THURSDAY 28th
Psalm 84
NIV (vv1-2) – ‘How lovely is your dwelling place, LORD Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.’
ESV (vv1-2) – ‘How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.’
The psalmist is expressing his delight, joy in being able to have the time to spend in the house of God, he describes it has lovely, and that his soul longs, faints to be found there. He concludes that a day in the house of God is far better than a thousand days elsewhere, and that it is far better to be a doorkeeper in the house of God than to dwell in the places of wickedness. (v10)
In other words, to be in God’s house was his priority, it was as essential to him as it is for a sparrow finding a home and a swallow having a nest for itself. The psalmist knew that it was the place where he was going to be in close communion with the LORD God, it was the place where he would feel and know his presence, it was the place where he was going to get that which he would need to empower and to strengthen him through the week, ‘For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favour and honour. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly, O LORD of host, blessed is the one who trusts in you!’ (vv11-12)
Now we know that God can bless and bestow upon us even when we are not in the house of the LORD, he is constantly with us, he is constantly giving and providing for us, but I believe there is a particular and special blessing to be found in our coming together in the house of the Lord, to the place which has been designated as the place for believers to gather together to meet with God and to have fellowship with one another, how many times can we look back and recall that in the gathered Church God has blessed in a special way, we have felt his presence, we have known his presence and we have left knowing that we have truly met with God.
How lovely to us is God’s dwelling place? How much do our souls truly long for the courts of the Lord, do our hearts and our flesh sing for joy to the living God, so much so that we long to be in the meeting place, with the gathered Church to worship the Lord and to receive from him? Just as finding a home and building a nest is the priority of the sparrow and the swallow, so our priority should be to be found with the gathered Church every Sunday morning, to be meeting together with God, our hearts to be longing for the courts of God, to be desiring to meet with others to worship the Lord, to honour him with our lips and to receive from him.