Please do take your Bibles in hand and open with me to Psalm 84. Psalm 84. If you’re using the pew Bible, that will be on page 493. This is the first sermon in our summer sermon series on the Psalms, and we will have several of our pastors sharing this series that will draw from all corners of the Psalter. Now if you’re like me, one of the great joys and comforts in life is when someone speaking to you ends a sentence with the word, “too.” “I’m from Mississippi too.” “I went to that school too.” “I struggled with that too.” It has a way of validating our experience. We are not the only ones who have done something, and so it’s comforting. We are not alone. And that is one of the things that the Psalms do so well for us. They comfort and encourage us so well, because no matter what it is that we are facing, we can find that experience in the Psalms too. The Psalter tells us, “I know the joys of worship too. I’ve walked through the valley of the shadow of death too. I’ve asked God, ‘How long, O Lord?’ too.” My hope is that over the course of this series over the summer, that these psalms will give us more confidence in God’s faithfulness in whatever circumstance it is that we may face. That these psalms will truly become our prayers and our songs.
And this particular psalm, Psalm 84, is exactly that. Its title, if you look down at the superscript, tells us it is a song. But we also see in the psalm that it is a prayer. From the first line we can see the psalmist addressing God directly. “How lovely is your dwelling place.” He’s talking to God. And in verse 8, we see the psalmist pleading for God to hear his prayer. But we also find that the psalmist seems to be speaking about God to others. He goes back and forth between addressing God directly and then speaking about God in the third person. So this is a song and it’s a prayer, but the psalmist is also busy with telling others about God and the blessings of His dwelling place as well.
So as we look at this psalm this evening, we’ll see that the psalm actually divides itself up nicely for us. There are two “selahs” that you see there in the text and they divide this psalm into three, equal, four-verse sections. And beyond having a “selah” to divide them, we also find that each one of those sections includes something of a benediction or a blessing. You see that in verse 4. “Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise.” And then the second blessing we find in the very next verse. “Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.” And then the last of the blessings comes at the very end of the psalm in the last verse. We see it in verse 12. “O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!” And so do you want to have a blessed life? Do you want to have a happy life? This psalm tells us a lot about living a blessed life. And so we’ll look at each of these three sections under these three headings. First, we’ll see the blessings of God’s house in verses 1 to 4. Second, we’ll see the blessings of God’s highway in verses 5 to 8. And third and finally, we’ll see the blessings of God’s help in verses 9 through 12. So the blessing of God’s house, the blessing of God’s highway, and the blessing of God’s help. We’ll turn now to our text. Before we do so, let’s go to the Lord in prayer.
Heavenly Father, we are glad to be in Your house this evening, Lord, and we ask that You would reveal to us what You would have us hear. Lord, we pray that as Your Word is read and preached that the Holy Spirit would be at work in hearts here. Without the Holy Spirit, this is a fruitless task, and so we ask that You would bring forth fruit even this evening. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Psalm 84. Hear now the Word of God:
“To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah.
How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise! Selah
Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion.
O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah
Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed!
For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!”
May God add His blessing to this the reading and hearing of His holy, inerrant and infallible Word. Amen.
Well as we look at the first blessing, the blessing of God’s house, we can say that this is one of the most beautiful and memorable exclamations with which to start a psalm. “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!” What does that line make you think of? Maybe a lovely dwelling place makes you think of a beautiful cabin with a view over a lake or a mountain or on the beach. Maybe it’s a house you have driven by that’s just the perfect example of your favorite type of architecture. Or maybe you hear something lovely with these words, like the beautiful musical setting of these words from part four of Brahms’ German requiem that our choir often sings. It would be right to describe any of those things as lovely. And surely the tabernacle and the temple could be described in the same way. We know that it was the most skilled craftsmen that fashioned each curtain, each decoration, each item of furniture in the tabernacle and the temple. Even Jesus’ disciples, as they walked through Jerusalem with the man that was the fulfillment of everything that the temple was designed to show, they could not help but be distracted by the beauty of the temple. They cried out, “Look, teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” They were captivated by the grandeur of it all. God’s dwelling place was an amazing sight to behold. It surely was a lovely place.
