The Christian’s great desire is to bless and be blessed by the Lord

Sometimes our anticipation of a great time exceeds our actual experience. We look forward to vacation for weeks and months. We’re driving there or we’re flying there and our anticipation is through the roof. This is going to be incredible. But then we get there and we remember that this place is not heaven. We still have many of our same troubles. Children and babies still take a lot of work. You and your spouse still disagree on things and argue. The prices are all way too high for you to afford. Your experience isn’t able to live up to all the anticipation you had.

As Christians, we’re described as being on a journey. We’re marching towards heaven. Anticipations are high. Will our experience be able to measure up to the anticipation? Will we receive all we’ve hoped for and will our journey have been worth it?

This is the last of our Songs of Ascents, the 15th psalm we’ve covered in this series. The first psalm, Psalm 120, began with the believer who was experiencing a holy discontentment for the place he was in. He wanted to leave the presence of sinners and journey to the presence of the Lord. The intervening psalms were various experiences and thoughts that the pilgrims have on their journey. But now we’ve reached the final destination of that journey. This is the culmination of everything they have been journeying towards. This is the thing that every one of these journeying believers has desired. What will it be like? It’s a place of blessing the Lord and being blessed by the Lord.

Main Point – The Christian’s great desire is to bless and be blessed by the Lord

Prayer

The great journey of the Songs of Ascent has culminated in their arrival at the temple. And the comparison is easily made and intentionally made here that the Christian’s journey culminates in their arrival in heaven.

Point #1 – Blessing and being blessed is a foretaste of heaven (vs. 1)

It’s clear to see that the operating word in this psalm is “bless”. The people bless the Lord and the Lord blesses the people. The word shows up three times, once in each verse. But it’s interesting who is called to bless the Lord in verse 1. Look at it with me.

READ VS 1

But what does it mean to bless the Lord? I’ve often wondered this. We know what it’s like to receive God’s blessing. Besides, he has all things and is infinitely greater than us. He is the one who blesses others. But what do I have to give to God? How could I bless him in any meaningful way?

When we bless the Lord, it is different from when the Lord blesses us. When we bless the Lord, it is synonymous with giving the Lord praise. This is how the Bible uses that phrase over and over. This is how David says it in Psalm 34

“I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.” - Psalm 34:1

To bless the Lord is to praise the Lord for who he is and what he has done. And our psalm describes people it calls the servants of the Lord, who are here in the temple and they are there for the sole purpose of blessing the Lord. It specifically says that they stand by night in the house of the Lord. What does that mean? The book of 1 Chronicles describes for us what the responsibilities of many of the people in Jerusalem were and in particular it describes what the Levites were supposed to do in the temple. Let me show you 1 Chronicles 23:30. Speaking of the singers it says,

“And they were to stand every morning, thanking and praising the Lord, and likewise at evening.

- 1 Chronicles 23:30

So here are these guys whose job is to stand around the presence of God and never stop singing praises to him. They sing in the daytime when people are busy milling around the temple. They sing at night time while everyone sleeps. They are constantly blessing the Lord. This reminds me of a scene described in Isaiah 6. Where we get a glimpse into the throne room of God and he is surrounded by these incredible creatures called Seraphim who are described as day and night saying “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty” That’s their only job day and night. So when God has this temple built, he wants it to reflect his throne room in heaven as closely as possible.

This is one of the reasons why the Jews were excited about traveling to Jerusalem for the festivals. Being at the temple was literally the closest thing in all of the earth to being in heaven itself. I know the song says West Virginia is almost heaven, but I assure you the temple was a much closer reflection than West Virginia. The temple was the place where God was always being blessed.

But it was also where God was blessing his people. Ezekiel describes the temple as a place where the river of life and blessing from God flows out of and fills the whole earth. Revelation describes God’s throne in heaven as that exact same thing: the place where the river of God’s blessing flows out of and blesses the whole earth. The temple, just like heaven, is the place where people bless God and God blesses the people.

The pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem for the festivals endured all the hard work, all the struggles, all the costs, all the pains and obstacles of getting there because they wanted to experience heaven. The comparison is clear. We, as believers today, are on a journey that involves hard work, struggle, great cost, and pain. We also are on a journey towards heaven, the place where we will bless the Lord forever night and day.

