Blessed before God

Blessed before God

Psalm 84

Main Idea: God has always provided refuge and hope for his people as they worship him, and this is true today as God dwells in and blesses those who trust in Jesus Christ.

In his book When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy, John Piper asks, “How can we help Christians who seem unable to break out of darkness into the light of joy?” Piper is speaking about depression, and for those who find it odd to hear of Christians who struggle with depression, Piper adds,

Yes, I call them Christians, and thus assume that such things happen to genuine believers. It happens because of sin, or because of Satanic assault, or because of distressing circumstances, or because of hereditary or other physical causes. (When I Don’t Desire God, 210)

After acknowledging the reality of different degrees of depression and different reasons behind depression, Piper goes on to conclude, “For most people who are passing through the dark night of the soul, the turnaround will come because God brings unwavering lovers of Christ into their lives who do not give up on them” (ibid., 229). That is what pastors, and all followers of Christ, should want to do: walk alongside fellow Christians in unwavering love for Christ and for one another. We should be determined not to give up on others, even when they may want to give up on themselves.

We may be tempted to look down on those who suffer from depression, as if the problem is some grave sin or spiritual weakness. However, as Charles Spurgeon reminds us, this may not be the case:

I know that wise brethren say, “You should not give way to feelings of depression.” If those who blame quite so furiously could once know what depression is, they would think it cruel to scatter blame where comfort is needed. There are experiences of the children of God which are full of spiritual darkness; and I am almost persuaded that those of God’s servants who have been most highly favoured have, nevertheless, suffered more times of darkness than others. . . . No sin is necessarily connected with sorrow of heart, for Jesus Christ our Lord once said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” There was no sin in Him, and consequently none in His deep depression. . . . [T]he way of sorrow is not [always] the way of sin, but a hallowed road sanctified by the prayers of myriads of pilgrims now with God—pilgrims who, passing through the valley of Baca [lit: of weeping], made it a well, the rain also filled the pools: of such it is written: “They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.” (Spurgeon, “The Valley of the Shadow,” 230–31, 234–35)

At the end of that quote, Spurgeon is citing from Psalm 84:6-7.

Three times the psalmist refers to how “happy,” or as some translations have it, “blessed,” certain people are (vv. 4,5,12). These three acknowledgements of blessing will form the outline for how we walk through this text (Boice, Psalms, vol. 2, 691–93).Then, drawing on the entirety of Scripture and the finished work of Christ in the gospel, we will find three blessings for followers of Christ today.

Three Blessings for God’s People Then

It Was a Blessing to Work in the Temple

The superscription says, “A psalm of the sons of Korah.” To find out who they are, we need to look at 1 Chronicles 9.

God appointed different people from different tribes and families for all the work that went on in or around the tabernacle and the temple. When Israel returned from exile, God once again named those who would serve in the temple in 1 Chronicles 9. After mentioning the priests (vv. 10-13) and Levites (vv. 14-16), 1 Chronicles 9:19 mentions the sons of Korah:

Shallum son of Kore, son of Ebiasaph, son of Korah and his relatives from his father’s family, the Korahites, were assigned to guard the thresholds of the tent. Their ancestors had been assigned to the Lord’s camp as guardians of the entrance.

The sons of Korah were gatekeepers who stood at the threshold of the tabernacle. They worked as doorkeepers of the place that symbolized God’s presence among his people.

Other psalms, such as 42–43, express a longing for the presence of God when the psalmist is away from the temple (42:4; 43:3-4). It makes sense that the sons of Korah love what they do. They’re not bored. Psalm 84:10 expresses their enthusiasm.

The psalmist, representing the sons of Korah, is singing about how he longed to be in God’s presence. He loved the dwelling place of God so much that he longs, yes faints, to be there! And this from a guy who’s always there. He’s talking about the temple in the language of love poetry. The appetite for God here is insatiable. He wants more and more of God.

