The Beauty of the Church

Well, good morning, Grace Life Church. It is so good to be here. I'm Derek Melton, our pastor at Grace Life Church in Prior, Oklahoma. You have family in Oklahoma saved by the same Lord. And so this morning they're praying for you, praying for your pastor, praying for your elders, praying for each one of you. And I'm so thankful to be part of the Anchored in Truth Network and the fellowship of Grace Life churches around the globe. Your pastor is one of my dear friends. We text back and forth quite a bit and visit on the telephone. And brothers and sisters, I hope you all realize that you're in a very rare, unique place.

Churches like this are few and far between. And I know some of you all probably know that firsthand, that you have been in a barren place religiously. And you've come here and you have found streams of living water. You love the truth. You love to hear the exposition of the Word of the Lord, to sing the praises of God. And the reason I'm telling you this is that you need to be thankful for what you have. You need to be thankful to the Lord, thankful to your pastor, your preaching pastor, and your elders. It's a diamond. It's a diamond. And thank God for it. Be faithful. Serve. Let God use you for the glory of His great name.

And I'm so thankful that Stacey and I are able to be here all the way from prior Oklahoma to come and to wash the feet of your pastor, to serve Him, but also to serve you. And that's why I'm here. I'm here because I have a burden to love all of the saints, to proclaim the truth of the Word of the Lord, and especially to come underneath your pastor and to help Him, to encourage Him, to minister to Him, because it's not easy. I've been a pastor for 30 years and it's not easy.

Not only do you deal with church life and some of the hardship that comes with that, but it seems like at times, and Pastor Chris you'll agree, it feels like every devil in hell is coming after you. And so it's a worthy calling, but it is also a wait at times. But the Lord does give grace. I'm looking forward to the next several nights. Revival and renewal is something that God does in us through His Word.

And I pray that the Lord will use the Word of God as a sharp sword to cut away stuff in my life and in yours that need not be there, to cut away some of those spiritual cataracts that we might have, that we might be able to see the Lord Jesus more clearly. I do want to introduce my wife Stacy. Some of you ladies met her. We've been married 40 years this coming June. And so thankful she is indeed pastor, my best half. And she knows she's my best half, and she lives with me. Well, let's go to the Word this morning. Psalm 84, the Old Testament book of the Psalms. The Psalter's been called God's medicine for the soul.

And we're going to spend tonight, this morning and tomorrow night in this particular psalm. And I preach this at my church, and I'm preaching it again because I believe that the theme and the message of it is critical to revival. It's critical to health in a local church. It's critical to each one of us. This morning's sermon title is the beauty of the Lord's church. We're going to look at the first four verses. Tonight we're going to come back and hear the battle for the Lord's church in verses five through seven. And then Monday night we'll look at the blessings of the Lord's church in verses eight through twelve.

Let's turn our mind to the scriptures this morning. I'm going to read all twelve verses starting in verse one. How lovely are your dwelling places, O Yahweh of hosts! My soul has longed, even fainted, for the courts of Yahweh. My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. Even the birds have found a home in the swallow and nest for herself, where she sets her young at your altars, O Yahweh of hosts, my king and my God. How blessed are those who dwell in your house! They are ever praising you, Silah. How blessed is the man whose strength is in you and whose heart are the highways to Zion, passing through the valley of Baka.

They make it a spring. The early rain also wraps it up with blessings. They go from strength to strength. Each one of them appears before God in Zion. O Yahweh, God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob, Silah. See our shield, O God, and look upon the face of your anointed. For better is a day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would choose to stand at the threshold of the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness. For Yahweh, God is a sun and shield. Yahweh gives grace and glory. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk blamelessly. O Yahweh of hosts, how blessed is the man who trusts in you.

Let's bow for a word of prayer. I'll pray for you and you pray for me. Lord, I pray that you would work this morning through the word of the Lord, incline our ears to hear your voice in the revealed truths that you've given in the Psalms. Lord awaken us. Give us understanding. Enlighten our minds. Teach us, O Lord, what your spirit has to say. Lord be with Grace Life Brookhaven. Bless these precious saints. Thank you for each one of them. Lord may the word of the Lord shape inform us to be more like our Savior, Jesus Christ. Thank you for the blood of the cross. Thank you that you gave your life up as a ransom for us, paying our debt.

