“How Lovely Is Your Dwelling Place” Psalm 84 September 15, 2013 I have said a number of times that my favorite book of the Bible is whatever book I happen to be preaching on at the time … But I am REALLY enjoying the Psalms. I usually try to decide what I’m preaching on next week on the Sunday or Monday before — so I’ve been meditating on Psalm 84 everyday through this week. And what I am discovering is a “texture” to the Psalms that I’ve never appreciated before … It’s hard to get that when you’re (let’s say) reading through the Bible in a year, and so you might have two or three Psalms on a given day — and you’re more or less “plowing through them.” (At least that’s the way I usually do it!) There’s certainly a place for that kind of “Fast Food” approach, but I am enjoying a Crock Pot meal in the Psalms — just letting all the juices simmer! This morning, I again want to walk you through the Psalm, section by section, and then step back to see a couple of “big ideas” that he’s teaching us. Psalm 84 is written by one of the “Sons of Korah.” From 2 Chronicles we learn that these men were the Temple Singers, only this poor guy seems to have found himself FAR from the Temple. We don’t know why, and it really doesn’t matter. He’s apparently far from HOME and — more importantly — far from his Temple and he misses it desperately. He begins, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty.” But he’s not thinking so much about the beauty of its appearance as he is the MEANING of this place. Maybe it would be better to read it, “How LOVED or BELOVED is your dwelling place.” It’s not just a pretty place, it’s a LOVED PLACE. And if you go down to vs. 2, you’ll see why: “My soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” It’s not so much the BUILDING he misses, it’s GOD!
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Now he knows (and we know) that God is not limited to a BUILDING, but that building (with its ARK and its MOST HOLY PLACE) represented the presence of God in a way that he could see and smell (with the burning sacrifices) and hear (with the noises of singing and sacrifices and bells and crackling fires). If you wanted to be near God, you went to the Temple! (Simple as that!) Speaking of NOISES, vs. 3 is so poignant: “Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have a nest for herself, where she may have her young — a place near your altar.” We should understand this quite literally: The Temple with its open courts and eaves — like any public building — had all sorts of places where birds could nest and sing … So it was a home for GOD and a home for the BIRDS where they could sing their songs of praise … But this poor Temple singer was far away from all that and — so he thinks — he has NO HOME and NO PLACE to sing. Vss. 5–7 are a little harder to understand, but they seem to refer to PILGRIMS who — though they were far from Jerusalem — at least had to chance to return for a while to the city and the Temple. But — for whatever reason — our poor author is not among them. They go (as he says in vs. 7) “from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion,” but this poor Son of Korah is going NOWHERE! He’s stuck far from the city and the Temple and God. And so he does the only thing he CAN do: he prays. Vs. 8, “Hear my prayer, O Lord God almighty; listen to me, O God of Jacob.” But he also DREAMS of better things. Vs. 10, “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God [or, perhaps better: “I would rather stand at the door of the house of my God”] than dwell in the tents of the wicked.” That’s truly LOVELY, isn’t it! Just one day with YOU is better than a thousand anywhere else in the world! It’s what Asaph said in Psalm 73: “Being with you, I desire nothing on earth.”
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Then he goes on, in vs. 11, to call God “a sun and a shield,” and to observe that “the Lord bestows favor and honor [which you could easily translate, “grace and glory”]; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.” WAIT a minute! Is he beginning to see himself and his location in a little different light? Whom does God bless with favor and honor and good things? Those who come to the Temple and join in the rituals of sacrifices and singing? No! “No good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless,” WHEREVER they are! I wonder if PAUL wasn’t thinking of this verse when he said, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him…” in Romans 8:28. And then this Temple singer — who felt so estranged from God because he was so far from the Temple — summarizes the whole Psalm in its final verse: “O Lord Almighty, blessed is the one who trusts in you.” He begins the Psalm saying, “Blessed are those who LIVE NEAR your house.” Then he says, “Blessed are those who can at least VISIT your house.” But he ends by saying, “Blessed are those who TRUST YOU, no matter where they live!” It reminds me of what Jesus said to Thomas: “Thomas, you’ve SEEN me and believed. But blessed are those who have NOT SEEN and yet believed.” [John 20:29] That’s our Psalm. Isn’t it beautiful? So what do WE do with it? Obviously, we have no Temple today. That was destroyed 2,000 years ago when Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans. So how can we sing, “How lovely is your dwelling place?” What kind of yearning might we feel? The New Testament locates the “dwelling place of God” in three places: First of all, it’s in JESUS. He is God’s Tabernacle and God’s Temple.