It’s not the place itself the psalmist longs for but the person whose presence dwells in that place. We have to be careful when we think about the tabernacle or the temple, this place that symbolized the presence of God. God was not present only there. Solomon, when he was dedicating the temple, said, “Even heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain you, much less this temple I have built” (1 Kgs 8:27). But then he goes on to pray the following:

Listen to your servant’s prayer and his petition, Lord my God, so that you may hear the cry and the prayer that your servant prays before you today, so that your eyes may watch over this temple night and day, toward the place where you said, “My name will be there,” and so that you may hear the prayer that your servant prays toward this place. Hear the petition of your servant and your people Israel, which they pray toward this place. May you hear in your dwelling place in heaven. May you hear and forgive. (1 Kgs 8:28-30)

The Bible talks about how God dwells in heaven, yet it also talks about God dwelling on earth in a temple (earlier in a tabernacle). At the same time, the Bible talks about God being omnipresent, that is, dwelling everywhere on earth and in heaven. So instead of thinking of the tabernacle or temple as the only place God dwells, we should instead think of it as the place God chose to dwell in a particular, powerful way among his people in the Old Testament. If that’s the case, this psalmist wanted to be there. He longed for communion with God in the courts of the temple. One day there was better than a thousand anywhere else. He loves that place because he longs for God’s presence.

The psalmist even looks up into the structure of the temple, and he sees sparrows and swallows that have set up a nest there (Ps 84:3). What great imagery—the presence of God as the place where the humble find a home. The sparrow is used throughout Scripture to describe a humble, lowly, common, seemingly worthless bird. Jesus pointed out how two of them are sold for a penny (Matt 10:29). Yet this simple bird finds majestic meaning by having a house in the presence of God. It’s really a great description, in a sense, of the people of God—humble, lowly, common people who find majestic meaning in the presence of God. Donald Grey Barnhouse compared the church to sparrows, saying,

I look down some little street and see a humble chapel where a group of simple people worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, despised and rejected of men, even as was their Lord, and I know that this is the rich reality of spiritual truth. Here are the sparrows who find their nest at the cross of Jesus Christ. Here is worthlessness that finds its worth because the Savior died. (God’s Remedy, 239, as cited in Boice, Psalms, vol. 2, 690)

The presence of God is also where the restless find a refuge. Psalm 84 mentions the swallow (v. 3), a fast-moving bird that flies back and forth in different directions, wearing out anyone who tries to watch its movements (Boice, Psalms, vol. 2, 691). And yet here, in the presence of God, this same bird builds a nest and settles down to rest with her young. What a great illustration of what Augustine once said: “Our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee” (Confessions, 3, as cited in Boice, Psalms, vol. 2, 691).

Not only did the psalmist long to be in God’s presence, but also he loved to sing God’s praise. More than a simple song, verse 2 refers to a loud cry (Kidner, Psalms 73–150, 303). This longing for God in the psalmist’s heart and flesh overflows into crying out, not just in songs but in shouts to God. Biblically it is right to both sing and shout to God.

We are commanded repeatedly in the Psalms (e.g., Pss 66:2; 68:4), and all over Scripture (Eph 5:19; Col 3:16), to sing to God. In addition to singing, we also shout: “Let the whole earth shout joyfully to God!” (Ps 66:1). The word for “cry out” that’s used in Psalm 84:2 (ranan) is used in other places in the Bible as a cry of celebration (see Deut 32:43; 1 Chron 16:33; Pss 20:6; 32:11). And that’s what’s going on in verse 2 in the presence of God; this psalmist overflows in praise (see v. 4). This blessing comes not for those who merely talk or think about God’s praise but rather for those who celebrate God. The blessing is for those who sing with joy and shout aloud over God and his Word in worship. This kind of response is entirely appropriate for the church’s corporate gathering on Sunday.

Our singing and shouting is a response to who God is. There are at least twelve different names and attributes and activities of God specifically mentioned in Psalm 84.

God is the covenant-keeping Lord. “Lord” in small capital letters is a translation of Yahweh, the name by which God revealed himself to Moses and to Israel when he called them out to be his people and entered into covenant with them (Exod 3:19; 6:3). He is the God who reaches down his hand of mercy and enters into covenant with unworthy sinners. He makes a commitment to them, and he keeps his covenant.

God is the commander of heavenly armies. He’s the Lord of hosts. Literally, he is “Yahweh of heavenly armies,” which points to the security that is found in God’s presence, a reality the psalmist will later rejoice in.

God is the living God. The God I long for, the psalmist says, is not dead. He is the God whose presence is active among his people.

God is my King. As with the next statement below, the psalmist begins thinking of God in personal terms. God is not only the King of the world or even of Israel—he is my King.

