matter of mouthing empty prayers or droning on in passionless songs. That's not worship.
It's when everything in you, your heart and your flesh, cry out to God in song. David expresses this again in Psalm 27.4. He says, one thing I have asked from my Lord, that I shall seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. And then he says, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to meditate in his temple.
Lord, I want to behold your beauty. I want to see your splendid glory. That's the heart of a worshiper, someone who longs to see God.
I want to see how lovely you are, O Lord. That's David's desire. And then he says in verse 3, the bird, it's interesting, he goes right to nature here.
The bird also has found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even your altars, O Lord of hosts. Here we almost detect a hint of jealousy, jealousy, because the psalmist is considering the birds who live in the eaves of the temple. See, the worshipers, the Jews, they had to make these long pilgrimages.
They had to travel miles and miles, and the pilgrimage was difficult. There were many times when they would be injured along the way, or sometimes there's robbers along the roads, or sometimes the weather was bad, or maybe they were sick. They're making these elongated pilgrimages to the temple, and then the psalmist says, but the birds, they just show up.
They just fly to the temple, and they can nest inside the eaves in the temple. Even they have a home there. They can travel there whenever they want.
They can build their nest in the temple, and they can be near you anytime they want. Even the birds. But there's something else going on here that's significant.
Even the insignificance of the creatures themselves. The birds, even the swallows, they're able even to find rest in the presence of the Lord. In fact, birds are oftentimes used in Scripture to make spiritual illustrations.
Even when Jesus talks about this in Matthew 6, He's talking to disciples. He talks to them about worry and anxiety. We know the passage where He talks about not being anxious for your life, what you're going to put on, what you're going to eat, what you're going to drink.
He says, don't worry about your life. Don't be anxious about your life. And what is the illustration He uses to point to that truth? He says, consider the birds.
So, beloved, when you're stressed out, when you're worried about things, think about the birds. Does a bird ever see a stressed out pigeon? I've never seen a stressed out pigeon, because they don't worry about anything. They just do whatever they're going to do.
And that's the idea here. Even the birds are able to be fed. Because here's the thing.
If God is able to feed and care for the birds of the air, which are insignificant, nobody cares about birds. And yet, if God is able to care for them, He is far much more able to care for you and I. He cares for us. And so, likewise, if the birds can feel comfortable making a nest that is secure, so secure, He says, that they can even lay their young.
They can build a nest there, and they can entrust the God of the temple with their eggs. They can make a nest there where they can lay their young. And certainly, we can find safety in the presence of the Lord of hosts, even, He says, in the presence of the altars, O Lord.
This safety, this security, and the solace in His presence to which the psalmist addresses the Lord in the most personal way, what does he call God? He says, My King and My God. This is so personal, so intimate. Yes, He is the King of creation.
He is the God of all. But He's my King. He's my God.
So whether it's the birds of the air or the people of God, He writes in verse 4, how blessed are those who dwell in your house. They are ever praising you. There is joy.
There is gladness for those who abide in the presence of God, who dwell in His house together. It's a place of continual praise. And so we read of this passion here for the Lord's house, and this brings us then after we consider the Selah, where we're stopping and we're pondering and we're meditating.
After we stop and ponder, it brings us now to the second stanza of the psalm. We see the passage to the house of the Lord. So they're longing, their passion is to be there.
How do we get there? That's what we're going next here. Scholars have seen Psalm 84 as a pilgrim song as they traveled to Jerusalem for the different festivals. It's possible that they would have recited or even sang this psalm along the way.
Now whether or not it was actually the travelers on the way to Jerusalem or even just the believers who are longing for the temple, verse 5, it expresses the heart, the desire of the heart to make this pilgrimage to the city of God, to Zion. And so we read here in verse 5, how blessed is the man whose strength is in you and whose heart are the highways to Zion. So oftentimes I believe that Christians on the journey, we can grow weak, we grow weary, we become distressed, we become dispirited along the way.
Even the Jewish pilgrims, they faced the same dangers along the road and they reminded themselves that their strength was not to be found in themselves. Their strength was in the Lord. And we understand this truth even for ourselves.
Beloved, your strength is not inside of you. Maybe we're convinced because we're Americans, we're convinced that our strength is found, it resides in us, but as believers, as Christians, we know I have nothing in myself. I have no inherent strength for life.