But the psalmist here is getting at something different, a different kind of loveliness. This word for “lovely” is the language of a love poem rather than the loveliness of a home featured in Southern Living magazine that looks like no one could ever possibly live in it! This place that the psalmist is describing is lovely because it is beloved. It is a well-loved dwelling. It’s more like the childhood home that was far from picture perfect but was always home. The place that you always desire to return to. And of course the loveliness of such a place has little to do with the craftsmanship of the house but everything to do with the ones who live in the house and with what happens when you are there. This, what’s being described here as the dwelling place of the Lord of hosts. What happens there is worship. In verse 2, you see the psalmist looking forward to being there again. His soul longs, yes faints. His heart and flesh sing, it says. Every part of him wants to be worshiping in God’s dwelling place. You see, his soul, which in the Hebrew mind is the very life and personality of a person, his soul but also his heart, which is the seat of the will and the core of the inward being – so his soul, his heart, but also his flesh, the physical body, all of it is engaged in worship. All of it is engaged with being there and singing for joy to the living God.
Now you might think, “Okay psalmist, relax. Your soul longs and faints for this place? It feels a little dramatic.” But perhaps the fact that longing and fainting for the temple sounds so odd and foreign to us means that the application to our hearts has written itself. Do we recognize the blessings of God’s house, the blessing of being together, the blessing to us of singing God’s praise? Do we come begrudgingly to sing His praise? Do we seek out God’s house wherever we might be? We’re heading into summer and vacation season and we are likely to spend hours planning each minute of our time away, of our vacation. We want it all to be wonderful. But how often are we looking for God’s dwelling place, where we are going to worship, how we are going to be with God’s people even as we are traveling and we are away from home? Is it something that we desire to do or just do when we are in town out of routine? Are we too restless to enjoy the blessing that God has given to us in a day of rest in His house? Do we maybe consider ourselves to be unworthy to enjoy this blessing?
Well look down with me again at verse 3. “Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.” Now at first glance, this little digression into ornithology seems a little bit out of place, but what do we know about these birds? Both the sparrows and the swallows were known as restless birds. We see both of them mentioned again in the Old Testament. They are mentioned together in Proverbs 26:2 which says, “Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight.” So these birds just seemed not to land. They seemed to fly aimlessly about, nonstop with no real purpose to their activity. In addition, we know that sparrows were known to be worth almost nothing. Right? In the Gospels, Jesus tells us that two sparrows were sold for a penny or that five sparrows were sold for two pennies. They are of practically no value. And so the point that the psalmist is making here is actually the very same point that Jesus was making about sparrows. No matter how insignificant that you think you might be, there is a place for you in God’s house. If God cares for the sparrows, how much more will He care for you?
And so even if you have struggled to put your busyness aside, to put aside your flitting and your flying, you have been aimless in your wandering, in your searching for something else, some other place, some other god, some other worship, something else to satisfy your longings, there is a place for you. There is a place for you in God’s dwelling place. You can find your rest here in God’s dwelling place. You can set all of your fruitless working down and you can make your nest here, right here in the dwelling place of God. Not only is this your only hope, but “Blessed are those who dwell in the house of the Lord.” Blessedness comes from being gathered here together in God’s house and in singing His praises as we have done and will continue to do this evening. We are blessed as we are obedient to His commands, to remember the Sabbath Day and to keep it holy. We are blessed as we admonish one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. We are blessed as we hear the Word of God read and preached and the Holy Spirit drives us out of ourselves and draws us into Christ. We are blessed as we pray together, as we are reminded that we are sinners and that in Christ our sins are forgiven. We literally receive the benediction of the Lord at the end of the service. His blessing is spoken over us at the conclusion of the service. So do you see it? I hope you do. That gathering in the dwelling place of God is not merely a duty but an enormous blessing to each one of us.
So we’ve seen the blessing of God’s house. Now we’ll see the blessing of God’s highway. Look down with me at verse 5, which is our next blessing. “Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion.” So here we see something of the pilgrimage of the Christian life and we see this beautiful phrase – “They go from strength to strength.” How’s that for you as a description of your Christian life? Would you describe yourself this week as going from strength to strength? When it comes to personal holiness and resisting temptation, are you going from strength to strength? That phrase is all the more remarkable when you consider the path that these pilgrims have been on. They have been going through the Valley of Baca, it tells us. Now we don’t know where that valley is or actually if it even exists as a physical place, but the word “Baca” sounds like the Hebrew word for “weeping.” Not just “to cry” but “to weep.” And so this valley is clearly indicative of a difficult road, a difficult path. The context makes it clear that this was a dry and dusty road without water because as the pilgrims go through “they make it a place of springs.” So everything here points to the fact that this is a bitter path. This is a challenging road. Except that these sojourners go “from strength to strength.” How can that be? How can that be in light of the Valley of Weeping?
