To Dwell in the House of the Lord
Psalm 27v4
11th October 2024
As we saw last time, this Psalm was probably written by David in the days when he was living as a fugitive, hiding from the forces of King Saul. In these very difficult circumstances, he proclaimed his trust in the Lord in verses 1-3. He now says:
Psalm 27v4
One thing I ask from the Lord,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
and to enquire of him in his temple.
What's your deepest desire? What's your most fervent prayer? What do you long for more than anything else? Can you echo David's words? Is your relationship with God your top priority? Do you long to dwell in the house of the Lord?
Actually, we have several Psalms that David wrote, and he did ask for other things. I think we have to give him a bit of poetic licence here. I know that the Bible is inerrant, but this is poetry, and inerrant poetry is not the same thing as inerrant history or inerrant doctrine. I think David means "this is the main thing, the overriding thing, I ask of the Lord. Nothing is as important as this".
David was in hiding. He couldn't just walk up to God's Tabernacle to worship Him. He worshipped God profoundly, but he had to worship in forests, caves and deserts, not in the Tabernacle. He yearned to be there. We begin to understand why it was that, after David had become king, he was so desperate to bring the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, pitch a new tent for it there and make plans for a stone temple. He'd spent all these years longing to be in the place dedicated to God's worship.
It's different for us. As Jesus told the woman at the well in John 4, the time was coming when there's no special place to worship God. We now worship Him all over the world. Now, God has no need of a special physical building. Now, we the church are the temple of God:
1 Corinthians 3v16
Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple?
1 Peter 2v5
You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house
Ephesians 2v19-22
… you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's
people and also members of his household,
built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself
as the chief cornerstone.
In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple
in the Lord.
And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God
lives by his Spirit.
The church is not a building, and it's not an organisation. It's the sum total of all the people who have been born again as children of God through faith in the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It's people. It's you and me. Since we, the church, are God's temple, what does it mean for us to dwell in the house of the Lord? We can't help being in the house of the Lord; we're the living stones out of which it's made. I'd like to offer you two answers to this question. Firstly, there is a special sense in which we're the temple of God when we meet together in His name. Secondly, although you and I together are the temple of God, we are also individually temples of God:
1 Corinthians 6v19
Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit…?
So the church is the temple of God when we're gathered together, and we're still the temple of God even when we're apart. It's of vital importance to be conscious of this, and to be intentional about it, all the time, all the days of our lives.
Firstly, then, Jesus said:
Matthew 18v20
"For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them."
And the writer to the Hebrews said:
Hebrews 10v24-25 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another - and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
We can't love and encourage one another if we don't meet one another. And we all have different gifts. We can't help each other with those gifts if we don't meet together. And there is something special about worshipping together, and about listening to the preached word of God together. There's a spiritual dynamic that's more present when we're in the same room than when we're not. It's important for us and for the world that the church gathers for worship, teaching and fellowship, at least weekly. I believe it's also important for us to meet in small groups for fellowship and prayer. Nevertheless, I don't think God wants us to meet together every day of our lives.
So the main application of this verse for Christians is about our relationship with God when we're not together. My equivalent of "One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek" is this: I want to experience God every day of my life. And, I'm very glad to say, I do! I can't remember a day when I didn't sense God with me. What I want more than anything is a healthy relationship with God my Father, Saviour and Lord. And I believe that relationship can – and will – get better and better from now on, for all eternity.
David says he wants "to gaze on the beauty of the Lord... in his temple." So do I! And I hope, so do you. I hope it's what we want more than anything else. The man who has God and nothing else has infinitely more than the man who has everything else, but doesn't have God.
In ancient times, the glory of God manifested above the Ark of the Covenant, which was God's throne on earth, and was in the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle. When David wrote this psalm, he was on the run, so he couldn't go to the Tabernacle. We're not sure if the Tabernacle even existed at that time. Anyway, the Ark of the Covenant wasn't in it. It had been captured by the Philistines and, when it was returned, it was kept at the house of a man called Abinadab who lived on a hill near the town of Kiriath Jearim, because the Israelites were afraid of it. Since the Ark of the Covenant wasn't in the Tabernacle, the glory of the Lord wasn't there.
After David became king, he brought the Ark to Jerusalem. Then he was able to visit the Tabernacle, but he wasn't a priest, so he still wasn't allowed to enter the Holy of Holies and see the Ark of the Covenant or God's glory above it. David might encounter some fine artwork in whatever structure then existed, he might have witnessed the sacrifices and joined in the singing, but he couldn't, as the Psalm says, "gaze on the beauty of the Lord" at that time. But that's what he most wanted. He longed to see God. So do I.
One day, you and I will stand in glory and we'll see Jesus face to face. That will be the most wonderful moment we will ever experience, won't it? But Hebrews 4v16 tell us we can "approach the throne of grace with confidence" now! We can – today – come before God on His heavenly throne, of which the Ark of the Covenant was just a copy. Whenever we pray or worship, we stand in the real Holy of Holies, not a tent in the Middle East, but God's throne room in heaven! There's a sense in which we're worshipping on earth, and there's also a sense in which we're standing before the throne of God in heaven.
Of course, now we see through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13v12). One day we'll see God as He truly is. But even now we do see Him with our mind's eye. We see the beauty of God in His creation. We see it in His holy word, the Bible. We see it in the stories about Jesus. We see His power, His purity, His holiness, His faithfulness, His wisdom, His justice. We see something of God's beauty in each other, and in what God is doing in making each other Christlike. And by the Holy Spirit, we can sense God with us when we pray and worship. Sometimes we hear His voice. Sometimes we sense His touch.
Our times of prayer can be what David longed for – a conscious meeting with God and a taste of heaven. But we have to stop from the busyness and cares of this world long enough to seek Him. We need to be still and know that He is God (Psalm 46v10). We have to choose to enter into the holy place, to turn off the phone and the TV, to pray "hallowed be thy name".
And David says he wants to "enquire of [God] in his temple". Our times of corporate and private prayer and worship can be times when we learn about God. The more we love God, the more we'll want to learn about Him, and the more we learn about God, the more we'll love Him. We can learn about God through Bible study, through fellowship – sharing our insights with one another – through worship, when our songs help us to meditate on His goodness, and through study. I study theology because I love God and want to love Him more. Theology is just "thinking about God". We all do theology. Some very wise men have written wonderful books that help me to do that. The more I study, the more I want to worship the God that I'm slowly coming to understand better.
What greater desire can we have than to experience God more and to learn more about Him?