A Longing To Be With God

Introduction

What we should remember when studying the Psalms:

The Psalms are filled with Praise. This is so helpful when we consider our own need to praise God in prayer. This reminds us that we should be willing to praise even when times are difficult and we struggle. What a wonderful sourcebook of songs and prayers.

The Psalms address suffering. The Psalms address the most difficult experiences and struggles of life without glossing over them. The authors of the Psalms face death, adultery, murder, loneliness, fear, and the presence of enemies. They are written by a variety of people facing various difficult circumstances. There are times when the Psalmists look up to God in utter loss and ask if He is even listening. For me, this makes the Psalms a valuable faith resource.

The Psalms are a different type of literature from the rest of the Bible. We typically categorize them as poetry. The language of the Psalms reaches out and touches the heart by expressing the yearnings and struggles experienced in life. This is the power of the Psalms. They recognize that even men and women of faith and strength can crumble into questions and doubts.

The Psalms that express the greatest pain often end with great praise. Just because one is going through struggles and wonders what God is up to doesn’t mean they are giving up on God. This is important because all of us will face pain in our lives.

The Psalms are at home in your Bible. The Psalter is not in a separate space from the rest of Scripture. The Psalms are like a mesh that extends into several other books of the Bible. There are accounts from the history of Israel found in the Psalms. Jesus was familiar with the Psalms, as all good Jewish people in the first century were. There are phrases and thoughts from the Psalms in Apostle Paul’s writings. There are over four hundred quotations or allusions to the Psalms in the New Testament. The early church also used the Psalms to buttress their preaching and to find encouragement in times of persecution.

Singing selected psalms was a part of their worship and should be a part of the church’s worship today. As I see it, this makes the Psalms unique in your Bible. They seem to have connections that bring richness and awareness of God’s work among his people throughout the ages. What a treasure!

The Psalms are basically prayers. The prayers of the people of Israel. They are primarily community prayers… but individual prayer is here as well. Prayer brings us to God. It allows us to think God’s thoughts after God, and it serves, with other spiritual disciplines, to conform us to the image of God’s Son, Jesus. (Dunnam)

We are not studying the Psalms; we are allowing the Psalms to study us and to speak to us the things of God. (Dunnam). Gary Holloway said it this way, “While we read the Bible, it reads us, opening the depths of our being to the overpowering love of God.” McCann affirmed that “the psalms are both as humanity’s words to God and God’s word to humanity.” Wiersbe wrote that primarily, “The psalms are about God and His relationship to His creation, the nations of the world, Israel, and His believing people.” Wiersbe wrote, “The book of Psalms has been and still is the irreplaceable devotional guide, prayer book, and hymnal of the people of God.

We are spending some time with Psalm 84 in this lesson. McCann suggests that “Psalm 84 is perhaps the most expressive and beautiful of all the songs of Zion.”

Often called one of the Pilgrim Psalms. “...A poem which expresses a longing to be worshipping God in his temple, and which opens a sequence of psalms that seem to have been intended for people travelling to Jerusalem for one of the great festivals, most likely the feast of Tabernacles.” (Willcock)

The theme is our longing for God - as contemporary a theme as could be presented.

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Psalm 84

1 How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty!

2 My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

3 Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself,where she may have her young—a place near your altar, Lord Almighty, my King and my God.

4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you.

5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.

6 As they pass through the Valley of Baka, they make it a place of springs;the autumn rains also cover it with pools.

7 They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.