SPEAKER_00 0:00

Let us pray. Almighty God, as we s as we come to this time to consider your word, we pray, Lord, that you would give us eyes and ears and hearts of faith to accept your word. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Have you ever gone shopping just to lift your mood? A little retail therapy, maybe? Let's be honest. What's the last thing you bought to make yourself feel good? To feel a little bit better or to celebrate something in your life? Well, if you ever have been shopping as a stress reliever, you're not alone. Something like 63% of Americans admit to buying things on a whim under emotional for emotional reasons, and the other 37% were fibbing when they were asked. What do you think about retail therapy? How do you feel about it? At the heart of retail therapy is the idea that both in the shopping and purchasing of things, people experience an emotional lift by getting what they want. This, of course, cuts across all ages, gender, and socioeconomic lines. Most people, whether they like shopping or not, enjoy the mood lift of getting stuff. But what do you think is at the heart of getting stuff and the mood lift that comes from that? Why does going shopping lift your mood? What emotional need do you have that is met by shopping? Practically speaking, if you're feeling overwhelmed by stress, the last thing you probably need to go need to do is go out and spend money. Of the 63% of Americans who said they were influenced by their emotions to make a purchase, something like 74% of them regretted making that purchase afterwards. And this gets into the whole problem of using credit cards to spend money on things. And that's the majority of the reason why those people felt bad afterwards. You know, they felt like they maybe that how am I going to pay for this now? In other words, shopping to feel better is not meeting the emotional need that prompted the shopping excursion to begin with. Retail therapy is simply a way to numb the feeling of stress that we have or to take one's mind off their problems for a little while. On the other hand, well I'm sound pretty negative about retail therapy at this point. I don't know how you feel about it, but I sound a little negative at this point. So let's give it some, let's give it its due here. It is healthy to take your mind off of your problems for a little while, then to go back to them with a fresh perspective and new energy. However, it appears that lots of people ultimately find shopping has left them with regret and not a fresh perspective to tackle life's problems. Let's ask all of this another way. When was the last time you got on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, a news website, Netflix, or whatever you prefer to get on as a way to de-stress? How did you feel afterwards? After that YouTube binge, after watching two movies on Netflix, after scrolling on Facebook for a long time, how did you feel? Ironically, most people go away from that not feeling any better, but they feel guilty. And I can't speak for you, but I know I always feel guilty after watching two or three YouTube videos back to back. I think, what have I done with my time? Not only do I have the weight of what prompted me to get on my phone to begin with, now I deal with the fact that I've spent two hours or whatever looking at something that didn't really help me very much. The process of distracting myself from the internal angst and disquiet that I feel is not the way that I need to feel really and truly better. In order to make the most out of my life, what would I need to do? I need to slow down, think about what's going on, and address the longings that I have for meaning and satisfaction in life. That's the deep soot, the deep-seated, rooted thing that I'm struggling with is who am I and what am I supposed to be doing with my life? And as I and as I'm impacted by all the things that are coming at me from different places and in different ways, those are the real questions that I'm seeking answers to. The search for meaning and satisfaction in life almost certainly leads me, as I ask those deep questions, it almost certainly leads me to ask the big questions of who am I? Why am I here? And what is my purpose? These big questions about the meaning of life ought to lead me and ought to lead us to see that life has a deeper meaning than getting a lot of things and getting the attention of the people around me. The search for meaning in life should draw my attention off of myself and toward God. We can see that the psalmist in Psalm 84 is working with some of the same ideas. He is willing to trade all earthly success, power, and pleasure to do what? To be a doorkeeper in God's house. The main idea of Psalm 84 is simple. The psalmist envisioned living in the presence of God as the highest good in life. You want the most out of life, you want to wring every bit of value out of life. The psalmist in Psalm 84, his vision for that is get in the presence of God and stay there. In a moment of Holy Spirit-inspired wisdom, Psalm 84 recalls one of the deepest