But the question I am compelled to ask is, “Is that somewhere you actually want to be? Do you want to arrive at the destination where you will be blessing the Lord continually?” If many of us sat down honestly and thought about it, we might say “No. I’m not interested in that.” Because what comes to mind when you think about eternity with God? Some of us might imagine the cartoonish version where we sit on clouds and play harps all day. That doesn’t sound too fun. Or maybe you’re more like me. For such a long time when I was young I thought that heaven would be an eternal church service. We would sit or stand in front of pews and sing hymns every day forever. Admittedly, that was not very appealing to me.

What would be more appealing is if we got to do fun stuff in heaven. Maybe heaven means getting to wake up every day and play golf. It would be more exciting to think of heaven as a place where we get to enjoy all of the most delicious foods and never get fat! Or for still others just being able to sit in a chair by the lake for hours on end with nothing to ever interrupt is the greatest pleasure imaginable. But I assure you that each one of these things and any other number of things you can imagine will grow old.

I remember being a child and looking forward so much to the summer. School would be over and I could sleep as late as I wanted and I could do whatever I wanted. But then after several weeks of no responsibilities and no schedule, boredom sets in. King Solomon describes this in the book of Ecclesiastes. He indulged in every single pleasurable thing imaginable and it only took him a few years to realize this is all vanity. It’s all worthless.

If the joy we’re looking for one day is simply the joy of some sort of recreational pleasures, if the greatest desire of our heart is just to be free from responsibilities, then our motivation to obey the Lord will quickly grow old and it will not withstand the great dangers and hardships of the journey. Instead we’ll likely conclude, “Why wait for pleasures later when I can get the same thing now?” And we’ll abandon the pursuit of God for the pursuit of our comforts.

The reason these pilgrims were able to make their difficult journey was because they wanted to bless the Lord and they wanted to be blessed by the Lord. They wanted to interact with the God that they loved. Listen to what David says,

“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” - Psalm 42:1-2

Christian, is your heart filled with a longing to be with God? Do you thirst for God? Do you want to be with God? Or are the greater desires in your heart for the pleasures of this world? This question is an incredible way to evaluate your own spiritual health. Do you sense in your heart that longing to read his Word and hear from him? Is God growing the desire and thirst in your heart to know more of who he is? Do you desire to speak with him in prayer and sit in his presence? Or instead do you find yourself indifferent? Being in his presence and blessing him actually sounds kind of boring to you.

If that’s the case then perhaps your heart hasn’t yet been transformed by Christ. When the Lord gives life to a dead heart, he also plants in it a thirst and a hunger for him. If you’re missing that thirst, then pray. Pray that God would grant it to you. Pray that he would transform your heart so that you desire to be with him. Unless you have a heart whose great desire is to be with the Lord then you will abandon the journey as soon as some other pursuit catches your eye. You may pay lip service to loving God, but the desires and pursuits of your heart will say otherwise.

But what of those of us who do thirst for God? What should we do?

Point #2 – Bless the Lord (vs. 2)

READ VS 2

Our psalm tells them to lift up their hands towards the holy place. They are already there at the temple, but it tells them to specifically turn towards the Holy of Holies, the place where the ark of the covenant is kept, the place where God dwelt and lift their hands towards that. Orient yourself so that you are facing God and then start praising.

Now I know very subtly some of you are thinking, “We don’t have to literally lift our hands though do we? Please don’t make us lift our hands”. You’re all very good Baptists and you keep your hands very stationary during worship. I get it. We can praise God just as much with our hands at our side as we can with our hands lifted up. Yet at the same time, we know that the position of our bodies has an effect on the position of our hearts.

When children in school are slouching really low in their seats and kind of sagging to the side, we tell them to sit up straight and face forward. Sitting up straight helps them to pay attention more. The position of their body impacts the position of their minds. In sports there are various positions you take to prepare yourself. If you’re running track you have a certain ready position you put your body into or in basketball our coach drilled into us over and over the way that we should position our bodies on defense. Adjusting the way your body is positioned sends signals to your brain to tell you, I’m here to do a specific thing. If you’re here this morning and you’re having trouble staying awake, consider how your body is positioned. The worst thing you can do is cross your arms and cross your feet and slouch down a little bit. Your body is telling your mind it’s sleepy time, not pay attention time. Take control over your body so that you can take control over your heart.

