Psalm 84
I looked up on Google to see what people would say they long for. I typed in the phrase I could just die for and came up with these items.
a frappuccino
a fried shrimp plate
a strawberry daiquiri
some good chapati
a certain bakery’s sugar cookie, lemon zest, or snickerdoodle
that smile
a good tv show
those platform wedge tattooed shoes
a chocolate shake
Isn’t it interesting how much of the time food is something we long for? I like asking people what is the meal they most want to eat when they return to their home country? What could you just die for?
We long for many things. I long to be with my daughters and their families in either Boston or Brazzaville. This week my father and some of my extended family are on the southern New Jersey coast and I miss being with them. I would love to be in New Jersey for August and enjoy the delicious sweet corn, tomatoes and peaches. (We get delicious peaches here, but not the tomatoes and corn.) I long for an extended vacation on a lake in the northeast of the US with beautiful blue skies and puffy white clouds, green forests with white birch trees and the shimmering waters of the lake.
The Sons of Korah wrote today’s psalm and it begins with a longing, with an I could just die for…
My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God.
A few weeks ago the South Koreans from Rome presented a wonderful concert here at the church. Their beautiful, powerful voices drew the attention of a Peace Corps volunteer who was in Rabat for some inoculations and she came inside. Afterwards she talked with Annie and me. She has lived the past year in a very remote section of southern Morocco and has had a difficult time.
We prayed with her and streams of tears poured down her face. She has missed being at church and being part of a church community. Her soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord.
This is not true for all of us. For some of us, it is a struggle to get up on Sunday morning and come to church. It would be so much easier to sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast, maybe go to the beach or pool, play golf or tennis and relax.
When we get to church we may be bored; the music may not be the kind we like; the sermon may not be interesting or the style of preaching may not be the kind we are used to; the liturgy or lack of liturgy may be unfamiliar and uncomfortable; the music may be unfamiliar; the church may not have the variety and quality of programs we are used to having.
It may also be that we are spiritually listless and apathetic and no matter how the church was, we would be bored.
In short, we may not yearn or faint for the courts of the Lord. Our heart and flesh may not cry out at all.
So how do we relate to this psalm? Should we put on a good spiritual face and sing the songs and say “Good sermon” at the end of the service? That is not at all authentic and not at all what God is interested in. God does not want us to put on a mask and be church people. God wants authentic presence in his church. God wants authentic worship. God wants our hearts and minds to be inclined toward him. God wants to be the object of our desires.
Psalm 84 is a psalm of worship and as we look at this psalm, we will learn about authentic worship that pleases God and blesses us. We will examine the seasons of worship, the benefits of worship and then the joy of worship.
First the seasons of worship.
As I mentioned, the Sons of Korah wrote this psalm and you may remember that Psalm 42/43 (one psalm divided into two), from which I preached in June, was also written by the Sons of Korah. The emotions of this psalm seem to be the same voice as that of Psalm 42/43 and perhaps the same person wrote both psalms. At least the longing for God in the two psalms is the same.
Do you remember how Psalm 42/43 begins?
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
In Psalm 42/43 the psalmist is cut off from God, is distant from God and the movement in the three sections of the psalm takes us from despair to hope. But at the end, it is a hope that is not yet realized. At the end of the psalm there is hope of a rich experience of God that will come in the future, but there is, in the present, no joy in worship of God.
The refrain that ends each of the three sections of the psalm leans forward to a future time when the presence of God will be experienced and celebrated.
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and 6 my God.
Psalm 84 was written at a time when this unrealized hope was fulfilled. Psalm 84 is a psalm that expresses the joy of worshiping God.
There are three statements of blessing in this psalm: verse 4
Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
they are ever praising you.
verse 5
Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.
and verse 12
O Lord Almighty,
blessed is the man who trusts in you.
The writer of Psalm 42/43 was discouraged, feeling distant from God but hoping. The writer, and perhaps the same writer, of Psalm 84 celebrated the presence of God in worship. Psalm 84 is an expression of joy because of the blessing of God.
In our Christian life we move through these seasons. We move from Psalm 42/43 to Psalm 84 and back to Psalm 42/43. We move from exhilaration with spiritual blessings popping out of every corner of our world to times when we doubt that what we believe is true to times when we don’t even care.