needs of mankind to be restored to living in the presence of God. The psalmist heart is aching for a restored garden of Eden where he can dwell with God forever. And the interesting thing about Psalm 84 is that if we look closely at it, we can see signs of the Lord Jesus all over it. As well as the role that he plays in bringing us into the presence of God. As we, like the psalmist, ache to have the deepest longings of our hearts fulfilled, we also, like we also need to, like the psalmist, find the answer to our aching hearts in the same place. And where is that place? We must find our identity in Christ so that we can truly seek the highest good in life. In Psalm 84, the psalmist is dreaming of a new place to live. You notice in Psalm 84, verse 1, how lovely are your dwelling place, O Lord God of dwellings, O Lord God of hosts. He wants a new place to live. He wants to dwell with God. He is yearning for this with his entire being. The psalmist has seen the beauty of Solomon's temple and wants to go and live there. He wants to go and live at the altar of God. He wants to go and dwell with God forever. Perhaps at this point, if you think about, if you've ever seen drawings of the temple, Solomon's Temple, or depictions of the temple in Jesus' day, you think, oh, that's a beautiful building. But why would anyone want to go and spend all of their lives living in something beautiful, a building that's just whatever the way it looks? So we have a hard time, I think, we have a hard time appreciating soul-aching beauty. And yet that's the way Solomon's temple is described. It wasn't sort of drab stone covered with some gold things on a table somewhere. It was gloriously decked out with all the colors you can imagine, with thick tapestries that had to be lifted with huge ropes, and took multiple people to do it, and there were rooms within rooms in that temple, and it was all lavishly furnished and overspiced with incense and all the things. It was a sensory overload. And so it's a it prompted in the psalmist these feelings of soul-aching beauty. Most modern buildings are not beautiful and do not inspire feelings of transcendence, but if you've ever seen pictures of massive Gothic cathedrals, or if you've ever been in a Gothic cathedral, you know that your eyes are pulled up away from yourself and at all of that transcendent beauty that's present there. The psalmist has those same feelings of transcendent beauty and appreciation of Solomon's temple. He calls the dwelling place of the Lord lovely, and that anyone who finds themselves dwelling there is to be blessed beyond measure. That in the dwellings of God, even the doorkeepers are given grace, honor, and no good thing will be withheld from them. Hidden in this passion for the temple. It's evident, if you're wondering what the psalmist is talking about in Psalm 84, he's talking about Solomon's temple. He's looking at the temple and he thinks, I just really want to be in there, right? Hidden in that passion for the temple is something else, is a desire to draw close to God. You can see this in verse 2 where he says, My soul has a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord, and then the line that follows parallels it. It's the same idea. And what does the second line say? He says, My heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God. He doesn't say, My heart and flesh rejoice in your altar. My heart and flesh doesn't rejoice in the beautiful stonework and tapestry. My heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God. His heart is drawn to the temple and the beauty of the temple insofar as it has a connection with the living God. The emphasis is on the blessedness of the presence of God, not in the beautiful stonework and tapestry work and gold things and all the glitter and pomp and circumstance of the temple. You know that this has to be the idea because in verses 3 and 4, in the imagery of the sparrow and the swallow building their nests in the altar, he's not talking about wanting to be there because of how beautiful it is necessarily. He is struck by how beautiful it is, and his heart aches for the beauty of the temple because when he sees the temple, he sees the glory of God. But why use a bird? Why use these two birds? And I saw Jerome, Saint Jerome from the fourth century saying, don't stress the bird part too much. He said that in a commentary, and I thought, thank you, Jerome. I'm gonna use what he said and appreciate that and also use the birds a little bit here. Birds have the ultimate form of freedom. We have, you know, folks who fly around a good bit in our congregation, they have a lot of freedom for that. To get in a plane and to go in the air and to travel really fast and really far, and that's amazing. But mechanical flight through an airplane is not the same thing that a bird experiences. They literally go wherever they want. They can fly themselves wherever they want to go, and yet birds build nests and go back to them every day. Because the nests are about safety and about growth and about security and about having a