One Thing Have I Asked of the Lord

It’s the question that children are frequently asked this time of the year: “What would you like to get for Christmas?” Young and old alike are often encouraged to make a wish before they blow out the candles on their birthday cake: What is it they are hoping for during the next year of their life?

Let’s ponder the question together this morning, shall we? What is the one thing you want more than anything else? How would you answer that question? Seriously now. What is it?

I remember as a child being perplexed by the question, because once I thought I knew how I would answer it, another possibility would come to mind, and I couldn’t decide between the two. Finally, someone told me the only way to answer the question. If I could have anything I could wish for, the one thing to ask for would be to have at least two more wishes. That’s it! To know that I could be granted everything I could ever need or want, now that would be the one thing to desire the most.

That’s more or less what the Psalmist says here in Psalm 27:4. By the way, this psalm is attributed “of David,” which may well mean that David is the author of the psalm, but this is far from certain. At any rate, notice the “one thing” the Psalmist is content to ask for, indeed even to “seek after.” It’s the “one thing” the Psalmist is convinced is worth everything. What is it? That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life. And in the rest of the psalm, he tells us why he wants this more than he could want anything else. Essentially, it’s because to be granted the privileges of dwelling in God’s house is to be granted the privilege of having everything he could possibly ever want or need. Ten thousand more wishes!

Central to the Psalmist’s request here is the concept of the house of the Lord. It is the central concept not only here but also in the two psalms that surround the present one. In Psalm 26:8, the Psalmist says, “O LORD, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells.” Where does God’s glory dwell? Here is an important point that needs to be made, because the answer many of us have been conditioned to give is “heaven.” That’s not exactly the wrong answer, unless of course we are thinking of heaven as a place that is entirely separated from earth. Because what the Psalmist is talking about is not some place he can only go to when he dies, but a place he can be even while he is still alive. The house of God is a place the Psalmist can point to and say, “There it is. That’s where I want to be.” The house of God for the Psalmist would have been either the portable tent known as the tabernacle, or the permanent structure known as the temple.

Christians today do not easily understand how important the temple is, not just to the Psalmist and his contemporaries, not just to ancient Israelites, but to the entire plotline of the Bible. From Genesis to Revelation, the temple is key to comprehending the biblical message of how humanity can find peace with God and with one another. The Bible teaches that God created the world so that he could fill it with his presence and joy. Israel’s temple anticipates the fulfillment of that hope as God’s glory took up residence there. But in order for that hope to be fully realized, Israel’s prophets spoke of the need for a much greater temple, a temple which has finally arrived with the advent of Jesus.

So, during these five weeks of the advent season, let’s explore this theme together. I’ve entitled this series The Temple of God and the Anticipation of Advent. And we begin today with Psalm 27 because it can help us understand the hope that the temple of God signifies, the hope that the entire biblical story offers to all of us, to the entire world. You see, to live in God’s house is to live with eternal hope no matter the danger that threatens our lives. What more could you ask for than that?

After all, it is in the house of God that we enjoy the protective presence of God, we experience the transformative worship of God, and we encounter the renewed strength of God.

The Protective Presence of God

First, the protective presence of God. The first three verses anticipate the ultimate hope of the Psalmist expressed in verse 4. To be in God’s house is to be under the protective presence of God.

Light, Salvation, Stronghold

In verse 1, the Psalmist uses three metaphors about God. The LORD is my light, my salvation, and my stronghold.

Light is “a frequent metaphor for God’s presence and purpose.”[1] It is “a natural figure for almost everything that is positive.”[2]Here is why the Psalmist can say the one thing he wants more than anything else is to be in God’s house, because he has found that when he is with God, he has everything else he could possibly need or want. “God is my shepherd,” Eugene Peterson translates Psalm 23:1, “I don’t need a thing.”

The second metaphor the Psalmist uses about God is “my salvation.” By now we all should know that the frequent references to “salvation” in the Bible (and this Hebrew word is used over 350 times in the OT) can never be narrowed to the fate of a person after they die. Salvation has to do with “freedom from distress and the ability to pursue one’s own objectives.”[3] To experience salvation is to have obstacles removed so that you can be who God made you to be and do what God made you to do. The majority of OT references are about “deliverance from real enemies and out of real catastrophes.”[4]

That is certainly the case in this psalm, and it is clear by the metaphor of God as “the stronghold of my life.” The picture is of God being a fortress you can go to, a refuge when there are real dangers. And verses 2-3 add to the imagery. Verse 2 pictures the fears of the Psalmists to be like a pack of preying animals, and we see these fears in verse 3 as the assaults of a hostile army. The fears the Psalmist has had to confront “are not underrated” but are the kind that “may threaten one’s very life.”[5]

Safe in the Storm

You can see that this psalm can easily “serve as the prayer of anyone who feels besieged by life—by illness, conflict at home or work, stress, or depression, and so on.”[6] But it requires us to take the position of faith that the Psalmist has come to. He knows that being with the LORD does not mean that there will be no fears to confront, no dark valleys to walk through, no dangers that will threaten to take him out. Fearlessness is not the same thing as immunity. The one thing the Psalmist wants is not exemption from trouble but hope when trouble comes. And he has found God to be the reliable source of hope regardless of the trouble he might face.

