Latest / Reformed Thinking / Better Is One Day in Your Courts (Psalm 84) | Charles Spurgeon

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Better Is One Day in Your Courts (Psalm 84) | Charles Spurgeon · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to The Deep Dive. Today we are doing something a
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  little special, shifting gears to focus exclusively on our
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  Reformed Thinking series. We have, you know, cleared off
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  the usual clutter from the desk and replaced it with a stack of
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  books that smell like old libraries and leather binding.
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  We are digging into the archives of Protestant theology.
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  That favorite kind of deep dive? Oh, absolutely.
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  And we're specifically looking through the lens of the
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  Westminster Confession. See how the giant science of the
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  faith handled the text of Scripture.
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  It's good to be back. And you're right about the old
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  books. We aren't looking at modern hot
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  takes today. We are looking at tried and true
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  exposition stuff that's been, you know, tested for centuries.
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  We certainly are. Our mission for this deep dive
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  is to tackle Psalm 84. Now, if you grew up in church,
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  you have probably heard this one.
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  It's often called the Pearl of Psalms.
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  It is a real gem. But we aren't just going to skim
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  it for a nice quote to put on a coffee mug.
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  We are going to take it apart, verse by verse, line by line.
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  Which is really the only way to handle a text like this.
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  I mean you miss so much if you just speed read it or pull one
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  verse out of context. To help us do that, we are using
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  Charles Spurgeon, Massive work, The Treasury of David, as our
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  primary guide. And for those listeners who
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  haven't actually held a physical copy of this thing, it is huge.
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  It's not just Spurgeon giving his opinion.
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  No, not at all. He acts more like a curator.
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  He pulls in notes, sermons and what he calls quaint sayings
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  from theologians who were old even when he was writing in the
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  19th century. We are talking about guys like
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  Thomas Pearson, John Gill and Sir Richard Baker.
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  That is one of the best things about the Treasury.
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  You get Spurgeon's very Victorian, very eloquent take,
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  but then you get these flashes of Puritan insight that are just
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  sharp as a tack, right? It is like sitting in a room
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  with a dozen different pastors from different centuries, all
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  arguing over the same sentence. It's fantastic.
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  So let's set the scene before we get to verse one.
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  The title of the Psalm is dedicated to the chief musician
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  upon getteth. Now usually when I read the
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  Psalms I I have to admit I skipped the superscription.
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  A lot of people do. Yeah, get it.
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  Just sounds like some ancient noise, or maybe a town.
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  But Spurgeon stops right there. He refuses to move past it.
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  He does, and for good reason. Words matter in scripture.
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  Every single one. The term get it is interesting.
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  There is some debate, of course, but the consensus among the
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  writers Spurgeon sites is that it refers to the wine press.
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  The wine press OK. It's a term tied to the vintage
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  season. OK, so if we are talking about a
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  wine press, we are talking about the heart.
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  We are talking about grapes being crushed, juice flowing.
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  Right. And think about what happens at
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  a wine press. Yeah, it is messy.
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  It is sticky, sure, But it is the happiest time of the
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  agricultural year. It's a time of celebration.
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  The work is done. The work is done, the grapes are
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  in, the wine is flowing, there is shouting and singing.
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  So right from the title we are being told that the tone here is
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  1 of overflowing joy. A festive joy.
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  It sets the musical key, so to speak.
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  Spurgeon makes this really cool comparison.
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  He says the joy found in the holy assemblies in church
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  essentially is sweeter than the joy of the wine harvest.
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  That's a high bar. It is he, he says.
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  The world has its wine and corn, it's material success, and they
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  get happy about that. But the people of God have the
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  communion of Saints, and that is a different, higher kind of
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  frequency. And that joy stands in a pretty
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  stark contrast to the author's situation.
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  The title says it is for the sons of Korra, but Spurgeon,
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  along with a lot of other scholars, argues that the actual
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  penman was David. He says the Psalm has a Davidic
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  perfume. He does.
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  I caught that Davidic perfume. He says it smells of mountain
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  Heather in the lone places of the wilderness.
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  That is such a vivid way to describe a writing style.
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  It is poetic, but it makes a theological point.
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  The style matches David's life. The theory is that David wrote
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  this when he was in exile, maybe during the rebellion of his son
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  Absalom. Right.
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  So he's been kicked out of Jerusalem.
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  He is on the run in the wild, dusty Backcountry.
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  He's cut off from the Tabernacle, from the center of
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  worship. Which changes everything.
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  I mean, if I am sitting in a comfortable Pew singing about
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  how much I love church, that is one thing.
