No Good Thing

Normally, I have you remain standing so that we can read the scripture when we go into the preaching portion of the service. But today, I have decided to step aside from the 1 Peter verse-by-verse exposition to preach from Psalm 84. And so we just actually said the words to Psalm 84 together. And so we don't need to read it aloud. Just a quick note, we believe in what's called expositional preaching here, which means that we preach from the text of Scripture.

Our goal is to exegete what the text says and to let the text guide what we do. And we believe also that we want to do that what's called verse by verse. And so in general, as you've noticed, we started in 1 Peter 1.1 and then we got to 1 Peter 2.10 last week, I think. But we also think that maybe a few times a year it would be appropriate to even do something topical, if necessary, so we could talk about the election or we could come up with something to teach from other parts of Scripture.

But as well, I think it's nice, since we're singing this psalm, to actually study it a little deeper and to be able to meditate on it a little bit more so than maybe just singing it at home. And so this psalm begins with some instructions which are actually part of the inspired text of Scripture. And this was actually news to me when somebody first told me this.

But when it says, like I'm opening my Bible, it says Psalm 83, it says, a song, a psalm of Asaph. That's actually part of the text of Scripture. And so when I memorize psalms, I memorize that. And when I read the psalms to somebody or out loud, I would read that part to myself. Whereas the headings, like in the ESV, in mine it says, Oh God, do not keep silence on Psalm 83.

The headings are not inspired text. Those were put there by the authors of the ESV. And so in Psalm 84, it says, to the choir master according to the getteth, a psalm of the sons of Korah. And so we have a few things here that are worth mentioning. And with 12 verses, should be able to spend a few minutes per verse and still have a reasonable chunk-sized sermon here for you.

But to the choir master, that tells me a few things. One of them in particular is that they sang this. So just like we just sang Psalm 84, this was actually meant to be sung. This was something that the people would sing. And it was given to the choir master. So in a day and age where we live in a country of worship leaders, right?

You go to most big churches, especially in the United States, but even some of the smaller ones now, more than likely you're going to walk in, and there's going to be kind of a hip-looking guy with skinny jeans, probably like long pointy shoes and he'll have maybe a little bow tie or something that makes him kind of stand out and look a little different. Usually they have a faux hawk and some fake glasses if they don't have vision problems. And you have these guys that are worship leaders all over the place.

In some places you have women that are worship leaders. And what you have in some of these situations is these people actually are writing the music that the church is going to perform. And it's not terrible to have somebody musically talented write the music. That's not a bad idea. But unfortunately, a lot of times, the person who God has gifted to be able to do music, or maybe more so to perform music, not even be able to author it, that person's not necessarily a gifted teacher.

That person's not necessarily the person that should be providing the doctrine to the people of God that's going to be sung out of their mouths, or, in a lot of cases, just sung to them in a performance style. So if you ever use the phrase worship leader around me, I think the worship leader is the pastor. I think the worship leader is the man that's standing in front, proclaiming God's word to you.

And so right now, I'm your worship leader. In fact, this entire night, I'm your worship leader. On a couple other occasions, Jason Roberts is your worship leader, because when he's up here praying and he's calling you to worship, He's leading worship at that time. And next week, Jason's going to do the whole worship leading thing, and then Brother Paul's going to preach.

And so worship leaders are the people that lead you in worship. Worship leaders are not the people that either perform songs for you or even lead you in the songs necessarily. They may be leading worship at that time, but it's not distinct to them. But we are happy to have gifted musicians throughout the history of the church, and it's one of the reasons why we have the song we just sang, because a personal friend of ours wrote music that we could sing Psalm 84 to.

And I could even adapt it to my modified words of the ESV with Yahweh instead of the Lord. And I could make it sound okay. And so we're thankful for choir masters. The Gitteth is kind of an unknown term. It's some kind of musical term. We don't know exactly what it is.

And then it says, a psalm of the sons of Korah. and when I first saw this I assumed that the sons of Korah wrote it and you can read about Korah there's a little thing in the Old Testament called Korah's Rebellion where a lot of people perished it wasn't a good thing you can also read about the sons of Korah in I think it's 1 Chronicles 26 I wasn't intending to go there so I didn't write this one down but in 1 Chronicles 26 something you see and it not first no that 2nd I might turn my Bible to the wrong page Hold on In 1st Chronicles 26, it's a new Bible. I'm getting used to it. There were the divisions of the gatekeepers.