So that is why the one thing he asks of God is that he might be able to dwell in God’s house all the days of his life. He knows that so long as he is with God he will stand victorious when the wars of life come and go. As long as he is with God, he will find renewed confidence for every problem he is forced to confront. As long as he is with God, he is certain that no fear will ever overtake him.

Now this all sounds very religious, doesn’t it? A sceptic might well say, “I’m glad you have found in your religion a crutch to help you cope with your difficulties.” Well, yes, of course we have. But it’s not like anyone can get along without some kind of “crutch.” How do you cope with your difficulties? The answer you give to that question is your crutch, your religion. The question is whether it is the one thing that can always deliver.

And the truth is, many professing Christians don’t actually run to God for rescue but run to the same old tired cultural deities that everyone else runs to. How can we know that we are with God, finding refuge in God? We need to go to his house.

The Transformative Worship of God

And what do you do when you get to God’s house? The whole reason for going to a temple is to worship. You go to God’s house to worship God. And in the worship of God, the Psalmist begins to have his entire life transformed. That is how it works. “What people do is organically related to which gods they are worshipping.”[7] We are shaped, formed, and transformed by our worship. And we are all worshippers. So we are all being transformed by who or what we worship. There’s no way around it. Your worship is what is turning you into the person you are becoming. Here's why the Psalmist longs more than anything else to worship the one true God.

To Get a Vision of God

First, to get a vision of God. By dwelling in the house of the LORD, the Psalmist will be able “to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.”

The word beauty here is not used only for outward appearances but can describe the inherent goodness of a person or thing. The Hebrew word is used elsewhere to describe the taste of bread (Prov 9:17) or the sound of music (Psa 81:2). Psalm 135:3 uses this word to modify God’s name, and there the ESV translates it “pleasant.” So, to “gaze upon the beauty of the LORD” means to see with all the senses the ways in which the God the Psalmist worships is good, pleasant, and delightful.

Part of worshiping God, then, is “inquiring.” The word means to meditate, reflect upon, and differentiate, and it is used largely in the context of worship.[8] It is in the worship of God that the Psalmist can truly come to see who God is, what he is like. Worship is instructive. We can get our questions answered in the worship of God.

Here then is what to fuel our worship together: the hope that as we worship God we will come to see God in all his goodness. But we will need to come to worship with a humble curiosity rather than a settled theology that has no more room for seeing God in fresh ways. In verse 5, the Psalmist expresses his confidence that what he will see in God will be satisfying, and in verse 6 he speaks of a further response of worship with both “shouts of joy” and melodious songs of praise. The worship of God will lead to a vision of God that will be truly satisfying.

To Experience the Love of God

Second, in worshiping God the Psalmist hopes to experience the love of God. Look at verses 7-10. It begins, as so many other psalms do (e.g. Psalm 4:1), with a plea for God to be gracious and to respond favorably to the Psalmist’s prayer. What is he praying for here?

Verse 8 is a difficult verse to translate and to interpret, as one can see by comparing the various English translations. But coupled with verse 9 the overall sense is that the Psalmist wants there to be a mutual seeking: he longs to seek God’s face, but he also wants God to seek his face. He wants there to be a completely restored relationship with God—no “hidden faces” between them.[9]You know what it is like when there is a fracture in relationship with someone important to you. Often there is quite literally a turning away of face. It’s a sign of anger. It’s the threat of giving up on someone.

Now this is how it might seem to be with God. And it is this that the Psalmist is praying will not happen. But in verse 10, he assures himself that the God he worships is ready to respond favorably to this prayer. Even if his own parents were to forsake him, “the LORD will take me in.” This is an astounding hope, that the love of God might only just be starting where natural human affections have run out of steam.[10]Could it possibly be true that nothing—not even my own sinfulness—could separate me from the love of God?

To Know the Way of God

It’s hard to fathom a relationship like that, isn’t it? But the Psalmist has dared to hope that it is so. And that is why, in verse 11, he asks the LORD to teach him his way. He wants to learn to love like God loves, because this would be to possess a far greater power than any that his enemies and adversaries could ever wield against him. Just imagine if one could, like God himself, love one’s enemies. What might that do to the world? What might that do to us?