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  If I am a king who has lost his throne, hiding in a cave,
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  completely cut off from the place of worship, and I'm
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  singing about how much I miss it, that is a whole different
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  level of longing. It turns the Psalm into a cry of
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  deprivation. He isn't singing because he is
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  there. He is singing because he can't
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  be there. The joy is in the memory and the
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  hope, not in the present experience.
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  So let's look at that opening cry in verse one.
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  How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts?
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  Now amiable is a word we don't use much anymore, or if we do,
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  we use it to mean someone is nice or friendly.
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  Always an amiable guy, yeah? Exactly.
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  But that's not what's happening here, is it?
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  No, that's a bit of a language drift over time.
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  The route there is from the French aimer to love.
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  So he is saying, how beloved are your Tabernacles?
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  Or how lovely? So it's a term of endearment.
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  It absolutely is. It implies something that is
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  dear to your affections. It is the way you might talk
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  about your grandmother's kitchen or your child's nursery.
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  It's a place you love deeply. But then he hits us with this
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  immediate contrast. He calls the place lovely, but
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  he calls the owner, the Lord of hosts, Jehovah Saboth.
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  That is a military title. It is.
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  It means the God of armies, the commander in chief of all the
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  angelic hosts. It's a title of immense power
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  and, frankly, terror. And that's the paradox, isn't
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  it? Sir Richard Baker points this
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  out in the notes. He says it is a wonder that the
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  tents of the Lord of Hosts are described as amiable.
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  It's a genuine wonder. Think about a military
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  encampment of a massive conquering army.
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  You have swords, Spears, discipline, guards, judgment.
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  If you are an enemy of that general, that camp is a place of
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  terror. It is the last place you want to
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  be. It's the Death Star.
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  You don't look at it and say how lovely, you look at it and run.
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  Exactly. But for the child of God, the
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  perspective is inverted. The very center of that military
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  camp, where the commander sits is the safest place on earth.
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  Because the Army is on your side.
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  A. Power that terrifies the enemy
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  is the same power that protects the child.
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  So David looks at the camp of the God of armies and sees
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  beauty. He sees home.
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  He sees safety and love. There is another detail in that
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  first verse that I think gets overlooked a lot.
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  He uses the plural tabernacles, but historically there was only
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  one Tabernacle. Right, the one tense that Moses
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  built. So why the plural?
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  Well, technically it refers to the different parts.
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  The outer court, the inner court, the Holy of Holies, it's
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  all the different spaces within the sacred compound.
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  But Spurgeon takes it in a more devotional direction.
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  He does that a lot. He does.
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  He says that to the believer, every portion of the sacred tent
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  is deer. Every single part of it is
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  lovely to him. So he loved the temp pegs, He
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  loves the heavy curtains. He loves the bronze basin where
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  the priests watched. All of it.
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  Every cord, every curtain, every piece of furniture.
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  It's not just the Holy of Holies that's amiable, it's the whole
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  complex. And we have to remember what the
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  Tabernacle actually looked like. This wasn't Solomon's temple.
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  Not even close. Silence temple had gold overlay
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  everywhere. The Tabernacle was a tent
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  covered in badger skins or porpoise skins depending on your
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  translation. It was dark, rough and weather
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  beaten. So from the outside, it probably
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  didn't look like much. It looked like a Bedouin tent.
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  To the naked eye it looked mean, as the old writers would say, or
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  lowly. But David says it is amiable.
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  Why? Not because of the architecture,
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  but because of the resident. It's about who is inside.
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  It was beautiful because the glory of God was hovering over
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  the mercy seat inside. It was beautiful because that's
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  where atonement happened, where sins were covered.
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  It's where the priests ministered.
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  It's a good check for us, you know, Do we love the church
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  because the building is nice and the coffee is good, or do we
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  love it because God is there? That's a challenging thought,
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  and that love it isn't just a polite appreciation.
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  Verse 2 gets incredibly visceral.
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  My soul longeth, yeah even fainteth for the courts of the
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  Lord. My heart and my flesh crieth out
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  for the living God. This isn't just I miss going to
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  church. No, this is physical distress.
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  This is a bodily reaction. The word fainteth in the Hebrew
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  implies being consumed or finished.
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  It's a kind of holy love sickness.
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  A love sickness. That's a great way to put it.
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  You know that feeling when you are so anxious or so longing for
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  something that you physically feel weak?
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  Your stomach turns. That is the Hebrew idea here.
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  He's literally wasting away because he's barred from the
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  assembly. And notice who he is crying out
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  for. He doesn't say my flesh cries
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  out for the rituals or for the singing.
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  He says for the living God. That is a rare title in the
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  Psalms. It really is.