Even for us today, we're exhorted in Ephesians 6, 10, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might to put on the full armor of God. Strength, believers, strength comes from God. If it's up to me, I have no strength.
And just to confess to you, there are days, there are weeks where I feel like I don't have it. I don't have any strength. I have nothing.
And there are times when you experience that too. When you're just out of gas, you have nothing left. No strength, no energy, no vigilance, no anything.
You're just empty. But here's the thing. There is a blessing in knowing that your strength, our strength, is in the Lord of hosts, in the Lord God Almighty.
That's why we talked about this before. That's why this is so important. It's not that David or the psalmist is just putting in some random name for God.
No, the only way we're going to find strength is if we put our hope and our trust in the one who possesses all strength, the Lord of armies, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of God Almighty. And so as we walk along the way, the one who is blessed, who has in their heart the highway to Zion, that's where they're finding strength for the journey. They've set their heart on this.
And the phrase here is interesting. And if you have different translations of the scriptures here, NIV, ESV, CSB, whatever your translation is, I'm using the New American Standard. That's the one that we seem to fit best here.
But there's lots of phrasing of this verse in the original. The highways on the road to Zion, to Jerusalem, they were often, they were regarded, they were raised public highways. They were maintained.
They were built up. But the question is, well, how do you possess in your heart the highway to Zion? That's where the grammar, the language is a little bit funny for us. Old Testament scholar Ross Allen believes that to say that the highways are in their heart was to say that the journey was on their mind.
That they were intent on making the journey. And so it's almost as if they had sat down and they said, I've set my heart on going to the temple. And so they map it out in their mind.
They don't have GPS back then. So they would have said, okay, we're going to go down this road. And then at this city, we're going to go this way.
We're going to travel here, here, here. Watch out for this. And we're going to get to Jerusalem, to Zion, and we're going to worship.
And so they had set their heart on that journey. And the journey for them symbolized here, this traveling to the place of worship. And so they were determined and they were desiring to go to worship God in the temple.
And the Apostle Paul even says something similar about this kind of pilgrimage in the Christian life too. And we experience the same thing. Maybe we're not going to Jerusalem.
Some of you have been to Jerusalem, but we don't all go to Jerusalem for pilgrimage. But what does Paul say in Philippians 3.12? He says, I press on in order that I may lay hold of that which was also laid hold of by Jesus Christ. He says, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
What's Paul saying? He's not saying I'm going to Jerusalem. Paul had been to Jerusalem a million times, but that's not what Paul's focusing on. His journey, our journey is this upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
I want to march closer and closer till I see him. The goal isn't a place. The goal is a person.
I want to get closer to this relationship, to this experience of knowing Christ even more. And so we're marching on. We're pressing forward toward heaven.
And yet we understand that as we're pressing in toward this ultimate goal of reaching this place of worship of the Lord, we know that there are sorrows along the way. Verse 6, passing through the valley of Baca, they make it a spring. The early rain also covers it with blessings.
Now this is interesting. This is interesting. Another one of those verses that different translators sort of play with here.
The psalmist describes passing through the valley of Baca. It's interesting, however, is that scholars can't find a location in ancient Israel called the valley of Baca. That's led many of them to believe that this is actually not a geographical place at all.
Some have noted this word Baca is very similar to the Hebrew word for weeping, for weeping. And so they surmise that the valley of Baca, or valley of weeping, is not a physical place, but rather it's an emotional place, a spiritual place. And we're familiar with this kind of thing.
We know Psalm 23. I'm sure you have Psalm 23 committed to memory. But verse 4 talks about when David is describing this place where he says, I'm passing through the valley of the shadow of death.
You can't go to Israel and find on the map the valley of the shadow of death, right? It's not a geographical location. What's being described here, it's a place of emotional and spiritual darkness. It's a place where you're besieged on every side by enemies and by sadness.
You find yourself stuck at the bottom of this valley, this pit, and you're just filled with tears and weeping. And I trust and I know the experience that you have all experienced this along with myself. We've all been through seasons and times like this.
Maybe if you're younger, you have not yet been through a season of this kind of sadness, the valley of the shadow of death, the valley of weeping, the valley of mourning. The older you get, the more times you do experience that. And some of you are experiencing that even right now.
