Speaker 1: My name is Sean Carroll, and I have the privilege of serving on staff here as one of the pastors. Welcome to worship at Ward Church. It's a great day outside, amen? Amen. For those of you joining us online, I do hope that you're able to find some time outside God's evident, God's glory is evident today.
Now I moved here from Michigan six years ago. I moved from St. Louis, but before that I grew up in Connecticut. And people ask me, they're like, Do you miss Connecticut? And I'm like, well, the weather is pretty much like this.
We have snow and sun and it's pretty much the same, but I miss people. You know what I mean? I miss my friends, I miss my family, I miss seeing them. Recently I had the privilege of going home for just a few days, but in I think three days I met and hung out with 40 different friends, family members, church friends. It was a blast.
It was a I love seeing all those people and there's one other thing about home that I miss and that's the food. You guys know what I'm talking about? You ever go back home and like, I gotta go to this place. Well, the place that I had to go to was called Brookside Bagels. I took my kids there and was like, you guys are gonna love this.
And they're like, dad, it's bagel sandwich. Like, it's not that special. And maybe there was some kind of longing in me that that, that I wanted and I didn't really have breakfast today. So, they don't have Brookside Bagels out here, but they do have Einstein Bagel. Excuse me for a second.
I'm just gonna take a bite of my my bagel. Good. Yeah. That's pretty good. Anybody else not have breakfast today?
Anybody longing for a bagel? I got an extra. Anybody want it? Call... Hey.
If you want it, it's right here. Come and get it. Who's longing bad enough for a bagel that they want it?
Rev. Nicole Unice: Give me it. Give me heck. They can't have
Speaker 1: it. They're ready to see. Alright. First two, get it. Alright.
You guys each get a half.
Rev. Nicole Unice: Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1: Alright. Yes. You know what? You wanna have too? Hey.
This one is spicy. Okay? Parents, this one is spicy. That's that's my favorite. Okay.
Yeah. Take that. I bit the other half. Okay? It's germ free.
Yeah. Listen. Hey. If you are longing for something, you will go through great lengths to make sure that you get it. Today, we're gonna talk about longing from Psalm 84.
Everyone has things in life that they long for. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter where you come from. Everybody has things in their life that they long for. We're gonna wrestle with that today.
We're gonna ask the question, what do our hearts long for? Now, by longing, I don't just mean food or what you want the weather to look like. I mean those deep desires that begin to shape our lives. Maybe it's the health of someone that you love. Maybe you long for a relationship restored.
Maybe you long for some security that you don't have or maybe you're just looking for some peace in your life that you could just rest and go to sleep at night. Eventually those longings of our heart, they begin to organize our lives because you see what we long for, we will make time for. We will sacrifice for it. We will think about it. We will restructure and reorganize our day so that we can acquire the things that we long for.
Your life and my life reveals what our hearts really love. And today, as we finish our summer series on the book of Psalms, Psalm 84 is going to talk about longing. Let's pray and then we'll get into it. Heavenly Father, we come to you with longing hearts. Lord, there's things that we are longing for that are from you, or there are things that we are longing for that are not from you.
And Lord, I help that your spirit will speak to us today, or the things that come from you, maybe long for them more and the things that are not of you, may they fall away. We want you to have the glory from this day, from this sermon, from this worship, from this prayer. And for you alone, our hearts long. In Jesus name we pray, amen. Now, I don't know if you know this today, but you most likely brought a Bible because you have your phone.
And so if you have your phone, go ahead and take it out. Open your Bible app if you got one. If not, you have the Internet, which has the vast sum of all knowledge. Go ahead and open that up to Psalm 84. All right.
I see some of you not opening your Bible. Psalm 84 is where we're gonna spend our time today. It is important that you follow along and you'll see why later. The
Dr. Scott McKee: first part
Speaker 1: of the Psalms says, how lovely is your dwelling place, oh Lord Almighty. First, opens up and it's like, wow, what a beautiful building. Well, the temple is so fantastic. Well, the streets, they're paid with gold. Ward Church, look at this awesome building.
It's so cool. How lovely. But it's like, it's a building. Like, who really cares about this building? Well, the rest of the Psalm actually gets to the point.
So here's what comes next in verse two, it says, My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. That's longing. Do you hear it? Yearns.
