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Let
Me Paint You a Picture One of the wonders
of the Bible is that our Lord uses the experiences and praises of the Jews of
the Old Testament as pictures of the nature of New Testament experience.
We will see that today in Psalm 84.
The picture today is that of three concentric circles.
In the inner circle, hidden from the view of all but God, is the
spiritual life of the Christian. Next
is the outer life, and finally that life as viewed by others.
These are the Temple, the Pilgrimage and the Worship.
Psalms such as this do not define doctrine;
they illustrate it. The Temple The Old Testament
picture of the Temple is very explicit. Chapters
are written about how it was built; instructions were given in great detail.
In Psalm 84 we see the result, as seen by the ancient Jew: {84:1} For the director of music. According to gittith.Of
the Sons of Korah. A psalm. How
lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD Almighty! {2} My soul yearns,
even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God. {3} Even the
sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for
herself, where she may have her young‑‑ a place near your
altar, O LORD Almighty, my King and
my God. {4} Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
they are ever praising you. Selah
‑‑ Psalms 84:1‑4 (NIV)
The temple of the
New Testament is the Christian, as Paul says.
Here we see some characteristics which might interest us: First, there is the
beauty of the Temple. Where God
resides, the building is beautiful. Pardon
the repetition, but I know this from living with her.
When I first married my wife, I did not regard her as particularly
beautiful (I'm nothing to look at either, so we're even).
Indeed, among our friends we call our "UCLA bunch" (college
chums) I rated her fourth among four. But
over the years all the bodies have aged - and the spirits have come out.
Now we know who found the real beauty of the group. How is this beauty
of soul achieved? Think how
women achieve physical beauty. Exercise,
cosmetics, surgery - they all start with desire. Looking in the mirror and saying "not quite what I
wanted." Here we see the way
to spiritual beauty - the yearning for God.
This is a natural yearning, and only Christ can satisfy it: {13} Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water
will be thirsty again, {14} but
whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the
water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to
eternal life."
‑‑ John 4:13‑14 (NIV) The phrase "cry
out" in the NIV is translated "shout for joy" in the RSV and
Jerusalem versions. There is really
no conflict; yearning in any sense
comes out. Witness Job in his
yearning for God: {25} I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end
he will stand upon the earth. {26}
And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see
God; {27} I myself will see him with my own eyes‑‑I, and not
another. How my heart yearns within
me! ‑‑ Job
19:25‑27 (NIV) From the oldest to
newest books of the Bible ("even so, come") we see this yearning on
the part of the Christian to meet God. The personal nature
of this relationship is also shown in this Psalm. Notice the use of the sparrow as nesting near the altar, and
remember Christ's words: {29} Are not two sparrows sold for a penny ? Yet not one
of them will fall to the ground
apart from the will of your Father.
‑‑ Matthew 10:29 (NIV)
Even the most
insignificant of people can draw close to God.
And not only the insignificant, but also those even less likely to be
suspected of being "church people."
Have you ever seen a swallow in flight?
It is not a smooth flight - rather it dips and darts in all directions.
Even the nest of the swallow is hard to find - hidden up under the eaves.
Yet even such creatures (this is the only mention of such in the Bible)
are welcome in the Lord's own house. This section also
includes a bit of poetry which is almost a throwaway, yet a great lesson.
The Psalmist refers to God and Lord Almighty (Yahweh Sabaoth = Lord of
Hosts?) and in the same passage as
My King and My God. God rules over
the host; God is also in a personal
relationship to us. Pilgrimage There is a
difference between "getting there" and "going."
Think not? Some people
travel to far away places - they say "we did Thailand last year, and this
year we're going to do India," or something like that.
The emphasis is on going to someplace to experience it.
Other times we will say things like "we came to Fullerton two years
ago." One implies the
adventure of going; the other implies the satisfaction of arriving.