Thank you Lord for living in accord with the law of God, never stumbling even at one jot or tittle that you fulfilled all of righteousness and you did that as our substitute. That we might be clothed with the perfect righteousness of Christ. Lord be with the preaching of your word today. Speak to us. Your servant listens. We ask this in Jesus' precious, powerful name. Amen. The beauty of the Lord's church. You know Grace Life, one of the devil's most vile and vengeful schemes is to lie about the beauty of the Lord's bride, which is his church. He's the accuser of the brethren, it says in Revelation chapter 12.

He accuses the church of infidelity. He questions the Lord's love for her. He exploits and exaggerates the weaknesses of the church. He obscures her strengths. The enemy labors long and hard to portray the church as uncombly. The church being undesirable, he would say. You know this is all driven by the enmity that there is between the devil and the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what fuels his hate for the church and because the devil despises the head of the church, which is our Lord, he despises the body, which is you and I, his precious people. The devil's aim is to do all the harm that he can do to the church.

Matthew 13 tells us that he sows tares among the wheats so that he might infiltrate the church from the inside. Matthew 25 verse 33 says that he plants goats among the sheep, that he might disrupt our unity. He tempts men to sin and then they fall into weakness and error. Then we all know this, that the enemy exploits the fall of a Christian and then accuses the church of what? Hypocrisy. So Satan is at work warring to repel people from the Lord's church. I tell Grace Life prior to this all the time, there's no rage like Satan's rage against the Lord's blood-bought church.

Even within the sphere of the church, there are so many that are influenced by the sinister mind of the adversary. Many become loosely connected and uncommitted in the local church. Some succumb to the lies that the devil whispers in their ear, that they are convinced by the enemy that the world can provide for them more satisfaction than the Lord. They attend the church in some outward fashion, but inwardly they crave the world. Some claim to marry Christ, but they continue to court the world that crucified our Lord.

The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 4 that Satan has blinded the minds of the unbelieving that they will not see the beauty of the glory of God in the face of Christ, or even the beauty of the bride of Christ that he's wed to. And because of believing the lies of the enemy, some become distant from the church, making excuses why they cannot be faithful in so many people's lives. And I've seen this over the many, many decades of ministry that insignificant events win more and more significance in people's lives and that they begin to drift further and further away from the Lord's church.

And all this is because Satan has convinced them of the lie. Now listen to me, he convinces them that the church is not worth your time. John 844, Jesus clarifies that the devil is a liar and the father of all lies. That's a good spot for an amen. He's a liar. Listen, Jesus loved the church and gave himself up for her Ephesians 5.25. Revelation 21.9 says that Jesus calls his church his own bride. I love that language, the intimacy, the love that is there. The church is exclusive to the divine purpose of God in his son. Exclusive. You can't be joined to Christ and not be joined to his church.

And here's why, the body and the head are inseparable. You cannot separate the Lord's head from his body. Psalm 84 has been described as a psalm of longing. Derek Kidner in his fine commentary on the Psalms says this in the very first page on Psalm 84 that longing is written all over this psalm. This is a psalm of the sons of Korah. You see that in the superscription of the sons of Korah. Those were Levitical singers in the Old Testament. There are several of these what I call Korite Psalms in the Psalter. There are four of them in the third book of the Psalter and then also in the second book, Psalm 42 through 49 are also Psalms of Korah.

But what our psalm begins with here is a longing for the house of God. The writer possibly is King David has been displaced from the house of God. Although scholars will tell us the certainty, the absolute certainty of this being Davidic is obscure. But there are some scholars that do buckle down and say this is a time in David's life when Absalom, his son, was revolting against David. We find this beginning in 2 Samuel 15 that Absalom wanted his father dead. And so David now is on the run. He's in kind of a quasi-witness protection program. But the point is that he's displaced from the house of the Lord, hence the longing, the longing.

And above all else, David loved God. David loved to be in the presence of God. David loved to worship Yahweh. He loved the assembly. He loved the songs of Zion. He loved the presence of God. In fact, David wrote in Psalm 27.4, "One thing I have asked of Yahweh. That I seek, that I might dwell in the house of Yahweh all the days of my life." So the context of Psalm 84 is that he's longing to return. In fact, tonight we'll see in the second parochial starting in verse 5 that he's beginning to go back to the holy city. And he's facing some obstacles.