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  It pops up here and in Psalm 42, which also has that theme of
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  longing for God's presence, and I think he uses it to draw a
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  hard line in the sand. David was surrounded by Pagan
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  nations with dead idols, statues of stone and wood.
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  You don't cry out to a stone. A stone can't love you back.
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  A stone can't hear you. David is craving communion with
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  a person, a living being, who interacts, who speaks, who
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  listens. He wants the real thing, not a
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  dead substitute. Precisely.
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  The longing isn't for a place. Fundamentally, it's for a
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  person. You brought up the flesh
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  earlier. My heart and my flesh crieth
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  out. In our circles, especially in
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  Reformed theology, we're used to being suspicious of the flesh.
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  Very suspicious. The flesh is the bad guy.
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  It is the part of me that wants to sin that's at war with the
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  Spirit. But here the flesh seems to be
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  on the side of the angels. It is a unique moment of
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  alignment, isn't it? Spurgeon notes this beautifully.
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  He admits that usually the flesh drags us down.
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  The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, right?
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  We all know that battle. All too well, but.
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  Here the desire for God is so intense, so all consuming, that
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  it actually galvanizes the body. The clay, cold flesh, as he
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  calls it, catches fire from the soul.
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  The whole person, body and soul, is united in this one desire.
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  So the body wants the posture of worship.
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  The knees want to bow, the hands want to go up.
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  It's psychosomatic in the best way possible.
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  The physical body is craving spiritual repose.
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  That's it. And Thomas Brooks has this
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  fantastic analogy for the word cry of fear.
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  He says it implies a strong shout, like soldiers rushing
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  into battle. It's a war cry for God, but then
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  he shifts the image to a hungry child.
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  Oh I love that image. The hungry child.
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  He says when a child is truly hungry or in distress, it is not
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  just the voice that cries. The hands cry out, the feet
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  kick, the face contorts. Every limb and muscle is
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  involved in the plea. The whole body is screaming for
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  what it needs. Exactly, Brooks says.
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  That is how the believer longs for God.
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  It is a total full body demand for presents.
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  It's not a polite request. It's a desperate cry.
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  It is desperate. And then right in the middle of
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  this desperation, David looks up.
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  He stops looking at his own heart and looks at nature.
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  Verse three. Yeah, the Sparrow hath founded
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  house and the swallow and nest for herself, where she may lay
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  her young, even 9 altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
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  The camera swings from the internal agony to the external
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  observations. A brilliant move.
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  David is probably visualizing the Tabernacle structure from
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  memory, and he knows that birds nest in the nooks and crannies
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  of buildings. They don't respect sacred space,
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  they just seal, edge and build a nest.
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  He is jealous of the birds. I mean, that's what it boils
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  down to, right? A king is envious of a common
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  Sparrow. He is absolutely envious and the
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  choice of birds matters so much. We have the Sparrow in the
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  swallow the. Sparrow is the common bird,
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  right? Just a little brown bird, the.
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  Sparrow is the worthless bird in the New Testament.
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  Jesus says you can buy 2 for a Farthing.
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  They are the cheapest meat in the market.
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  They're insignificant. Nobody notices a Sparrow.
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  And the swallow, what's the significance there?
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  The. Swalley is known for being
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  restless. It is always flying, darting,
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  moving. It never seems to settle down.
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  It's a picture of agitation, of constant motion.
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  So put that together, you have the worthless bird and the
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  restless bird, and both of them find a home in God's house.
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  That is the gospel right there. That is the good news in a
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  nutshell. God provides a house for the
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  insignificant, the one that nobody values, and he provides a
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  nest, a place of rest for the agitated, the restless soul.
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  So if God has a place for a 2 cent bird.
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  Surely he has a place for his own covenant children who feel
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  worthless or restless. It's an argument from the lesser
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  to the greater. There is a practical question
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  here though. Did birds actually build nests
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  on the altars? I mean, the brazen altar was a
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  BBQ pit. It was on fire half the time.
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  That doesn't seem like a safe place for baby birds.
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  No it doesn't. And the golden altar was inside
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  the holy place where only priests went.
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  A bird nest on the altar seems messy and dangerous for the
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  bird. You're right, it is almost
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  certainly poetic language. He uses thine altars as a Synod
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  to carry a figure of a speech where a part represents the
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  whole. He means they nest in the courts
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  near the altars in the general temple precincts.
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  OK, that makes more sense. But theologically, the specific
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  mention of the altars is huge. We can't just skip the typology
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  because it's poetic. The poetry is pointing us to
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  something deeper. OK, so let's break down the
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  typology. We have two altars in the
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  Tabernacle. We do.
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  First, you have the brazen altar out in the courtyard.
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  This is where the sacrifices happen.
