Lesson: Psalm 84
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INTRODUCTION:
Bosses Night[1]
At an annual Bosses Night dinner for Helena, Montana, lawyers, sponsored by legal secretaries, it was time to announce the Boss of the Year.
The master of ceremonies began:
"First of all, our winner is a graduate of the University of Montana. So
that already eliminates some of you as candidates."
"Our winner also is a partner
in a downtown Helena law firm. That eliminates some more of you. "Our
nominee is honest, upright, dedicated..."
A voice from the audience cut in:
"Well, there go the rest of us!"
A lawyer was overheard praying in
church:[2]
"We respectively request, and entreat, that due and adequate provisions be
made this day and the date hereinafter subscribed, for the organizing of such
methods and allocations and distribution as may be deemed necessary to properly
assure the reception by and for said petitioner of such quantities of baked
cereal products as shall, in the judgment of the aforementioned parishioners,
constitute a sufficient supply thereof."
Interpretation: "...give us
this day our daily bread."
I.
We understand the Psalms as a means to know God and
ourselves.
A.
John Calvin describes the Psalter as, “‘An Anatomy of all
the Parts of the Soul;’ for there is not an emotion of which any one can be
conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy
Spirit has here drawn to the life all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts,
hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which
the minds of men are wont to be agitated.”[3]
B.
Another writes, “Like the windows and carvings of medieval
cathedrals, the Psalms were pictures of biblical faith for a people who had no
copies of the Scriptures in their homes and could not have read them.”[4]
1.
To express the divine word spoken in rather than to
man
2.
To reveal the character of God through the praise,
complaint and exhortation of God’s people so that the reader may be willing to
submit himself to the Lord.
3.
To enable the reader to come into contact with God through
the expression of the common, subjective daily experiences of others.
4.
To encourage one’s confidence in God’s faithfulness by the
words of others when one’s own life experiences do not seem to support that
faith.
5.
To affirm the certainty of God’s future rule on earth
through the line of David wherein the righteous will be blessed and the wicked
will be judged.
6.
To provide a worship hymnal and a devotional guide for the
Temple-centered Jewish faith
7.
To encourage believers to enjoy God and his benefits
II.
The Psalms remind us that life is a journey, where are you
going to go?
A.
It is now more expensive to take a long trip.
1.
Oil near $143 per barrel.
2.
Current price of a gallon of regular gasoline as of July 1st
is $4.05.
3.
Where are you going to go?
B.
It is now more expensive to fly.
1.
Airlines are cutting planes and personal.
2.
The price of tickets is increasing.
3.
Airlines are charging for baggage.
4.
Airlines are reducing services on flights.
5.
Where are you going to go?
C.
It is now much more expensive to shop at your local
supermarket.
1.
Food costs are up and going still higher.
2.
Milk is between $3.50 and $4.00 per gallon.
3.
This means that food on the run is going to cost a lot
more.
4.
Where are you going to go?
III.
Do the Psalms help us to formulate an answer.
A.
The answer is YES!
B.
The Psalms help us to keep our eyes on the prize.
C.
The Psalms help us to realize the nature of the journey.
D.
So we turn to a Psalm of Pilgrimage, Psalm 84.
1.
Why not the Psalms 120-134.
2.
Psalm 84 is one of the most poignant and profound of the
Psalms
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MAIN
BODY
I.
The Korahites were a family of Levites who lived on the
east side of the Jordan River.
A.
They had to take turns in fulfilling their temple duties.
B.
Sometimes it was impossible to get to Jerusalem.
1.
The weather intervened.
“Dwelling
on the other side of Jordan, it was often impossible for them to reach Jerusalem.
When the river swelled and rose with the melting snows of winter, or with the
heavy tropical rains which fell on the northern hills and mountains, the fords
of the Jordan became impassible; and the sons of Korah, even though their turn
of duty had come round, were unable to go up to the house of the Lord.”
2.
Sometimes it was invading forces that prevented the
ascendance to Jerusalem and the courts of the Temple.
II.
The first stanza is a poignant cry, a longing to be able
to stand in the courts of the Lord.
1How lovely is your dwelling place,
O LORD of hosts!
2My soul longs, indeed it faints
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
3Even 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.
4Happy are those who live in your
house,
ever singing your praise.
A.
We cannot compare our church to the temple of God.
1.
We remember what Paul said to the Athenians at the
Areopagus.
24The God who
made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does
not live in shrines made by human hands, 25nor is he served by human
hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life
and breath and all things. 26From one ancestor he made all nations
to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and
the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27so that they
would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find himCthough indeed he is
not far from each one of us. 28For ‘In him we live and move and have
our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his
offspring,’ (Acts 17:24-28, NRSVA).
2.
Do we have the same longing for the presence of God as did
the descendants of Korah?
B.
Michel Bouttier in Prayers For My Village puts this
thought so beautifully:[5]
My soul thirsts for you, O living
God.
It's your Holy Spirit, O my God, who comes
and hollows out this expectant space within me.
It's your doing that my heart says to me:
Seek the face of the Lord.
And I do seek your face, O God of my salvation!
I thirst for you. The closer you are --
the more your presence surrounds me --
the more lively and ardent is this thirst.