Well, quite simply because their strength is not their own. Do you see where their strength comes from? Do you see in verse 5? “Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.” So Christians can go through suffering and they can find themselves going from strength to strength because our strength is not ours; it is not our own. And so even when we do not feel there is any strength in us, just like the psalmist, we will find as we look back over the Valley of Weeping that God was faithful to provide the strength that we needed.
As a little girl, Corrie ten Boom was worried about the future. She had reached the age as a small child when she realized that her parents wouldn’t be with her forever, that her parents would die. And so she was worried. She was worried about the future. She asked her father how she would be able to go on if he were to die? And her dad responded by asking her, “Corrie, when we go to Amsterdam on the train, when do I give you your ticket?” She responded, “Why, just before we get on the train.” Her dad responded, “Exactly. And our wise Father in heaven knows when we are going to need things too. Don’t run out ahead of Him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will find the strength you need just in time.” So even in the bitter valleys of this life, even in our very lowest moments, even when we have a simultaneous and profound sense of our own weakness, we can go from strength to strength because our strength is in Him.
But what about having “highways to Zion” in our hearts? Well this simply means that whatever it is that leads us to Zion, that should be our heart’s desire. Spurgeon comments that this is all about the posture of our hearts. He writes, “When we have God’s ways in our hearts, and our heart in His ways, we are what and where we should be.” Let me say that again. “When we have God’s ways in our hearts, and our heart in His ways, we are what and where we should be.” And do you see the end goal of this journey in this psalm? We find it in verse 7. “Each one appears before God in Zion.” So just like the dwelling place is lovely because it is God’s dwelling place, the reason we love the highway that leads to Zion is because we will appear before God at the end of it. That’s our blessed hope. That is a picture of heaven – that we will be with and we will see God, we will see our Savior face to face. It is the beatific vision. This highway that leads to Zion is worth loving, not because the road is easy, not because it leads to a finely crafted temple. It is because the highway leads to God Himself. The ultimate happy life, the ultimate blessed life is eternal life in the presence of our Savior.
So we have seen the blessing of God’s house and the blessing of God’s highway. Now let’s turn to the blessing of God’s help. Look with me at verses 9 to 12. “Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed! For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!” So our last blessing here reminds us that there is blessing for one whose trust and whose hope and whose help is in the Lord. When we are trusting in God, when we are trusting in Him, He is our sun. It says He brings light; He brings warmth to all that we do. He is our shield, it says. He protects us from whatever it is that we may face. He gives favor. He gives honor. And “He withholds no good thing from those who walk uprightly.” These are the blessings of the ones who trust in God, who find their help in God.
And then we find the image here of the doorkeeper. And the image is clear enough, right? It is better to occupy the lowliest possible position in God’s house than to be a VIP in the tents of the wicked. But there’s a bit more to it than that. If you look back at the superscript, back to the title, you will see that this psalm is called “A Psalm of the Sons of Korah.” Well who was Korah? Korah’s claim to fame, or rather his claim to infamy was his rebellion. We find that story in Numbers 16. He was a Levite who gathered 250 men in opposition to the leadership of Moses and Aaron. They wanted a role that was more significant than what they had been given. So Moses said to come before the Lord with offerings of incense, with fire in their censors, and to see what the Lord would do. And as they came before the Lord, the ground opened up and swallowed all 250 of them alive and they were consumed by fire.
But even in this story, there are notes of grace. If you flip ten chapters later to Numbers 26, we find the record of the census. And in verse 9 there is this record. “The sons of Eliab: Nemuel, Dathan, and Abiram. These are the Dathan and Abiram, chosen from the congregation, who contended against Moses and Aaron in the company of Korah, when they contended against the Lord and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up together with Korah, when that company died, when the fire devoured 250 men, and they became a warning. But the sons of Korah did not die.” So we see grace here. This was profound opposition to the man of God’s choosing, to Moses, and Korah was swallowed up. And yet the sons of Korah did not die. The sons of Korah did not die. Even though their father had become a warning to all Israel and remains a warning to us today, the sons of Korah were mercifully spared.