The Renewed Strength of God

Finally, in verses 13-14, the Psalmist has emerged from the temple where he has encountered the renewed strength of God. And that is why the one thing he wants more than anything else is to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life. He has found that every time he is there, in God’s house, in God’s temple, he is strengthened, renewed, refreshed, hopeful.

The Danger of Hopelessness

Do you see what difference this makes? Verse 13 seems to invite us to ponder this reality. The first word of this verse in Hebrew is “unless” or “if not,” so that the verse invites one to ponder, as the NET puts it: “Where would I be if I did not believe I would experience the LORD’s favor in the land of the living?” The phrase “the land of the living”—let’s be clear—refers to where we are right now, being alive on earth rather than dead. So what kind of people are we in danger of becoming if start to lose hope that we will see God’s goodness all laid out before us right here on earth?

We are on to something very important here. So many Christians are taught that our ultimate hope is “in heaven” rather than “on earth.” And since all one has to do to go to heaven is “get saved” then there is no need to bother or hold on to hope that God’s goodness might be seen here, in this life.

What kind of persons might we be in danger of becoming if we believe that? We are in danger of living vindictively and desperately, clinging to power however we might have it so that our own life can be as comfortable as possible while we wait for death to come and usher us into the goodness of the Lord in the land of the dead.

The Courage to Wait on the LORD

This directly contradicts the Psalmist's message and intent.  But so also does the Christian who, soaking up all this biblical hope, ignores the concluding verse of this hopeful psalm.

The message of verses 13-14 go like this: precisely because I do believe that I will see God’s goodness laid bare right here in the land of the living, I will go on waiting for the LORD to bring it all about. I will not run ahead of the LORD and, forgetting the power of self-giving love that I have received myself, try to advance his kingdom with the futile powers of the gods of this world. Whether it be the well-known gods of Mammon or Mars—money and war—or any of the other pantheon of idolatrous gods that still tempt us all day by day, we can easily lose sight of the biblical vision which is laid out before us in these last two verses of Psalm 27.

Our calling is to wait on the Lord not to take matters into our own hands. And if you think this sounds like weakness and passivity, think again. The Psalmist urges us to “be strong” and to “take courage.” As Ray Ortland has said,

“Waiting on the Lord” is not like resting in a hammock with a glass of iced tea; it’s like holding a plank position until our coach tells us we’re done. But that place of unresolved tension is spiritually creative and surprisingly refreshing. Our strength is renewed.[11]

Yes, that’s what Isaiah said. Those “who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength” (Isa 40:31).

The Arrival of Christian Hope

So, this is why the one thing the Psalmist wants is to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of his life. Unfortunately for him, he has to go now. It seems he can’t stay there in the temple forever. Will he wander away from God? Will he be able to hold the plank position until the time he can return to God in his temple?

If only the temple could become an even larger space so that God would always be present, so that all of life could become an act of worship, so that hope would never be lost. That is what the Psalmist might wish for.

And what the advent season announces loud and clear is that that wish has, in fact, been granted.

The Gospel of John doesn’t relate to us the nativity scene found in Matthew or Luke, but it tells us this about the birth of Jesus:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. (Jn 1:14)

The verb “dwell” there is striking. It’s the verb used to describe God’s own presence with his people in the tabernacle. This is what our waiting during advent is all about. The entire biblical vision comes to its exciting climax right here with the arrival of Immanuel, God with us. Jesus is the temple of God we can dwell in now and forever.

Brothers and sisters, the one thing that matters most has been given to us. Now, let us learn together again this Advent season how to live in this hope that has been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.

What more could we possibly want?

_____

[1] Nancy deClaissé-Walford, Rolf A. Jacobson, and Beth LaNeel Tanner, The Book of Psalms, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament, ed. Robert L. Hubbard, Jr. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), 267.

[2] Derek Kidner, Psalms 1–72: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, ed. Donald J. Wiseman, vol. 15 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 138.

[3] John E. Hartley, “יָשַׁע,” Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, ed. R. Laird Harris (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 414.

[4] Hartley, TWOT, 414-15.

[5] Kidner, Psalms 1–72, 138.

[6] deClaissé-Walford, Jacobson, and Tanner, The Book of Psalms, 268.

[7] Belinda Luscombe, “What Christians Get Wrong About St. Paul’s Teachings, According to a New Testament Scholar,” TIME, November 10, 2025. www.time.com/7331426/nt-wright-ephesians-christianity-interview.

[8] Elmer A. Martens, “בָּקַר,” TWOT, 124.

[9] deClaissé-Walford, Jacobson, and Tanner, The Book of Psalms, 270.

[10] Kidner, Psalms 1–72, 139.

[11] Ray Ortlund, “What to Remember When It’s Going Poorly,” 9Marks, June 30, 2020, https://www.9marks.org/article/what-to-remember-when-its-going-poorly/.