God is my God. Put yourself in the psalmist’s shoes for a minute: he looks up and sees the glory and grandeur of God commanding armies in heaven, living and active all across the earth, and he says, “He’s mine.” This is pride, but in a good sense. It’s like the pride of a groom who sees his wife walk down the aisle. He says, “That’s my wife! She chose me! She’s with me!” So also the people of God ought to look up to God in all of his greatness and grandeur and glory and majesty over heaven and earth and think, That’s my God. That’s my King! He chose me! He’s with me!

God is the only God. Verse 8 uses another Hebrew word for God—Elohim—to describe God as the one true God. Then in verse 8 the word Elohim is combined with Yahweh so that we have “Lord God of Armies.”

God is the faithful God. He is the God who made promises to Jacob centuries before, promises he is still faithful to today. God has been making and keeping promises to his people for centuries, going all the way back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

God is a source of light and life to his people. Besides verse 11, nowhere else is God explicitly called a sun in Scripture (Boice, Psalms, vol. 2, 693). Scripture does not typically identify God with the sun because of pagan religions that worshiped the sun (Goldingay, Psalms 42–89, 598). Nevertheless, the psalmist looks up at the light and life the sun brings, and this is the way he describes being in the presence of God, who shines brightly on his people.

God is a shield of protection and provision for his people. This is a picture of protection for people who find refuge in him.

God showers his people with his grace. He grants “favor and honor” and “good” (v. 11). Though they didn’t deserve it, God was gracious to Israel. And though we don’t deserve it, God is gracious to his people today.

God surrounds his people with his glory. When verse 11 says the Lord grants “honor” to his people, the phrase might be more literally translated as God bestowing his “glory” on his people (Kidner, Psalms 73–150, 307). He surrounds his people with his glory so that they dwell in it. This is what the temple was all about. In Psalm 3:3 David prays, “But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head.” As we come into God’s presence, God bestows honor on us, surrounding us with his glory.

God shows his people all his goodness. The effect of being in God’s presence is that the psalmist lacks “no good thing” (ESV). With God’s grace on him and God’s glory around him, the psalmist rests confident in God’s goodness to him.

When you put all this together, you realize why the psalmist longs to be in God’s presence and why you and I, if we realized who God is, would long to be in God’s presence. Think about the God whom we gather to worship. This is our King; this is our God. And it is good to be before him and to sing and shout for joy before him day after day. That is the point of the first blessing in this psalm, the blessing of working in the temple.

It Was a Blessing to Journey to the Temple

The second blessing the psalmist mentions comes in verse 5: “Happy are the people whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.” Zion (v. 7) is a reference to the place where the tabernacle, and later the temple in Jerusalem, was located. The psalmist is talking about people who are far away from the temple but who find their strength by setting their hearts on the presence of God. Obviously, this was the majority of people in Israel; most people lived far away from Jerusalem, and only a relative few actually worked at the temple. So the psalmist sets his gaze on the people of God scattered throughout the country; and he gives us this picture of the road that leads to Zion, and the strength that people find, though far away, when they set their hearts’ hope on the presence of God.

The psalmist describes how hope in God brings strength amid weakness, even to those who are far away. In verse 7 he uses the imagery of traveling to the presence of God in Zion, saying, “They go from strength to strength.”

“Baca” in verse 6 is a Hebrew word meaning “balsam tree,” a tree found in dry landscapes. The resin of this tree oozed out, like tears, and this noun, Baca, sounds similar to the Hebrew verb for “weeping.” That’s why some people refer to the “Valley of Baca” as the “valley of weeping” (Kidner, Psalms 73–150, 305). The psalmist is talking about people on a figurative (or maybe a literal) journey from where they live to Zion, to the presence of God. They make this journey by walking through the “Valley of Baca,” symbolizing dry and difficult days filled with hardship and hopelessness that causes weeping. In the middle of that valley, what sustains them is the hope of God’s presence. When they hold on to that hope, even this dry, desolate place becomes a valley of springs and pools from which they can drink and be satisfied.

The psalmist is also describing how hope in God brings joy amid weeping. Tears of sadness become springs of joy when the pilgrim looks to the presence of God. It was a blessing to journey to the temple, the psalmist says, both physically and spiritually.

