2024-08-25 - Covenant CRC - Sermon Only - Joel Kok

Transcript

 Psalm 84

Let us continue our worship now with the scripture reading that will lead to our meditation, which we call a sermon. As noted, we've already been singing this Psalm, but now we're going to read Psalm 84.

I think on this Sunday, we can offer a specific Prayer of illumination for our reading of this Psalm. Let's join in a prayer for the Holy Spirit to help us understand and live by God's word. Let's pray together.

Gracious God, we gladly confess that it's only in your light that we can see because you give us such wonderful light. We've seen you shining through the songs we've been singing, the children, and all the people up front. We're so glad you have this light that the darkness cannot overcome. And so we pray for that light to shine through us, through the illumination of your Holy Spirit, as we read from the scriptures.

We pray that in the written and spoken word, we can meet the living word, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. So we invite you to turn to Psalm 84. As you do so, you'll see just above the Psalm these words we call a superscription. We noted them last week. We'll note them again this week, as well.

And what we read in that superscription that gives a little bit of context for the Psalm is that this is for the director of music, according to Gidduth, which people think has something to do with music. And it comes from the sons of Korah, who were a family in the Levite tribe. Very cool. We'll talk about that briefly during the sermon, but now let's turn to the Psalm. And as we do so, we invite you to hear God's word.

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty. My soul yearns even faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. Even the sparrow has found a home. And the swallow asks for herself where she may have her young, a place near your altar.

Oh, Lord Almighty, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house. They are ever praising you. Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. As they pass through the valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs. Amen. The autumn rains also cover it with pools.

They go from strength to strength till each appears before God in Zion. Hear my prayer. Oh Lord, God almighty, listen to me. Oh God of Jacob, look upon your shield. Oh God, look with favor on your anointed one. 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 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. Oh, Lord Almighty, blessed is the man who trusts in you.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Friends, amid all the things that God is saying to us through our Psalm today, one thing God is doing is he is forming us into pilgrims. He's forming us into disciples who follow Jesus as pilgrims. And we hear that in verse five of our reading where the Psalmist prays and where we join him in praying: “Blessed are those whose strength is in you.” And we need that strength because, as the Psalmist goes on to pray, “Blessed are those whose hearts are set on pilgrimage,” that is, people journeying through life.

Pilgrims want to hear all kinds of good news in that word, Pilgrim, connected to the other words in our Psalm. We'll begin by exploring that word briefly. We'll look at its definition. We could call it. We'll also look at the destiny of pilgrims in Psalm 84. So, let's just begin with that word pilgrim because one of the things that grace and I experienced this past week is that that word was not very operative in my life.

I read Pilgrim's Progress about a hundred years ago, but I hadn't been thinking much about life as a pilgrim. So I was very happy to be able to look up the word in a Bible dictionary. There, I learned this interesting thing: a pilgrim is someone who journeys through life with the desire to experience God.

And that's certainly a desire to experience God that we hear in this pilgrim helping us to pray in Psalm 84. So, for example, in the opening verses of this Psalm, we hear the Psalmist pray. And again, we join in the prayer about my soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord. And that's a little bit of the place right outside the temple of the Lord, the home of the Lord, my heart and my flesh cry out to meet the living God. We can note further that in other translations of this Psalm that seemed to be accurate, many translations add the word joy to this crying out to be with God. So my heart and my flesh sing for joy to be in the presence of the living God. As an example of the kind of joy that can come with the understanding that we're in the presence of the living God, we can listen to the psalmist praying a bit further.

And so when the psalmist prays, even the sparrow has found a home, even the swallow has found a nest for herself where she may have her young, a place near your altar in the temple, Lord. Friends, a biblical truth that emerges from those words is that when we journey through life as pilgrims, which is to say, when we journey through life seeking to grow more and more awareness of the presence of God, then we can experience the glory of God, the creativity of God, all kinds of qualities in God.

We can experience God by looking at birds. Because somehow they're reflecting God. They're reflecting God. The presence of God. We can experience God in trees, in lakes, in all kinds of creatures, in all kinds of ways. And then the psalmist adds that we can have a sense of how much we need and want God when we go through a place like the Valley of Baca, which seems to have been a kind of a dry valley, sort of like a wilderness.