I'm going to preach about the battle for the Lord's church when it's hard, when it's difficult to be faithful in the Lord's church. And I want you to be encouraged by what the psalmist will reveal to us and that the Holy Spirit will help us with. But the fact of the matter is the psalmist wants to be in the dwelling place of God, that he throbs to be in the presence of Almighty God. And I've entitled the sermon, "The Beauty of the Lord's Church" because I believe that's exactly what's in view here. Jesus went with his disciples in the 22nd chapter of Luke and opened up and unpacked the Old Testament and showed himself in all of Scripture.

And I believe that Jesus is here. I believe that we have a New Testament picture right here in this Old Testament book. Jesus is the true tabernacle, isn't he? Jesus fulfills everything that ancient tabernacle pattern and type and shadow that John 1.14, the Word became flesh. Our translations will say, "And dwelled among us," but it literally means tabernacle, that he tabernacled among us. Ephesians 5.23 says, "Jesus is the head of the church." So these first four verses clearly disclose the beauty of the church of the Lord, that the church is the dwelling place of God by His Spirit.

Paul wrote this to Corinth, and I'll listen to this in 2 Corinthians 6.16. This is a very familiar passage to you. He says, "For we are the sanctuary of the living God, just as God said, 'I will dwell in them the church, and I will walk among them the church, and I will be their God.'" That is His church. "And they, the church, shall be my people." I have three points to make this morning. The first is found in verse 1. The church is beautiful because the church is the dwelling place of God. Look at verse 1 with me. "How lovely." Well, it's just glorious, isn't it? How lovely are your dwelling places, O Yahweh of hosts.

It's very clear the word "lovely" has more to do with the Psalmist's affection than it does the outward ornamentation of the Old Testament tabernacle. In fact, the Psalmist looks forward to the church. He's seeing eschatologically, and he's enamored with the beauty of the one that's enthroned in the church. And who would that be? The Lord Jesus Christ. The Hebrew word here behind our translation "dwelling places," the Hebrew word is "mishkan," and it literally means "tabernacles." And you see it translated in the King James that way.

The Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, calls it "a tent." How lovely are your tents, O Lord, or it can't actually meet in the Hebrew the abode of God. But here I want you to understand what makes the church beautiful is not the stained glass windows, although those are awesome. It's not the geometry and the wonderful way that the outward physical form of a building is. That's not what it's talking about. What makes the church beautiful is the one who is enthroned there, the Lord Jesus Christ. The church is His blood-bought possession, His special people, the object of His redemptive love and death.

Jesus came to seek and to save His own people, His church. He came to rescue us. But I want you to note back in 2 Corinthians 6 what Paul says about the church, that the church is the sanctuary, the dwelling place of God. There are five plural pronouns used in that one verse. "I will dwell in them. I will walk among them. I will be their God. They will be my people. We," plural, "are the sanctuary of God." The church is beautiful because God dwells there. He loves His church. Paul told the church at Ephesus that they were the household of God.

That they, the church, are the fellow citizens with the saints built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets with the chief cornerstone being Jesus Christ. Ephesians 2, 22 says that the church is being built together into, listen to this, a dwelling of God in the spirit. We talk about the church, I'm not speaking about the brick and mortar institution. The church is flesh and blood. The collective assembly of the redeemed, the ecclesia, the called out ones. We are the dwelling place of God. Listen, beloved. And no wonder the devil wars against the church. No wonder he strives to circumvent this glorious truth about the church.

The church is a God-possessed people and that's what makes us beautiful. That's what makes the church desirable. That we are indwellable of by the King of the cosmos. It's Christ beloved that heads up the church. It's Christ that's the glory of the church. It's Christ that's the fairest of 10,000 songs, of Psalms, chapter 5, verse 10. And the church is the throne of Christ. That's why Satan assails the church so often, although it's in vain, that he may war, he may labor, he may lie, he may try to circumvent. But listen, the gates of hell will not be able to prevail against the church. Why is that? Because he dwells among his people.

That's what makes us beautiful. That's what gives us strength. The church is his glory. Psalm 3, he is the glory and the lifter of my head. Remember with me the context, David, if this is writing about David, he's displaced from God's temple, God's tabernacle. And he's yearning, he's desiring to go back. He's thirsting to be with God. He is a senseless by which he has an anguish in his soul and that he aches to be where the beauty of the Lord is manifest. He dwells, God dwells in his church in a unique way, in a superlative way, and there's a special presence of God with his church. So the church is beautiful. Number one, why is it?

