Psalm Devotional
Tabernacles of Grace
Written by Gordon Keddie. This devotional was first published in the May 2010 issue of The Reformed Presbyterian Witness.
On Jan. 26, 1681, two young women, Isobel Alison and Marion Harvie, sang Psalm 84 on a scaffold in Edinburgh, Scotland. They faced execution for agreeing with the Covenanters’ declaration of King Charles II as a usurper of the crown rights of Jesus Christ. Whatever you think of the civil and religious conflict in 17th Century Scotland, there is something intrinsically tyrannical about a regime that can kill servant girls for their theological views—especially sound views of the Lordship of Christ in relation to the pretensions of earthly rulers. What a glorious testimony to sing this wonderful psalm in the full flow of hope in Christ when a noose is wrapped around the neck.
Psalm 84 is about loving God’s house and enjoying God’s presence on both sides of eternity. The psalmist speaks in the context of the centrality of the temple in Jerusalem to the life of God’s people and expounds the experience of public worship according to God’s ordinances.
You are blessed in longing for God’s house (vv. 1-4). The psalmist isn’t “in church.” The temple is far off. The synagogue is not yet an institution. As he lives his daily life, his heart and mind turn to Jerusalem, to God’s house and his desire to be there to worship the Lord. He notes three things in particular:
God’s house is a blessed place (v. 1)
The idea is, “How loved and lovely is Your dwelling place” (A.M. Harman, Psalms, p. 288). This “tabernacle”—the Hebrew is the plural “tabernacles”—is the whole Old Testament temple in all its parts. It is an ordinary structure, originally a portable tent, designed as a temporary dwelling of God, for “the Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands…” (Acts 7:48-50). Its holiness, loveliness and love-worthiness are not in the architecture, materials or location as such, but in the “holy ordinances” of worship, “for the beauty of holiness is spiritual, and their glory is within” (Matthew Henry).
God’s house is where He meets with His people (vv. 2-3)
The believer “longs” and “faints” for His courts, his body and soul crying out for communion with the living God! His envy of the birds that nest in the temple precincts says, as it were, “I wish I could be there all the time. Has God not said, ‘And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the testimony, about everything which I will give you in commandment to the children of Israel?’ (Ex. 25:22).” The reference to the altars reminds us also that there were altars of sacrifice and of incense—the one pointing to the satisfaction of Christ’s sacrifice and other of His heavenly intercession.
God’s house is the believer’s spiritual home (v. 4)
There we are blessed by the Lord and we are moved to praise Him. We love to worship him. This is our calling and privilege from here to heaven and forever. What does coldness in this matter tell you about yourself?
You are blessed in loving to go to God’s house (vv. 5-7)
What you are keen to do tells us what you really love. If all you can say is that you “have to” go to church, you are in a poor spiritual state. In contrast, the man, “in whose heart are the highways [to Zion]” (ESV), is blessed in his resolve to worship God, for he knows his strength is in the Lord (v. 5).
He is also blessed in the rewards of faithfulness. They turn “Baca”—a place of dry dustiness representing the rigors of the long wearying journey to Zion—to a “spring” and a place of “pools.” Going to worship is not a hardship and a sacrifice, but a privilege and a joy (v. 6). They also go “from strength to strength” because acting in faith brings growth in grace —”grace upon grace” (v. 7a; John 1:16). Finally, they actually get to church! “Each one appears before God in Zion” (v. 7). Public worship is not an optional extra—it is where we are privileged to meet with Christ and receive His means of grace.
You will be blessed in being in God’s house (vv. 8-12)
The psalmist details five distinct blessings of God in the worship of His house:
- God’s hearing of our prayers (v. 8).
- God’s provision of a Mediator (v. 9)—the Messiah (our “shield” and “anointed”) through whom alone believing prayer is heard.
- God’s presence with His people (v. 10)—the reason “a day” in his courts is “better than a thousand in the tents of wickedness.”
- God’s promises of His grace and goodness (v. 11)—He is light (“sun”) for our darkness, and strength (“shield”) for our weakness and is to us “grace and glory” and every “good thing.”
- God’s preservation of those who are trusting in Him (v. 12).
This grace in God’s Anointed, Jesus Christ, will both last a whole lifetime and prepare us for the glory of the eternal Zion. When Thomas Halyburton (1674-1712) was on his deathbed, he asked for the singing of Psalm 84. Afterwards he said, “I had always a mistuned voice, a bad ear, but which is worst of all, a mistuned heart. But shortly when I join the temple service above, there shall not be, world without end, one string of the affections out of tune.”
