I invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning that are in front of you to Psalm 84. Psalm 84, as we will be considering this psalm today in both worship services. Tonight again at 6, there will be a sort of part 1 and 2. And Psalm 84 is found on page 583 in those Bibles that are in front of you. Page 583, as we consider this beautiful psalm. Psalm 84. Let's give our attention to God's wonderful Word. To the choir master, according to the Giddeth, a psalm of the sons of Korah. How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young. At your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise. Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs. The early rain also covers it with pools. They go from strength to strength. Each one appears before God in Zion. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob. Behold our shield, O God, look on the face of your anointed. For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you. In the reading of God's word. One of the things that I have to constantly be reminded of about our God is that he delights to give his people new beginnings. It's really a remarkable thought that he loves to give in life his people new beginnings. It's not something that I've ever really appreciated enough about the Lord. and his kindness to us, that he delights to do this for us and give us new beginnings, that we would be a happy people and a thankful people. The fact is, most of us don't like change at all. You know that's true. It's difficult. Change is hard. This is, certainly we worship an unchanging God, but the reality is, at times we need change, don't we? We need change for a variety of reasons, mainly because we're called to be a forward-looking people. We're not called to be a backwards-looking people. You remember it was Jesus who said that he who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God. We are always a forward-moving people. The Lord said that, you heard in Isaiah 43, speaking, of course, of the work of the cross and of his son. Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I'm doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? Don't you see? The Lord loves to do a new thing. Philip Brooks wrote a little book that I read a long time ago, and it kept coming to my mind as I was preparing for this service and this day and this particular sermon titled New Starts in Life. And he says something that I couldn't get away from that I thought was so helpful describing his own pastorate years ago he says in many ways there's a new a sense of stir and start about us he must be dull who does not feel it he goes on to say that when God brings about a new beginning upon a church it has the effect of freshening the fundamental motive upon which a work is done. I want you to think about that. When God brings a new beginning, it has the effect of freshening the motive of why we do what we do. It keeps, he says, us from degenerating in a mechanical routine. A big danger. A big danger. It brings a renewed sense of what great power is at work upon us that we do not ordinarily feel in common times. Brooks says, it's the renewed sense of these things, of what it is and what great power is at work upon us, that sparkles and fills it full of life as it begins its new career, which simply is the old career with its fundamental consciousness refreshing and revived. If you get that, I think that's a very important thing he's saying to us here. God doesn't just bring new beginnings and fresh starts for no purpose. He has a great purpose in doing what he does. And one of the things that he's keeping us from is degenerating into mechanical routine over time. And that sort of thing stagnates a church. Even when it's doing everything correct according to the form of things. God brings new beginnings to wake us out of sluggishness. God brings new beginnings to revive a people. God brings new beginnings to wake them up out of sleep. God brings new beginnings to confront apathy. God gives new beginnings to give you a fresh sense of his power upon you and his work. And I don't know how you cannot see that today. Look what he's done for you. The blessedness here that God has done is the gift that God gives his people so that something results that normally, in the life of a people, sometimes goes stale. The blessedness is not just that we say today, what a blessed people we are. Because God has blessed us with all this. The blessedness is the wonderful added blessing of a building to the blessedness that you have always enjoyed that you may not have always noticed, that you may not have always seen, that you may not have always been perceptive of. A blessedness that has been in this place a long, long time. But he likes to wake people up to his blessedness that he gives people. And I want you to notice that today. That's what we're considering in this place, in this particular passage in Psalm 84. You'll notice there that it says there three times in this psalm the word blessed. And that's the way I think that's helpful to break down this psalm. That this particular psalm, Psalm 84, is incredibly helpful for us to understand God's blessing upon a people at times that we don't perceive and so that he awakens in us with new starts so that we would understand his blessedness. You'll notice that it says there in verse 4, Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise. That is a glorious verse, isn't it? Blessed are those who are ever in your house, singing your praise. What you have at the beginning of this psalm is really a description of what the believer lives for. why he was created, what he has learned is most valuable in this life and important in this life. We are blessed to dwell before the Lord. What a wonderful thing to consider. We are blessed to dwell before our dwelling place. You remember Psalm 90 says that. Oh Lord, you have been our dwelling place from all generations, from everlasting to everlasting. You are God. How lovely, verse 1 says, is your tabernacle, your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts. My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. What is he describing there? He's describing something that's absolutely beautiful and special, isn't he? There really are two ways of looking at the psalm as I was wrestling with it and thinking through what the psalmist is describing for us here. Some think these sons of Korah were describing an absence of being able to come up to worship the Lord. And they have that longingness to do so, the longing to come and to worship and enjoy the Lord. But it had been taken from them. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine had this had been taken from you right now? And the government had said, you're no longer allowed to gather for worship. That's being said in China right now. And all of a sudden, that sense of a longingness for what we had and what we didn't appreciate as we should have comes out. And you have that described in something like Psalm 42, where he says, My soul longs for the courts, faints for the courts. My soul thirsts for the living God. When do I get to come back to worship? This is why you were made. This is why you were created. And this is what heaven is going to be. Enjoying God without any more sin. Praising him, loving him, adoring him. That's how many people have taken Psalm 84, that the same sort of struggle is being here described of the psalmist who wants to come and worship but can't. That's how John Calvin took this particular psalm, that the circumstance of this is some sort of hindrance has come to worship and no longer could they gather together to worship the Lord. And I don't believe that's right at all. psalm 84 is not describing that this is what makes psalm 84 so unique what psalm 84 is describing is the psalmist has found complete happiness and joy in his freedom to worship the lord in his freedom to be able to come in his freedom to be able to gather before the presence of the Lord and enjoy the Lord as he was created to do. His ability to come to the pearl of great price with which you find this pearl, you sell everything else that you have because nothing else is of more value than this. This is a whole different kind of scenario, isn't it? That's a whole different kind of scenario than being barred from coming to worship, actually being able to come and enjoy him with the same kind of joy as I should if I had it taken away and longed for it. The word tabernacle here, the word is dwelling place. It's tabernacle dwelling place, which means he's describing here what they understood as the tabernacle that was there in Israel for a long time. The place where God had said, remember in the Old Testament when the tabernacle was set up, God had said he would come down and he would dwell with his people. And you remember the end of Exodus, when the fire cloud and the smoke came down and rested on the tabernacle, telling Israel God was with them. There was later the temple. The God of heaven and earth had made his place among his people, hadn't he? That's the remarkable truth of the Old Testament, that we had lost that access to be able to come before God, but God made the way to us, and he came down to us. It's beautiful. What he's describing here is that sort of experience that he had. I loved it. It was wonderful. I love to come up and worship the Lord to the place where the Lord was. notice how personal this is. My soul longs, faints for the courts of the Lord. It's deep within him. This is his satisfaction in life. This is what he has come to enjoy the most. And the shocking thing is, is that we're not really in the New Testament here, are we? Most people think of the Old Testament worship as cumbersome. Full of rules, rules, rules, rules. But are you getting that in Psalm 84? Not when people understood it. It wasn't a cumbersome task to come and to worship the Lord. It was the thrill of somebody's life. He's describing what he's found. It is a lovely thing to be able to come into the courts of the Lord. but I want you to notice here as we consider this that it's not the tabernacle that he's excited about. It was not the temple that he is praising. My heart and my existence, notice, cries out for who? The living God. I cry out for you, oh Lord. I love coming to the tabernacle because that is where you have said you will dwell with your people. That is where you are. The worship of you is lovely. The worship of you thrills my soul. And it's not that anyone ever, when they came to the tabernacle, came and looked upon the face of the Lord of hosts. Remember, there were barriers because of his holiness. And still what he understood what was being communicated was access that was planned and foreshadowed that would be given to the people of God to be before their dwelling place forever. The worship of you is the most satisfying thing that I have ever done with my life is what Psalm 84 is saying. One thing I've desired of the Lord, Psalm 27, it's all over this altar. One thing I've desire to the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold his beauty. I love where you dwell. It's the most satisfying experience to a weary soul in this life to come where you dwell. I faint for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. He gets the wonderful privilege to use his mouth and his heart and all of who he is and all of his being to praise and adore and receive the word of life from the Lord. The psalm is describing this for us. The psalm is is helping