It begins, it says, As for the divisions of the gatekeepers, of the Korahites, and then it lists all their names. And it says in 19, these were the divisions of the gatekeepers among the Korahites and the sons of Merari. So the sons of Korah were the gatekeepers. And anybody who's been practicing this song or knows this song at all knows that later on in Psalm 84, it's going to compare being a gatekeeper or a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord.

And so I thought naturally, oh, these sons of Korah, these gatekeepers, they were musically inclined and they were inspired by God and they wrote this psalm. But men I look up to, like Charles Spurgeon and John Calvin, both had no problem at all saying it was David who wrote this. And they had a couple of... Spurgeon seems to just assume it, at least where I read Spurgeon.

It doesn't mean he assumed it, but he didn't prove it. And Calvin had some proofs why he thinks it was David who wrote it. and I was somewhat convinced by them that I'm safe to say it was David. It was King David who wrote this by the inspiration of God, and he certainly didn't need anyone to write it for him. But so we have this psalm, and it begins with, How lovely is your dwelling place, O Yahweh of hosts.

And so we have this proclamation that where God is, is lovely. And this is something that I want us to be able to think through as you read through this psalm, because he's going to say, My soul longs and faints for the courts of Yahweh. He says, the sparrow finds a home. And then he says, at your altar, so Yahweh of hosts. And he keeps referring to where God dwells, in God's tabernacle in the temple.

And what I want you to remember is what we talked about a few weeks ago when we talked about living stones. That where God dwells, we call it the temple in the Old Testament, because that was the only place where God would visit the people. And a holy priest with blood could go in once a year and actually visit. But now, God actually dwells in us. God dwells in our bodies.

The Holy Spirit. If you go through the New Testament, you see the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit all make their home inside a believer. and so when he says how lovely is your dwelling place so Yahweh of hosts I want you to remember that this is not an exaltation of a particular building it's not a oh the temple was beautiful because the temple may have been beautiful but the temple that was beautiful that was made by the hands of man was only beautiful to the extent that God was willing to visit them there and when God had the Romans destroy the temple he was letting us know that there's a new temple because people had decided not to even believe what Jesus had said about it but Jesus said I am the temple it is in me where you find salvation and so when we say the temple is lovely it's not about the gold, it's not about the glitter it's not about the expensive at all which it was expensive, they were supposed to spend a lot of money It partially showed how grateful they were to God for delivering them from Egypt, that they would use what they plundered from Egypt to build this building for God. But it's lovely because God's there.

And God's here too. And you don't have to go to Mecca to visit God. You don't have to be in a certain time of the year so you can see your zodiac sign to visit God. you don't have to be in a certain prayer position to visit God if you're a Christian today God's with you all the time with you in a more real way than when we say he's omnipresent he's everywhere right but we mean something special when we say God's with you as a Christian all the time and it's lovely where God dwells is lovely and so we have great joy coming to a place where God is going to visit us not this building but this building is where God visits us on Sundays.

This building is where we hope that when we read a psalm for the call to worship and when we read the Old Testament scripture and we look at the confession and we sing songs that we think exalt the Lord Jesus Christ and His Father that we think are spirit led and when we preach when I preach and we think God's visiting us in a special way. There's something different happening when a man's preaching God's word than when you're at home. That's the way God works. it's one of the reasons why we want to meet every week and preach.

It's one of the reasons why we have communion every week. I'd have a baptism every week if we got people getting saved every week, but we're not going to manufacture those like some people do. But because it is lovely here, and it should be exciting to us. And even if the walls aren't probably painted the way you'd have done it, and even if there's little screws sticking out, and there's things about the building that are falling apart, when you're here, you're actually meeting in a special way with God's people, and thus God is here as well.

And so the author here says, My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of Yahweh. He says, My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. In Psalm 119, verse 20, David who also I think was inspired to write that said my soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times in Psalm 46 again David says what does he say a lot of people know this one It the deer pants for the water right Not Psalm 46 I don't remember which psalm that is.

If you know, tell me. Maybe it's 45. It's the deer pants for the water. I don't remember. So my soul longs for you, O God. There's this sense of longing that David has for God. he faints even for the courts of Yahweh Psalm 42 that's right but there's just this sense of he's not comfortable when he's not in God's house so we have this comfort level in a sense where you have this teaching that the Holy Spirit indwells you and he'll never leave you and I believe that and I can teach it to you and hopefully you already know this, and you have this belief, and so even when you're not at church, even when you miss church, you miss being there, but you know God is not with you.

But this longing that he's describing is a longing as if he's not near God, as if God is far away from him, and he wants to be there with God so badly, and we're going to see that he's willing to trek long distances and fight through hardship to get there. And it's less reminiscent to me of just meeting God in the first place and more reminiscent of the pilgrim's progress, if you ever read that story or listened to it. The pilgrim in the book, I don't want to spoil it, but he's a Christian very early.