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  It represents the shedding of blood, the judgement against
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  sin. It points directly to the cross
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  and Christ's humanity and suffering.
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  The place of death. The place of death, It brings
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  life. Then inside the Holy place you
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  have the golden altar of incense.
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  This represents intercession, the sweet smelling smoke of the
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  prayers going up to God. It points to Christ's deity and
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  his ongoing life and mediation for us at the right hand of the
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  Father. So if we take the poetry
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  seriously, the Sparrow finds her home, her safety, her rest at
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  the place of sacrifice and the place of intercession.
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  Exactly. For the Sinner, the only
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  safeness and place in the universe is the cross.
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  We find our rest in the finished work of Christ and His ongoing
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  prayers for us. It is a beautiful paradox.
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  The bird finds safety in a place of fire and blood, just as we
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  find our life and the death of the Savior.
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  Wow. And David wraps up that thought
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  with a double claim. He doesn't just say, oh Lord, he
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  says my King and my God. Spurgeon calls that the double
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  my, and it's so precious. It is an act of defiance against
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  his circumstances. He is in exile, He is an
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  outcast, He's been rejected by his own son and his Kingdom, but
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  he grips God with both hands. It's possessive in the best
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  sense. Absolutely, he says.
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  You are my king, so I still owe you allegiance even though my
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  throne is gone and you are my God, so I still have a
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  relationship with you. You can kick me out of
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  Jerusalem. You can't kick me out of the
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  covenant. That's powerful.
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  Moving on to verse 4, we shift from the birds back to the
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  people. Blessed are they that dwell in
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  thy house. They will be still praising
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  thee. Now who are the dwellers?
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  These are the permanent residents, the priests, the
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  Levites, the guys who work there full time.
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  Spurgeon even humorously mentions the Pew openers, the
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  janitorial staff, the doorkeepers.
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  The people who see how the sausage is made, so to speak.
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  And, you know, sometimes they say familiarity breeds contempt.
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  It often. Can if you work at the church,
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  you see the dust behind the pulpit, you see the arguments in
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  the vestry, you see the human flaws up close.
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  But here it says they are still praising.
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  The word still there means constantly or perpetually.
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  It's not they are praising in spite of it all, it's their
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  praise never stops. It defeats the idea that
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  familiarity kills worship. So why doesn't?
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  Spurgeon has his great line. Communion is the mother of
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  adoration. The closer you get to God, the
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  more you see of Him, and the more you see of His Holiness,
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  His grace, His power, the more you have to praise Him.
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  Familiar with God doesn't breed contempt, it breeds awe.
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  Sir Richard Baker has a great take on this too.
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  He talks about the nature of the master.
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  He says normally servants don't praise their masters all day.
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  No. You might like your boss, but
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  you don't write songs about him. You don't spend your weekends
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  singing his praises. You.
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  Definitely don't. Right, so Baker says if you find
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  servants praising the Master 24/7, it implies the Master is
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  of infinite worth, and it implies something else.
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  It proves God treats his servants like children, not like
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  slaves. They're happy to be there.
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  Their job isn't a grind, it's a joy.
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  So that is the dwellers. But most of us aren't
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  professional clergy. We don't live at the church.
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  So verse 5 introduces the second group, the pilgrims.
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  Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, in whose
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  heart are the ways of them. This is the transition to the
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  people who have to travel. They don't live in Zion.
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  They have to hike there for the festivals and the text says
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  their strength is in God. They don't make the journey in
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  their own power. And then there's that phrase in
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  whose heart are the ways some translations say highways to
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  Zion. It refers to the actual roads,
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  the steep descents up the mountains to Jerusalem.
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  But notice the location of the road.
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  It isn't just on a map, it is in their heart.
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  That is a fascinating, fascinating concept.
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  The internal map, the spiritual. GPS.
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  That's a great way to put it. The believer might be sitting at
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  their desk at work, or stuck in traffic or in a hospital bed.
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  They can't physically be in church, but internally, their
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  compass is set to Zion. Their heart is traveling that
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  road. So they long to be.
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  There they long to be there, and that longing itself is a form of
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  worship. Spurgeon.
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  Contrast this with the natural human heart, He says.
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  The heart without grace is a pathless wilderness.
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  It is a tangle of briars and confusion.
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  But grace comes in and builds a highway.
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  It constructs A Causeway right through the mess of our soul
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  that leads straight to God. It's a reference to that Isaiah
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  40 passage A. Highway for our God.
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  But that highway isn't easy, is it?
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  It's not a smooth, flat Interstate.
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  Not at all. And this leads us to verse 6,
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  which I think is one of the most famous and mysterious parts of
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  the song. Who passing through the valley
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  of Baca make it a well? The rain also filleth the pools.