Because the church is the dwelling place of God. Look at the verse again. "How lovely are your dwelling places, O Yahweh," or "O Lord of hosts." Well you survived my first point. You ready to move on to number two? The church is beautiful not only because we're the dwelling place of God, the church is beautiful and it is the longing of all of God's people. We see that in the second and third verse. The Psalm is marked clearly and profoundly by the longing of its inspired author. We find this sort of hunger throughout the Chlorite Psalms. Psalm 42, by the way, speaks about how the Psalm thirst for the living God.

In verse two of Psalm 42, "As a deer pants after the water, but so does my soul thirst for you." So what makes the church beautiful is the thirsty throne just like you that dwells in the church. And I know, let me just stop for a moment and put this on pause. There are some of you who are fairly new to Grace Life Brookhaven. Maybe you're coming at a very difficult time in your life. Maybe you're coming out of a dry period.

Maybe you've been in an unhealthy church and you've come in here and being in the mix of God's people, hearing powerful spirit empowered preaching by your preaching pastor, it's just being in the presence of God's people stirs your affections for Christ and you can't wait to get back here. That God's using this glorious ensemble of people that are filled with the spirit to help strengthen you and to help hold your arms up in the midst of your own spiritual battles. But what makes a church beautiful is the thirsty throne of God's people that are found there. There's a God centered thirst in a local church, a true church.

Blessed are those who do hunger and thirst after righteousness. They shall be filled. And again I mentioned that you know something of this. You're coming here weekly to assemble with the people of God at Brookhaven at Grace Life Church. But why is that? Because you're hungry for God. That you have spiritual longings that are finding satisfaction as you're feeding up on Christ through the word preached through the ordinances of the Lord's table in baptism. You're running into the assembly to feed up on the bread of life to drink the living water that's being poured out. You're joining in with every prayer.

You're joyfully singing every Christ exalting song. You're stirred by the Christ centered sermons and expositions coming from this pulpit week in and week out and that you're strengthened and encouraged by the fellowship of the redeemed. Listen, the church is beautiful also because God's people have holy longings to assemble. A couple of truths here in our text, note this in verse 2, "We long to be with the church," why? "Because of God's presence." Pastor, this is what I was visiting with you about earlier. The presence of God is with us as we come together. Look at verse 2, "My soul has longed and even fainted from the courts of Yahweh.

My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God." It's not obscure, is it? The Psalmist longs to be in the courts of Yahweh. Why? Because of the glorious presence of God that's found there. Dr. James Montgomery Boyce wrote in his commentary that there's a special, in the Old Testament economy there was a special manifestation of God's presence in the tabernacle. It was called the Shekinah glory when God would manifest in a powerful way and do this in the most holy place that God demonstrated that He dwelled in the midst of His people. David, the king of Israel, so yearned to enjoy the presence of God in this way.

In Psalm 27, 4, he says, "One thing I've asked from Yahweh that I shall seek that I might dwell in the house of Yahweh all the days of my life," listen to this, "to behold the beauty of Yahweh and to inquire in His temple." Pastor, I wonder if we're so afraid of mysticism or charismaticism that we either ignore or deny the presence of God in the Christian life. My friends, the presence of God is not mysticism. The presence of God is His relational promise to every person that's been born of His blood and name.

And it seems to me that in our circles of, I'm going to use the term, "reformed-ish" kind of people, that we're afraid to talk this way. But the Bible's not afraid to talk that way, is it? I will dwell in them and I will walk among them and I will be their God and they shall be my people. The idea here is God walking among His people is indicative of His presence with us. Charles Hodge, the Princeton theologian writes, "To walk among them is simply a parallelism with the preceding clause expressing the idea of the divine presence in another form." So what is the presence of God? Well here's my run at it, Pastor.

It's a manifestation of God that's marked by personal awareness, that God manifests Himself in some way and we're aware that God is with us. Let me ask you just some personal questions this morning. You remember whenever the Lord saved you? I remember. What was it that moved you to repent? What was it that provoked you to believe where only an hour before you were unwilling? Listen, you might not have been able to put a theological definition to it at the time, but I'll tell you what it was, that there was an awareness of God. I remember when the Lord saved me in 1987.