And then the book is all about the Christian life heading to the celestial city. And it's filled with different hardships, but it's a constant wanting to be with his Lord in a different way than we are now. God indwells you right now, but you're still suffering from the consequences of sin. You're still suffering from your sinful flesh. And you haven't seen him face to face.

Peter praises those who haven't seen him yet love him. But we haven't seen him face to face. And you should long for that. That's a special thing. how many of you if you were separated from one of these people in your family that you love so much if you were separated for even a few days how many of you would long to just see their face to go up and just touch them you ever gone for a while and then you come back and you just grab the other person's head you just kind of hold it you ever done that or somebody did it to you I know that my wife is more likely to grab my face like that than I would be to her but yeah there is a sense that you just long to see their face A picture doesn't do it.

A photograph isn't enough. Photographs fade. So we should long for Jesus in that same way, but even more so. So David gives us an example. He says, my soul longs, just faints for the courts of Yahweh. My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.

He sings. I don't think we sing enough. I think we sing a good amount at church, but I'm saying it on a regular basis. We've been trying to tell you here, go home and sing the songs all week. If I don't publish the songs for next Sunday soon enough for you, sing the ones we just sang. Just sing the ones from Sunday on Monday if I don't publish quick enough for you.

You don't have a hymn book? Spend $20 and buy one for your house. I guarantee a lot of you have spent a lot more money on something less important to you than a hymn book. I know I have. I have a device in my pocket. well I didn't buy this because my work did but I bought some expensive devices in my life and if my work didn't buy me a phone I'd probably spend $800 or whatever they cost now on a phone and I wouldn't even think about it I'd just buy it because I think I need it but thinking about buying five hymn books for my house so we could all have one is actually a challenging decision ooh that's $100 if I go with the nice ones it would be $250 how much do you value the Lord?

I just confess I don't value hymn books enough I don't think so praise the Lord for letting heaven show me that right now but my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God David says now this next two verses are kind of interesting or even the third one only he says even the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest for herself so he refers to these two birds and there's some people that think it should say dove rather than sparrow and he says where she may lay her young and then it says, at your altars, O Yahweh of hosts, my King and my God. But if you look at other translations of the Bible, it does not say at your altars as it sounds. It doesn't sound like the bird finds a home at the altars of God.

Now, although that's theoretically possible, and David could be jealous of birds who are able to get close to the temple and they could actually put a little nest maybe somewhere around the eve of it or something like that. And that's how I first read it. But the way Calvin, I read Calvin a lot when I was studying this, was that there's actually two separate thoughts here.

He's saying, even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young. He's saying, God, you are so good. Even these tiny, insignificant creatures find a home in your creation, not at his altars, but in your creation. Think, God, you're so amazing. You've counted all the hairs on my head. You care about the sparrows.

You certainly care about me. I'm made in your image. I'm one of your people. And yet, I look outside, and there's animals all over the place that find homes, places to take care of their young. And so this psalmist is reminding us that God is so good to even the smallest, most insignificant seeming creatures because God is meticulously able to look over all of his creation and it doesn cost him anything It doesn cost him any effort or energy He doesn get tired God can simultaneously make sure that every sparrow in the world is taken care of and hear all your prayers and answer them perfectly.

I think we forget that. I think we forget how great a God he is. I mean, if every one of you called me this week with a problem, I'd probably just die. There's not that many people in this room. I'd be overwhelmed. If every person in the entire world stopped and cried out to God simultaneously, it wouldn't make any difference to him.

It'd be meaningful. I'm not saying he wouldn't like that. I'm saying it doesn't change him. It doesn't hurt him. It doesn't cost him. It's not hard for him.

He has immeasurable power and greatness to do all that he pleases. And he can do what you ask him to do. If you ask according to his will and you come to him through his son. And so how often have we neglected prayer? How often do we not come to Him? And so what Calvin said, and a couple other people I read, was that he's talking about the sparrows and the swallows, and then it's like he stops mid-thought and he just says, Your altars, O God!

Your altars, O Yahweh of hosts! Yahweh of armies! It's like he was praying and thinking, and he just changes his thought, like, God, you're so good! It's like an exclamation in the middle of another sentence. And he says, your altars. And so we have references to God's altars, his courts, his dwelling place.

And what I want you to realize is that really, the entire universe is his kingdom. He reigns. He's the one who owns it all. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. The fullness of the earth is his, and everything thereof, it's all his. But the altar is where we go and we sacrifice.