His heart and his flesh cry out. And notice what he wants. It's not about the place, right? It's not about the courts. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
And that's the heart of this Psalm. Psalm 84 isn't ultimately about wanting to be in a particular place. It's about wanting to be with a particular person. It's about desiring one person above all else. You see during the time of Israel in the Old Testament, there was this temple.
It was the temple of the Lord and inside the temple of the Lord was the holy place and inside the holy place was the Holy of Holies and in that was Ark of the Covenant. And on the Ark of the Covenant is where the presence of the Lord dwelt. And it was a special place you could not enter, you gotta be a special person. And it was once a year that the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies and be face to face with God. You see, God's presence was so special, you could not be around it all the time.
And so when we talk about longing for God, when we talk about Psalm 84, we are not talking about a building. It's very important. We are talking about who resides in that building. The Psalmist says, hey, don't miss a place. I miss God.
I wanna be with God. I don't care where I'm at. I just wanna make sure God is there. Now I wanna give you a picture of Longing. Anybody out there have a dog?
Yeah. Have a dog. Now I don't know about your dog, but my dog, he needs to be wherever I am. If I'm sitting down in a room, the second I flinch, right, he's like, are we going somewhere? Let's go.
Where are we going? I'm with you. Right? And if I get up, he or she is out there, her name is Luna, she was following me around. Usually, she follows the kids around whenever they have food.
Whoever has the food, that's where the dog follow. Her heart somehow always longs for food. But you know what I'm talking about. Sometimes they follow you so much, you're like, stop. Stop following me.
I just want some peace and quiet. But they don't stop, do they? You guys know what I'm talking about, the dog owners, right? That's longing, right? That's the heart of, I need to be with you.
You're my person. I need to spend all of my time with you. And I think there's an important distinction for us today between longing, which is something that we need to do. We need to long for a relationship with God, but sometimes we can turn that into a transaction. Right?
We can say sometimes we want to be with God because we're longing for refuge. We're longing for what we can get from it. Maybe you said, God help me fix this. Help me do this. Give me direction.
Take care of this person that I love. Heal them. Now, prayers aren't bad. In fact, God invites us to bring our needs and our requests to him. And in fact, here at Ward prayer is so important that we have a whole team of deacons that loves to pray for people.
That's what they do. You enter your prayer request and they love to pray for you. But there's also another piece of this, that Psalm 84 takes us into something deeper. Here's a question we need to ask ourselves. Do I long for God or do I just long for what God can give to me?
Is my heart seeking after a relationship or does it just want the fruit of that relationship? Those things are not necessarily the same. The Psalmist says, God, I want you. I want to know you. I want to be close to you.
There is something for the Psalmist that has to do with the relationship of God that nothing else can replace. There is nothing else besides I wanna be completely known and completely loved. I wanna know that I am cared for, I am accepted, and that I belong to the one who created me. That's what permeates the heart of the Psalmist. And then in verse three, we have this wonderful picture.
Even the sparrow has found a home, a swallow, a nest for herself, where she may have her young, a place near your altar. Picture that. Listen, we got lots of rafters here. Anybody see birds flying today? I see a few nests, like they're here.
They live here. This is where their home is. This is where they have their young. It is a safe place. And that is what the Psalmist is saying.
The Psalmist is like, Man, I'm jealous. I'm jealous. The birds get to live here. This is where I want to be. I want to be where the presence of the Lord is.
I wanna be in such a safe place that I know I can raise my kids here. How come they get to stay here and I have to go home? You guys hear the longing in his heart? You hear how much he wants to be with the Lord. The sparrow, they found a home, the swallow, they found a place for their young.
That's what I want. I wanna be with God. I wanna be home. There is something deep inside this man that says, I was made to be here. I was made to be with this person.
And I think there's something deep inside every one of us that says the same thing, whether we recognize it or not. We were made for a relationship with God. And if you're wrestling with that today, if you're wrestling with, do I long to be with God? Do I long for a relationship with Him? How do I know?
How do I know I want that? Listen, after the service, you come forward, you talk to the leaders who will be here praying for you. Or if you want, you and I, we can grab coffee sometime and we can wrestle with that together. Here at Ward, we wanna help you figure this out. This really is that important.
And then in verse five, if we're moving on, he totally switches things up, right? We're talking all about coming to the place where the Lord dwells. And now he says, Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. Okay. I thought we were talking about coming to a place and now you're talking about going on a journey.