I was in my pickup driving between Adair and Prior, Oklahoma, southbound in a '79 GMC pickup with Hank Jr. blaring over the radio. And in an instant I experienced the presence of God in the conviction of the Holy Spirit and I began to weep. I was broken. There was an awareness of God. That's not mystical. That's God and how He works. He opened up my mind to the Scriptures. He convicted my heart to things that used to... I had just stopped at the main store five miles down the road and bought a pack of marble cigarettes and a can of Copenhagen and the window went down and they went out the window. I was done with it. I was done with it.

My drinking stopped. My swearing stopped. God transformed me. He took that heart of stone out. But I will tell you, beloved, God be my witness that every hair stood up on me, that I was aware that God was there and dealing with my heart. That God triune, although I might not have been able to articulate that in 1987 and I'm most sure that I would not have been able... I could articulate this, that God came down and convicted me. That God came down and showed me my sin. An awareness of His mercy. An awareness of His love. A persuasion of the Spirit to call upon the name of the Lord.

Listen, and I know too that you experience this day in and day out when you hear the word preach. I know every Lord's Day and on midweek service when you come to Grace Life Church in Brookhaven, whenever your pastor is opening up the Scriptures, your heart is burning on the inside of you at some level that there is an awareness of God in the presence of His people or whenever Brother Keith is up leaving the songs and you're singing these rapturous praises unto God and that your heart is just melting like wax in God's presence.

That's what makes the church beautiful that the Lord manifests and comes down and deals with us in a unique and a special way. And that's been my prayer for the last several weeks as I've been preparing and praying to come and to preach that there would be a presence of the Lord with us, that He would work in our hearts, that He would bolster our commitment and strengthen our vows to His great cause and name. We know that whenever the Lord is preached our affections for Christ are stirred up. Just because of His presence. Our desire for His Word becomes more intense.

Our appetite to obey God is deepened down on the inside of us and that we experience the presence of the Lord when we're singing and worshipping as we would find in Psalm 95 verse 2. We all can attest to moments when the Scriptures leap off the page as our hearts become warmed by them, maybe in a morning devotion that you're fellowshiping with God over a cup of coffee. The Spirit of the Lord is using the truth of God to draw you near to God as it says in James 4.8. But there's just a sense of the presence of God. Has anyone ever been there? Let me see your hand.

I remember in times I'd be out witnessing Christ to those on the streets maybe and Lord I just don't know what I'm going to say. As I and faith began to step out that the words would just like honey roll off of a honeycomb the Lord would give me the ability to speak and to proclaim the glories of Christ and it was just so otherworldly, it was so not Derek. It was just the Lord at work and that there was an awareness of God with me in those moments. You know what I'm talking about. Martin Lloyd Jones even wrote a book on this called Enjoying the Presence of God. And I don't think that Lloyd Jones was a mystic.

I would say that he's one of the brightest exegetes in the last century. Even the Puritans wrote so much upon the presence of God. They were a group of men that believed in experiential theology. The Puritans beloved were not as stoic as we try to make them to be in today's modern world. They believed in the presence of God. They believed in experiencing and enjoying God. And that's exactly what we find in the Psalms. He's longing for the courts of Yahweh. Why is it that he had such a longing? Because God was there. God was there. God was manifest. He met with God. And listen, this is not speaking about emotionalism.

This is not sensationalism. Christianity itself is marked by the presence of God. That is the Christian faith. That God is with his people. Reminded in the Old Testament narrative in 1 Kings 18 of the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal or Baal or however you pronounce it. But what was the distinction? The presence. God came down in fire. Divine holy presence. And doesn't the Hebrew author say that our God is a consuming fire? The presence of God. So here's the deal. In the Old Testament story, that which separated the true from the false was the presence of God. The presence of God.

Acts 3.19 in the New Testament talks about repenting that God might give us showers of what? Refreshing in the presence of the Lord. And brothers and sisters, I'll just witness that whenever we come together as a church, and you come together as a church, this morning as we come together there's just a sweet aroma of the presence of the Lord. There's a sweet fragrance of God when we sing under the glories of his great name. Whenever the word is being preached, whenever the ordinances are being administered that we know that he's with us.