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  The valley of Dhaka. This is where the rubber meets
• 18:10
  the road for the Pilgrim. It really is.
• 18:12
  Let's unpack the word baca. What are we looking at here?
• 18:14
  Linguistically, it signifies weeping.
• 18:17
  It's the valley of tears, but it is also rooted in botany.
• 18:21
  It is related to the Mulberry tree or the balsam tree, and
• 18:24
  these trees are known for weeping SAP when you cut them.
• 18:27
  And where do these trees grow? In a swamp.
• 18:29
  Just the opposite. They love dry, arid, waterless
• 18:32
  places. The Valley of Baca is a dry,
• 18:35
  depressing, tear filled valley. It is the hard part of the
• 18:39
  pilgrimage. We have all been there.
• 18:40
  The season of depression, the season of grief, the financial
• 18:43
  drought, the spiritual dryness is the place where you want to
• 18:46
  quit walking. It's the low point, but look at
• 18:48
  what the pilgrims do, The text says.
• 18:49
  They make it a well. They don't find a.
• 18:51
  Well, they make one. This is critical.
• 18:53
  They don't just sit down and cry.
• 18:55
  They don't just endure the valley.
• 18:56
  They get to work, they take out their shovels and they start
• 18:58
  digging. It is an act of faith, isn't it?
• 19:01
  Digging a well in a dry valley seems a logical You dig because
• 19:05
  you believe water is there, or that water is coming.
• 19:08
  It's an act of expectant faith. Thomas Pearson, one of the
• 19:11
  Spurgeon sources, points out that faith reputes the Dry
• 19:14
  Valley as a well. I love that phrasing.
• 19:16
  It's great, isn't it? Faith looks at the dry sand and
• 19:19
  says there is refreshment here somewhere and I'm going to find
• 19:23
  it and notice the synergy here. The pilgrims do the digging.
• 19:27
  That is human responsibility. That's our act of faith.
• 19:31
  But then it says the rain also fill us, the pools.
• 19:34
  That is divine sovereignty. We dig the trenches.
• 19:37
  God sends the rain. Yes, we cannot force the rain to
• 19:40
  fall. That is God's part, But we can
• 19:43
  prepare the ground to catch it when it comes.
• 19:45
  We can position ourselves through prayer and faithfulness
• 19:47
  to receive the blessing. Spurgeon says something profound
• 19:50
  here about the result of this digging.
• 19:52
  He says they don't just pass through sorrow, they transform
• 19:55
  it. They change the nature of the
• 19:57
  valley. They redeem the suffering.
• 19:59
  Right. And by digging a well, they
• 20:01
  leave something behind for the people coming after them.
• 20:04
  That is the legacy of suffering well.
• 20:06
  If you go through a tragedy and you dig a well, you find God's
• 20:09
  grace in the middle of it. You leave a resource for the
• 20:12
  next person who has to walk through that same valley.
• 20:15
  Your experience becomes a drinking fountain for the rest
• 20:18
  of the church. That refreshment explains verse
• 20:21
  7. They go from strength to
• 20:23
  strength. Every one of them in Zion
• 20:25
  appeareth before God. That feels counterintuitive.
• 20:28
  It is another paradox, isn't it? Think about hiking.
• 20:30
  If I walk 10 miles, I don't go from strength to strength, I go
• 20:34
  from strength to exhaustion. My legs get heavy, my energy
• 20:37
  drops. By the time you get to the top
• 20:39
  of the mountain, you are wiped out.
• 20:41
  But on the spiritual pilgrimage, the opposite happens.
• 20:44
  As they draw nearer to the source of life, to God Himself,
• 20:48
  their vigor increases. The more you exercise faith, the
• 20:52
  more you drink from the wells you dig, the stronger you get.
• 20:55
  And the arrival is guaranteed. Every one of them appeareth
• 20:59
  before God. Yes, William Michael V1 of the
• 21:02
  commentators Spurgeon Sites highlights the Calvinistic
• 21:05
  assurance here, he says the whole band assembles, not one is
• 21:09
  lost. No stragglers are eaten by
• 21:11
  wolves. No one dies of thirst in the
• 21:13
  Valley of Baca. So if you start the journey, you
• 21:15
  finish it. If you start the pilgrimage with
• 21:16
  genuine faith, you will arrive in Zion.
• 21:20
  God ensures the completion of the trek.
• 21:22
  It's the doctrine of the perseverance of the Saints,
• 21:24
  right there in the songs. That is a comforting thought.
• 21:27
  We might limp in, we might crawl in, but we all appear.
• 21:31
  Now in verses 8 and 9, the mood shifts again.
• 21:34
  We go from describing the journey to a direct prayer.
