Search the Scriptures, May 15

Psalm 84 TN

Our reading schedule has brought us today to Psalm 84, and you will recognize some of the verses in this Psalm as you read it.

84:1] How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! Maybe you’ve had this experience. You get invited over to somebody’s house, a house maybe you’d never been in before, and you fall in love with the place. You love everything about it. And you say, you’ve got a great house here, you’ve done some great things to it, and it’s a beautiful place.

Or maybe you can think back on all the places, all the homes you’ve lived in, and you have your personal favorite. You have particularly good memories attached to that place. Maybe it’s the place you lived when you brought your babies home from the hospital when they were first born, or maybe it was the home you lived in when you were the happiest and most content.

This worship song, this prayer, was written by the Sons of Korah. It’s a song celebrating their relationship with God, enjoying the privilege of being in relationship with him, being in his presence, and being in his home.

The sons of Korah are saying to God, We love your house, we love your home, we love being in your home, because that’s where you are, and we like being where you are. We even love the fact that you have birds in there, making their nests. 84:3] 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.

84:2a] My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; We all go through times when we feel a little distant from God, we realize that that’s what’s missing, and we long for a closer walk with God. We long to feel more connected to him. We know that’s what we need, and we can feel it. We miss the sense of being close to God and being in his presence.

Then there are other times when we’ve enjoyed our relationship with him. You’re in a place of worship, they are singing a song that speaks to you, a song that you love, and you get into it. You feel the good things it’s doing to your soul and your spirit. 84:2b] My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.

When I was a pastor, one of the things I told my worship leaders was that I wanted us to have fun in our worship. I wanted us to enjoy it, and I wanted us to sing songs we all loved to sing. So, I wanted him to be sure that every song we sang was singable, that every song was easy for people to sing, so they could be fully engaged in worshipping God.

I asked them to open with two or three songs that had a lot of life in them, songs that had energy. I would tell them that I wanted those songs to have energy so that we could all get caught up in our worship, I wanted songs that made us want to move, to bounce a little bit, songs that had so much life in them we couldn’t sit still.

Then we’d glide into songs that were more reflective, slower pace, where we could just concentrate on connecting to God through worship. At the end of the service, I told my team, I wanted them to bounce us out of the door, go out celebrating and reflecting on the amazing worship they just experienced. Then those songs would come back into all of our heads during the week, and we’d find ourselves singing them or humming them all week. So they say, 84:4] Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise! Selah.

They mention some of the things that worshipping God in song does for us. It makes us stronger, we can sense God filling our spirit with His Spirit, filling our souls with His Spirit. 84:5] Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. It’s like, if somebody could see into our hearts, they’d see a bunch of highways, a bunch of roadways, and they’d follow those roads. They would discover that every one of those roads leads to God, and they lead people to a deeper connection with God.

Worship not only strengthens us, it makes us more fruitful for the kingdom. Notice what he says, 84:6] As they go through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. The word Baca literally means weeping; the valley of Baca was a place that was barren and dry, like our souls can get. Through worshipping God, what we can leave behind are the valleys of weeping that have become a valley of springs, a valley covered with pools containing fresh rainwater. We can help do that for other people. We can leave behind a life-changing impact on other people, something that flows out of our worship.

We will find ourselves getting stronger and stronger in our faith and in our walk with God.

84:7] They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion. We become stronger in spirit, stronger in our faith, we go from one stage of strength and spiritual power to another, and eventually we wind up in the very presence of God. ...each one appears before God in Zion.

84:8-10] 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. They say there is no place they would rather be than in the presence of God. 84:11-12] For the Lord God is a sun, He brings light and illumination - and he is a shield, One who will protect us from harm; 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!