I'm reminded also in Revelation chapter 1 and 2 the churches of Asia Minor, where was the Lord walking among the seven golden lampstands? He's with and manifesting himself to his church. Let me ask this question. I'm not asking this as indictment to you, but just that you and I, including myself, can search our hearts. Have we become so stoic that we've lost the presence of God? Brothers and sisters, we've got to be very cautious that we don't reform the church beyond the parameters of Scripture.

We've got to be very cautious that we do not reduce Christianity to mere intellectualism, to systems, to categories, to black and white shades that are absent of the panoramic color of the glories of God with his people. Listen, we must never forget the brightest scholar in the entirety of the New Testament was the Apostle Paul, and he said in Philippians 3.10 that I've counted all things as loss, that I might know him, that word know there is so misleading in our English language, it literally means to experience God, to taste and see that the Lord is good. It's intimate experience with God.

To know Christ as the Psalmist writes is another way of saying taste and see that the Lord is good. To know is something that is familial. To know is something that is intimate. This is transcendent to scholarship, by the way. It's better to know my wife than to read data about her. I want to be in her presence. I don't want to just read information about her. The Psalmist here clearly tells us that he longed to experience God in the church, and listen, he promises us that the presence of God is with his church. Secondly, we see we long to be with the church because of the praises of the Lord that are saying there.

In verse 2 says, "My heart and my flesh," and he's all in, isn't he? "All about me. Everything from the top of my head down to the soles of my cowboy boots," he says, "are again, to serving and singing to and experiencing and loving and magnifying God." That a heart that loves God craves to be where his praises are sung. Brother Keith, where you at? Brother Smore, I enjoyed that. Singing with God's people. And brothers and sisters, you all sing your hearts out to the Lord. So thankful. The saints at prior do the very same thing. They love to raise the roof.

You know over 2,000 years now the saints have gathered together on the first day of the week to sing praises to the Lord that has called them out of darkness. The hearts are burning to sing praises to God because of all the wondrous deeds that he's done, the miraculous gifts that he's given. He's miraculously called us out of death. He's given us life. We want to sing to him about that, right? Listen, praise, what is it? It's the believer's response to the gracious and glorious gifts of God and also the presence of God. Part of the psalmist's longing here is to sing for joy to God.

Joy has been stirred by God's faithfulness, the provision of God. He just can't wait to get back to the house of the Lord. There's anticipation here. And mind you, listen, he's away. He's not in Jerusalem. He's on the run for his life, but he's lonely. He's not worried about his life in so much. He just wants to get back that he can be in the presence of God's people and in the presence of God himself, it is seen praises to the great name of his King and God. He couldn't wait to get back. He has an anticipation. I want you to note, and just think about this, anticipation helps me with what? Preparation.

Worship is not something that should be taken lightly. I think there's a sense here by which David has such a holy desire in his heart that it's creating not only loaning, but a preparation that he might be ready to worship God. This is not something that's superficial to him. When I'm talking about singing to God, there's an intense fire burning in his soul that's been illumined by the truth of God. He's remembering who God is. He's remembering all that the Lord has done, and that is stirring his heart to worship God. He can't wait to get back to Jerusalem.

He can't wait to get back to the tabernacle to sing, to worship, and he's preparing now that he might go back and give God worship that's right in biblical and true spiritual worship. In other words, he's now meditating upon the Word of the Lord. He's meditating upon the gracious works of God, and that's underwritten his praises.

You find that in Psalm 1, meditating day and night, being like a tree planted beside rivers of water, meditating day and night, setting his mind on things above, thinking upon the glories of God, thinking upon the accomplishments of the cross throughout the week, and setting the stage for eruption and worship like we're experiencing today. Worship is a response. Listen, worship is a response of the heart that's been enamored with God, captivated by God. And so for you and I to be enamored with God, for you and I to be caught up with God, we've got to begin to muse upon, meditate upon who God is and what God has done for us in his Son.

I mentioned a moment ago the necessity of preparing our hearts for worship. God gloriously gives us six days to prepare for that one day. And what we feed it on through the week will either be a catalyst for spiritual worship or it will cauterize it. What we do with those six days. We've got to be very careful, beloved, that we don't rob our hearts of this glorious truth about who God is and the work that he's accomplished for us throughout the week. We can't starve ourself of the glories of Christ for the week and then expect to come into the presence of God on a Sunday morning to give heartfelt, glorious, fiery hot worship.