What changed? Well, do you remember that we talked about God's people wanna be where the Lord is? Now the Lord at that time and the people of Israel was at the temple. The temple was in one place. It was in Jerusalem.
And so if you wanted to be where God is, you had to make a pilgrimage. It doesn't matter where you came from, it doesn't matter where you lived. If you wanted to be with God, you had to get up, you had to take your people and you had to come on a pilgrimage to the Lord. Right? So it's the same thing pulled from a different perspective.
I wanna be where God is and so wherever we're at, we're traveling to Jerusalem. Jerusalem uniquely the place where the Lord dwelt. I love that phrase in this in this verse. It says, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. Their hearts are pointed somewhere.
How many people out there have ever been on a work trip or something and you're trying to talk to somebody and you're like, Hey, how you doing? And the person's like, oh, yeah, I'm doing... I'm new fires. Gotta go. I gotta...
I'm I'm off to pick up my my wife at the at the airport. You ever try to stop someone but they're on a mission? They're literally set on doing something? You can't stop them. You can't stop them.
Right? And probably because as cool as your relationship with it is, the relationship with the spouse is much more important. If I'm ever picking my wife up at the airport, I'm probably not gonna stop and talk to you. I'm probably gonna be on a mission. I'm sure you're a great human.
I love you, but you know, my relationship outweighs that one. And that's what the Psalms is saying here. He is saying, listen, everybody is great, but there is one relationship that my heart is set on above all else. The people in this pilgrimage, they know where they're going because they know who they are going to. They're going to the one relationship that matters the most.
Right? And then we come to one of the most beautiful images in this Psalm. Now stay with me through this because it says, As they pass through the Valley Of Baca, they make it a place of springs. We don't know with certainty exactly where this Valley Of Baca is. We don't even actually know if it's a particular place, but the word itself is associated with weeping.
And the picture here is of a dry and of a difficult place along the journey. If I'm trying to get somewhere and I gotta walk there, I probably don't wanna walk through the desert, right? And yet the Psalmist is making an intentional point here that they're pilgriming towards Jerusalem and you're going to go through barren places along the road. I'm sure that we can relate. Right?
There's dry and barren places in our lives too. Places that we didn't choose to put ourselves in. Places that just happened upon us. Sometimes it's grief. Maybe it's disappointment.
Sometimes it's simply realizing that though you've prayed for something over and over again, the Lord is just not answering your prayer in the way that you had hoped. And the Psalm, he doesn't skip it. He doesn't say that life is going to be grand. Now I say that because sometimes as Christians, myself very much included, we can be too quick to take somebody else's Valley Of Baca and tell them it's gonna be okay. We can say it's gonna be alright little buddy.
It's gonna be okay. No. Listen, life sometimes hurts. Name it. Sometimes you pray and nothing seems to change.
Sometimes you know God is faithful and you're still sad. Sometimes you trust Him and you still don't understand what He's doing. The Bible gives us room for that. The Psalms have been full of those realities. Listen, last Sunday was the final service of Ward Church Farmington Hills.
And as a campus pastor who poured four years into there along with my family and along with a 100 other people to fulfill the mission of Jesus there, to see it closed down feels a bit like a valley of Baca. So I get it. It's a hard place. Even if you know it's where you're supposed to be, it does not make it easy. But through that, there's one phrase that I like to keep coming back to.
It says, as I pass through. They pass through Bakkah. Right? The valley is real. In fact, in order to get to Jerusalem, there is no way to avoid it.
You are going to hit valleys in your life. The longer you live, the more valleys that you will hit. In order to get to your destination, you have to pass through hard times. And these pilgrims, it does not deter them, right? It does not say, Oh, well, I'm not gonna go to Jerusalem.
I'm not gonna go to where the Lord is. It's gonna be too hard. No, because they know that the fruit, the relationship at the end of the destination is worth anything that they go through. They know that the valley is not their home. They know it's gonna be terrible, but they walk forward anyways.
The destination is worth the trouble. And here's a key part. I need you to understand this about valleys. Being in the valley does not mean that God has abandoned you. Verse seven says this, it says, They go from strength to strength till each appears before God in Zion.
So as it turns out, their destination changes how they walk through the valley. We are still headed towards God. We know the end result of our journey. You see, the Psalmist is trying to get us to understand just how sweet it is to be with the Lord. He talks about going through a dry and desolate and barren place just to reach God.
That's what longing does. That's what our hearts yearn for. That's what we go to. In verse 10, he makes this bold comparison. He says, better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.