There are times when we come to church for communion and it is an empty sacrament of the church and there are other times when we come forward for communion with tears of gratitude because of the way God has loved us.
There are times when we sing the songs and hymns of the church and they are tedious and other times when we are alive to the words and spirit of the song and we feel like jumping and dancing to express the joy we are experiencing.
Wherever you are this morning, I want you to know it is OK to flow through these seasons. Flowing through these seasons is a part of our Christian experience. We move from the exhilaration of mountain-top experiences to the discouragement of the valley. Peter, James and John saw Jesus revealed in his heavenly glory and talking with Moses and Elijah and came down the mountain to find themselves unable to cast out a demon from a boy and arguing among themselves which one of them was the greatest.
In the 37 years of my Christian life, I have been through these seasons. If you are in a season of doubting, I have been there myself. If you are in a season of apathy, I have been there before. If you are bored with church, I have also gone through periods of being bored. If you are filled with joy, I have also been in seasons when I was filled with joy.
Whatever you are experiencing, you are not alone. There is not necessarily something wrong with you. As spring moves to summer and into fall and winter and then begins all over again with spring, so do we move through spiritual seasons.
There is helpful news in this. We can help ourselves as we move through the spiritual seasons of our lives. David Hutton either mentioned this in one of his sermons or in conversation, but he talked about people coming up to him to complain about a preacher, not liking the way he preached. They complained that they were not being fed by this preacher. David’s response was to tell them they had been Christians long enough that they should be feeding themselves by now.
And I have observed that deeply spiritual Christians are able to do this.
I don’t think that RIC is like anyone’s home church. We are a different church. The mix of the congregation is different. The style of worship changes as the worship leaders change. The preaching style is probably different. When you first come to RIC, chances are you are struck by the differences rather than the similarities to your home church.
I have to add that with time, you may discover that you love the differences of this church and will miss them when you leave Morocco. This has happened to many who have passed through our doors. I know that I love this church with all its diversity and will miss it very much when the day comes that I leave.
Over my years at RIC, with all the wonderful Christians who have been a part of our community, I have observed that deeply spiritual Christians are able to find meat in almost any preacher’s sermon. Deeply spiritual Christians are able to find joy in almost any worship style.
There have been some who came to RIC and were unhappy that there was not more of a liturgy or that we did not sing from the hymnal more often. There have been some who were disturbed that we used a printed order of worship rather than be more spontaneous.
But deeply spiritual Christians are able to look past the differences and allow the Holy Spirit to encourage and instruct them. They find food in what is offered to them.
Deeply spiritual Christians are able to flow through the seasons of worship by finding little pieces here and little pieces there that they can feed on.
We need to work at worship. God blesses us with a sense of his presence but we have to be open to receiving his blessing. There are seasons of worship but we can help influence the seasons by persevering and working to open ourselves to God.
There are seasons of worship and secondly, there are benefits of worship.
Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.
Jews made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the three annual festivals: Passover in the spring, Pentecost seven weeks after Passover, and the Feast of Tabernacles in the fall. The psalmist here is using this image of pilgrimage to Jerusalem but making it broader to include all those who set their hearts on a pilgrimage toward God.
Blessed are those who set their hearts toward a pursuit of God. God pursuers are blessed because when you set your heart on a pursuit of God, God will move toward you and bless you. God does not wait for you to come to his kingdom, but like the father of the prodigal son, he lifts his robes and runs to greet you and walk with you and bless you with all good things.
Does such a pursuit affect anyone other than ourselves?
6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca,
they make it a place of springs;
the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength,
till each appears before God in Zion.
The Valley of Baca refers to a dry, wilderness area with single trees and shrubs spotted here and there. It is a place of hardships and difficulties and the psalmist says that those who have set their hearts toward a pursuit of God make it a place of springs.
Those who have set their hearts in pursuit of God are able to take hardships and make good come out of them. They are able to endure through difficulties.
Those who set their hearts on pilgrimage are able to move through personal difficulties but they transform the landscape of hardships so that the springs bless themselves and others.
It is not that we who have set our hearts on pursuing God are perfect. The history of Christians in the church reveals that in addition to creating springs like orphanages and hospitals, Christians also have created cesspools with political infighting and backstabbing. We are sinful people and our sin has polluted and weakened the church throughout the ages. But in our sin there is hope and that hope helps us increasingly to create springs rather than cesspools.