That people would need to go through on their way to Jerusalem. And so as pilgrims go through the Valley of Baca, somehow they're able to make it into a place of springs. That's something for us to think about and what they wind up doing or what the Psalmist winds up helping us to do is to recognize that to be in the presence of God, that is the best experience possible.

It's better to be one day in your house, one day in your presence, Lord, than a thousand days and infinite amount of days anywhere else. So that's a little bit of a definition and description of what it means to be a pilgrim. It means we journey through life seeking to experience God. And as we'll explore more, we can do that in all kinds of ways.

But now again, to help us pray this, let's look at the destination of people who follow Jesus as pilgrims. And let's recognize for the psalmist who is writing this probably about 500 years or so before the birth of Jesus as the word made flesh for the psalmist, the destination for a pilgrim is one specific place, which is the city of Jerusalem, which also is called the city of Zion.

Because in that city, Jerusalem and Zion, there is this temple and this house of the Lord. And at that time, at the time of the Psalms life, in the story and in the history of God, our Lord had arranged for His people to meet Him in a special way, in a unique way, by being pilgrims who would go to Jerusalem, to Zion, into the house, the temple of the Lord, because our Lord had arranged for them to be able to worship, to be able to be with others, to be able to do all kinds of practices that would open them up to the transforming presence of God.

And so in a few minutes, we're going to return to this idea of a pilgrim having the destination of Jerusalem, because that's a central item for Psalm 84 and related psalms. But to pray this as people who have gathered in the presence of God in Christ, one thing we can do right now is pause for a moment and move ahead in the biblical story and realize that in the biblical story, in the plan of God, Jesus expands where pilgrims grow infinitely.

Jesus expands Jerusalem and Zion to reach the ends of the earth. Jesus expands the temple, the house of the Lord, in all kinds of ways. And that's why, as we were able to note before, you know, where we are right now, we are in the house of the Lord. We're in the presence of God. We are in the heavenly Jerusalem.

We are in Zion as the Bible goes on to develop it by being fulfilled in Christ. And to give us a sense of how radically Jesus expands the city of Jerusalem and the house, the temple of the Lord, let's again, as we're moving in the biblical story, let's go to a particular gospel scene. And that's the gospel scene of a group of very sad, grieving disciples going to a tomb right near Jerusalem. And as you can probably guess, that tomb is the tomb of Jesus. So as these women, as these grieving followers of Jesus, as they're making a journey to that tomb, they probably wouldn't think of themselves as pilgrims because as they go to that tomb, they're not expecting to experience the presence of God in some memorable way.

Instead, what they're planning to do is to anoint a dead body, which they do with love, but also with tremendous grief. And yet it does turn out that in ways they didn't predict, they turn out to be pilgrims who will experience God. In an amazing way, because when these women, when these disciples of Jesus and their grief get to the tomb, do you remember what happens?

Do you remember what they hear? The gospels present us with slightly different details, but there are some kind of angels and messengers from God in the tomb rather than Jesus's dead body. And as these women in their grief are surprised by that, they hear this amazing announcement. Because these messengers from God say, you're looking for Jesus who was crucified? Well, he's not here. He has risen, they say. And then they go on to talk again, different gospels bring out different things. They go on to say, you know, he's going to meet his disciples in Galilee, where he's going to pronounce that he's going to be with them to the ends of the earth, to all the nations of the world.

But we also see scenes where he meets them in Jerusalem. So it's not like he's giving up Jerusalem. He meets a couple of them on there on the road to a town named Emmaus. So this risen Jesus who is revealing himself now as the raised up true ultimate temple of God, where you meet God in the most transforming way, this temple Jesus is expanding.

He's bringing Jerusalem and Zion to the ends of the earth. And as he does that, as the risen true house, temple of God, he also turns us into houses. He turns us into temples of God. As Paul describes in First Corinthians three and six, as Peter describes in his letter, our Lord, our risen Lord, is expanding the house of God and the city of Zion, Mount Zion, in all kinds of ways.