So what do we make of this dishonored family, this family that led the rebellion against Moses and Aaron, who God had used to bring their people out of Egypt? What happens to a family that is embarrassed and disgraced? By God’s grace, the sons of Korah lived, and a few generations later we hear from them again in 1 Chronicles 9:19. “Shallum the son of Kore, son of Ebiasaph, son of Korah, and his kinsmen of his fathers’ house, the Korahites, were in charge of the work of the service, keepers of the thresholds of the tent, as their fathers had been in charge of the camp of the Lord, keepers of the entrance.” So the sons of Korah, it turns out, were keepers of the thresholds. They were doorkeepers in the house of the Lord. So when it’s written here that “It is better to be a doorkeeper in the house of God than to dwell in the tents of the wicked,” it’s not simply a word picture. It isn’t hyperbole or empty words. They had surely heard from grandparents and great-grandparents who were close enough to look down into the void as the earth opened up and to feel the heat of the fire as 250 were consumed, and to be told about the seriousness of the holiness of God. They knew what the tents of the wicked were like. Their family name had been known for wickedness, but by God’s grace, their hearts were not hardened. The sons of Korah did not die. Rather, they trusted in God and they were blessed.
So here in this psalm, the sons of Korah are singing of how blessed they are to trust in Him. So not only does God welcome those who trust in Him, no matter what your past may be, no matter what your family name may represent, not only does He welcome those who trust in Him into His dwelling place, but He gives us a role. There are Sunday school teachers. There are encouragers. There are VBS leaders. There are prayers. There are deacons. There are budget planners and there are budget spenders – you know who you are! There are givers and there are goers. And there are doorkeepers. You may have several of those roles to some degree or another at any given moment, but what we are seeing here is that whatever the role is, it’s glorious because we trust in Him. And it is the job in His dwelling place that He has given to us.
There is a story told of President John F. Kennedy that is impossible to verify but it’s a good story. It is said that he was being walked through the NASA facilities on a tour in the 60s and he had his entourage there showing him all of the things going on there. And he saw a man walking down the hallway with some purpose. He seemed to be really intent on what he was doing, focused, walking with purpose down the hallway, and he observed as that man opened a door and seemed to be gathering some things together with some urgency. And as the entourage of the president walked up to him, they saw that he was a janitor. And as he was pulling a broom out of a closet, President Kennedy reportedly stopped to ask him what he was doing. And the janitor looked back at him and he replied, “I’m helping to put a man on the moon.” He understood that even though his job was not the most glamorous at NASA, he wasn’t an astronaut, he wasn’t a mathematician or an engineer, but just being in the building was an honor and made him part of the mission.
The sons of Korah are here teaching us this same lesson – trusting in God’s help, walking along God’s highway, and being welcomed into God’s house is an amazing and a beautiful privilege. Whatever work we have been called to do in the house of faith, may we desire nothing more than to be where God has placed us.
And so how is it that we can become a member of God’s household? How can we have the highways to Zion in our hearts? How can we take advantage of the help and mercy that He offers to us? Look back at the prayer in verse 9 with me. “Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed!” We know that anointed ones in Israel were prophets and priests and kings, and this psalm is undoubtedly referring to a king in Israel who sat on the throne. But it’s also undoubtedly looking forward to the Anointed One, to Christ. So do you want to be blessed? Do you want to be happy? Whether it’s the first time tonight or for the thousand and first time, our prayer ought to be for God not to look at us, not at our sin, not at our inability to obey the law, not at our good deeds which are like filthy rags, but to plead with Him to look instead to our Shield, to His Anointed One, and to our Redeemer. He is our God, He is our King, and oh what blessing comes from placing our trust in Him.
Let’s pray.Heavenly Father, O that we would long and faint for Your dwelling place. O that we would leave here this evening, waiting with zero patience to come back next week and sing Your praises together. Lord, we ask that You would apply Your Word to our hearts and that You would make us a people that is so attracted, that people are so awestruck by what happens here as we sing Your praises and we hear Your Word, that they would love to be with us as well. That they would ask us,”How can I be in the house? How can I be on that highway? How can I receive the Lord’s help?” Lord, we pray all of this in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.