Paul talks in Romans about two stages of salvation. When we come to faith, we are justified by faith. We are made righteous in the eyes of God because the sacrificed life-blood of Jesus covers over our sin and God sees us through the perfection of Jesus. But then in the second stage of salvation, the Holy Spirit is given to us to help make us, in fact, more perfect, more holy. We cooperate with the Holy Spirit in this process of sanctification, making us more righteous.
This is why we are able to make a wilderness area in our lives into a place of springs. It is the work of God in our lives that allows us to endure and to overcome difficulties. Because the Holy Spirit is at work with us in our transformation, we have confidence that whatever our weaknesses, what we are today is not what we will be tomorrow. We will change for the better because the Holy Spirit is at work in us and because we have set our hearts on pilgrimage.
In the Valley of Baca, because of God’s work in us, we transform dry wilderness into a place of springs. When we go through financial struggles, the way we struggle creates springs that help others to see God in us. When we are fearful and worried, the way we deal with our fears communicates to others that God loves us. How we handle rejection and insults communicates to others that God is our shield, he is our protector. When we forgive those who have hurt us, springs are created that bless others. When we extend second and third and fourth chances to hurting people, we create springs. When we practice tough love and deny someone help until they are ready to come to their senses and are willing to change, God’s love is revealed.
People come to faith in Jesus because of the way we struggle through hardships and struggle in crises.
We are able to press on and create springs in dry wilderness experiences because we know where we are going: we are heading to Zion, the heavenly city of God. We are heading to Zion and we know that the Valley of Baca is only a passing-through discouragement, not a final destination. However dark it is, it will not stay dark forever. The darkness will pass and the light will come. We are heading toward the heavenly city and so we press on.
Notice that the Valley of Baca receives water not just from the springs we create.
6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca,
they make it a place of springs;
the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
We are not alone in our effort. We who pursue God make our pilgrimage a place of springs but God also provides autumn rains to cover it with pools of water.
We persevere because we know that God is with us and promises never to leave us or forsake us. We are in this together. With God’s presence and with his help, we will pass through dry wilderness experiences and redeem them with living water.
There are seasons of worship, benefits of worship and thirdly, there is the joy of worship.
At the dedication of the temple, David wrote in Psalm 30:5b
weeping may remain for a night,
but rejoicing comes in the morning.
No matter what season you are in or through what hardship you are passing, rejoicing will come in the morning.
At the end of this psalm to dedicate the temple, David wrote:
You turned my wailing into dancing;
you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
12 that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.
Set your heart on pilgrimage, set your heart on a pursuit of God and he will bring you joy. This is what the Sons of Korah held our as a promise in Psalm 42/43.
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and 6 my God.
God is at work in your life and with your cooperation, he will remove whatever it is that is holding you back and open you to a full experience of the peace and joy that comes from being in a relationship with him.
Joy with God is not an option; joy comes with the standard package of salvation. You may not always experience the joy of worship of God, but it will come.
When the ark of the covenant was brought into Jerusalem, David wrote in a psalm (I Chronicles 16:27)
Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and joy in his dwelling place.
Peter wrote to those who had not had the privilege of seeing Jesus on earth:
I Peter 1:8-9
Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Joy is to be our experience as we grow in the salvation of our souls.
On the night Jesus was arrested, he promised that we would be filled with joy. John 16:22
Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.
We do not live in a constant emotional state of joy. We are overwhelmed by the struggles of this world and fall into fear and anxiety. We are overcome by temptation and fall into the desperation of sin. We are caught up in the limitations of our rational minds and fall into indifference.
But when we persevere, joy will come to us.
Joy is a foretaste of what is to come when we come into Zion, the heavenly city, and we are blessed when God allows us to worship him as we will one day worship him in heaven.
The most encouraging part of this message this morning for me is that we are not alone. When we set our hearts on pilgrimage, God runs to be with us, to walk with us, to take us to his heavenly city. We are never alone and through the seasons of our lives, he will never leave us or forsake us.
God is at work in us, transforming us, as we open ourselves to him. Because of this, we will create springs in dry places.
No matter how dry or dark your spiritual life is this morning, hold on because joy will come in the morning.