• 21:37
  O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer.
• 21:40
  Give ear, O God of Jacob. The Pilgrim pauses on the road
• 21:43
  to pray, and he invokes the God of Jacob there.
• 21:47
  Think about Jacob's life. It was a mess.
• 21:48
  It was a mess. He's a wrestler, deceiver, a guy
• 21:51
  who had a very crooked, difficult pilgrimage.
• 21:53
  He had a lot of trouble, a lot of self-inflicted wounds on the
• 21:56
  God of Jacob. The psalmist is appealing to the
• 21:58
  God who sticks with difficult people, the God who meets us in
• 22:02
  our mess and is faithful anyway. And then verse 9.
• 22:05
  Gives us the theological anchor for the whole thing.
• 22:07
  Behold, O God, our shield, and look upon the face of thine
• 22:11
  anointed. This is the prayer.
• 22:13
  That changes everything. This is the heart of the gospel
• 22:15
  in the Old Testament. We have to identify the anointed
• 22:18
  OK in the. Immediate context.
• 22:21
  It is probably the king, right? David or maybe a later king.
• 22:24
  The people are praying for their monarch who is God's anointed
• 22:28
  representative. Historically, yes.
• 22:31
  That's the primary meaning. But prophetically and in the
• 22:35
  full scope of Scripture, the anointed in Hebrew mashiach is
• 22:39
  the Messiah. It is Christ.
• 22:41
  So when we pray, look. Upon the face of anointed, what
• 22:44
  are we actually asking God to do?
• 22:47
  We are asking God. The Father to look away from us.
• 22:49
  Think about it. If God looks at my face, the
• 22:51
  face of the Pilgrim, what does he see?
• 22:53
  Dust from the journey. Tears from the valley He sees my
• 22:56
  sin, my. Doubt my failure, my wandering
• 22:58
  in the valley of Baca. He sees a mess, and if he judges
• 23:01
  me based on my face, I'm gunned for.
• 23:02
  But if he looks at the face. Of Jesus he sees perfection.
• 23:06
  He sees perfect obedience, He sees righteousness, He sees the
• 23:09
  beloved Son in whom he is well pleased.
• 23:12
  Sir Richard Baker says something brilliant here.
• 23:14
  He says we cannot look at God's face until he first looks at the
• 23:18
  face of his anointed on our behalf.
• 23:20
  That is substitutionary. Atonement 101 Right there we are
• 23:24
  accepted because God is looking at Jesus.
• 23:27
  We are effectively hiding behind the anointed one.
• 23:30
  It is the only way we. Can approach a holy God.
• 23:32
  We don't come saying look at me, I took a well on the valley.
• 23:35
  We say look at Christ. He is our shield that security
• 23:38
  leads. Us to verse 10, which is
• 23:39
  probably the verse everyone knows, even if they don't know
• 23:42
  the rest of the song. For a day in my courts is better
• 23:45
  than 1000. I had rather be a doorkeeper in
• 23:48
  the House of my God than to dwell in the tense of
• 23:50
  wickedness. Yep, the spiritual.
• 23:52
  Mathematics 1 equals more than 1000, but we need to clarify.
• 23:56
  It is better than 1000 days elsewhere.
• 23:58
  It is not just better than 1000 days of prison or sickness.
• 24:02
  It is better than 1000 days of partying, of business success, a
• 24:06
  vacation on a beach. Yes.
• 24:08
  Thomas Brooks breaks this down so well.
• 24:10
  He notes that the text says a single day.
• 24:13
  It doesn't say a year in my courts is better than 1000.
• 24:17
  It doesn't even say a month. It says the smallest unit of
• 24:20
  time with God is superior to the largest unit of time with the
• 24:24
  world. One moment of real communion
• 24:27
  outweighs a lifetime of worldly pleasure.
• 24:30
  And then the comparison of. Roles.
• 24:31
  I'd rather be a doorkeeper. The margin reading.
• 24:34
  Is often I would rather sit at the threshold, yeah, just on the
• 24:37
  doorstep. So the choice is.
• 24:39
  Sit on the doorstep of God's house, maybe out in the cold, or
• 24:43
  dwell, which implies comfort and status and luxury in the tense
• 24:47
  of workedness. It is a choice between the
• 24:49
  lowest. Position in the Kingdom of light
• 24:51
  or the highest position in the Kingdom of darkness.
• 24:53
  You could be Aceo in the tense of wickedness or a beggar at the
• 24:57
  gate of God, David says. I'll take the gate.
• 24:59
  Why? What makes the?
• 25:00
  Gate better than the palace because God is.
• 25:02
  Inside the gate, Spurgeon says the threshold of God is happier
• 25:05
  than the couch of the Sinner. It is all about proximity.