place to be. The freedom to go anywhere and to be the master of one's own destiny is not the highest good that you can pursue. Even the birds know better than that. In other words, being powerful and getting what you want all the time are nothing compared to dwelling in the presence of God. The ones that have the good life, the ones that uh the ones that get to have the good life, the blessed life, are the ones that dwell in the house of the Lord and sing his praises all the time. But at this point in the Psalm, verses 1, 2, 3, 4, all of those are painting this lovely picture of devotion to the house of God and of singing God's praises all the time. The vision of dwelling with the Lord and being blessed by it is so beautiful and strong that most people would jump at the chance to live in a place where you would be that blessed and that that and that joyful and that full of passion all the time. Right? Maybe you would, like the sparrow or like the swallow, like to build your house right under our table here. Maybe if you could see how beautiful and how pre and how precious the presence of God, you're ready to just sell your house wherever it is and come and live here in the church building. Maybe that's the vision that you're catching here. But more likely than not, the psalmist, the psalmist picture of a single-minded devotion to and joy in the presence of God and in dwelling with the Lord is a little bit a little bit overstated. As is often the case, there's a problem with this picture that's been painted. It sounds so amazing, and I'm willing to sell everything I've got to get it. And then you start thinking about what you're gonna get in return, and it sounds kind of like a boring life. Let me go and live in the church, basically. Let me go live in the temple and serve at the door and wait on God to tell me what to do. No matter how amazing, no matter how beautiful, no matter how joyous dwelling with the Lord and rejoicing in Him are, maybe we don't want it all the time. In our best moments, of course, we find joy and meaning in our worship, but the thought of yearning for it all the time is for most of us just a poetic device. Today I feel this way, but tomorrow I might not feel this way. We have to keep in mind, though, that in the framing of this psalm, as a vision, we have to keep in mind that the framing of this psalm is a vision of the good life, a vision of the highest good that we could ever have. We were, in fact, made to dwell with God like Psalm 84 describes. We were made for this kind of presence and relationship with God. The fact that we do not want the presence of God like this shows how far we have really fallen. As Christians, we who as Christians who do want to be restored to a right relationship with God, we at least know that we should want to dwell with God forever, but like so many in our anxious world, we don't always want the presence of God. Sometimes all we really want is a meal we don't have to want, we don't have to clean up after, and a new outfit or some new piece to whatever hobby or interest that we have. The highest good in life is dwelling with God. That's easy to understand. But even the psalmist knows that we do not get to enjoy that completely right now. The psalmist himself, who has painted this picture of the lovely dwelling place of God, his soul is yearning to go into the courts of God, his heart and his flesh rejoice in the living God. He wants to be like that sparrow, like that swallow who builds his home in the temple of God so that he can always be there praising God day in and day out. The psalmist knows that the presence of God is where he wants to be, where he's going to receive everything that he can receive from God, that no good thing would be withheld from him. And yet the vision of the psalmist shifts from standing in front of the temple and desiring to go in and dwell with God forever, shifts, that vision shifts to that of a pilgrim in verses five to seven. In verse five, he says, Blessed is the one whose strength is in you, and whose heart are your ways, who going through the valley of misery uses it for a well. Indeed, the early rains fill the pools with water. They will go from strength to strength, and the God of God shall be seen by them in Zion. Those on the way to the temple have to pass through the valley of misery. If you have your own copy of the scriptures open with you this morning, you will see that in verse 6, in pretty much every other English translation, it'll say something like the valley of Baca or Baca, which is really funny with the Japanese word Baca does not mean misery, it means something else. But it's just funny that that's the word. Instead of the valley of misery, like it is in the prayer book, it says valley of misery, but in most English translations it says the valley of Bacah. Now there's a play on words here, because the Hebrew word backah that ends in the Hebrew letter aleph, now we're getting into the weeds, stick with me, I'm sorry. This is actually in the text and it seems to make a difference. The word that's used in