Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - A Pilgrim's Progress | The Writings | Psalm 84

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

Where do you long to be? Disney World? At home under a cozy blanket? A nice vacation? What if your soul is longing for something more? In today's episode, Jensen looks at Psalm 84, a prayer for God's people to sing as they walk the path of life towards their heavenly home. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 84

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. And the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. When I was in middle school, my dad was memorizing a whole psalm and asked if I wanted to memorize it with him. And despite not loving doing Bible memory verses at school, I said yes, I liked the challenge, I guess. So I started reading Psalm 84 every night to commit it to memory. And I succeeded. Now, well over a decade later, although Psalm 84 is not something that I can recite entirely by memory,

different bits and parts of it are stuck in my mind. And I think about the passage often. You see, every night as I read Psalm 84, the meaning behind the words was shaping me, encouraging me, and teaching me, teaching me about what it meant to know, to love, and to faithfully follow God. Psalm 84 was a Psalm written for one who was making their pilgrimage to the temple. You see, different Old Testament laws commanded that the Israelite males present themselves in the temple at different times throughout the year, at different festivals. And so faithful Israelites would make their pilgrimage from their home to the temple of God. And this Psalm was written to encourage them, to help them worship and delight in their pilgrimage

as they made their way to the place where God dwelt. Even though as a middle schooler I never made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to stand before God in his temple, even with my limited understanding of theology at the time, I knew these verses related to the ways that I was called to faithfully follow God in my life. Now, as I've grown up beyond a middle schooler and my theology has also grown, I've come to find this chapter about Israelite pilgrim's journeying to the temple has so many parallels to the journey that I find myself on as I followed Jesus. And so today, we're going to learn about what Psalm 84 meant for its original audience,

but also what it means for you and for me today. So this Psalm, it has three main sections. And in each section, we learn about three different people who are called blessed. And that blessing is the main idea of each section. So we'll start with the first, verses one through four. How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts, my soul longs, Yes, feints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. Even the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young at your

altars. Oh, Lord of hosts, my king, and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house ever singing your praise. So growing up, my heart longed to go to Disney World. And as an adult, heart longs to go to grease and swim in sparkling blue water and watch beautiful sunsets and eat really, really good food. Is there a place that you really, really want to go, to see, to explore? Maybe you're a home body like me, and most days the place that you long for is your home with a cozy blanket, a good book, and some calm, quiet. Wherever it is for you, we all know what it feels like to long for a place, a childhood home, your grandma's house, a dream vacation, or a place that you visited once and just fell in love with. We long for those places because we know that those

places they offer us something. Comfort, love, adventure, sunshine, peace, joy. Well, the psalmist here talks about the dwelling place of God, the temple, in that way. He says his soul longs for the courts of the Lord, for God's home. He says his flesh, his heart and his soul, so his whole being sings for joy to the living God. The place that he daydreams about, the place he thinks might fix his problems, the place he longs for is the place where he can be with God. The thought of it causes him to joyfully sing and praise God. In this section, it ends with the one who's blessed. Blessed are those who dwell in your house ever singing your praise. And right before he tells us this, he shares the good news that God's house is welcoming to everyone. Even the birds find their home in his house.

All are welcome in the house of the king. He continues on in the second section, verses 5 through 10. Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs. The early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength. Each one appears before God in Zion. O Lord of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob. Behold our shield, O God.

Look on the face of your anointed. Okay, so this time he begins with the one who is blessed. Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. So if I asked you how to get to your home right now, you'd be able to imagine the way in your mind, right? You know the way home. Driving it is probably second nature to you at this point. Now, in the same way, those who long for the courts of the Lord, who long for his house, would have the pilgrimage, the highways, the way memorized to Zion or