I thirst for you, because your Holy Spirit comes in me --
with sighs too deep for words --
to breathe the expectation of all
your creatures;
comes to sing what I could not
otherwise know;
springs up in me like the first spark
of your kingdom.
1.
Do we have a divine thirst for this journey, its customary
task, the youth to instruct, the sick to visit.
2.
Do we desire, above all else, to send time here with our
God.
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III.
The second stanza recognizes the true nature of life.
A.
It is a mixture of light and dark, filled with shadows.
B.
It is a time of joy and sorrow.
5Happy are those whose strength is
in you, in whose heart are the
highways to Zion.6As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with
pools.7They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion.8O LORD
God of hosts, hear my prayer; give
ear, O God of Jacob!
C.
They go through the valley of Baca.
1.
Baca may mean the “valley of weeping.”
a)
It is a difficult place.
b)
A place of stone and sand.
c)
A place where there is little water.
2.
The pilgrims passing through Baca leave it better than
they found it.
3.
Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and
painter. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1946.
One of Hesse's last poems,
"written on an April night" in the spring of 1961, ends with these
lines:
“What you loved and what you
strove for,
What you dreamed and what you lived through,
Do you know if it was joy or suffering?
G sharp and A flat, E flat or D sharp,
Are they distinguishable to the ear?”
4.
Life is what you make it.
In the
pioneer days of the Old West, a wise settler had a beautiful ranch. He and his
family were happy, with many nearby neighbors who were true “friends.” Trouble
with neighbors was unheard of.
One day,
as this wise settler was sitting on his front porch, a wagon pulled up. The
traveler in the wagon was looking for a place to put down roots, so he asked
the settler, “What kind of neighbors do you have?”
The wise
settler answered with a question of his own: “What kind of neighbors did you
have back East?” “They were cranky, unfriendly and cantankerous,” the traveler
replied.
“Well,
I’m afraid you’ll find the same kind of neighbors here,” the settler told the
traveler. So the man drove on, looking for a better place to live.
The next
day another wagon stopped at the settler’s home. That traveler also was looking
for a place to homestead. He, too, asked about the neighbors. The settler asked
him the same question, “What kind of neighbors did you have back East?”
“My
neighbors were the nicest and friendliest neighbors in the world,” the traveler
replied. “Well, you’ll find the same kind of neighbors here, too,” the settler
said.
So the
second traveler decided to stay, and he found great neighbors. The first
traveler settled a day’s journey away, and rumor has it that eventually he
became involved in a feud with his neighbors.
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IV.
In the lasts stanza the writer of the Psalm speaks with
confidence in God, as he prays for restoration to his house and worship.
9Behold
our shield, O God; look on the face
of your anointed.10For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.I would rather
be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than
live in the tents of wickedness.11For the LORD God is a sun and
shield; he bestows favor and
honor.No good thing does the LORD withhold from
those who walk uprightly.12O LORD of hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you.
A.
There are two expressions in this stanza that so striking
they cannot be ignored.
1.
A day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.
2.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than
live in the tents of wickedness.
B.
This is speaking about the pilgrimage.
1.
As John Dalrymple writes in The Longest Journey: Notes on Christian Maturity:[6]
The journey inward is the journey from
the issues of this world toward God. It is a journey toward the mind of Christ,
beyond feelings of expediency or fear of what people will say, to truth itself.
It is followed by the journey outward, back from the depths where we meet God,
to the issues facing us in our everyday life, a journey which we now undertake
with a new sensitivity to the will of God in all things.
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CONCLUSION:
I.
Keith Wagner, Navigating the wilderness tells the story of
faulty map reading[7]:
A man
and his family were sailing on the Chesapeake Bay. He had little experience and
he had never been in waters where you had to navigate. Unfortunately he ran
aground. The Coast Guard came to his aid and towed him back into safe waters.
When they asked to see his chart he handed them a Rand McNally road map. He had
been navigating with a road map and not a nautical chart. For those of you who
know nothing about sailing, a nautical chart shows the depth of the water,
shoals, obstacles and channels.
Too many
people are navigating through life with the wrong map. Instead of looking
outward seeking help, they look inward, relying on their own resources. Instead
of plotting a course they just wander from here to there with very little
planning and a lack of goals. People also live in the past, doing things the
same way they have always done them before, taking no risks and having no
adventure.
When the
journey gets difficult people get stuck, like the fellow who went aground. All
seems hopeless. They are not prepared to face rough waters or weather the
storms that arise. They can’t cope with a crisis and they are unable to adapt
to changing conditions.
A.
Use the Psalm.
B.
So here we have a map that may help us on our own personal
pilgrimages towards and with our God.
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[1]Pastor Tim [posts”cybersaltlists.org]
[2] ‑via George Goldtrap
Madison, TN
[3]John Calvin, Commentary on the
Book of Psalms, p. xxxvii.
[4]La Sor et al, Old, p. 530.
[5]Michel Bouttier in Prayers For My Village (Nashville:
Upper Room Books, 1994), 90.
[6]John Dalrymple, The Longest Journey: Notes on
Christian Maturity (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1979), 17-18.
[7]Keith Wagner, ANavigating the wilderness,@ April 1, 2001.
bright.net/~coth/navigate.htm. Retrieved August 11, 2005.