The altar is where the sacrifice was given that actually makes salvation possible. And Jesus Christ, He's the one that went into the Holy of Holies and offered the one-time sacrifice for us. And so now you're to be a living sacrifice. You're to live a life that shows that your body you don't think is yours, it's God's. You're to live a life that shows that you don't think your life is your own, that it's God's. and you're to trust him with all the results of that this is a call to abandon self-preservation I'm not saying don't be prudent the Bible tells us to be prudent the Bible talks about how to be wise how to store up for the winter like an ant so I'm not saying you go spend all your money tomorrow and trust God to give you some tomorrow I'm not saying quit your job but God may be calling some of us to do more things that are faithful to Him that potentially will cost us.

And I've heard so many stories of people who did the thing and then they were blessed. And God took care of them in a way maybe they didn't expect. So let us be that way. David says, my King and my God. It's like a double my, my. He's my King.

He's my God. He could have said my King and God, right? It kind of goes well in English. at least. He said, my king and my God. He's all these things. There's no God that's not the king.

There's no God that's not the ruler. There's no God that's not the sovereign. I think a lot of people that you know in the United States, half the people I met last night that professed to be Christian at Ohio State University, they want a God that's not their king. Because what they really want is the genie from Aladdin. That's what they want, but they want unlimited wishes.

Most people, that's who God is. He's the genie that popped up. He said, you get three wishes. He said, my first wish, I wish for unlimited wishes. And the genie said, okay, well, you got me there. And now the rest of their life, God's just waiting on them, like, what do they call them, a divine butler.

Ready to do their will whenever they need them. Would never judge them for anything. But God is the king. And the king sets the rules. The king makes the laws. The king taxes the people.

The king decides who eats and who doesn't. The king decides who comes into the palace, who's not allowed even near the moat. The king decides what other nations he's going to conquer, what army he's going to put together to do it. So when David says, Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise, he's referencing the people that are in God's kingdom.

He's talking not just about the priests. He's not talking about people that actually live in a temple. He's talking about those who dwell with God. Look at Revelation 3. In Revelation 3, there's a neat little phrase here that most certainly is metaphorical. Revelation 3, in verse 11, we'll start there, we'll look at 12.

He says, I am coming soon. Hold fast what you have so that no one may seize your crown. It's a warning to Christians. Hold on to things. You're supposed to apprehend Christ. you're supposed to cling to Him. It sounds maybe a little trite, but you're kind of supposed to cling to Him as if you could fall away.

Now you can't. We have assurance that God will keep all those in His hands. No one can pluck them out. And I'll tell you what, you can't jump out of God's hand either if you're in it. But there's a sense that we're to cling to Him as if you were afraid. It's like you were afraid you could fall out.

So you should hold on tight. But then He says, the one who conquers, this is the one who perseveres to the end, those who make it to the time Jesus returns, or they make it to the celestial city, going through that river of death at the end of their life in this world, the one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Now does anyone here actually imagine that there's some temple with billions and billions of pillars, literally somewhere, and one day you'll be one of them? that's a little closer to Buddhism than Christianity if you believe something like that although in Buddhism I guess it would be like one that we all combine into, I don't know, but it doesn't matter.

The point is, it's metaphorical. You're going to dwell with God forever. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me, and I will dwell in the house of Yahweh forever. I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of Yahweh. Everything is about dwelling with Yahweh. It's about where is God?

I want to be with Him. And even though He's omnipresent, even though He's with you now, you long to be face-to-face with Jesus Christ, who we will see face-to-face. John tells us that. That's apostolic authority there. And scriptural. He says, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God.

Never shall he go out of it. And I will write on him the name of my God. It's like you're tattooed with God's name. So what do you do when you get something that's yours? And you go somewhere where other people are going to have the same kind of thing. You get a new basketball.

You go to the gym. What do you do first? Yeah, you get a magic marker. A permanent one. and you write Tom or Jeremy or Michael or whatever on it, right? Or Wesley or Michael, Leora, Eris. You write your name on something, it's yours.

God's going to write His name on His people, it says here. And it's more permanent than the permanent ink my wife put on our dry erase board a couple weeks ago. I had to throw that thing away. I think I promised I'd never use her in illustrations. Maybe I need to repent of that one. But he says, never shall he go out of it.

And I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from God out of heaven in my own new name. I'll tell you what, that's the bride of Christ. And we can go into that a different time. But blessed are those who dwell in your house. And what do they do? I repeat, or does the psalm repeat, ever singing your praise.