One day. It is so much sweeter to be with you than a thousand elsewhere. And then he says, I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked. Listen, I would rather, I would stand outside and just hold the door. If you let me do that, it's enough.
I don't wanna sit in the temple if God is not there. I don't wanna be dwelling with other people, even have the best meals, have the best friendships if God is not there. I wanna be where God is. Just let me be near God, that's enough. That's all I need.
The man is longing to be with God. It's this sense of, God, I'm coming. Wait for me. I'm coming to you. Wait.
Now I I love this Psalm, but there is a tension there. And the tension is resolved with the New Testament because the Psalmist is longing to be where God is. He's longing to move towards God, to get to the location that God is at. If I can just get to Jerusalem, if I can get to the temple, if I can be a door holder, if I can get into the presence of God. But what if, what if, what if God came to us?
And here's where the New Testament completes this Psalm. It's where Jesus becomes the heart of Psalm 84. John tells us in the New Testament that the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. God came near. The God that this Psalmist is longing for, he steps into our world as Jesus Christ.
The Psalmist says, Hey, I wanna get to where God is. And the gospel says, God has come to you. God makes his presence and dwelling among you. Jesus even describes himself using the same language of the temple. He's boldly saying, I am the dwelling place of the Lord.
I am God. In John two, he says, destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days. And Jesus rose again. Not only did he rise again from the dead, that place the holy of holies that nobody could enter, that veil that was separated from the rest of people was torn from the top to the bottom saying, I am no longer here. I am now with you forever.
You see, John tells us that Jesus was speaking of his own body. During the time of Israel, again, remember, it was only the temple that held God's presence. If you want to be where God was, you had to go to the temple. It's all the Jewish people knew. You must move to God.
And now Jesus is saying, God's presence is with you. God's presence is with you. God's presence is with you. The longing of Psalm 84 is ultimately fulfilled not in a building, but in a person, and that person's name is Jesus. And and this is why Christianity is fundamentally relational.
It's not primarily about rules. It's not trying to become good enough that eventually God will accept you. It's not about making some spiritual pilgrimage until you finally reach him and get this, it's not even primarily about our longing for God, which you probably all thought was the point of this sermon. It's not about that. Listen, we should be longing for God.
We were created for that. Our hearts were made to long for God. But if the solution was us longing for God, we would fail. We would fall short of God's perfection and God's glory. And so God came to us.
Jesus came near. And he didn't just enter the beautiful parts of our world and coast through life the way that we should have. Jesus entered the Valley Of Baca too. He knew rejection. He knew grief.
He knew what it was to weep. He knew suffering. And ultimately, he went to the cross. And there, Jesus dealt with the thing that actually does separate us from God, it's our own sin. He took our sin upon himself.
He died in our place and ultimately proving he is God, he rose from the dead. Jesus opened our way home. All those who want to be sons and daughters of God need but to accept Jesus. There is nothing stopping us. Our past isn't stopping us.
Our failure isn't stopping us. We don't need to clean ourselves up before coming to Jesus. We don't even have to have an appropriate level of longing before Jesus loves us. Come. Come all you who are weary and I will give you rest, Jesus says.
The relationship that our hearts were created for is offered to us freely in Jesus. Jesus. If we lay down our lives for him. To know God and to be known by him, to love God and to know that you are loved by him. To belong, That's what we long for.
Now once you see the heart of Psalm 84 fulfilled in Jesus, there's a detail at the beginning that I want you guys to pay attention to that becomes even more beautiful. Take out your bibles if you have them. Psalm 84. I started reading in verse one. You would think that's where the Psalm starts, but there's a little intro here.
Right? And if if you have your bible open, it says, for the director of music according to Giddith of the sons of Korah, a Psalm. And so the author of this Psalm is the sons of Korah. Now, the sons of Korah, they have a particular history in the people of Israel. That name is literally like saying the sons of Hitler.
In number 16, Korah leads a rebellion against Moses and Aaron, the leaders of Israel, and then ultimately against God. It's a terrible chapter in Israel's history. People follow them. It is a mess. It is ugly.
But it's not the end of the family's story. Generations later, the descendants of Korah are serving in worship. And now look at the song that's attached to their name. My soul yearns, it even faints for the courts of the Lord. Think about that.