This valley of the shadow of death, of deepest darkness. And I'll tell you, it's in those times, when you're in these valleys, when you're in these pits, in these ruts in the road, those are the times that you long and you yearn for the courts of the Lord. You long for the comfort of His presence.
I know I've sat with many of you in the hospital. I've sat with many of you in your homes, been on the phone with you when you've been hurting. And there's just this deep longing.
I just want to be free from this. And we know as in our spiritual intelligence here, that this is not going to happen in this life. I'm never going to know ultimate peace.
I'm never going to be free from sorrow, free from adversity, free from sickness, free from death, free from turmoil. I'm not going to be free from all of this until I reach glory. But there's a sense in which I want this now.
I want to experience, Lord, freedom from this valley of death, this valley of weeping. But there's something going on here. He says that as they pass through the valley of baka, the valley of tears and weeping, something else begins to happen.
He says they begin to make that valley into a spring. Well, how do you do that? Well, again, the language in the original is somewhat ambiguous, but it seems to convey the sense that as they begin to weep these tears, the tears begin to produce for them a spring. As the tears fall from their eyes and land on the ground, eventually this flood of tears begins to become this pool, this refreshing spring.
It's kind of a unique thing. And adding to that their tears becoming this spring, God Himself begins to send the rain because we read here the autumn rain, which we know comes from God, the autumn rain also covers it with blessings. This is remarkable.
What's going on here? They're descending into this valley of the shadow of death. They're descending into the valley of tears and weeping, a place where they're bruised and they're hurting, a place when they feel lost and alone. They're in agony and the sorrow and the tears are turned somehow into hope and even rejoicing when they realize that they're not alone, that God is with them and He's ministering to them in their time of need.
And that's what He does. When you're at your lowest point and you confide in the Lord, He ministers comfort to you. When you're at a place of turmoil and you don't turn to Him, then you suffer alone and you're left alone to your thoughts and to the terrors of your own mind.
But when you're in this place of weeping and mourning and shadow and darkness and you confide in the Lord and you give Him your heart and you trust in Him and you rest in Him, He comforts you and He ministers His truth to you and He protects you and He even carries you. He carries you and He can do so, verse 5, because He is the strength. He is our strength.
And suddenly these worshipers who are stuck in the valley of baka, the valley of weeping, they find themselves moving again. Have you ever experienced that before? I trust that some of you have. Where you have this place where you're in a crisis or you're in a trial and you feel like you're totally incapable of living.
I've talked to people who just are destroyed by something that happens in their life. I know many of you have experienced this or talked to other people who've experienced this as well when they just are destroyed and they're incapable of moving forward and they say things like, I don't know how I'm going to get through this. I don't know what I'm going to do.
I don't know how I'm going to get out of this. And then in the midst of all of that, they confide in the Lord, they lean on the Lord and all of a sudden, you find yourself moving forward. I've talked to people after they've lost a loved one, a spouse, even a child, and they've said things to me like, I don't know how I'm living right now, but somehow God is getting me through.
In the tears, God is providing blessings. In the weakness, He is the strength. Which brings us to verse 7. They go from strength to strength.
Every one of them appears before God and Zion. See, God doesn't drag us through life one weakness at a time. It feels like that experientially, doesn't it? We don't go from weakness to weakness, otherwise we wouldn't survive.
And yet we know that we're weak, don't we? I know I am. I'm very weak as a person deep down inside. That's what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12, in the midst of a debilitating sickness, he's calling out to God, Lord, take all this away.
You've prayed those prayers before, Lord, just take this away from me. I don't want to deal with this anymore. And what does the Lord say to him? My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.
Power is perfected in weakness. What does that mean? Does that mean that somehow in being weak, I have built myself up in my own strength? No. It means that when you are weak, God is shown to be strong.
God is strong in your weakness. Because when you're weak, you know that whatever is happening in your life is not coming from you. That's how pride messes with you.
When you're carrying yourself along, well, I'm just going to do the best I can, and you keep on going in your own strength, it's all about you. But when you're destroyed, and you're moving along, your confession at that point is, the Lord is sustaining me. The Lord is carrying me along.
The Lord is giving me strength. It's not from me. And I'll tell you, this is encouraging.
This is encouraging to Paul, because he realized he didn't have to be strong. You and I don't have to be strong. We don't have to pull ourselves up from the bootstraps and say, I'm just going to power through.