Because here's what happens, the little foxes of busyness throughout the week being preoccupied throughout the week, little by little turn our eyes away from the glory of God to the clamor of the world and we'll not be able to experience this kind of worship. But for those who lay up treasures through the week, those that set their minds on things that are above, those that muse upon the glories of Christ, meditate upon your pastor's sermon that he preached on the midweek or the previous Lord's Day, feeding upon that, rehearsing it in your mind and when we come back together again, worship is dynamic, it is an explosion of spiritual worship that glorifies God and fans the flame of our devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ.

We've got to be careful, holy longings are choked out by being preoccupied with the world that surrounds us. We've got to be very careful. Proverbs says, in Proverbs 4.23, "Guard your heart above all else for from it flows the springs of life." I know that you look forward to this day. I've been looking forward to it. I know that this is the highlight of your week, it is for mine. This is something that you've been praying about throughout the week.

You've been praying for your pastor, you've been praying for the elders, you've been praying one for another, you've been in anticipation of coming together, preparing your heart every day privately, praising God and whenever you come together and whenever the Lord's Day finally comes, it's like a foretaste of heaven, isn't it?

There's times at Grace Life prior, Pastor Chris, when I'm sitting and listening to you, I just don't sing, I just stand there on the front row and just close my eyes and hear the saints sing and tears flow down my cheeks for the beauty, not necessarily in sound quality, although it's good, it's the idea of everyone and the little children belting their hearts out to God. In my mind, I'm thinking about Revelation 5 and Revelation 7, whenever the saints are surrounding the throne in this great ensemble of worship and I'm getting a little foretaste of that. So glorious.

The third thing I want you to note, we long to be with the church because of God's protection. Verse 3 says, "Even the bird has found a home in the swallow a nest for herself where she sets her young at your altars O Yahweh of host, my God and my King." The King James doesn't use the word bird, it uses the word sparrows, so does the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. My translation here uses the word bird. But the idea here is this, and this is very interesting.

The idea is that in the Old Testament, tabernacle, that even the sparrows, even the swallows would come underneath the eaves and build their nest and raise their young, i.e. that the least of the least in the inconspicuous places, even in the obscurity in that tabernacle found safety. They had a safe haven there at the house of the Lord. And it's in this way the church is a place of protection not only for you, but for your children. Because in the church the weak and the vulnerable find strength and safety.

We see even the Lord Jesus modeling that, that He goes after that one stray sheep leaving the ninety-nine, and what is that even telling us? That there is safety in the flock, there's safety in our togetherness, there's safety in the assembly. And there's plenty of room for everyone that flies to the Lord's church for refuge. Not only the sparrow, but our young. The church is where you and I and our family ought to be congregating for all of life, raising our children in a safe haven, nestling them next to this altar, if you will.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote on this and said, "The church of God is a house for us and a nest for our little ones." We can raise our children, listen, this is important that you hear me. We can either raise our children as open prey for the world and all the devils and the things of the world, or we can give them a home under the canopy of the house of God where our children will be safe and secure, brought up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. Paul told us the church is the pillar in support of the truth. That is to say that the church has these pillars that sure up and strengthen the edifice to make a very strong structure.

That is the big idea that the church is a place of safety, a place of safety. A lighthouse in the midst of a dark world, a pillar of truth in a world that is filled with lies, it's a fortress in a vulnerable wasteland that every inch of the house of God is valuable and to be prized and to be pursued. Look down at verse 10 with me. "For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere." Praise God. The church is beautiful and it's the longing of God's, all of God's people. Here's my final point. The church is beautiful and it's the source of all blessing. If you're getting anything out of this, just wave and say amen, amen.

Verse 4, "How blessed are those who dwell in your house. They are ever praising you." The church is in Christ and Christ is in His church. That all the blessings of God have been granted to the church. In fact, I've been preaching through Ephesians in my church and so this is fresh on my mind even now, chapter 1, even though I'm in chapter 4 now. Paul tells the church that you are the object of every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. Paul takes a whole chapter to begin to unpack that. You've been chosen in Christ. You've been redeemed by Christ. You've been sealed by the Holy Spirit of Christ.

