Sermon Psalm 84 “Longing for God”
Presbyterian Church of Easton
August 22, 2021
All of us have things we long for. You have probably brought your longings with you today to church. Again and again we pray that our longings will be satisfied. But they are still there week after week. You pray for the same thing week after week, and nothing seems to happen. Your longings are never satisfied. Today we will be talking about our longings, especially our longing for God. But first please pray with me.
Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy Heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen. (John Calvin)
NRS Psalm 84:1 <To the leader: according to The Gittith. Of the Korahites. A Psalm.> How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! 2 My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. 3 Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God. 4 Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise. Selah 5 Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. 6 As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools. 7 They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion. 8 O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah 9 Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed. 10 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 live in the tents of wickedness. 11 For the LORD God is a sun and shield; he bestows favor and honor. No good thing does the LORD withhold from those who walk uprightly. 12 O LORD of hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you.
Psalm 84 is a poem about longing. It begins with the words “my soul longs”. The Hebrew word that the poet uses for longing shares its root with the word that means “silver”. So she is talking about the feeling we have when we desire money, wealth, or economic security. It is the intense desire that we have which motivates us to work hard, earn a living, and put away something for our retirement. But when taken to its extreme this feeling can overwhelm us and lead to the sin of greed. As with all gifts from God this one of longing must be held in balance and used to our benefit, and not twisted and used for our destruction.
Our earlier reading from the Song of Solomon was about a different type of longing. This is the longing for a sexual relationship. Like our longing for gold and silver our longing for sex must also be balanced. So long as we limit our longing for sex to activity within a marriage it is a great blessing for us. But the moment we twist this blessing and begin to long for sex outside of marriage then we become overwhelmed with the sin of lust and this leads to the destruction of relationships and ultimately the destruction of our lives. So longing is a gift from God which must be used within limits. If we follow these limits the promise is that we will be richly blessed by God.
There are all kinds of things that we long for. Some of us long for the day when our children will come home for a visit. Others are longing for a job, or a place to live. Still others are longing for a relationship with someone to love. These longings can either motivate us to change our behavior to satisfy our cravings, or they can lead us to depression and failure to act believing that all hope is lost. For longing to be a blessing for us we have to realize that we need to change to receive those blessings. We need to get out and look for a new job. We need to get out and meet new people to start relationships. Maybe we need to pick up the phone and make a call to receive a visit from our kids. Whatever it is, we have to make changes in our lives to satisfy our longings, and we must remember the limits that God has imposed for our longings to be turned into blessings.
I, like most people, have spent most of my life longing for something. I longed for my businesses to be more successful. I longed to be in a relationship and find a wife. I longed to be closer to God and to understand God’s Word more fully. I would come to worship and pray but these longings never seemed to go away. I prayed week after week but the longing just became more intense. I needed to make changes in my life to satisfy my longings.
In Psalm 84 the psalmist longs to be in the presence of God. She longs for the opportunity to go to Jerusalem for one of the festivals so she can enter into the magnificent temple that Solomon had built. She longs for the day when she can sing praises to God in worship. She longs for the day when she can pray to God and be heard. And her longings have motivated her to begin the long journey to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage to where these blessings could be found.
Do we long to be in the presence of God? Do we long to sing praises to God and offer our concerns to God in prayer? If the answer is “yes” then God has graciously given us this opportunity to come to church where we can do the very thing the psalmist could only long for: we can sing praises to God and know that our prayers will be heard.
But for worship to truly be a blessing for us the psalmist tells us that we must walk uprightly. We must obey God’s commands. We must live our lives pleasing to God. Otherwise our worship is empty and bestows no blessing.
If we are overwhelmed with the longing for money, coming to church will not satisfy our desires. If we are preoccupied with our longing to find a sexual partner outside of marriage, then singing and praising God is hypocritical and will not satisfy our longings. If we bend to our longings for alcohol and drugs then praying will not satisfy us. So we have to be willing to confess our sinful lifestyles and change our behavior in order for worship to truly satisfy us.
Because sin separates us from God, it is ultimately our source of longing. Listen to this story from the third chapter of Genesis.
Genesis 3:2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; 5 for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.
Adam and Eve experienced longing in the garden. They did not realize that their longings were for God. Rather they thought that their longings were for wisdom or beauty and they twisted these longings into disobedience of God. As a result they and all of their descendants have experienced longings. And we all make the same mistake thinking that we long for money or sex or alcohol. But the reality is that we long to be in the presence of God. And walking away from our sin and coming to God in worship is our only hope of satisfying our deepest longings.
I finally realized that my longings were the result of ignoring what God wanted me to do. When I was a child, my family thought that I would be a pastor because I loved public speaking and going to church. But I was determined to be a successful businessman and have a family. I longed for these things and prayed for them continually. But it was not until I realized that my true longing was for God that I changed. I started studying the Bible more intensively. I went to seminary and became a pastor. As soon as God saw that I had left behind my old longings and longed for Him alone, God blessed me richly with a wife and a church to care for. So I am convinced that if we are plagued with our longings the only solution is to long for God and follow God wherever God might lead.
When the author of Psalm 84 arrived in Jerusalem she experienced, possibly for the first time, the joy of delighting in the presence of God. Happiness replaced her longing. She experienced the joy of singing to God and praying to God free from the longings that had plagued her for so long.
And this is the offer made available to you. Turn from your sin, your evil ways. Put behind you your longings for wealth or sex or liquor. And long for the one thing you were created to long for with your whole heart. Long to be in the presence of God. Then come to worship and experience the blessing of happiness as you sing and pray to your creator, and your longings will be satisfied. Let’s pray.
Holy Father in heaven, we long for you. We long to be in your presence. We long to sing your praise. We long to be with you in prayer. Banish from our minds our longing for sin. And help us to find our delight only in you. This we pray in the name of the greatest gift we have received, your son Jesus Christ. Amen.
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