And that's why, again, right here and now, where are we? Well, according to the scriptures, and blessed are you if you have faith to believe this, because that's what the psalm also says, blessed are those who trust in the Lord. You right now, you're at a place called Mount Zion, because that is in what is called the heavenly Jerusalem in Hebrews 12, which is any place where our Lord gathers us together to worship him.

We come to Mount Zion, we come to the heavenly Jerusalem, we are somehow connected to God and to all kinds of heavenly beings, angels and saints who are in heaven with God. All of that kind of thing is going on right now. All of that is bringing us eventually to a joy that we're going to celebrate forever.

That's what we can experience when we realize that we're pilgrims who can enter more and more into God's transforming presence. To understand ourselves more and more as pilgrims, to live more and more our journeys of life as pilgrims, we can turn to another key word in our psalm, which is the word strength. The psalmist who's a pilgrim speaks about blessed are those who have strength in the Lord.

In verse 7, he talks about how pilgrims go from strength to strength, getting more and more strength as they journey with the Lord. And certainly, that, too, gets fulfilled in Christ. So, as we think about needing strength to be followers of Jesus as pilgrims, we can start with just every day or lifetime personal experience.

We know that to get to some destination, especially to walk a long way, we must travel all kinds of journeys. What do we need to get where we're hoping to go? We need strength. We need some physical strength to walk for a while, but we also need emotional and spiritual strength to keep going when we're feeling down or wondering what's going on.

And to get a little more flavor for how much we need strength to journey as pilgrims, we can note as we read in the superscription that this Psalm 84, this prayer comes to us via this Psalmist who's called one of the sons of Korah, which, as I mentioned, means that he's part of a family that was part of a group of a tribe of Levites.

And so, as a son of Korah, as someone in the tribe of the Levites, the psalmist probably served as a priest in the physical temple of the historical Jerusalem back in his days. And he can remember how, How grateful he felt, how blessed he felt to dwell in the temple where God was dwelling in that wonderful way.

And so that's why he says, blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you, which is what he wants to do more than anything else. But then he goes on in the very next verse, he goes from verse four to verse five in this Psalm. Then he goes on to add, well, blessed are those who have strength in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.

That probably indicates that even if he had been a Levite, a son of Korah, a priest in the temple all day as part of his calling in life, now he seems to be having a much harder time getting to the house of the Lord, getting to the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. And it would seem to be that there are some oppositions opposing him, forbidding him from getting where he wants to be more than anything else in the world.

One way we get that kind of perspective is if we, again, think about the sons of Korah. We recognize that we get some more prayers from the sons of Korah, this son of Korah, in Psalms 42 and 43, where we do meet a son of Korah just lamenting painfully How sad and hard it is for him that he, he can't seem to get to the temple of the Lord in the city of Jerusalem.

And what he says in Psalms 42 and 43 is, the deer pants for water, so my soul pants for you. I thirst for you, God. I so much want to be with you, God. I ask, when can I meet with God? But you know what's happening is he asks that, the psalmist, when can I finally meet with God again in the temple in Jerusalem?

There are these enemies who have seemed to have captured him and they're making fun of him. They're saying, oh, where's your God? You love to be with God so much. Well, where is he? You're nowhere near where you want to be. So again, that happens in Psalms 42 and 43. So, in some way, the son of Korah has been captured, and he's unable to get to the temple, the house of God, into the presence of God there.

And it's possible that that happened to him on an individual, personal level. But it's also very possible that it happened to him as part of his whole family, tribe, and nation, being ripped out of Jerusalem and being kept from going to heaven, to the temple, because we get that bigger message about how this is possibly the prayer of an exile wanting to get back to God we get that because Psalm 84 comes Towards the middle of what we call book three In the whole book of Psalms, in book three, a group of Psalms goes from Psalm 73 to 89, and you'll find if you read those Psalms, which are fascinating as they all are, you run into some Psalms like 73 and 88 where it's a very personal. Lord, I don't understand what's going on.

