Seeking God's Presence Rockland Community Church Download

We long to spend time with those we love - do we place the same significance on seeking God’s presence?

Transcript:

A letter from a friend is nice, but a visit is better. FaceTime and Zoom can help families connect across continents, but the best video quality cannot replace a loved one's embrace. We long to be together with those we love. We will pay an expensive price to get on a plane to be reunited, if only for a brief time. And so with that in mind, here is a question for you. Do we desire God's presence even as much as we desire the presence of family and friends? Is the desire for God's presence our deepest desire in life? We're going to contemplate this today in Psalm 84. In this psalm, the sons of Korah express their deep longing for God's presence.

Now, I wanna remind you, last summer we dipped into the Psalms, and we're dipping into the Psalms again here this summer, that Psalms were used for worship. Most of them were written by King David. This psalm, however, is written by the sons of Korah, and they wrote 11 of the Psalms. And as songs, they were put to music. One of the terms here that is strange to us, it says, "According to Gittith," would've been the instructed musical style in which it was to be played. But we don't know what that means. We don't have the notation so that we could play it as it was in that time in our own. But these sons of Korah were part of the tribe of Levi and served in the temple.

Now, there's something very interesting about these sons of Korah, though, because their family history has a, has a, has a big skeleton in it. Some of you might be familiar with Korah's rebellion. This, this was a rebellion on the part of their ancestor, Korah, who was of the tribe of Levi, during the time of the exodus as they're approaching the promised land. Now, Korah, unlike other members of the tribe, the Aaronites, who were given the privilege and responsibility of serving as priests in the temple, Korah was there to basically give hands-on service, to help carry things, to help set up the tabernacle, to transport it from one place to another. It turns out, though, that Korah wasn't very pleased with that service, and he was jealous. He was jealous of, of Moses and of Aaron, and he wanted their position, their stature, their glory for himself. And the, in response, God brings judgment upon them. But it's interesting because we have this showdown between Korah, and there are some Reubenites. There was 250 leaders in the community who joined with him in this rebellion.

And Moses addresses Korah in Numbers 16, verses 8 through 9. He says, "Now listen, you Levites! Isn't it enough for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the rest of the Israelite community and brought you near himself to do work at the Lord's tabernacle and to stand before the community and minister to them?"

You see, Korah was showing a lot of ingratitude, ungratitude for the privilege that he had been given, because unlike the rest of the tribes of Israel, he was constantly ministering in the presence of God. Yes, not as closely as the priests, but nonetheless, it was a great privilege. And yet he was entirely ungrateful and desiring for something more for himself.

These sons of Korah, however are not like their predecessor. He was consumed by fire. He and most of his household were destroyed, but there was a line preserved. In this later generation, we're talking about a few hundred years later now, they are, they are serving as doorkeepers in the temple, as its custodians and as, as singers in the temple. This is how they have their hand here in the Psalms. They're musicians. And as they're serving in the temple, they're reveling in this great privilege that they have. So they start off in verse one. They say, "How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty." How lovely is your dwelling place. Now, what does this mean when we're talking about God's dwelling place?

We're gonna spend a little time on here. I promise you the rest of the psalm isn't gonna take as much time, but we need to first understand what we're talking about when we're talking about God's dwelling place. What we're talking about is God's presence with his people. Now, we can say that God is omnipresent, that is that he's present everywhere. You cannot run away from God as, as Jonah tried to do. In Psalm 139:7, David says, "Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?" And so that's true, but there is also a sense in which God makes Himself especially present with His people. And there's a true sense in which we've lost the greater presence of God because that sort of presence, that sort of relationship with God that we enjoyed in Eden has been lost. Adam and Eve were dismissed from God's presence. They were cast out of the garden. And it's interesting, though, that we see that through the people of Israel, God is calling a people for himself, and he's making himself present with them. It's by his presence that he brings them out of Egypt, and when they sin against him, they're very afraid of God removing his presence among them.

And when you see the camp of Israel organized when they set up camp, what we find is the tabernacle in the center of the camp, God in the midst of his people. So yes, God was making himself present among the people of Israel in the tabernacle, and ultimately looking forward to the temple that would be constructed in the land of Israel.

In Deuteronomy 16:11, it anticipates this, and it says, "And rejoice before the Lord your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his name-- you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites in your towns, and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows living among you." So God was making himself present in his temple, and we, and we see this idea captured in the dedication of the temple in 2 Chronicles 6:18-21. And we have this interesting tension here because not only here is it recognized, but elsewhere in the Old Testament God's dwelling, true dwelling place is heaven, and yet he's making his dwelling place in some way here in his temple. Solomon, in, in dedicating the temple says, "But will God really dwell on earth with humans? The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built! Yet, Lord my God, give attention to your servant's prayer and his plea for mercy. Hear the cry and the prayer that your servant is praying in your presence. May your eyes be open toward this temple day and night, this place of which you said you would put your name there. May you hear the prayer your servant prays towards this place. Hear the supplications of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Hear from heaven, your dwelling place; and when you hear, forgive."

So we see both heaven as God's dwelling place, but him, himself, God making his, himself present here in this temple also so that his people may come before him and pray to him even from afar, praying towards the temple, which is, it seems like a strange concept to us, but it was this idea that the people were seeking the presence of God. And so you have to have this in mind if you're gonna understand the richness of this Psalm, that there's a very true sense here of the presence of God. It's not a mere building. It's a place in which God has made himself especially present. And yet we know that there is no longer a temple today, which may lead us to wonder, has God removed his presence from Earth? When we look at the testimony of the New Testament, we see that's not the case at all. Jesus, in his earthly ministry, anticipated and actually brought about this situation in which we would no longer have need for an earthly temple that preceded him and that was around at his own time.

In talking to the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman, many of you will be familiar with this, in John 4:23-24. He tells her, "Yet a time is coming, and has now come, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth." And the reason why he was saying this to the Samaritan woman is 'cause there was this debate as to whether worship should be taking place in Jerusalem, as the Jews believed, or on Mount Gerizim, as the Samaritans believed. And Jesus is saying it's not gonna be fixed in one location. But do not misunderstand. This does not mean that our experience of coming before God's presence is necessarily spaceless. It's not spaceless. We hear Jesus tell his disciples in Matthew 18, verses 18 through 20 this. He's talking about situations in which his believers have to correct those that have fallen into sin, but it has a broader implication, I think, as we talk about, as we...