LORD, TEACH US TO LONG FOR YOU.
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 3 viewsNotes
Transcript
PSALM 84
PSALM 84
Good morning!
We are quickly approaching the church-wide 40 days of prayer and fasting for the welfare of the city.
It is starting on Feb 14th - March 24th.
Actually 40 days, then we will continue do a passion week prayer focus leading up to Easter.
We will be providing next Sunday prayer guides for these 40 days. One of the goals is for the church to be unified in prayer and prayer focus. And the guide will be helpful for that.
Also, leading up to the start, we have been talking about preparing our hearts and minds for these 40 days.
I honestly believe that these 40 days will be life changing for you and for this community.
However, you are only going to get out of this focus what you are willing to put in to this time. Your input will determine your reception.
I have been asking you to prepare and ask 3 questions in your personal life before we begin.
Lord, what would you have be fast?
Lord, how do you want me to specifically to seek the welfare of the city?
Lord, search me, try me, see if there are any grievous ways or motives in me.
I pray that you search out answers to these questions prior to Feb 14th.
I want to pause for a minute and let you know something.
I have been in church for a long time. Since I was a child. I know that pastors will generally try to ask their congregations to seasons of prayer. Sometimes yearly. Sometimes for special reasons. Sometimes for building campaigns.
Look, I’m back on Facebook. I see a number of even local churches are calling their people to 21 days of fasting and praying. or 40 days. or 30 days.
Look, I know its one of those “Christian church culture” things. But my honest and sincerest prayer is that you would not see it like that. That you wouldn’t see this as something you have to do. or are being co-horsed or manipulated to do. or guilt tripped into.
The deepest motives of my heart is for you and I to go into this season and find that we never want to leave this season of prayer. That the lessons and challenge of intentional prayer becomes the life giving power in your life and the life changing power of the church of Jesus Christ and in our community!
See, the enemy is going to try or is already trying to give you a perspective that this is going to be a challenge, or a chore, or a sacrifice for you to take this seriously. That you are doing God a favor my setting aside 15-20 minutes a day to pray.
We need to be reminded that this gift of prayer and relationship and intimacy with the all-powerful God, creator of galaxies is the greatest gift ever offered mankind!
The only sacrifice that we need to be concerned with is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary that makes this depth of relationship with our heavenly Father possible!
We want to act like WE are the one’s making the sacrifice here?!
We want to act like we are the one’s giving something to God here?!
We need to reject those self-centered lies from our flesh and remember that we should not even be allowed before the throne of grace because you and I are sinner. Willful, intentional sinner.
We need to remember that the vail was torn for us by the death and pouring out of the blood of the Lamb of God!
We need to remember that we are the sole benefactor from the presence of the Almighty! Our God lacks nothing. He is perfect and complete. He does not NEED you.
But our God is gracious and loving and desires to pour out that steadfast love and mercy and grace upon you!
He desires to heal your, restore you, save you, redeem you, call you son or daughter, to offer you a place of rest.
And He is offering you an invitation.
See David understood this. David knew that he was the benefactor of the presence of God. Of His dwelling place.
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
Church, do I need to remind us that after Pentecost, the dwelling place of the Spirit of the Living God is with you!
You are the temple of the Lord. You recieved the indwelling of the Holy Spirit when you came to saving faith in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
The dwelling place of the Lord for you and for me is Immanuel, God with us!
So, when we stop and pray, when we intentionally stop and focus our minds on Him, we are entering the dwelling place of the Most High God.
But I love David’s chosen name for the Lord throughout this Psalm. The Lord of Host. That is the title of the commander of the Lord’s armies. That is the title of the God of angel armies!
We are entering into the headquarters of the leader of the spiritual forces for good! This is the location that James describes, James 1:17 “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
And David that its lovely there! It’s beautiful! The dwelling place of God, in you is a beautiful and lovely place!
My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
David, a man who spent a lot of time with the Lord, a man after God’s own heart, knew that coming before God wasn’t a chore or a box to check off but it was the place that his soul longed for. That his soul wasn’t satisfied by things of this world but in the presence of the mighty God. His heart and flesh longed for it and sang for joy when he was in it.
David talked a lot about the soul when placed in the care of our Lord.
Psalm 23:3 “He restores my soul.”
To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones says that the most priceless thing in our lives is our souls.
Its the only thing that we possess that is eternal.
Who we are inside, our personality, our heart is the most precious possession that we have and we must care for it properly and guard it. We are eternal being and who we trust our soul with will determine how eternity looks for us.
David, goes on to say in the next verse Psalm 84:3
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.