us with that. Now I stopped as I was preparing this and thought to myself, if there's anything that needs to be reformed today, if there's anything that needs to be thought a lot more about today, it is what happens when we gather together to worship. Obviously, there's great dangers that Israel experienced in thinking that they could contain God. Remember? Remember when Israel thought, well, God is contained in the ark, so we're going to win the battle by thrusting the ark right out on the battlefield. You remember later that there was more trust in the temple, the temple, the temple, than the Lord. and there is always the added danger in this good gift of the Lord. You know this. There's always the added danger to think that somehow God now will be brought more to us because of this. There's an added danger. That I really now feel that God is closer to me because of all this. That's why Rome built their cathedrals. That's why we walk in and say, wow. They're splendid. God must be here. This was Israel's greatest danger at a time like this. I feel like I'm really in the presence of God because this beauty brings him here. And that wasn't it. Israel tried that and it always went south. That's one error. But that said, God loves beauty. God loves beauty. Look at his creation. Look what he painted for you. Look what he put all around you. Do you know what's coming? This is nothing. So we never want to despise a good gift like this, do we? What the psalmist is describing here is talking not about places of stone or wood. What he's describing is not the building of the URC. That is not God's house. He's speaking about the spiritual blessings that flow from his presence. There was an understanding always throughout history that when God's people gathered together, where God's people called out on the name of the Lord, there he met with them. It wasn't confined to a particular—the temple was always intended to be later what would be for the nations of blessing when we would worship in spirit and in truth. And that's not to say that we don't need to come together anymore. It was always that wherever God's people gathered and called, there God was with his people. And we were lifted up and worshiping with him in the heavenlies. You think of right after the fall. In Genesis, it said very early on that men began to gather together and call on the name of the Lord. That's the church. It's a gathering of people. It's his body. There where the body is, there God is with his people specially, is what this is saying. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. God had chosen to be with his people in a special way. Don't you think that's lost today? Where everyone's trying to find God their own way? Apart from the gathering of his people? I think sometimes a change of this magnitude can be scary. For some, fearing that maybe we'll lose who we are. That fear that maybe we'll forget our roots. And that change, even like this, could it undo what was done in the past? Those are all good things to think about, aren't they? I liken it to an experience I had with my own father. He was a very well successful known basketball coach for years in the Central Valley. And we had the old gym that was built in the 40s. The Graham Gym. He was an old veteran coach that had worked hard, and they named the gym after him. My father coached there from 1975 to about 2000. The gym was the epitome of a classic Hoosier-style gym. Many phenomenal teams went through that gym. I still can see those teams and the talent that he had in that gym. The walls stunk. It just seemed to bleed the sweat of those former players, you know. It's like an old gym. Banners hung there for years of all the championships that were won by my father in that gym. And right before my father retired, he was the athletic director, and he was a big part of getting the project done, the new project called the Event Center. It was beautiful. It was a beautiful Event Center. I love the Event Center. Well, not so much. Two sort of things happened. Knowing that my dad was the coach, I didn't appreciate the event center very much because the old gym was dad's gym. And at Rocky's Donuts in Lemoore, you would walk over to Rocky's Donuts every morning and there would be all the old guys sitting out there talking about the glory days of Lemoore basketball as it used to be. The new generation, would they appreciate what had been laid down and what the old gym was? Would they appreciate that? Last time I was in L'Amour, I walked into the old gym. It was dark, abandoned, cold. The banners were still up. Dad's dead. It was an emotional moment for me. He had built the event center part of that. But I stood there. How much I thought of what he did was ever remembered. Now, does that work? Does that help? Here's what overwhelms me about our project, and that's basketball, temporary, earthly. Here's what's overwhelming about this project as I have stood back as the pastor and watched it. What I witnessed is that the elder generation in this church, and maybe I'm wrong, seems most excited about it. They're not the Rocky Donuts fans. They're not going to enjoy this very long. They're not going to enjoy this very long. In fact, many are going out right now. I think of one who would love to be here and can't. What's clear to me is that the generation going out is the one that wants to pass something on. What do you think they want to pass on? A building? It's not a building ultimately they want to pass on. It's their faith. It's their faith. And the worship of the Lord. That's clear to me. That's what I've seen. It was wonderful seeing the older people here yesterday running around with vigor. I mean, that was impressive. They wanted to give you, through obviously