No, God is Paul's strength. He is our strength. He is the psalmist's strength.
He is the one who carries us. And God promises to take his people from one strength to another. He says, strength to strength.
He says every one of his people will appear before God in Zion. That's a promise. They will appear before God in Zion.
This is the preservation of the saints. The perseverance of the saints. God, he has a sustaining grace that carries us all the way to the end of our lives and into glory where we will see him.
Believers, you will get to the end. If you're in Christ, you'll make it to the end. And not because you were so strong or so powerful or you were so mighty.
There's no such thing as great Christians. It's an oxymoron. Now, Christians are those who are humble and dependent on God.
He is our life. He is our source of strength. But rather, he makes it so that we will appear before him in glory to worship.
It's such a wonderful promise to us that he will sustain us until the end. And so at this point, we cry out, verse 8, O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob.
God of Jacob is a name that identifies God with his people. It was an Israelite title for God, but it's a personal entreaty. Lord God of hosts, God almighty, God of Jacob, God of our people, hear my prayer.
Give ear to my cry. And he does. He does.
Which brings us to the last stanza of the psalm here. It brings us full circle as the worshipers finally arrive at the destination. And as they're going through the gates, they give praise to the Lord in his house.
Verse 9, behold our shield, O God, and look upon the face of your anointed. We can almost see the congregation arriving in the temple to behold the glory of the Lord within the temple. And yet, they declare, behold our shield, O God.
To behold is to look intently, to gaze. And so gaze at our shield, they cry, and look upon the face of your anointed. Now this is interesting, because yes, they arrive in the temple and they're beholding the sight, but they're entreating God to behold their shield, to behold your anointed.
What's going on here? Because the language seems a little bit funny at the first read. Now in a very real sense, the anointed would have been a king chosen to be over God's people, to lead them. And so in many places in the Bible, we see the king going before even, I mean, King David went and danced in the temple.
He led people. That's what he says in Psalm 42 when he's depressed, he says, I used to go and lead the throng in procession. I would go and I would blaze the trail.
I'd lead God's people to God's house, to God's worship. And so the anointed one was the king. It would have been David.
It would have been Solomon. It would have been Josiah, Hezekiah, whoever the anointed king of Israel would have been at that time. And so at a very real sense, the people were saying, behold our king, Lord, he's going to lead us to you.
Again, that's temporal. That's only one sense of it, because there's a deeper sense going on here as well. There's a deeper meaning to this verse, I believe, because in the grander sense, this word anointed is the word Messiah.
That's what a Messiah means. Messiah means anointed. But the Greek translation of Messiah is Christ.
Christ, Messiah, anointed one. And so again, the immediate reference might have been for one of their kings. The ultimate reference here is to the king of kings, Jesus Christ.
Because truthfully, this isn't the first time we've heard about this anointed one. Even Psalm 2-2 presents both God and His anointed. Again, that's a messianic psalm.
So we understand that this psalm has a messianic flair to it. There's a messianic tone here, because God the Father is beholding the face of His anointed one, the Son, Jesus Christ. And the people refer to this anointed one, and what do they call Him? They call Him their shield.
Their shield. This title gets carried over to verse 11. But the sense of it is this.
They're able to enter the presence of the Lord because they have a shield. A shield, a protector who also brings them into the presence of the Father. Well that's what our Lord is.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is our shield. He shields us from the wrath and the judgment of God. He protects us from anything outside of ourselves.
The sense of it is here that because of our shield, we can enter the presence of the Lord God Almighty. And that's who Christ is. He is the Lord who is our shield.
And they're standing in the midst of His presence and they declare in verse 10, they say here, for a day in your courts is better than a thousand outside. He says, I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. The beauty and the glory of being in the courts of the Lord's temple is to be in His resplendent presence.
That's enough to satisfy the desire of the worshiper. I remember when I was in business, I used to be a financial service representative. I used to sell insurance and investments and all that fun stuff.
And there was one year that I won a trip, a cruise to the Caribbean. And my wife and I went as sort of a late anniversary present. And on that trip, far and away, my favorite place to go on that trip was St. Thomas.
And I remember going to St. Thomas and we spent one day there, one day in St. Thomas. But that one day in St. Thomas was enough to carry me for weeks and for months afterward. I mean, I look back even now and it was probably the most beautiful place I've ever been on planet Earth.