So when I tell you I don't think you sing enough, when I tell you when you're at home and your family doesn't sing enough, and when I tell you that in your private devotion you don't sing enough all by yourself, you don't sing enough to God, you can get as mad at me as you want, but I think your disagreement is with things like Scripture. We should be singers. We should be singers.

Tell you what, if you save someone's life, particularly if it didn't cost you your own, there would be no amount of devotion to you that you'd reject from that person. You would think it was very nice that the person would want to constantly be appreciative of you. And if you were in trouble, that they'd defend you or help you. Why don't we do it for God?

So verse 5, Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. So now the strength that we have is the strength from God. So he's saying, blessed are those whose strength is in you. You're not blessed if you're relying on your own strength. If you're relying on your own strength, whether it's because you're not a Christian or whether you're a Christian that's trusting in yourself, not necessarily for salvation, but maybe for other things that we do as Christians, instead of relying on the Lord, you're not blessed.

You're not going to be happy. A lot of people argue about this, but blessed kind of simply just means happy. You're happy. You're joyful. It's not the fleeting happiness that we get when the Browns win a few games in a row and then two weeks later I'm ready to unplug my TV so I don't have to see them. It's not that kind of happiness.

But it's a happiness. It's a joy when we realize that, hey, I can't do these things on my own, but my strength is in God. It requires that you have the humility, first of all, to say, I don't have the strength. Some of you are very talented people. Some of you are very successful people. You go to work and you're very successful.

You do some very good things. you homeschool your kids, you do it really well. You're a good wife, you're a good daughter, you're a good husband, a good grandfather, whatever it is. Some of us have some skills. There's nothing wrong with that. And we're to use those for God. Some of us have been gifted by God to do things.

I like to hope I've been gifted by God to preach. If I'm not, I would hope people would start complaining more. But that's a gift that I try to use. But you know what? if I ever get up here in my own strength, it doesn't matter. Because the gift is from God. And so any skill, any success, any positive, productive output of the whole endeavor is only because God's involved.

Only because the strength comes from God and not from man. And you'll start to notice when you're relying on your own strength. Things will get frustrated in your life. If you're a Christian, thank God, He will let you get frustrated when you're in your own strength. Because He lets the wicked be successful. Remember Psalm 73, that guy Asaph, he was jealous because the wicked were fat and happy and they were eating and they were making money and they got to do all the fun things and they had prettier girlfriends and all this stuff.

And God's like, don't be jealous of these people. It's like He's fattening them up for the slaughter. He'll frustrate you. He'll let your endeavors be unsuccessful when they're in your own strength. and you'll know it. And you'll be extra tired at night. And you'll be extra exhausted on Sunday.

And you'll be less interested in looking at His Word, less interested in singing, less interested in praying. You'll be more irritable. All the things in 1 Corinthians 13 that love is, you'll notice you're the opposite of most of them. I'm not saying just once in a while. We all fail. I'm talking about a more consistent basis.

And you'll wonder, why God? I'm trying to do so many things for you and all of a sudden it'll hit you. Oh, I'm trying to do so many things, but I'm doing it on my own strength. I'm not trusting God to do these things. You have a prodigal child. You have a relative that you need to talk to about things and you want them to be converted to Christ.

You want them to change their mind about a bad decision. You want the prodigal child to come home or at least repent. And we start to fight in ways where we think we going to affect the change But we have to trust God And he says in whose heart are the highways to Zion In our heart is the highways to Zion So again is this literal Is the psalmist, by the inspiration of God, trying to say that we have like, almost like you've got like a Google Maps?

No, this is the city of peace. I read Psalm 2 before we came and he said, as for me I have set my king in my holy hill in Zion, right? In Zion is where God is, and that's the city of peace. And that is where our hearts are to have the pathways to there. Some people have said this is just knowing God's ways. Some people have argued that there were actual highways to Zion that people would know how to take.

Although that may have been true, I don't think that's the intention of the psalm. It's in your heart where it's the pathway to God that you want that to be there. In your heart. So you may outwardly do religious things. I mean, literally every one of you is sitting in church right now. And I don't know if one of you is a devil.

The apostles didn't know Judas was. These guys were sitting next to Jesus, listening to him preach, watching his miracles, believing the stuff he said, and they didn't figure out that Judas was actually a devil. God closes our eyes sometimes to some of these things. I don't know if we're necessarily supposed to do devil checks on each other, but we're supposed to help each other, we're supposed to edify one another, we're supposed to admonish one another, rebuke one another, reprove one another.

It's one of the ways that we maybe find those things out. It's also one of the ways you help an erring Christian. But in your heart needs to be your love for Jesus. You can stand and sing. You guys can memorize Psalm 84. Sing it with me.