• 25:09
  I would rather be near God in the rain than away from God in
• 25:11
  the palace. It's a statement of ultimate
• 25:13
  value. There is also a.
• 25:14
  Historical Easter egg here, which I think is so cool.
• 25:17
  We talked about the sons of Korah at the beginning, who this
• 25:21
  Psalm is addressed to. Do you know what their actual
• 25:23
  job was in the temple? They were the gatekeepers.
• 25:26
  The doorkeeper. They were the doorkeepers.
• 25:28
  In First Chronicles it lists the core heights as the keepers of
• 25:32
  the gates of the Tabernacle. So this wasn't just a.
• 25:34
  Metaphor. For them.
• 25:35
  This was their daily grind. This is their job description
• 25:38
  exactly. They were.
• 25:39
  Literally saying we love our job.
• 25:41
  We would rather stand here and open the door for people than be
• 25:45
  a king somewhere else. It takes what looks like a
• 25:48
  menial task and turns it into a high honor.
• 25:51
  It sanctifies the. Lowly work if you are doing it
• 25:54
  for God. Standing by a door is glorious.
• 25:57
  Changing diapers is glorious. Filing paperwork is glorious.
• 26:00
  It's all about who you're doing it for.
• 26:02
  Verse 11. Gives us the reason for all this
• 26:04
  confidence, this radical value system for the Lord God is a sun
• 26:09
  and shield. The Lord will give grace and
• 26:11
  glory. No good thing will he withhold
• 26:13
  from them that walk uprightly. Sun and shield.
• 26:16
  I love this double metaphor because they usually don't go
• 26:19
  together. Usually if you have the sun
• 26:20
  beating down on you in the desert, you need a heal to
• 26:23
  protect you from the sun, right? You need shade.
• 26:26
  But here God is both the light and the shade, exactly the.
• 26:29
  Sun is the source of everything. Professor Green in the notes
• 26:33
  points out that scientifically, the sun is the source of all
• 26:36
  earthly power. Coal is just stored sunlight.
• 26:39
  Wind is caused by the sun's heat.
• 26:41
  Muscle power comes from food grown by the sun.
• 26:44
  So God is the. Source of all spiritual energy.
• 26:47
  He's the origin of all life and light.
• 26:49
  He is the battery. He is the generator.
• 26:51
  He gives light, warmth, and importantly, revelation.
• 26:55
  The sun reveals the dust in the room.
• 26:57
  It shows us reality as it truly is, including our own sin and
• 27:01
  the shield. The Shield.
• 27:02
  Is protection. It's defense.
• 27:03
  Henry Melville and other of Spurgeon's guys synthesizes this
• 27:06
  perfectly. He says as a son, God shows us
• 27:09
  our sin. He lights it up so we can't
• 27:11
  ignore it. But as a shield he protects us
• 27:14
  from the just punishment of that sin that he just revealed.
• 27:17
  That is good. That's really good.
• 27:19
  If you had the sun without the shield, the holiness of God
• 27:21
  would burn you up. You'd be consumed if you had.
• 27:23
  The shield without the. Sun, you would be safe, but in
• 27:26
  the dark, ignorant. We need both.
• 27:29
  We need both the revealing. Light and the covering
• 27:32
  protection. And then we have the promise
• 27:34
  pair. The Lord will give grace and
• 27:36
  glory. You can't separate.
• 27:38
  Those two in reformed theology, Can you?
• 27:39
  No, they're a package. Deal.
• 27:41
  They are two sides of the same coin of salvation.
• 27:44
  Grace is the seed. Glory is the flower.
• 27:47
  Grace is the beginning of glory. Glory is grace brought to
• 27:50
  perfection. So you don't get glory.
• 27:52
  Without grace, but if you have genuine.
• 27:54
  Grace, glory is inevitable. It's the guaranteed outcome.
• 27:57
  Now I have to push. Back on the last part of this
• 27:59
  verse, because this is a tough one.
• 28:02
  No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.
• 28:06
  That sounds great on a greeting card.
• 28:07
  It does. But I know people good, godly,
• 28:10
  upright people who are suffering.
• 28:12
  They are broke, they have cancer, they are lonely.
• 28:15
  It feels like God is withholding a lot of good things from them.
• 28:18
  This is the problem of. Theodicy, right?
• 28:20
  And it is a hard question, but Sir Richard Baker tackles it
• 28:23
  head on. He argues that we have to define
• 28:26
  good the way God defines it, not the way we define it from our
• 28:30
  limited perspective. So how does God define?
• 28:32
  It what's a good thing, Baker says that.