I want to be with you. I can't be with you. Darkness is my only friend. There are just all kinds of grief about not being able to connect with God as wanted very personally in those Psalms, but it's also very communal. Psalm 89, especially the last psalm in Book 3 of the Psalter. I mean, it's just lamenting God having seemed to give up on his promise to David about keeping his sons there on the throne forever and his people in Jerusalem forever.

So there's all this grief. And the psalmist is experiencing some version of that. So what is he asking for? Strength! To be a pilgrim who can get to the presence of God, he needs strength to strength to get him there. And we read that when eventually, in the scriptural story, God's people, the sons of Korah, the Levites and others.

Eventually, they do get to get out of exile. They're able to leave Babylon and return to what they call the holy land in the city of Jerusalem. They're able to rebuild that city and rebuild the temple. Well, what happens there and then? Well, in some ways, it's a dream come true, as in Psalm 126. When the Lord restored the people of Zion, it was like a dream come true.

They're celebrating. In other ways, they're still suffering. They're still grieving because even though they've been able to come back to their homeland, even they've been able to come back to Jerusalem and to the temple, they're still facing all kinds of opposition from people around them. They're facing all kinds of opposition within their own people of God.

They're facing tragedy within their own lives. And so that's when we read, and we see this especially in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. In Ezra chapter 3, for example, we see this scene where they finally rebuild the temple as they've been planning to do for a while. And what happens when they rebuild the temple?

Well, on the one hand, they are shouting for joy, they're celebrating, they're praising God with the highest voices they have. But you know what else they're doing? They're weeping. They're crying. They're grieving. Because so much has been lost, so much has not yet been restored, so much is still leading them into opposition and suffering.

What again do they need? To really have the experience of God as pilgrims? They need strength. They need to go from strength to strength to experience God. And again, that's physical strength. But it's also emotional. It's also spiritual. And that is something that we experience as well. Even though we're sitting in heavenly Jerusalem, Mount Zion, the presence of God in this house right now in this church.

And even though we can do it in all kinds of places, all over creation, what do we need to follow Jesus as a pilgrim? We need strength. We need God to move us from strength to strength in all kinds of ways. And here I can share that as I was exploring that thought, how do I need strength? How do we all need strength?

I was glad to be reminded of a book I read a while back, and I feel like I want to reread it soon, because this is a book from a fellow disciple who is very conscious of following Jesus as a pilgrim, seeking to experience God. This disciple's name is Donald Nickel, and if you were closer you could see the title is The Testing of Hearts, and that testing is God giving him strength he needs.

The Testing of Hearts, A Pilgrim's Journey. And so just by needing strength, just by describing himself as a pilgrim, the song, or Donald Nickel, connects us to Psalm 84, but further, another way in which he connects us is that even though, again, Jerusalem, in some ways, the heavenly Jerusalem, Jesus bringing that to earth everywhere, there is also a specific city of Jerusalem, the historical place of the people of God, and Donald Nickel lived and worked there for quite a few years.

In an ecumenical Roman Catholic place of worship and learning called Tantur, which Trish and I were able to visit for a couple of weeks or some years ago. And in that place, do you know what he experiences? What do you think you would experience at any time? If you were living in Jerusalem, if you were living in Israel and Palestine, think of what's going on now and how scary and sad all of that is.

Well, that is part of a long history of conflict. So Donald Nichols so needed strength from strength to be a pilgrim experiencing the presence of God and sharing it. And he again needed it not just physically to keep going even through scary hard times, but also emotionally. and spiritually. And where the word pilgrim, I think, is really illuminating here is that one way he was able to have the strength to continue in his journey, one way he was able to bless all kinds of people.

So many people in talking about this book were so thankful for ways in which Donald Nickel could not only experience, but he could also express the presence of God and many others. He was able again to say, you know what I am as a thought? I'm a pilgrim. I am just looking for any and all ways in which I can truly experience ”

So to give one sort of small example, instead of him going through Jerusalem saying, Well, what would Jesus do if he were here? He would have asked in effect, What is Jesus doing? How can I know his presence and express his strength and wisdom as I live out my calling? Here in Jerusalem, and to give us one more angle on that, I can share another source I thought was helpful with Donald Nichol and for us all as pilgrims.