We already do this in church when it’s time to sing. We stand up while we sing. Why? Because standing communicates to your body that you have a job to do and you need to be participating. It communicates to your body that you’re showing respect for someone. So in order to help carry our hearts into worship, we stand while we sing.

I think that’s the same thing that’s going on here with the call to lift our hands as we bless the Lord. Lifting your hands is a way of disengaging autopilot in your mind. It’s your body communicating to your mind that I’m doing something different or special here, so think about it. I joked about us being Baptists so we don’t lift our hands, but there’s a lot of truth in that. Most of us here were brought up in a culture where expressing yourself in worship with your body was frowned upon. That includes me, I was brought up in that kind of environment.

And I understand why. All of the attention in our worship should be directed at the Lord. If someone raises their hands maybe we think they are drawing attention to themselves and away from God. That’s a legitimate concern. Another reason we tend not to involve our bodies is the concern for emotionalism. We don’t want to confuse being able to stir up all the feels with genuine worship. It’s possible to work yourself into an emotional frenzy without ever worshipping God in truth.

But let me ask you, is completely emotionless worship better than worship that involves our emotions? Is it better to sit still and avoid any attention or to make every effort to turn your heart towards God? I’m not suggesting that all of you need to now raise your hands in worship even though it makes you extremely uncomfortable. But I am telling you that the Bible commands it here for a reason. It may be that you need to find a way to shake your heart out of autopilot.

Personally, I still get a bit uncomfortable raising my hand all the way up in worship. But you might see me hold my hand in front of me or to the side. You might see me lift it up to my shoulder. These are all ways that I’m attempting to align my heart in worship.

Of course the goal isn’t to become people who just posture ourselves in the correct way. Our goal is to bless the Lord. The reason they are to lift their hands is so that they bless the Lord, so that they would praise the Lord. The reason this is the goal is because this is their job. This is who they are. You are servants of the Lord. The reason you exist is to praise the Lord. That’s why God created mankind. He created things to praise him. The last 5 psalms are full of this. “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels;  praise him, all his hosts! Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!... Praise the Lord O Jerusalem! Praise your God O Zion!... Praise the Lord, O my Soul!... Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”

This is your primary responsibility as a Christian, praising the Lord. You were created to praise. This is counterintuitive to us because our culture values productivity. We need to be getting stuff done. Praising doesn’t seem to accomplish much. We think God would be better served if we were to make more money so we can give him more. God would be better served if we raised kids who were respectful and did well in school. God could be better served if we kept ourselves busy with all kinds of little tasks that were productive for him. But God says, “No. The thing I created you for, the thing you will do for all eternity, and the thing that blesses me most now is when you praise me!” If you do all the little tasks, but you’ve done it with bitterness in your heart, what good is it? If you never miss church and you always give your 10%, but you aren’t praising the Lord, your work is actually insulting to God.

How much do you spend praising the Lord? I don’t mean how much time you spend singing praise songs. I mean, how much time do you spend considering how good the Lord is and thanking him for his greatness? We tend to come to our devotional time and prayer time only ever with a needy heart looking to get something from God. What does God have for me today? Praise God, we are dependent needy beings and coming to God to receive is good and right, but that’s only half the equation. When we are in God’s presence he blesses us and we are to bless him! We are to praise him!

Try this the next time you sit down with your Bible or the next time you take a moment for prayer. Open a passage of Scripture and then just list all of the praiseworthy things about God you see there. Keep going until your pen runs out of ink. Praise him for it. Consider the great work that Jesus Christ has done on your behalf. Think about how the gospel has transformed you. Praise him. Tell him that he is good and see if your love for God and the joy in your heart doesn’t continue to increase over time.

Get other people involved. Tell them what you appreciate about the Lord. And this is exactly what we see in our final verse of the psalm.