• 28:34
  If God withholds something from one of his children, it means
• 28:38
  that at this specific moment for this specific person, it is not
• 28:42
  a good thing for their eternal soul.
• 28:45
  It might look good, money looks good, health looks good, but if
• 28:48
  having that money would make you proud, or if perfect health
• 28:51
  would make you self reliant and lead you away from Christ, then
• 28:54
  for you right now it would be a bad thing.
• 28:56
  So God is too. Good to give us something that
• 28:58
  would ultimately harm our souls, even if our bodies are screaming
• 29:01
  for it. Precisely.
• 29:02
  The good things that are guaranteed are spiritual things,
• 29:05
  peace of conscience, the presence of God, the necessary
• 29:09
  grace for the day. Temporal things are indifferent.
• 29:12
  He gives sun and rain to the just and the unjust, but he
• 29:15
  custom tailors the life of the believer.
• 29:18
  He withholds what would hurt our eternal standing with him.
• 29:20
  That requires an. Immense amount of trust, which
• 29:23
  brings us perfectly to the final verse verse 12 O Lord of hosts,
• 29:28
  blessed is the man that trusteth in thee this is the capstone
• 29:31
  the. Whole Psalm lands right here.
• 29:33
  It all comes down to this. We started with.
• 29:35
  Blessed are they that dwell then.
• 29:38
  Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee now.
• 29:40
  It is simply Blessed is the man that trusteth.
• 29:44
  It is the. Summary of the entire
• 29:46
  pilgrimage. You can't find the Tabernacle
• 29:48
  lovely if you don't trust the host who lives there.
• 29:51
  You can't dig a well in the valley of Baca if you don't
• 29:54
  trust the water is coming. You can't be a doorkeeper if you
• 29:57
  don't trust the master of the house.
• 30:00
  Trust undergirds everything. It moves from a motion.
• 30:03
  To action, to repose. It starts with this intense
• 30:06
  feeling. I long, I faint, I cry out.
• 30:08
  It goes to the physical action of the journey, The Walking and
• 30:11
  the digging, and it ends with the state of being.
• 30:15
  I trust it is the rest of faith. It ends with the believer
• 30:18
  leaning their full weight, all their weariness from the journey
• 30:21
  entirely on the Lord of hosts, the God of armies who is strong
• 30:24
  enough to hold them up. So we have.
• 30:26
  Walked through the whole Psalm. We have seen the amiable
• 30:29
  Tabernacle, the nesting Sparrow, the Weeping Valley, and the sun
• 30:33
  and shield. As we wrap up this deep dive,
• 30:36
  how do we synthesize this? What's the big take away?
• 30:39
  I think the key. Is that the Psalm validates the
• 30:42
  difficulty of the Christian life while guaranteeing the joy of
• 30:46
  the destination. It doesn't promise you won't
• 30:49
  weep. It assumes you will pass through
• 30:51
  the Valley of weaving. Yeah, it's part of the map.
• 30:53
  It's. Part of the map.
• 30:54
  But it promises that the weeping can be used, it can be a well,
• 30:57
  and it promises that the Lord is looking at the face of his
• 31:00
  anointed, not at your dirty Pilgrim clothes.
• 31:03
  That's the anchor I want to leave our listeners.
• 31:05
  With one final image to chew on, we talked about that Sparrow in
• 31:08
  verse 3, the worthless bird. The insignificant right?
• 31:12
  Think about this for a second. That Sparrow has no theology.
• 31:15
  It hasn't read the Westminster Confession.
• 31:17
  It doesn't know about substitutionary atonement.
• 31:20
  It just knows that the area around the altar is warm and
• 31:22
  safe, so it builds a nest there. It operates on pure.
• 31:25
  Instinct for safety, Exactly. So here's the thought, if a bird
• 31:30
  with 0 understanding can find a home and rest in the altars of
• 31:34
  judgement and sacrifice, how much more should you find a home
• 31:37
  there? You actually know the one who
• 31:39
  was sacrificed. You know the anointed 1.
• 31:42
  You know the king. That is a profound.
• 31:44
  Thought the bird rests in the structure, we rest in the
• 31:47
  Saviour the structure points to our rest is so much deeper, so
• 31:51
  much more secure. I really encourage you.
• 31:53
  If you're listening to read Psalm 84 again this week, don't
• 31:56
  just read it. Pray it.
• 31:57
  And if you are in the Valley of Baca right now, grab a shovel.
• 32:00
  Start digging. Rain is coming.
• 32:02
  Thank you for. Joining us for the special
• 32:04
  edition of the Deep Dive into Reformed Thinking, we hope this
• 32:07
  has been a relative refreshment for you, good guy and God.
• 32:10
  Bless until next time. Keep thinking.