It Was a Blessing to Live with Trust in God

Right after he talks about walking uprightly before God, the psalmist writes, “Happy is the person who trusts in you, Lord of Armies!” (v. 12). This blessing comes wherever one lives, whether at the temple gates or far away. Blessed are those who walk with all of their trust placed in God.

The three blessings mentioned above are for Old Testament Israel, when God was dwelling in a particular way among his people in Jerusalem (in a tabernacle or a temple). However, this is not where the story of this larger book, the Bible, ends. As Christians, we no longer travel to Jerusalem to worship at a temple. There is another “place” where God’s glory now dwells, resulting in at least three blessings for Christians today.

Three Blessings for Christians Today

John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The Greek word for “dwelt” (skenoo) is the same word used in the Greek version of the Old Testament (the Septuagint) to describe the tabernacle. Literally, God became flesh and “tabernacled” among us. The good news of Jesus’s coming was that God had come to dwell in the midst of his people, and in Jesus his people would see his glory.

This theme of Jesus as the temple continues in John 2. Jesus was having a discussion with some Jews at the temple in Jerusalem:

Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.”

Therefore the Jews said, “This temple took forty-six years to build, and will you raise it up in three days?”

But he was speaking about the temple of his body. (John 2:19-21)

Jesus was telling the Jewish people that he was the temple. He was the place where the presence of God dwelt. He was the revelation of God’s grace and glory in the flesh. When Philip asked to see the Father, Jesus replied, “Have I been among you all this time and you do not know me, Philip?” (John 14:9). To be with Jesus is to be in God’s presence, for he is God.

When Jesus died, the Bible says that the curtain of the temple that separated man from God was torn in two (Matt 27:51). God was making a way for sinful men to be reconciled to him through faith in Christ. Now, for those who are in Christ, God’s presence dwells in us: “Don’t you yourselves know that you are God’s temple and that the Spirit of God lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is holy, and that is what you are” (1 Cor 3:16-17). God identifies his people corporately as the temple. Then, a few chapters later, Paul says something similar: “Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body” (1 Cor 6:19-20).

The temple imagery is both personal and corporate. So, Christian, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and the church, corporately, is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Today we don’t go to a designated place of worship like Israel did in the Old Testament because we are the place of worship. You are the place of worship. If you’re a Christian, the Spirit of God dwells in you. For the church gathered, the Spirit of God dwells in us.

For the psalmist, working in the temple was a blessing. But you and I don’t work as doorkeepers in the temple. Our situation is far better. Consider three blessings we receive by virtue of our union with Jesus.

It Is a Blessing to Be the Temple

The glory of God’s presence now dwells in us, which radically changes how we live. We wake up with the presence of God in us; we walk through every detail of our day with the presence of God in us; we go to bed at night with the presence of God in us. The blessing today is not for those who dwell in God’s house; rather, blessed are those whose bodies house the glory of God. Knowing this—that God’s glory is manifest through your body—changes the way you use your body. It changes the way you act and think, the way you speak and love. You (literally) walk in the worship of God.

On a corporate level, when we gather as the church, there is indeed something unique about this gathering. God is among us! We gather together as the people of God, as the temple of God, and we sing his praise. Our hearts long for this. This is no casual thing we do once a week. This is a blessing! Blessed are those who gather together as the temple to celebrate the glory of their God.

It Is a Blessing to Journey to Heaven

For the psalmist it was a blessing to journey to the temple. For the Christian now, we’re not focused on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, but that does not mean the highways of our hearts have no hope, for we now journey to heaven. While this was true for the psalmist then, we know this in an even greater way today based on what we know in the rest of the Bible.

The Bible talks about Christians as “strangers and exiles” (1 Pet 2:11). Along with faithful men and women from the Old Testament who went before us, we are “foreigners and temporary residents on the earth”; we seek “a homeland” and desire “a better place—a heavenly one” (Heb 11:13-16). Revelation 21 describes that heavenly country, that homeland:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away. (Rev 21:1-4)

Over and above physical descriptions of its beauty and all that will be there, the most important thing about heaven is not what is there but who is there. The dwelling of God will be with man in this holy city.

Later in the chapter heaven is described with measurements that match the shape of the temple (Rev 21:15-17). The point of this imagery is that all those who have trusted in Christ are secure and will be fully reconciled to God. Yes, God is with us now, and his presence dwells in Christians, but we are longing for more, aren’t we? The highways of our hearts are set on the hope of a day when sin and suffering will be no more, and we will be with God in perfect, pure, endless joy forever and ever.