Point #3 – Deliver his blessings to others (vs. 3)

READ VS 3

Some people believe this might have been a sort of call and response from the people to the priests at the temple. The people tell the priests to lift their hands and bless the Lord. Then the priests turn to the people and tell them “The Lord bless you!” So as mentioned before, the travelers have arrived at Jerusalem for the festival. They have made it to the temple and now the blessings are going both ways. They’re blessing God and he is blessing them. At Mount Zion, the Lord who is the maker of the heavens and the earth dwells. And when you come to him, he’ll bless you. Both of those truths are fascinating. The fact that the God of the universe would stoop down to dwell on earth at all is mind-boggling. But the fact that he would care to bless you is even more staggering.

But notice how he’s blessing them. He’s doing it through the priests. They’re the ones who are handing out God’s blessing. They’re the ones speaking God’s words. God could have spoken directly to them from heaven. Indeed there were lots of times when God did speak to his people with a voice from heaven. But here the way that God designed his blessing to be given was to have it given through his priests.

This is a pattern with the Lord. He has always asked his priests to deliver his blessings to his people. Look at Numbers 6 with me. God gives these instructions to Moses.

“Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, ‘The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.’ So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.” - Numbers 6:23-27

God delivers his blessing through his priests. It’s the way he designed it from the beginning. The priest's job was to represent God to the people. And that meant they were to declare God’s approval to the people. When someone arrives with a pleasing sacrifice to God, the priest says, “The Lord bless you”. In essence, you have been obedient to the Lord and he is pleased with you. You have his favor.

Now there are a lot of jobs the priests had to do that I don’t think I would enjoy very much. I wouldn’t love all the slaughtering of sheep and sprinkling blood everywhere. But this part of the job was probably the greatest thing they got to do. They get to deliver God’s favor to people. These poor broken beaten down souls have traveled from far away. They may feel the weight of their sin crushing them. Their guilt is overwhelming. They’re afraid. They’re hurting. And the priest has the opportunity to assure these people that their obedience has been accepted. Because of the sacrifice, God is pleased with them. Being the guy who brings the good news is always a good job and I could get behind that part.

But the job of the priests didn’t end 2000 years ago when the temple was destroyed. Listen to how Peter describes us today:

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." - 1 Peter 2:9

If you’re a Christian this morning, YOU ARE a priest. And your job IS to tell people about how excellent God is. It’s YOUR job to deliver God’s blessing to people today. You get the absolute best part of the priest’s role! You have the opportunity, No, you have the responsibility to tell your Christian brothers and sisters that they are accepted by God. God is pleased with them. You can tell them that regardless of how grievous their sin was, regardless of how far and for how long they’ve fallen away from God, that because of the sacrifice, God is pleased with them.

“But,” they say to you, “I haven’t offered any sacrifice. I haven’t given God my best. I haven’t faithfully served him. I have lived in obedience.” And you, as the priest, get the greatest job in the world. You get to declare to them that Christ offered the sacrifice on their behalf. Christ came to the temple earlier. He placed his own body upon the altar and he was crucified as the perfect, spotless, and final sacrifice for all. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

We bless the Lord by telling him who he is and praising him. Then we turn around and we bless those around us by telling them who God is and praising him. There are dozens of people here who you can speak with every Sunday. Dozens who you could be delivering God’s blessing to. It only takes a moment. “How has your week been?” “It’s been difficult. I’m having trouble with my kid’s school.” “Well, praise the Lord. He cares about that and he’ll walk you through it.” or “How are you today?” “I’m fine.” “Praise the Lord! Another day he’s graciously blessed us with because he’s good.”

We might laugh or even scoff at the idea of speaking like this, but it’s because we’re too often uncomfortable with speaking with others about God at all. We prefer for God to only be spoken of in formal appointed moments. He’s allowed in the sermon. He’s allowed if we’re in Bible study. We’ll even allow God into prayer before meals. But outside of that, we don’t speak about him. His name and his blessings are not regularly on our lips and this is why he’s not regularly in our hearts and our minds. But God has called you to be the one who changes that. You are called to speak to others regularly about the truths of who he is and what he has done for us through Christ.

Friends, is this a place where we deliver God’s blessing to others? When the weary traveler arrives, will he hear the words, “May the Lord bless you from Zion, he who made heaven and earth.” I look forward to the day when we become that kind of people. I look forward to the day when we bless the Lord by praising him ourselves and then we deliver his blessing to others. I look forward to the day when we get to do this forever in eternity.

Prayer