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John teaches [in chapter 1] us that when Jesus came to this earth He “tabernacled” among us. As one of my profs used to put it, “He pup-tented among us” — a clear reference to the Tabernacle. And Jesus referred to Himself as the Temple. He said to the authorities, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” And John goes on to explain that he was speaking of the Temple of His body. [John 2:19ff] So, if you want to find God’s dwelling on earth, you have to go to JESUS, not to some building in Jerusalem. Second, the New Testament locates the Temple in the church: Peter writes, “You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices.…” [1 Peter 2:5] The CHURCH is the new Temple. Finally, of course, WE are God’s Temple, aren’t we? Paul writes to the Corinthians: “Don’t you know that YOU YOURSELVES are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in YOU.” [1 Corinthians 3:17] The plurals here remind us again that it’s still TOGETHER that we’re the Temple — as members of His church. But later in the same book Paul writes, “Don’t you know that your BODY is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” [6:19] So, as CHRISTIANS, we will read this Psalm about wanting to be near God and understand that it has very little to do with “bricks and mortar,” and a lot to do with “Christ in you, the Hope of Glory,” as Paul put it to the Colossians. [1:27] So I see two big take-aways for us from Psalm 84: 1.
It teaches us who God is. This Psalm is simply LOADED with different names for God that let us know WHO He is and WHAT He is doing in our lives and in the world. 1. He’s the LORD (written in our English Bibles in small caps) to let us know that it’s the name YHWH — the covenant name of God. He’s the faithful God who doesn’t give up on His people. 2. He’s the LORD ALMIGHTY — literally, “The Lord of Armies” He’s the all-powerful God who marshalls the angelic armies of heaven to defend His people. 3. He’s the LIVING GOD.
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He’s not some relic from the past — He’s living and active in our world and in our lives. 4. He’s the KING — He’s my defender and protector. 5. He’s MY GOD — He’s personally involved with me; He knows my name. 6. He’s the GOD [big G] of gods [little g]. The NIV doesn’t bother to translate it, but (for example) the Revised English Bible translates vs. 7, “the God of gods shows himself in Zion.” Our lives are surrounded by little “gods” that clamor for our attention, but our God has NO RIVALS. 8. He’s the GOD OF JACOB — He’s the faithful God who has stood by His promises to His people throughout history. 9. Finally, He’s our SUN and SHIELD — He exposes life’s threats and then protects us from them. So, Psalm 84 teaches us who God is. 2.
It teaches us what LIFE is all about — that God’s PRESENCE is more important than geography or perception. Here’s what I mean by that: In the best of all worlds, we would LOVE to be in good health, to be financially secure, to have healthy, well-functioning families, to have great Christian friends all around us, supporting us and cheering us on. And that’s what our author LONGED FOR: “Better is ONE DAY in your courts than a thousand elsewhere! I’d rather be standing at the threshold of God’s house than living out in the dirty world.” That goes without saying, doesn’t it! But the simple truth is that most of our life is lived out in the dirty world, not in the comfortable setting of our church and friends. And, while we long to be the lovely dwelling places of God where the birds are chirping and the choirs are singing, what we need to understand is that God is not STUCK in those wonderful places! If we will TRUST HIM (and that’s the key, isn’t it?), we will find Him [or, better, He will find US … He will BE with us!] in the messiest, dirtiest, most chaotic corners of our lives.
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“O Lord Almighty [O faithful covenant Lord of the Armies of Heaven] BLESSED is the one who trusts in you!”
Rev. Robert Smallman Bible Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church in America) 1605 Highway G • Merrill, WI 54452 www.biblepreschurch.org
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