the Lord giving through these people, a beautiful place for future generations to enjoy what they did. We, I'm speaking to me, have no excuse to show a lack of interest or to blame anything anymore on anything external. Did you hear me? We have no more excuse to blame anything on anything. The organ sounds great. The excuses are gone. This gets to the heart. We need to own what they owned and what they built with the same amount of seriousness of faith and of joy in the Lord's work so that the Elkos who can't be here right now as they're dying and they hand us the baton that we take it and we run with it and show joy in the Lord like they did. That's how God works. God keeps us a forward-moving people. He gives us new beginnings so that we're refreshed. That this house that He has given us houses what is most important. Right here, the Word of God. The Word that God spoke to give you life. That's what this house is. That's where this is. It's what happens here that matters. It's a good thing to give thanks to the Lord, sing praises to your name. The only song for the Sabbath, Psalm 92, to show forth your loving kindness in the morning and your faithfulness every night. When you gather for worship, do you understand that you are the most blessed people to dwell before your eternal dwelling place? For where his people are, there God is meeting with them. and you are being lifted up to heavenly glory. God has set aside for you right now all distraction. Think about this. Just think of what's happening at this moment. He has given you a time to receive from him today grace and help for your walks and strength for your journeys. Why did God's people always love to gather together through all this history and all these thousands and thousands of years since the earth has ever been? There have been a people gathering because this is where it happens. in the gathering of his people. I love what James Boyce once said. There's something to be experienced of God in church that is not quite so easily experienced elsewhere. Otherwise, why have a church? If it's only instruction you need, then get it by a book. If it's only fellowship, have a home gathering. There's something to be said for the sheer physical singing of the hymns and psalms, the sitting in pews, the actual looking to the pulpit and gazing on the Bible as it's expounded, tasting the sacrament in the very atmosphere of the place set apart for worshiping God that is spiritually beneficial. Amen. This is where the gospel's announced. This is where the resurrection's proclaimed. This is where God reaches his hand out to you and all of your sin and all of your struggle and loves you and helps you. What an encouragement verse 3 is, isn't it? Even the sparrow has found a home, a swallow and nest for herself, for she may lay her young about your altars. O Lord of hosts, my King and my God, blessed are those who dwell in your house. They'll still be praising you. It's overwhelming. The top of the temple, we may get annoyed, but when you see bird issues up there, and they're dropping. You remember that even the sparrows have a place. That's how good he is. And what that's saying to you is, is that all the little people in this world who the world disregards and trashes, the Lord gives a place. And that's what we're going to consider tonight. One of the reasons we have a wonderful opportunity in a building like this to reach out to many people who don't know the gospel. I think that was in the Lord's mind, Psalm 84, when he said, God even cares for the little birds of the air. The sons of Korah understood this. They were the doorkeepers in the house of the Lord. They were the ones like the janitors in the house of the Lord, working always to keep things open and the people nobody ever noticed. And they said, you know what? We are so glad to just be door holders in God's house so that we can be there. is that your attitude to the worship of the Lord? That's how good he is. And the psalmist is overwhelmed to think that in the maker's eyes, a little life was of inestimable value to the Lord that he would consider giving sinners a place and to cover them with the blood of his son. This just shows the kind of heart the Lord's after. Right here. Psalm 84. I saw a little picture to close today. A little picture somebody handed me of a little Reformed church in Mexico. It was teal. And in the front were puddles of mud right in front of the door. And all of these little farm workers who have nothing heading up with joy to worship the Lord. Keep that image in front of you. We gather together. Do we come up with joy to the house of the Lord as Psalm 84 is calling us to? There really is no excuse for us. Look what he's done for you. He gives us something like this so that we would know how blessed but they are just as blessed they are just as blessed because they have the lord and so are we god has given the escondido urc a new beginning can't you feel it in the air right now he has set servants apart brand new to serve you today that's what you're going to see now brand new servants to serve you that should refresh in us that should revive us as we enter into the joy of a new year of worshiping our God who is forever our dwelling place. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you for your gift, the gift we're talking about of your Son. And to add a benefit of worshiping in a nice place like this, we thank you. You remember, oh Lord, what's been handed to us. And may we enjoy you the way that we are called to, feasting on your word every week. and never losing that priority. Fill this place with eager worshipers and eager hearts who love the name of the Lord for so great a salvation. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.