One day on that one island carried me forward. That's just some sand in the middle of water. Here, I want you to imagine spending one day, one day in heaven.
Ponder this. That one day in heaven would be better than a thousand days anywhere else doing anything else. Again, this longing is this, Lord, if I could just be in your presence for one day, if I could just see you for one day, that would be enough to satisfy me for my entire lifetime.
And that's what we see from Asaph in Psalm 73 25, whom have I in heaven but you. And besides you, he says, I desire nothing on earth. I don't want anything else.
Because what's here, what's on earth? Temporary joys, passing pleasures, sin, wickedness, corruption. And that's what we tend to do. We chase the pleasures of the world.
We chase things here and say, if I can just get this, I'll be happy. If I can just attain this, I'll be happy. If I can just get this much money and go to this place and be in this relationship and do this thing and accomplish this status, get this job.
If I could just get something here, I'll be satisfied. But guess what? It doesn't satisfy. Nothing here will ever ultimately satisfy you.
You're always miserable because it's never enough. But what does the psalmist draw as a comparison? He says this way, I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. Notice the contrast here.
Standing at the entrance, the threshold of God's majestic temple versus living or dwelling in the tents of wickedness. Some interpreters have seen this as standing in the threshold. That's referring to the doorkeeper.
There was someone who worked in the temple called the doorkeeper. Essentially, they were the janitor. They took care of all the cleaning and taking care of the building, the temple grounds.
And so the juxtaposition is this, I would rather be a janitor in God's palace than be a sultan living in the tents of the wicked. I'd rather sweep the floors of heaven than reign on the throne of hell. That's the same thing in Philippians 3. Paul says out of all the worldly success, all his fleshly attainments, all of his human achievements, Paul says in Philippians 3, all of this I've counted as loss, as rubbish.
My human accomplishments are trash. The Greek word is skubalon. I won't translate it for you.
It's dung, worse than dung. He says everything I have is dung, it's garbage, it's refuse in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Everything else I have in my life is nothing compared to having Him.
Paul's saying I'd rather lose everything in this life and become a janitor in heaven and know Christ than retain a profitable life here and miss Him completely. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and then loses his soul? You have nothing but a couple decades of selfish fun. That's all you have.
It doesn't profit you anything. I'd rather dwell for one day. If I could just be with you for a day Lord, that would be enough for me.
I just want to see you. That's the sense of it. Verse 11, for the Lord God is a sun and shield.
The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. Again the psalmist likens the Lord to a shield, but also he likens Him to the sun.
In scripture, the sun is a symbol of life and light and energy and joy. Even Malachi 4.2 says the sun of righteousness. He's seen as the vibrant and restorative providing healing in His wings.
The shield, as we saw, symbolizes the strength of God and His protection. And so in light of the two, we see that the Lord gives grace and glory. Again, grace is the unmerited favor of God, while glory is the expression of His beautiful presence.
So for those who belong to Him, we read that no good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. Ephesians 1.3 says the believers are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. See the Christian life is a life, I think that some people think, is only full of laws and rules and drudgery, where God is sort of this cosmic killjoy.
I can't do anything fun, I just have to go to church and just read a book all the time and just pray. They just see it as just a list of things to do, and then the real fun's out there. But here's the thing, that's Satan's lie.
Satan's lie is that God is keeping you from good things in this life. That's what Satan tells us all the time. It's a commonly believed myth, but that's what it is.
It is a myth. The Puritan Thomas Brooks says that sin always presents the bait and hides the hook. You never really see what's going to ensnare you, you only see the good parts.
Oh, this will be great, this will be fun. And you don't know that it's going to kill you. The allure is that this is going to be better, that I'm going to go dwell with the fun people without realizing it's only a tent of wickedness.
Somehow that our greatest pleasures are going to be satisfied if I go dwell in the tents of the unrighteous. What does that tell you? Well, a tent, is that permanent or temporary? Very temporary. It's like walking in, setting up a camping tent and say, this is my permanent, eternal dwelling.
The first storm is going to wipe it out. And so the tents of wickedness is nothing. It's a life of debauchery and immorality and excess and greed and selfishness and godlessness.
In truth, it's a life that's empty. It only leads to sadness and regret, heartache, and ultimately condemnation. But what does the Bible say? For those who walk uprightly, those who walk uprightly following God, worshiping God, obeying His word, God promises not to withhold any good thing.