You can get up here and preach. There's been a lot of guys that have stood up and preached probably a lot better than I do. They're in hell right now. Because their heart wasn't actually in it. You read every week about a new pastor that was molesting someone, don't you? I do.

Maybe I read the wrong news sites. They're depressing sometimes. but that concerns me. It concerns me that there's Christians like you that I love. My little group of people in here that I love dearly and if somebody hurt you, I'd be very, very unhappy. In fact, I'd be angry. I'd be righteously angry about it.

And it would make God angry too. And it makes me very sad to think that there's other groups of people like you. There's little kids out there like the ones that I'm looking out at now and there's predators that figured out, hey, if I memorize a few of these sermons I read online and I figure out the right things to say, Christians will swoon at it and they'll let me have access to their children even.

It's a serious thing. We live in a very, very wicked world. I don't suppose that any of you are that, but that's why you search your own heart. You search your own heart. Am I really giving devotion to God or am I just trying that other people would see me? that's really what it comes down to beware when you do your acts of righteousness in order to be seen by others for then you will have no reward from your father in heaven in your heart needs to be the highways of Zion as they go through the valley of Baca which we talked about last week that means weeping as they go through the valley of weeping they make it a place of springs the early rain also covers it with pools The picture here is of the sojourner making their way to Zion.

And they go through this valley of dryness and weeping. And metaphorically speaking, it's about the trials of your life, the valleys of your life, the difficulties. And I encourage you to read the Pilgrim's Progress or listen to it, because it describes all these things so well. Calvin said about this verse, in these words, reproof is administered to the slothfulness of those who will not submit to any inconvenience for the sake of being benefited by the service of God.

They indulge themselves in their own ease and pleasures and allow nothing to interfere with these. They will therefore, provided they are not required to make any exertion or sacrifice, readily profess themselves to be the servants of God. but they would not give a hair of their head or make the smallest sacrifice to obtain the liberty of hearing the gospel preached and of enjoying the sacraments he's just talking about people unwilling to go to church I see a lot more unwillingness than that in this world there's a lot more things that we don't do that we ought to do are you going to go through the valley of weeping are you willing to to get to God according to this, this is a metaphor again but there's pictures here, they make it a place of springs so they're traveling on their way to see God and they're on their way to God's dwelling place they want to be in the house of God it's like they're digging for wells, they're trying to find water they're parched, they're thirsty, they're malnourished they need this strength they make it a place of springs, but then it says the early rain covers it with pools and the early rain is something that I thought rain before 7 a.m. I was just kind of reading it, thinking, oh, that makes sense, early rain.

No, early rain is after a drought in Israel, after the dry season, the early rains are the rains that come at the beginning of that season. So the very first little inklings of any kind of nourishment, of any kind of water that's going to nourish people and nourish the land. And so as you dig these wells, and as you're fighting, you're working with your exertion that God has given you, that He wants you to exert in order to fight as if you're trying to get to Him.

He the one that comes from above though and He fills those pools you make with the water It God who sent Jesus to come down to us in order to provide for us what we needed There wasn't enough springs in the ground for us, but God nourishes us abundantly. In Malachi 3.10, we have an interesting little verse that's often misused and some of you You'll know the misuses of it from the prosperity gospel people. But in Malachi 3.10, Malachi, the messenger of God, says, bring the full tithe into the storehouse.

So he's talking about these priests that were robbing God. He says, bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. he makes me say make sure you're bringing bringing it in don't rob God of what the people are giving and he says and thereby put me to the test says Yahweh of hosts if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need God's the one that provides I think one of the principles that God wants us to understand is that when we are generous, when we're cheerful givers, and when we're honest in our dealings, we can trust that He's the one that's going to provide. He even says, like, thereby put me to the test.

I'm going to pour down for you a blessing. So it's this image of rain. In Ezekiel 34, it's a very important chapter of the Bible to understand being born again and to understand the new covenant. But in Ezekiel 34, verse 26. Well, I'll just say 25. It says, I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild beasts from the land so that they may dwell securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods.

And I will make them in all the places around my hill, right, his holy hill, Zion. He says, I will make them a blessing and I will send down the showers in their season. They shall be showers of blessing. Maybe we'll sing that song next week, showers of blessing. But God is going to rain down on His people showers of blessing. He's going to rain down on them exactly what they need, when they need it most.

It's going to be abundant. It's going to fill the pools. You dig all these wells trying to find water, and you wake up the next morning, and boom, there's water there that God can just put there. He's the one that's going to provide. And your responsibility is to be generous, especially with the saints of God, to care for others. Don't rob.