This is the blessings of God upon His church. The word blessed here by the way means happy. It's fortunate. It's the Old Testament word that's comparable to the Sermon on the Mount, blessed with the poor and the spirit. Blessed, happy, fortunate. In fact, this verse has been called the Psalmist's Beatitude. The church has an open heaven beloved that the favor of God is on His church and that true happiness and the good will of God are lavishly poured out upon and supplied to His church. Would you think with me for a moment? God blessings are found in a healthy New Testament local church like Grace Life Brookhaven.

The first thing is that you hear the word of the Lord faithfully. We're living in a famine of the hearing of the words of the Lord. I had a 90 some year old man came to Grace Life Church this last year. He's going to a church just right down the street. I'm not going to mention the name, but they gave the gospel a long time ago. He says, "I come here because my church does not preach the Bible anymore." You and I hear that we groan on the inside, but you know what?

You delight because you have found a place where you can come with your little sparrows, with your little birdies, and come and to hear the word of the Lord that there is a God-centered, scripture-saturated, Bible-driven refuge for God's hungry, thirsty saints in Brookhaven, Mississippi. It's called Grace Life Church. And brothers and sisters, what a blessing it is because you and I are living in a world of lies, and it is absolutely critical that you and I be inundated with divine truth. Not only the preaching of the word of the Lord, but in the presence of godly men and women to where we can be held accountable.

And you and I need that because I'm prone to wander. Lord, I feel it. Prone to lead the God I love. And I think one of the things the Bible has well established in our hearts is that we are sinful and weak and vulnerable and that we need to stay connected one with another because we need to hold one another accountable. Brother, I've been missing you at church. Sister, I've been missing you at church. What's going on in your life? What has crept into your life that's circumventing this glorious common means of God's grace in your life, this critical means of God's grace in your life? What is it that's got you stifled?

What is it that's robbing you of this wonderful gift of God? So important, is it? We're so easily misled, but we have the whole family of faith that can help us stay in the narrow way. I'm talking about the church is beautiful because it's a source of all blessings as we see in verse 4. In a healthy church, and I know you all teach your little children there, I've visited with your pastor about your VBS and all the outreach that you do, how you shepherd the children in this congregation as your little sparrows, to use that word, flitter and fly around the courtyards of the Lord that they're at the altars of God.

They're encountering other little sparrows in the proximity of God's altar, hearing the truth, witnessing God's work powerfully, hearing the testimony of those that are being baptized, having the oversight of godly men and godly elders being trained up in the way that they should go. Listen, beloved, I'm convinced of this. Someday, this in-part knowledge that we have, we see in part, we know in part, God's going to take that away. We're going to have that knowledge improved upon, and that we're going to see that the church and only the church is the Lord's diadem on earth.

We're going to see that the church and only the church is the object of the blessings of the Lord. We know in full that the church was the safest place. The church was the most glorious place on earth. So here's a cry from a man that's been displaced. He longs to be there. He longs to be there. He wants to be in the company of those that have been made right by God, those that have been sanctified by the word and spirit. He's jealous of the sparrows. He's jealous of the swallows. They're under the canopy of the church while he's still in exile on the run for his life. Do we see the church that way?

Brothers and sisters, I cannot read the first four verses of Psalm 84 without that thought overrunning my mind that the Lord's church is beautiful, that the Lord's church is truly a blessing for all those that attend there. This word "dwelling in the house of the Lord" has the idea of permanence, continuing in the house of God. It's not talking about being loosely connected. It's not talking about being a transient or a temporal dweller. This is talking about those that have been permanently planted in the house of the Lord. It's beautiful, blessed. Psalmist longs to be in the courts of the Lord, yearning.

Yearning his heart and flesh, or crying out, "See the beauty of God in his church." And that's our heart's throb, isn't it? The church is beautiful because our God dwells in his church, and he is beautiful. Let's look at the text one more time and we'll pray. How lovely are your dwelling places, O Yahweh of Host. My soul has longed, even fainted, for the courts of Yahweh. My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. Even the bird has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself where she sets her young at your altar, O Yahweh of Host.

My King and my God, how blessed are those who dwell, who continue, who remain, who are faithful in your house. They are blessed, happy, satisfied, fulfilled, and they will always and ever be praising you, Selah. Well, Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit takes these truths and writes them indelibly upon our hearts.