Now, in the meantime, we often find ourselves walking through the Valley of Baca, for on this earth there is weeping and dryness and, at times, darkness. Many of God’s people find themselves traveling “most of the way to heaven by night” (Spurgeon, “The Child of Light Walking in Darkness,” 542). There is struggle in this world. There is a fight for joy on some days. So what do you do on those days? The answer Psalm 84 gives is to keep your heart fixed and fastened on your hope in God. Even when the journey in the present seems bleak, lift your eyes to the hope you have in God.

Darkness and difficulty often come when we feel alone or isolated. Psalm 84 says to such people, “You have a home with God.” For those with feelings of restlessness, Psalm 84 says, “There is refuge in God.” To the worthless, Psalm 84 says, “You have worth before God.” In the midst of darkness, our greatest need is for a source of light and life, for a shield of protection and provision. And all of these things are found in God. Oh, set your heart’s hope on him!

It Is a Blessing to Live with Trust in Christ

It is a blessing to live with trust in God (v. 12), even amid darkness and difficulty. And for the Christian today, it is a blessing to live with trust in Christ. For God has sent his Son, the Word made flesh (John 1:14), to us, and he has identified with us.

He hurt as we hurt. He experienced sorrow as we experience sorrow. He knows what it’s like to be abandoned, and he knows what it’s like to feel alone. He knows what it’s like to look to God the Father in the midst of total darkness and ask, “Why?” He identifies with you, and he says to you, “Trust in me.”

Trust in the one who has walked through the dark night and has come out on the other side in victorious light. He has conquered sin and sorrow. He has defeated death and hell. And he is coming back to bring all who trust in him on this earth to glory with him in eternity, where he will wipe away every single tear from your eyes. He will heal every ache in your heart. So put your hope in Christ! Piper put it best:

Every Christian who struggles with depression struggles to keep their hope clear. There is nothing wrong with the object of their hope—Jesus Christ is not defective in any way whatsoever. But the view from the struggling Christian’s heart of their objective hope could be obscured by disease and pain, the pressures of life, and by Satanic fiery darts shot against them. . . . All discouragement and depression is related to the obscuring of our hope, and we need to get those clouds out of the way and fight like crazy to see clearly how precious Christ is. (“Can Christians Be Depressed?”)

The psalmist knew that God’s protection of his people was tied to God’s protection of the king who led them. Then the psalmist prayed for God’s favor on an earthly king (v. 9), but that earthly king in Israel was ultimately set up by God to point us to an eternal King over all.

Now the Christian enjoys God’s favor through our eternal King. Whether things are going well for you right now or you find yourself amid difficulty and darkness, you, Christian, have a King who keeps his commitment to you, who has made a covenant of love with you that he will not break. He is the commander of heavenly armies, and he is a source of light and life to you, a shield of protection and provision for you amid whatever you are walking through. His name is Jesus. Spurgeon said,

I know, perhaps, as well as anyone here, what depression of spirit means—and what it is to feel myself sinking lower and lower—yet, at the worst, when I reach the lowest depths, I have an inward peace which no pain or depression can in the least disturb! Trusting in Jesus Christ, my Savior, there is still a blessed quietness in the deep caverns of my soul, though, upon the surface, a rough tempest may be raging, and there may be little apparent calm. (Spurgeon, “Rest as a Test,” 483)

Reflect and Discuss

1. Have you or someone you’ve known experienced depression? Given that we don’t always know the causes, were you able to discern any factors that led to the depression?
2. What would you say to someone who claimed that true Christians should never experience depression?
3. How can the example of the psalmist in Psalm 84 and of Christ’s own sorrow give us comfort?
4. Why was the temple so significant for God’s people in the Old Testament?
5. What are some things that keep you from longing for communion with God?
6. Is a church building today the equivalent of the Old Testament temple? Explain your answer.
7. How can our future reward strengthen us during times of sorrow, depression, and opposition today?
8. What are some ways churches can minister to those who are depressed or grieving?
9. Why is it important for us to dwell on the promises of Scripture and the character of God rather than looking inward or basing our hope on our feelings and emotions?
10. What promises of Scripture would you share with someone who is depressed? Make a list.