A family that was once associated with rebellion against God is now associated with longing for God. That's redemption. That's what Jesus does for us. That is the God that we serve. He doesn't merely forgive our past, He changes our hearts.
He gives us a new heart. People that once ran from God now run to Him instead. People that wanted nothing to do with God now begin to say, how lovely is your dwelling place, oh Lord Almighty. You see, God changes what our hearts long for. And so how should this change the way that we live?
Well, maybe the first thing to simply say is be honest enough to ask, what does my life say that I love? Not what is the right Christian answer? What is the checkbox that I need to fulfill in order to be the right thing? Look at your life. Look at it.
Where does my time go? Who gets my attention? What do I believe I need in order to finally be okay? If you want a more pointed way, show me your calendar and your bank statement and I will tell you what you care about. Our lives reflect our longings.
They reveal what we love. And if I'm honest, there is definitely times in my own life that my life reveals I long for comfort, for control, for food, for success, or for people's approval more than I long for God. And some of those times is when sin enters our heart and it's why we need a savior in the first place. Now get this, get this, I can even do things for God without actually wanting a relationship with God. I'm a pastor, I can do all these things for God without actually wanting to be with God.
And maybe you're out there wrestling with that too. I do things for God, I do the right things, but maybe I don't want to be with God. Now, please hear me. The answer is not to feel guilt or shame. Those are the lies of the enemy.
The answer is not fine. I will try harder to love God. You cannot manufacture longing. But what we can do is we can bring our hearts honestly to Jesus and say, Jesus, teach my heart, teach my heart to hear from you, to long for you, to want you and desire you. And then after you pray, you have to make room for the relationship.
Every meaningful relationship requires presence. Few things you can do, open scripture not simply to finish your reading plan, but to know the God who speaks. Maybe pray sometimes without immediately getting to your requests. Thank God for who He is. Praise Him.
Be quiet long enough to remember God is here. I am his. I am loved. And pay attention, Pay attention to what is forming your desires because our hearts are being trained all the time. Our phones, our calendars, our culture, they constantly tell us what we should want.
And honestly, most of the things that we want, they're not bad things, they're good things. Your family should take up a lot of your time. Right? These are important things in our lives, but they aren't ultimate things. And if those good things take up all the time, then we miss time with the most important thing, which is spending time with our heavenly Father and with Jesus.
So maybe the question this week isn't simply, do I need to spend more time with God? Maybe it's what is teaching my heart to love? What is getting my longing? And if you're in Baccar right now, if you're in that valley, don't pretend it doesn't hurt. You don't need to call any valleys beautiful when they're not, but please do not confuse the valley with the absence of God's presence.
Keep walking, keep walking. Not because you understand everything, not because it doesn't hurt, but keep walking because Jesus is with you there. The Psalmist was longing to be with God and to be where God was. But we know something better, that God has come to us. Jesus came there.
Jesus entered our suffering. Jesus went to the cross. Jesus rose from the grave. Jesus opened the way home. So maybe the question isn't, do I believe in Jesus?
Maybe Psalm 84 asks us more personal question. Do I want him? Do I long to be with him? Not simply what he can give me, him. To know Him, to walk with Him, be loved by Him, belong to Him.
And if your question today is, I know. I don't know if I long for God like that. Friends, start there. Tell him. Because the good news is not that you have somehow longed for God enough to reach him.
The good news is that in Jesus, God came looking for you. God actually longs for you. So tell God where you're at. Tell him to reorder your heart. Make him the Lord and savior of your life because he longs for you.
How lovely is your dwelling place, oh Lord Almighty. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you humbled and awed that a perfect God and his perfect son would come to us. Lord, that your love for us is more infinite than we can ever know or expect. Lord, that when we run away from us, run away from you, you run after us.
Lord, you are so worthy of glory and honor. Lord,
Rev. Nicole Unice: may
Speaker 1: you teach and mold our hearts to long for you the way that you long for us. May we submit to you and come to know you personally. Lord, as we go this week, may our longings for you be restructured and reoriented around your person. We ask this all in Jesus name, amen. Now friends, again, this is our final Sunday on the summer series of the book of Psalms.
We have the last litany for you. If you want it, it's on the tables there or if you wanna grab some more coffee, it is over there. May you have a blessed Labor Day weekend. If you wouldn't mind standing, we'll receive the For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing, it is a gift of God, not as a result of works so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Friends, walk in those good works as you lead generations to live and love like Jesus. Go in peace. Amen.