True subjects love the courts of their King.
Favored indeed are those who are constantly engaged in His service (v. 4),
who find their strength in Him, and who know Him by the life of real faith (v. 5, 12).
Psalm 1
1 How amiable are thy tabernacles, O LORD of hosts!
2 My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.
3 Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O LORD of hosts, my King, and my God.
4 Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee. Selah.
5 Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them.
6 Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools.
7 They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.
8 O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah.
9 Behold, O God our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed.
10 For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.
11 For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.
12 O LORD of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.
Psalm 1 – J. Vernon McGee
Psalm 84 – Longing for the House of God
This is one of the sweetest of the Psalms. David probably composed it during his absence from Jerusalem at the time of Absalom’s rebellion, though its final form may have been due to the sons of Korah. It is divided into three parts by the Selahs.
They that dwell in thy house, Psalm 84:1-4. The psalmist envies the winged things that rest in those hallowed precincts, and how much more the priests and Levites who serve there! Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but man can rest only in God.
Those in whose hearts are the ways of Zion, Psalm 84:5-8. We may not be able actually to walk along those ways, but it is good to tread them in living sympathy with the saints, and to unite ourselves to the pilgrim hosts. Those absent from God’s house may in their heart join the great congregation. Thus dry and desolate valleys may become filled with water springs, making them green and beautiful. When the heart is right with God, the desert becomes a temple, and tears are exchanged for smiles.
The man that trusteth in thee, Psalm 84:9-12. God is better than His sanctuary. He is a Sun in dark hours, and a Shadow in scorching ones. Grace is His unmerited pardon and blessing to sinners; glory the irradiation of His character, into the likeness of which we shall be changed. —Through the Bible Day by Day
Psalm 84:11—The LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory.
How God suits Himself to our need! In darkness, He is a Sun; in the sultry noon, a Shield; in our earthly pilgrimage He gives grace; when the morning of heaven breaks, He will give glory. He suits Himself to every varying circumstance in life. He becomes what the exigency of the moment requires. And as the psalmist well says, He withholds no good thing from them that walk uprightly. Learn the art of extracting from God the special form of help of which you stand in need.
The Sun is the source of light and life. With impartial beneficence he scatters his beams on palace and cottage, mountain summit and lowland vale. He is ever pouring out his beams. It is our part only to stand in them, or to open casement or door. God is shining, dear heart. Get out of thyself, and sun thy shivering frame in his untiring love.
A Shield may be the shadow of a great rock in the scorching desert, or the canopy of a gourd’s growth. Put God between yourself and the sirocco of temptation. Is the noon with its burning heat too much for thee? Hide in the Lord God. The heat shall not smite thee by day, nor the frost by night.
Dost thou need Grace? He is full of it. His grace is sufficient. With both hands He will give and give again; only practice the habit of taking. Grace is the bud of which Glory is the flower. If He has given this, He will not withhold that. If thou knewest the gift of God, thou wouldst be sure that Glory in germ is within thee, waiting only for the summer of Eternity to develop in perfect beauty. “We have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). —Our Daily Homily