Certainly don't rob God. Verse 7, he says, They go from strength to strength. Each one appears before God in Zion. So there's two things I want you to think about with going from strength to strength, the first one is this, that there's weakness. As they go along the path, I think they get strength. We all get a little drive once in a while, right?

And you can kind of put it in there. And you can put in the effort. And then if you're anything like I am, you just sometimes just get beat. And maybe some of the young people don't understand this yet, but I know at my age, I have started to at least understand, And yeah, the aging process is going in the wrong direction for me now. There was a cutoff around 38.

It just started going down. I'm not complaining. It's just that's reality, though. When I get injured now, it takes me three times as long to recover from something as I did when I was 20. Just the way it is. We go from strength to strength.

But the beauty of it is, although there's so much weakness involved, although there's so much difficulty, although there's so many times that we just need to rest, we go from strength to strength. There's more strength given by God. We already said that, blessed are those whose strength is in God. We said that in verse 5. So we go from strength to strength, and we keep moving in the right direction.

And God's providing with these early rains and other ways of nourishment. It's a metaphor for God's amazing provision to each and every one of His people. some of us get more rain than others I'll admit it some of us have more gifts that God's given to be able to get through the difficulties seems like there's some people that suffer more there's some people who struggle more with faith and assurance some people who struggle more with various sins some people struggle more with the more difficult kind of heinous sins or the more devastating ones and some people they don't show those outward signs as much God gifts people differently I mean, thank God, you look at a guy like John MacArthur, thank God he's not, you know, a guy that struggles as much. He's fought his sin at a level in his heart so that he can actually be a decent spokesperson for Christianity.

You know what I mean? And then there's other people who have sinned grievously against God. They're still Christian, and maybe they've repented, but they're probably not the best person to go on TV and represent us. You ever see some of these guys, they get on TV, and they ask him about Christianity and you're kind of like, oh, I wish he wasn't, like, he doesn't represent me.

Yeah, you know what I mean? So they go from strength to strength, but each one appears before God in Zion. I think this is a promise. Each and every one of God's people who desires to dwell in his house, who longs and faints for the courts of the Lord, whose strength is in the Lord, who goes through the valley of weeping, you're going to make it. You're not going to die parched in the valley. your weeping and your mourning today it might hurt but it only for a day The sufferings of this life are not worth being compared with the glory that going to be revealed to us So David calls out, and he says, O Yahweh, God of hosts, hear my prayer.

Give ear, O God of Jacob. He announces that Yahweh is the God of armies, so hosts his armies. So it's this idea that you have this God who has an unlimited power to unleash all of the creatures that he would want to create at any time as armies that could simply destroy the entire universe. Jesus said, I could have called down legions of angels to defend me if I really wanted to.

And David calls on that God, the God of all power, of all might, the God who was able to convert him from sinner to saint, and the God who was able to forgive him even after he committed grievous adultery and then murder. He calls on that God who has all power and says, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob, to me. That's relying on God's strength.

Rely on God's strength and pray to Him. He's the one with the power. Behold our shield, O God. Look on the face of your anointed. In the ESV it says, behold our shield, O God. And it kind of reads funny to me.

I think it's supposed to say, behold God our shield. So God is our shield is really what he's trying to say. Although when I thought about it the first way I thought well my shield, the shield of faith is what I'm told to take up. And in fact I want God to look on my faith. I don't want God to look at my strength. I don't want to look at my weaknesses.

I don't want to look at my good works, my bad works, my righteousnesses, my repentances. I want God to look at my faith. my faith is in Jesus Christ and so if God looks upon us through Jesus Christ we have hope but God is our shield I think he's our defender he's the one that can protect us and he says look on the face of your anointed he's talking about Jesus Christ he's the anointed one in Mark 8 29 Peter says you are the Christ and that meaning is lost on us but when we realize that Christos or Christ means anointed Christ is the Greek word it just means the anointed one, which is what Messiah meant. So when we say Jesus Christ, you're saying Jesus the anointed one.

You're saying Jesus Messiah. He's the anointed one. And so we tell them, look on the face of your anointed. It's like, don't look at me. Look on Jesus, not me. I want him as my substitute.

At the same time, I want to see him face to face, because now we're anointed. John says, you've all been anointed by the Holy One. So we have an abundance of anointing on us. We've been covered, as if with oil, we've been covered with God's grace. It just pours down all over us. And then to round it out, this is the more common thing that anybody knows, most people know, Matt Redman has the song that a lot of people know about this part.