Jerusalem where the temple was. And those people who delight to travel to the dwelling place of God, they put their strength in God. What, follows are examples of what happens when a pilgrim's strength is in the Lord. When they go through the valley through a dry place, they make it a place full of water. It doesn't mean that they can miraculously provide water for themselves because they're being obedient, but that even in a dry place, the joy that they have in knowing to whom they are traveling makes it like a place springs. Their strength to carry on to keep going even in the valleys is from God, and he is faithful to deliver each one to himself in Zion. Now verses 8 through 10 transition from the author

speaking in third person to speaking in first person. So he is now directly speaking to God. He calls out and asks God to hear his prayer. He asks God to behold his shield, to look upon God's anointed one. The psalmist is praying for the king, the people's shield, God's anointed king of Israel. He prays for the king because it was the king's job to protect the pilgrims, to protect the temple, to make a way for the people to come to the Lord and to represent the people before God. The king was vital in making it possible for God's people to even come to Zion and to be with God in his dwelling place. And so he finishes this section praying for him. And then finally, the third section, verses 10 through 12. For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a

doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a son and shield. The Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you. The blessed person is described to close Psalm 84. Blessed is the one who trusts in you, who trusts in God. Now why are they blessed? Well, look at what comes before. The psalmist reiterates that he longs to be with God in his dwelling place.

He says one day with God in his home is better than a thousand anywhere else. even in Greece or Disneyland. One day with God is better. He would rather do the lowliest job in the house of his God than live in the tents of the wicked. Maybe you noticed it, but being with God is being in a home, a physical place of safety. While being with the wicked is to be in a tent.

No matter what is offered apart from God, the psalmist knows it will fail in comparison, a tent rather than a home. It's so much better purely because God is there and he is not with the wicked. Verse 11 describes who God is for us so that we can understand just how incredible it is to be able to find our home, our dwelling place in God's home. He tells us that God is a sun and a shield. God provides safety before electricity and even now nighttime.

It's dangerous. Without light, evil can roam. So God, being the sun, signifies safety. He is the son and a shield protecting his people. He bestows honor, favor. He doesn't withhold anything good from those who walk uprightly, those whose hearts long to be with him, who know the way to Zion, who find their strength in God, who trust him to deliver them safely into his home. For the Israelites on a pilgrimage to the temple of God, this Psalm was a comfort. It was an encouragement, a joy to sing and praise God as they made the Lord. As they made the Lord, the Lord. The Psalm was a comfort. It was an encouragement, a joy to sing

and praise God as they made their way to worship him, as they made their way to safety in the city where their king dwelt, where their God's home was. Now, we don't make a pilgrimage to a temple a few times a year. Instead of longing to go to Zion, we long for Disney World or Greece or an evening of peace and quiet with a cozy blanket. And I think there was probably something really beautiful and foundational about those yearly treks to the physical dwelling place of God, something that helped the ancient Israelites build their lives around remembering what the big story of their life was, to remember the goodness of finding your home in God.

Now here's the thing. We don't trek to Jerusalem for festivals every year. We aren't pilgrims in the same way, but we are all on a journey. We all long for things, we all chase after things, we all direct our lives towards the things our souls, hearts, and flesh cry out for. The Bible tells us that those who faithfully follow after God are currently on a journey. When we walk uprightly in obedience, we are following a worn path of humility,

perseverance, and faithfulness that ends in the dwelling place of God. Hebrews 12, 22 to 24 says this, But you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, into the assembly of the first born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. You see, the whole story of the Bible is, one of our faithful king Jesus, who through his life, death, and resurrection prepared the way for

his people to safely and faithfully appear before him in his kingdom one day, that God would once again dwell among his people in his eternal city, where you and I and all whose trust is in God would be blessed beyond anything we could ever imagine, because our home will be built in the city of God, the place where he dwells. Better is one day in his kingdom than a thousand elsewhere. What if our hearts longed for the kingdom of God in the way that we long for our next vacation? What if we took seriously the blessings of this Psalm? Blessed are those who dwell in your house, whose strength is in you, Lord, and whose heart is the way to your kingdom, who trust in your you. We may not be taking a physical pilgrimage anytime soon, but scripture tells us that we are

walking a path towards a heavenly Jerusalem to the city of the living God, the kingdom that King Jesus rules over. May we long so desperately for your kingdom, God, that our whole being shouts for joy at the thought that we will one day find peace as we dwell in your holy eternal city. Amen.