Psalm 84 in the Hebrew is the word Baca that ends with aleph, which doesn't make a sound, and it means balsam, like our Christmas trees. But there is another word, and even in my lexicon, the next word in the lexicon was bakah with a he at the end, and it's silent at the end of a word. And so neither one of those letters makes a noise in pronouncing the word, and yet the second backah means weeping or bitterness. And if you look at the Greek translation, they prefer the word weeping in bitterness, and all the church fathers liked weeping in bitterness, and so it shows up in our prayer book as weeping in bitterness, and not this place with balsam trees. Now, there are a few places in the Old Testament in 2 Samuel, uh no, in first Samuel, uh David is conquering some enemies, and he goes through a valley that's full of balsam trees, and that's that may be the place where this is referring to. Uh it's not really clear and it's it's not all that important. But what is important is that in order to get to Jerusalem, you have to go through a place that is dry and deserted and empty. In order to get to the place where the temple of God is, in order to get to the presence of God, you have got to go through a place where even the trees are crying. Because balsam trees drop water out. Because where they are is so dry, they will like squeeze the water that they have in themselves out. The few pla so even though sorry, there are a few places in the Old Testament where that actually could be referring to that, but the point of the psalmist is clear from verses five and seven. And even though we are not dwelling in the presence of God yet, our hearts can be so set on being there that our journey through the long road of life, misery-filled though it may be, will be marked by strength. You saw when we start talking about misery, and your mind immediately goes to all the problems and struggles and difficulties of life, and yet when you read verses five through seven, that's not the picture. The picture is instead of going from strength to strength. If we stop and we think about it again, there's another problem. Do you feel like your life is what the psalmist is describing in verse 7? That you go from strength to strength? I don't know about you, but I rarely feel like I've got all things under control. I rarely feel like I'm headed in the right direction with all the things that I've got going on in my life, and so I don't really know if I if I regularly believe I'm going from strength to strength in anything. And the single-minded devotion to the Lord that the psalmist imagined as the pilgrim's mindset as he journeys to Jerusalem. He's on his way to Jerusalem and he's going to go in strength, and he's going to go through the valley of misery where even the trees are weeping, and he is going to go from strength to strength on that journey until he gets to the very presence of God. That's not something that I can relate to very much. Much like I can't relate to the feeling of overwhelming desire to enter in God's presence all the time. Maybe we could chalk Psalm 84 and all of this language that he's using as a singer or a songwriter or a poet's overstated and expressive way of saying something that he likes. I want to go to church and I want to worship God. Maybe that's all he's saying. And he's using all of this passionate language, all this ardor, all this energy to just say something so simple. He is certainly saying that at the very least. So, like if you were to read this like you did this morning, you don't necessarily have to feel all the ardor that the psalmist feels in order for you to say it with integrity like we did a few moments ago when we read it responsively. Right? You just did it on part as part of the process of being in church this morning. You weren't thinking about all these deep thoughts about ardor and all this stuff, right? And yet that's the way we feel as we gather before God. He is certainly saying that we should feel in a figurative way the great desire for God's presence that he's describing. But we cannot accept that this is just a figurative thing in Psalm 84, that this is just flowery language for us to express how we feel this morning and maybe not feel tomorrow morning. We can't accept that because that's not the way the Lord Jesus felt about it when he was 12 years old. When our Lord goes to the temple with his family when he's 12 years old and he stays behind in the temple, he stays to be in his father's house. Right? And his parents are, why are you worrying us? You're stressing us out. And he says, Don't you know that this is where I have to be? Later on, Jesus drove the money changers and those making a mockery of the temple out with a whip that he had woven himself. And as the disciples reflected on that after the resurrection, what did they say? They said that Jesus' heart burned with passion for God's house. The same kind of passion and ardor that Psalm 84 expresses about the presence of God. And yet there's even a more striking turn. After 5, 6, and 7, you get to verses 8 and 9, and 8 and 9 point straight. So strongly and so particularly to Jesus that we can't help but see it. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer, hearken, O God of Jacob. The psalmist is like clapping his hands and waving at God and says, pay attention to verse 9. Behold, O God, our defender, and look upon the face of your anointed. The psalmist pauses and commands God to look at his anointed one. This is a reference, of course, to the king. The king is anointed by God, anointed by priest, inaugurated in his kingdom. But we can't help but see this as a reference to the Messiah, the real anointed one, our Lord Jesus Christ. Once we see that the focus of this psalm is on the anointed of God, we can go back and reread the rest of the Psalm with Jesus in mind. Our Lord Jesus lived with the passion for the presence of God that our doom scrolling and retail therapy failed to consider. He knew that the glory of God, he knew the glory of God firsthand and not only desired it, but as he went through the valley of misery, his own march to Jerusalem, he went from strength to strength. Even in his weakness of body, he held the ways of God in his heart. The Lord Jesus, better than anyone else, could have believed that one day in the presence of God was better than a thousand days somewhere else. When the Lord was tempted by Satan and taken up to a high mountain, when our Lord Jesus was taken up to the high mountain by Satan, he was given an opportunity to rule all the world in the same fashion that Satan had done. But Jesus refused to bow the knee and to worship Satan on the grounds that the only one that could be worshipped was God. No one could have better known or understood how great the Father was than the Son. And he was saying that he would rather be a doorkeeper in God's house than to dwell outside the presence of God for a moment. In refusing to worship Satan, Jesus did not lose the kingdoms that Satan was offering him. He didn't lose anything. He is trusting in his Father and living in the blessedness that comes with trusting in him. The Lord Jesus found his strength in the presence of God. But what about us? I can't speak for everyone, but I know that I don't measure up in terms of either longing for the presence of God or refusing to dwell in the tents of ungodliness like it mentions in verse 11. And if it comes down to me, it comes down to me, I'm going to come up short. Thanks be to God that it doesn't come down to us, it doesn't come down to me, because in Jesus Christ we have a new identity, which is securely founded on and in Him. The new covenant reality of Jeremiah 31, which we're not going to get to today, especially at the end of that chapter of verses we didn't see today, but we we read last week. At the end of that chapter, I recommend reading verses 31 through 33 later in the day if you have time. The new covenant reality that Jeremiah 31 talks about, having the law of God written on our hearts and dwelling with God, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. That's the true fulfillment of the new covenant is in Jesus Christ. And we enter into the life of Jesus. Jesus calls us to lean on him for strength. He calls us to receive him by faith and be indwelt by his Holy Spirit. And when we have entered into his life, he holds us in the palm of his nail-scarred hand more securely than the grave held us. Through Jesus, we will sing the praises of God forever. And through him, we will learn to love the presence of God instead of fearing God and shrinking back from him. Jesus will be the one who gives us the patient endurance to walk through the valley of the shadow of death and to use that valley of the shadow of death as a well. And in the end, through him, we will see God face to face. Maybe you've enjoyed this Christmas season and the start of the new year, or maybe you've already found it full of the same headaches and heartaches of last year. Either way, do not flee from the presence of God because in the presence of God is the fullness of joy and strength to meet each new day. You do not enter in to that presence of God. You do not enter in to the joy and the fellowship of God and have his son because you want it enough or because you are good enough. He makes us what he wants us to be. Simply come today and every day to Jesus. Ask him to carry you all the way home. Draw near to him through his word and prayer. Come hungry and thirsty to this table today, longing to meet with the Lord. And when we enter into his gates, we enter into his dwellings with a heart that is set on being with him forever and ever, he will, like he promises in verses 12 and 13 of Psalm 84, he will be a light and a defense for us. He will give grace and honor, and no good thing shall he withhold from those who live a godly life. And he will bless us as we put our trust in him. Let's pray. Almighty God, you are faithful to your people. Draw near to us, uh, draw us near to you today through your blessed Son, Jesus Christ. Teach us to love your presence and to draw near as little children. In Jesus' name. Amen.