And he says, for a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. So he's just making a couple comparisons. I would rather have a single day with God than a thousand days somewhere else. And I think it's even more comparison. I'd rather have a single bad day with God than a thousand really great days without Him.

One day of horrible suffering, one day of horrible difficulty, even as the result of your own sin, with God on your side, is better than a thousand great days elsewhere. There's just no comparison. He says, I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. A doorkeeper is a very low position. So rather than live in opulence and comfort and be in a tent and have a nice place to be, he'd rather be laying outside a door protecting the door of God's house.

I mean, when you think about a doorkeeper, if we had a doorkeeper right now, he'd be out there. He wouldn't be with us. David's saying, I'd rather be sitting outside the door of God's house, being the one that checks people in or out, maybe even getting to kind of touch the garment of the people that are allowed in, rather than be in a tent with the rich people and doing the fun things that the world thinks is good. it's just a it's a comparison but it's like there's no comparison but we get short sighted and we see worldly things as attractive and we want to do them so he finishes up he says Yahweh God is a sun and shield he provides nourishment he provides health and he provides protection to us he is our provider he's Jehovah Jireh right the God who sees the God who provides He's the one that will come and give us what we need.

He bestows favor and honor. In some versions that would say grace and glory. God's the one that can give us grace, and He gives us more grace. He gives us glory even. No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. It doesn't mean if you do the right things, God will give you everything that you think is good.

What it means is that God is perfect. And if you are in Jesus Christ, He's not going to withhold anything from you that's good. And because He's all-wise and all-knowing, He knows better than you what's good for you. And sometimes what's good for you is the opposite of the thing you wanted. And if you believe this verse, you would never complain again a day of your life, if you believe it.

Because you'd realize that if there was something good that you could have, He wouldn't withhold it from you if you're in Christ. he doesn't withhold. He's not this stingy God. He's effusibly graceful. it's effusive. It's like bubbling out, right? There's too much for us. You have so many good things you've been given that you don't even cling to.

You don't even apprehend them. You wake up in the morning. I said it earlier. You wake up in the morning, you forget to read your Bible, you forget to pray. I used to do this sometimes. I'd get in the car and I'd pray on the way to work.

I couldn't give God 15 minutes in the morning beforehand. We neglect to go to church. We neglect to call other believers and see how they're doing. We neglect the different means of grace He provides. We neglect to do all the things that God's given us in this world that are actually really good things for us, like going there for and evangelizing the nations.

The verse that Eris quoted for us. We neglect all these good gifts, and then we're mad that He doesn't give us a PS4 or whatever it is we want. There's a good thing. Oh, I want a new truck. God doesn withhold any good thing from His people and He didn withhold any good thing from Jesus If Jesus suffered the way He did I think we can suffer a little bit.

So He finishes up. He says, O Yahweh of hosts, the God of all the armies, blessed is the one who trusts in you. Happy is the person who trusts in God. That's the person with true joy. And you all have known this person. Everyone knows that person who is super faithful.

The person who, no matter what's happened in their life, they just seem really content with God only, and not all the other things in life that other people seem to cling to. And I'll add that when it says, Blessed is the one who trusts in you, when I hear blessed is the one, I think of Jesus. Jesus is the one who perfectly trusted in God. Jesus trusted the Father to take care of him. to the point of leaving glory to be put in the womb of a sinner And yes Mary was a sinner So that he could be born in a manger and have to be raised by people in the Middle East 2,000 years ago.

Jesus trusted God to take care of him every step of the way. Perfectly faithful and he's your example. He's your example. That's who we are to follow in his footsteps. So that's a little bit about Psalm 84. I wish I could have I should have split it in two almost there was exciting stuff in there but hopefully as we sing it again and as you sing it throughout this week and then sing it next Sunday as well and then hopefully continue singing it it will have meaning to you that it didn't before and you'll think more deeply about what God has told us in that psalm Father in heaven we thank you for the greatness of Jesus Christ who alone fulfilled all righteousness on behalf of sinners we thank you that all of the Old Testament Psalms tell us about Him and His life, about His righteousness, about faith in Him And we thank you that we have the same path as David that through trial and through suffering we may come to see Jesus face to face one day We thank you that Jesus led the way like a man and he did all that he was called to do, never complained, never lacked faith, saying praises to you.

We pray that we might be more like Him in this life, that we would become more virtuous in the many ways that we fail, by Your grace alone. But give us strength for these days of battle that we are in, because You are the one who can nourish and protect us. Help us not to rely on ourselves, not only for salvation, but even for every step of our life, that we may be relying on You and You alone. and while we do that Lord cause us to work and do the things that you have preordained that we would walk in for your son's glory Amen