I don’t think that David is saying that actual birds can nest and lay eggs on the alter of God.
But that our souls are like small birds like sparrows and swallows. Our souls are vulnerable and weak like small birds. That our souls need a place to be at home, that we need a safe place to trust our most valuable possess.
David says that the swallow trust the alter of the Lord of Host with his young and vulnerable soul.
Jesus said, do you not know that you are more valuable than the birds of the air or the flowers of the fields?
Do not be anxious about what you will eat or drink! Your heavenly Father knows that you need all of these things!
But seek first the King of the kingdom of heaven and His righteousness and all of these things will be added to you!
But when we realize that our souls are as feeble, as needy and defenceless as the sparrow or swallow, we will realize that the only safe place for us in the alter of the Lord of Host, the King and God.
I find it interesting that he doesn’t say throne or arms or refuge of the Lord.
But the alter of the Lord.
In order for our souls to be safe, to find a home, to find the place that it longs for even faints for it must be laid upon the alter of God. It must be placed on the place of sacrifice. It must be given to Him through surrender and trust.
We see this in the story of Abraham and Issac. Or even Jesus on the cross.
We must be willing to lay down everything that we are to Him. We must had over our most prized possession, our soul to commander of the Lord’s armies, to the King, to our God, elo-him, to defend, heal, restore and redeem and bring into eternal communion with Him.
Do you see how fasting and prayer is not a chore and how we are the benefactor here?!
Do you see how time in His presence, focusing on our God, laying down our souls before our King will benefit your soul?!
This is NOT a box to check but a place of refuge, a place to call home, a place of singing for joy!
Lord, forgive us for our twisted view of prayer...
In fact, the next 4 verses talk about the blessing of those who dwell in His house. Who do all that they can do to think about God and pray without ceasing.
Blessed are those who dwell in your house,
ever singing your praise! Selah
Blessed meaning there is blessedness, happiness, good fortune, a state of joyful mind.
Verse 4 says that our joyful state of mind will cause songs of praise to flow from our lips and hearts without ceasing!
Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
Verse 5 tells us that if we draw our strength from these dwelling place, this relationship we will be blessed!
Instead of trying to always doing it your way or by your power, or your strength, allow time in His presence and His guidance to give your strength to do all that this life requires of us.
It also says that you will be blessed in His dwelling place because in your heart will be paved a highway or roadway to Zion. Mt Zion is a common word is scripture to describe the temple in Jerusalem.
I have thought a lot about this verse over the past few weeks.
Highways are intentionally created to provide quick and efficient travel from point A to point B.
They were intentionally created by the authorities to allow safe travel through rough and wild wilderness to get you to where you need to go.
Our Lord, through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, intentionally provided a path for your soul to get into the temple of the Living God, the place that we all need to be. He carved a path through rough and wild wilderness to allow us to safely travel to our home before God in Zion.
On this highway, we can get to our destination blessed if we avoid taking any of the off ramps that distract us from the destination of His presence, of His temple.
We have that available in our hearts. We are blessed because we have a straight shot to the Father!
On this highway, we might have to go through the Valley of Baca or the valley of weeping or tears.
But because our access to the dwelling place of God, we can turn this place of tears and make it a place of springs!
Jesus said, John 4:13-14
Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Jesus offers living water that leads to eternal life for your soul. And eternal life is not just something that you receive after death!
Jesus said that eternal life is knowing God the Father and Jesus Christ whom the Father sent.
Eternal life, living water, springs of life can be found in a personal and intimate knowledge or relationship with God!
I don’t know what you are going through right now. I don’t know what might be causing you to feel like you are in the valley of tears, but I know that entering into the dwelling place of the Lord will restore your soul, cause your tears to turn to songs of praise.
That the dwelling place of the Lord takes you Psalm 84:7
They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion.
from strength to strength as you appear before God in His temple.
Church, my most fervent prayers for us as a church is that we would become a church that knows that there is no greater place on Earth that the dwelling place of our God.
This is not a challenge or a command or even a season to seek unity.
This is an invitation to the restored and redeemed soul!
This is an invitation to the throne of glory!
This is not a chore or box to check, this is not a guilt trip to get you praying more.
This is a rebuke to the lie of this being a sacrifice of our time or whatever distracts us and an invitation to lay down our lives on the alter of the God of angel armies, the King, our God.
This, my friends, is an invitation to down the highways of our hearts paved by Jesus Christ’s blood to the temple of our God.
Lord, teach us to long for you...
Are you okay if we finish this Psalm next week? Lord willing?
Pray