The Lord tells us, I'm not going to withhold from you. I'm not some stingy father who's going to not give you what you want and need. Now, God does not give us according to our personal desires.
He gives according to His will, but He knows what's better for us. There's been times I prayed for things personally, selfishly, Lord, I really want this. He doesn't give it.
And in the moment, you tend to think, well, why not, Lord? There have been times that maybe months or years later, I'm like, I'm so glad you didn't give that to me. That would have been a train wreck. The Lord knows.
He knows what He's doing. And so just because we pray and ask and He doesn't give us, there's a reason for it. But He promises not to withhold what He deems to be any good thing.
But here's the thing. What is the greatest thing He could ever offer us? What is the greatest good? Romans 8, 31, what shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? Listen to this. He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Again, we think that God is stingy.
We think He's holding out on us. That's what Satan's telling us. You're not getting what you really deserve.
You're not really getting what you want and need. He's stingy. It's a twisted logic.
Well, how do you figure? God took what was most precious to Him, what was most valuable, what was most lovely, His own Son, and He gave Him to us. That's what Paul's saying in Romans 8. If He didn't spare giving us His Son, who would save us and give us life, how could you ever call God stingy? How could you ever say He's withholding good things? It's just not true. In Christ, we have the forgiveness of sins.
We have eternal life. We have the hope of heaven. We have peace with God.
We have the peace of God. We have unity with one another. We have joy.
We have gladness. We have spiritual blessing. And that's what the psalmist lands on.
He says in verse 12, O Lord of hosts, how blessed is the man who trusts in You. How happy are those who trust in You, Lord, because You do give us what we need. Again, the world is temporary.
Heaven is eternal. And yes, while the world does have its joys, there are good things here. It's not all doom and gloom and sadness and debauchery.
There are good things here. There's lots of blessings here. But there's also sorrows.
There's also hardships. There's also tears and weeping. And the longer that we travel as pilgrims here, the more we long for the courts of heaven.
Thankfully, there is coming a day when that longing and that desire of the psalm will find its fulfillment. In fact, we read about this in Revelation chapter 21. This is what's going to happen for us in the future.
John records this vision. He says in Revelation 21, And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no longer any death.
They will no longer be any mourning or crying or pain. The first things have passed away. And He who sits on the throne says, Behold, I am making all things new.
And He said, write for these words are faithful and true. And He said to me, it is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
And I will give to those who thirst from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be His God, and He will be my Son. That's what's coming in our future, beloved.
That's our hope. No more tears. No more valley of weeping.
No more tents of wickedness. Only the Son of Righteousness with grace and glory nailed to His hands. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You that our hearts, our longing, our desire for You is not a longing that will go unsatisfied. This longing in our hearts, this desire to be free from the world, from the flesh, from the tyranny of the enemy, that desire will have its fulfillment, and it has the fulfillment in Christ.
That, oh Lord, You are our shield and our sun. You are our grace. You are the glory that shines on our face.
You are our righteousness and our salvation. You are life itself, and Lord, we love You. But Lord, we're also aware that there are many in this world who don't know You.
And Father, I even know that there are probably people here who don't yet know You. They don't realize that they can have salvation, they can have life in Your name. And Lord, we understand that this life comes through the gospel.
It comes through the recognition, the acknowledgment, the knowledge that Jesus has gone to the cross to pay the penalty for sins. The Son of Righteousness was nailed to a tree and bore the curses and the shame and the condemnation that was deserving of all of us, oh Lord. And yet, Lord Jesus, You took that shame upon Yourself, and You were cursed for us.
And the wrath of God was satisfied on You. You were killed on the cross, You died and You were buried, and You rose again the third day to bring us life. And the Bible tells us if we turn away from our sins, if we turn away from the tents of wickedness and trust in You, that not only will You give us life and life eternal and forgiveness and strength, but You will carry us through this life and into the next life with You.
You are our present hope. And so, Lord, be our shield, be our strength, be our life. We love You.
And we long to see Your face. And we long to be in close fellowship with You. And we long to hear, well done, good and faithful servant.
We know that day is coming. We can't wait to see You. But for now, we praise You, we worship You for who You are and for what You've done in Jesus' name, Amen.