This other source distinguished between following Jesus as a pilgrim in contrast to following Jesus as a tourist. Now, this other source wasn't saying it's bad to be a tourist. Still, he was just making a distinction in saying if you were to go to Jerusalem, for example, as a tourist, if you were to go anywhere as a tourist, I mean, you do want to see some of the stuff. You want to enjoy it in some ways, but you're not, as a tourist, most of all to experience God in a transforming way.

If you are doing that, then you're becoming the pilgrim. That is what we want to be here. But tourists, again, can sort of look at things, but then they want to get back and have good food and be in a warm, soft place. So that's a kind of a touristy attitude to Jerusalem, to life as a whole.

We ask in effect, What makes me the happiest? What is best for me is the center of reality here? That's the touristy way of journeying through life. And what Donald Nickel does is he embodies the pilgrim way. Because, again, as he testified and as people said about him, what was central in his life was seeking to be aware of the presence of God.

When he was tested with conflict after conflict, complexity after complexity, he would seek the presence of God in a way that led him not to ignore other people but to seek understanding and ways to practice love, justice, compassion, and mercy.

In other words, to embody the strength and the wisdom of Jesus Christ. That happens when we follow Jesus as pilgrims, and we receive that kind of strength by which Jesus can overcome evil with good. So here we could ask ourselves, how am I going through life? Would I say I'm primarily a tourist thinking, oh, will this be a good time?

Is this exactly what I want? Or are we journeying through life to seek to experience the presence of God? To be pilgrims, receiving and sharing God's strength. Here, I'll share two very modest ways of coming to a conclusion. I can share that as I tried to live out a little bit of what I was planning to preach today, I tried to be more aware of God's presence.

So the psalmist is able to just wonder about the swallow and the sparrow in the temple in Jerusalem. That's when I was seeking to open myself to the presence of God. Birds, squirrels, grass, trees—all these things would start to shine with a little more glory. I certainly didn't get all the way, but I was so grateful for this word and this practice.

Going in with understanding ourselves as seeking to follow Jesus as pilgrims. And to add again, just one more aspect to how we can follow Jesus as pilgrims. I'll share a pilgrim practice that in this case I received from my sister Mavis, who is a spiritual director. Because one way she tries to help people experience the presence of God is she invites them, and many other people do this too, it's part of what a lot of spiritual directors learn.

What we can learn to do is what we can call breathing the Holy Spirit. And I've been doing that for a while to try to get some peace and be aware of the presence of God just before I go to sleep. Psalm 84 was saying, try to do this more often. and be aware of God when you walk.

And by breathing the Holy Spirit, what that means is you breathe in part of the names of the Holy Spirit, of the Trinity, and you breathe out the names of the Trinity. So, for example, Fa—ther, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now, I can't do that out loud very well, but I can think that and so can you. And so I would say that as you're getting ready, many of you, for another school year, as you're getting ready, several of you, to some medical situations coming up, as you're getting ready, all of you, to follow Jesus in a world in which so, what do we, we need the strength of Jesus Christ.

You know what you can do at any time in any place? You can breathe Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Make me aware of your presence so I can not only experience you but also express you with the wisdom and strength the grace and truth of Jesus Christ. So let's turn to our triune God. for that to happen. Let's pray.

Join in this prayer.

Gracious God, Triune God who is love, as you know so much better than we do, we need you. We need to experience and express your presence. So we pray that you will, through your word and spirit, form us more and more into pilgrims who can pray from our hearts that better is one day in your courts, better is any time in your presence than any other time, any other place.

We are so glad, loving God, that we can encounter you through any door. And be glad for your anointing as we read about in the psalm. We thank you that you bless us with the faith that the psalmist says is a blessing. And we pray that by that gift of faith we can also grow in hope and in love. We pray that by your spirit you can fill us more and more with your presence for us to experience and express.

In the wisdom and love, the grace and truth, the strength that we see in Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.