Christians get to do both. It's
called pilgimage. {5} Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have
set their hearts on pilgrimage. {6}
As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place
of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. {7} They go from
strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion. {8} Hear my
prayer, O LORD God Almighty; listen to me, O God of Jacob. Selah {9} Look
upon our shield, O God; look with
favor on your anointed one. ‑‑ Psalms 84:5‑9 (NIV) In this world we do
the "going." Stength in
this world starts with the desire of the Christian to go where God wants him to
go. How often we tell God that we
do not like our circumstance, or we wish he would not place us in thus and such
a position. We are just passing
through, as the old spiritual says. If
we set our hearts on pilgrimage they would be ever so much lighter. Pilgrimage does not,
as so many think, mean walking through as much as it does (in the Hebrew)
setting up a temporary lodging. "Pitching
the tent nightly closer to home" is the closest I can get to this feeling
in English. Corrie ten Boom tells
this story to illustrate the guiding principle of pilgrimage:
When Corrie Ten Boom of The Hiding Place fame was a little girl in
Holland, her first realization of death came after a visit to the home
of a neighbor who had died. It
impressed her that some day her parents
would also die. Corrie's father
comforted her with words of wisdom. "Corrie, when you and I go to Amsterdam, when do I give
you your ticket?"
"Why, just before we get on the train," she replied.
"Exactly," her father said, "and our wise Father in heaven
knows when we're going to need
things too. Don't run out ahead of
Him Corrie.
When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look
into your heart and find the strength you need ‑‑ just in
time." You see the point?
We "arrive" only in heaven.
Here on earth we are pilgrims. Hence
we must ask for our daily bread.
Sometimes that bread will arrive with tears.
The Valley of Baca translates "Valley of Weeping."
The name refers to the trees in the valley, which are Palestinian alders.
They "weep" sap. The
valley itself is mentioned one other time in the Old Testament - it's also
called the Valley of Rephraim. Rephraim
were the original inhabitants - they were giants - but by the time the
Israelites conquered the land they had been wiped out.
Hence "Rephraim" also meant "ghosts" to the Hebrews.
Tears, giants or ghosts - these are in our trials.
The tears we weep at loss; the
fears of the giants in our lives and worst of all the ghosts of our pasts join
to terrify us. But in all these
things we are more than conquerors! We
take the valley of weeping and make it a fertile place;
we go "from strength to strength."
This is the life of victory, the pilgrimage of triumph which leads us to
the Father's throne. The Psalmist
concludes this section as I might. Now
that I have stated what you want (vs. 5-7) it's my prayer that you make me such
a man! (vs. 8-9) Worship By worship I mean
service, for they are the same word in the New Testament.
The Psalmist puts it this way: {10} Better is one day in your courts than a thousand
elsewhere; I would rather be a
doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the
wicked. {11} For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor
and honor; no good thing does he
withhold from those whose walk is blameless.
{12} O LORD Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in you.
‑‑ Psalms 84:10‑12 (NIV) John Milton took
these words and twisted them around backwards and put them in Satan's mouth
(Paradise Lost): "Better to
reign in hell than serve in heaven." These
are the words of pride, and they accurately reflect the sentiments of our
generation. As Milton would have
pointed out, however, Satan rules this earth - and is condemned to Hell. The Christian refuse
to try and stand on his own two feet, proud to be dependent upon no one.
The Christian looks to God as sun and shield, instead.
Sun - as in light to my path. Shield,
to defend me against the tempter. As
Proverbs puts it, {5} "Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield
to those who take refuge in him.
‑‑ Proverbs 30:5 (NIV) What the world sees
is the strange sight of the Christian taking refuge in God, not in the strength
of this world. For those who trust,
the world also sees the blessing of God on that same Christian.
While typing up this
lesson I was trying hard to think of an illustration.
I couldn't bring one up, so I took a walk.
Across the street, at Cal State Fullerton, in the middle of a large
grassy quad, there was a young man with a trumpet.
He was practicing scales. Now,
you can't practice a trumpet quietly. It
occurred to me: Pride is letting
them hear you in performance. Humility
is letting them hear you practice. And that's us:
practicing Christians, in every sense of the word.
We are the doorkeepers in the house of the Lord.
It doesn't appear to be a noble position to those in the world; indeed,
the lowest one around. But if
someone else is to get inside, someone has to open the door - right?
Remember the words of the Lord:
{24} "Therefore
everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into
practice is
like a wise man who built his house on the rock. {25} The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat
against that house; yet it did not
fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. {26} But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them
into practice is like a foolish man
who built his house on sand. ‑‑
Matthew 7:24‑26 (NIV)
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