Psalm 84

Some weeks ago, now, I was privileged to spend some time in Baltimore at a Korean Presbyterian Church; the pastor was concluding a series on worship taken from Psalm 84, and his comments provoked some thoughts of my own I thought I would share (now that I have a few spare moments).

Most of the two of you that read this know by now that the Psalms are special to me, not so much because they resonate with me the personal way they do with others (though they do that, too), but because of their Christological significance. We may read many of them from a prophetic perspective, and in so doing illuminate the nature of the Godhead in ways that are perhaps unexpected.

I am not much of a Hebrew scholar, knowing little of the language and not so much of the structure. But one of the interesting things I have heard is that Hebrew poetry tends to rhyme thought more than it does words, and it is with this approach I looked at Psalm 84.


Psalm 84 is the source of a popular praise and worship chorus "Better is one day." The Psalm itself is a meditation on the excellencies of God's house, the "dwelling place" or "tabernacle" of verse one. Structurally, the middle of the Psalm is contained in verses 5–7, which read

Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

As they go through the Valley of Weeping
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.

They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion.

The central part of the Psalm concentrates on the journey; the house of God is seen as a metonymy for God's presence, and the hope of the Psalmist is bound up in living in God's presence.

We might begin by seeing the "way to Zion" in the person of Jesus Christ: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (Jn 14.6). There is a curious locus in the person of Christ, where a number of disparate types find their unification. So we see that the journey is bound up in Christ, but also the destination. I think the temple works similarly.

The idea of the temple extends to the person of Christ (Jn 2.21), and I think we can make an interesting connection here to Christ. The opening verse of the Psalm reads, "How lovely are your tabernacles O LORD of Hosts!" One of the first things we read in the gospel of John is, "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn 1.14). The idea of dwelling here is the same as that of the tabernacle in Ps 84.1.

While the focus of the Psalm is decidedly rooted in the temple, I think we can develop a theme from other Psalms that describe the temple as though there's some divinity attached to it (specifically look at Ps 48.12–14). This presages the Divinity of Christ, who is figured in the temple as the place where God dwells.

That we can see a Messianic reference in the Psalm is reinforced in the 9th verse: "Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed!" The word "anointed" here is our word "messiah." The verse identifies the shield of the first clause as the face of God's anointed in the second (I rely on the ESV for the translation; my guess is that the Hebrew is plastic enough to draw some other conclusions).

I see Jesus as a shield, as it were, in two senses. In the first, he goes before us into God's presence (the firstborn from the dead), interceding on our behalf shielding us from God's wrath. In the second way, Jesus shields us from God by being human. God tells Moses in the famous passage that no man can see his glory and live; but in Jesus, the glory of God is contained in someone who can be seen and handled, an innocuous and innocent human who poses no such threat of death. He's harmless, as it were.

God is pictured as the sun and the shield in verse eleven, both the brightness that burns away the darkness and the shield to protect from it. Again, there's an identification here that points to the deity of Christ (the anointed is our shield, and God is our shield).


My thoughts at this point are a bit disjointed because of some interruptions; as is the case with most blog postings, it's difficult for me to find time to get them all in at once, and I find that my thoughts especially toward the end here have fragmented somewhat. But I think at least there's an outline of a thought here that would allow us to read the passage Christologically and investigate the different ways in which we know Christ's work.

When Helping Hurts

Traveling over the past few days has given me some much-desired reading time. I read the book (Amazon or WTS Books) from which this entry takes its title on the drive, and I enjoyed it.

I've been involved for a little while with a group of people who ministers to homeless, mainly through relationships rather than providing goods or services, and I thought the book would be a worthy read, if for no other reason than it would be thought provoking and could provide a bit of a check for me personally in what we've tried to accomplish and how.


This is primarily a theological blog, and I deal less with orthopraxy than orthodoxy when given the chance.

My primary criticism of the book is that the authors don't take more time to develop the theological underpinnings for their arguments, sound though they may be (and they support themselves well). They do take some time to look at the effect of the fall on the human race, both from the personal and interpersonal perspective, but also from the systemic perspective (that is, they argue that the plight of the poor is not merely a personal one, but also systemic, and that solutions need to target both areas, not just one).

"Man fully alive" has been a theological well spring for me for nearly a year, now, and I have seen how it impacts my interactions with the people we meet on the street. For my part, I am not an evangelist, and I haven't been gifted that way, but simply being able to talk about God's glory manifested in Christ to some of them has been a profound blessing (hopefully not just for me).

I would wish that they spent more time looking at what it means to bear the image of God, but I think they predominately wished to spend more time on the practical matters of helping. The basic premise of the book is that indiscriminate aid often hurts more than it helps, all around.


Some key points that stood out to me:

• Consider three different phases of poverty alleviation: relief, rehabilitation, development. Too often we apply relief when something different is needed. Essentially the argument is that we should help people to help themselves rather than introducing methods that could lead to dependence.
  
  
• Attempt to identify assets among the target people group rather than needs, and encourage development of those assets to fulfill their needs. The goal is to get them to take ownership of the solution.
  
  
• Avoid paternalism in all its aspects; instead take a learner's mind to the task at hand.
  
  
• Evaluate the need for your presence; consider whether local resources are better suited for the solution and determine the appropriate response from your church.
  
  
• Foster relationships rather than dependencies.

A lot of really good things in there. I enjoyed the read. WTS had it on sale when I bought it for about 66% off; so I got three copies: one for myself, one for the church, and one for the group. I'd recommend it for anyone who donates to charity, volunteers time, or has considered short term missions to impoverished countries, et c. It's a worthwhile read all around.

Gospel Sermons in Acts

In the past couple weeks at church, the pastor has inexplicably raised questions about the effectiveness of Paul's sermon on Mars Hill, noting that his time in Athens was apparently limited and that there were relatively few conversions noted. He attributed this to the absence in Paul's sermon of Jesus as the Messiah and his crucifixion.

Ignoring for the moment that it seems unlikely that we have the entire contents of Paul's sermon (I would think we have a summary of the main points instead), I have to ask by what criteria we're judging the sermon. These days we consider a sermon incomplete if it doesn't contain an altar call, even though this was virtually unknown prior to Charles Finney (whose exposition of theology seems a bit suspect to me). How are we to judge the effectiveness of any particular sermon, nonetheless Paul's?

He noted other features that seem strange: no letter to the Athenians is extant (by which I think he assumed that no church was planted at this time), there is no mention of Paul being driven from the city (as happened in Thessalonika, Berea, and Philippi), and no other special commentary is made concerning the church there.

To these points I would note that no letter is extant to the Bereans, despite the evident working of the Holy Spirit in that community. Neither was Paul driven from every single place he went to preach, notably Corinth. Regarding the church, it's clear that a church certainly did exist in Athens. Dionysius' name is mentioned as among the converts, and he is reportedly one of the first bishops of that church.


As to the initial arguments regarding the invocation of Christ's name and the crucifixion, we might note that the audience were primarily Gentiles, not Jews. The idea of a Messiah was known to the Jews, but by and large an alien thing to the Greek community. (Even if there were parallels, the expectations for the Messiah to the Jew were likely different than for the Greeks.)

It makes more sense to start with a natural theology, which is essentially what we see in Paul's sermon. God is introduced as the creator and sustainer of all life. The resurrection testifies to the necessity of judgment, and so the warning is sounded. (One wonders if Paul really didn't talk about the crucifixion when he talked about the resurrection of the dead. The resurrection pervaded his discussion with Jews, too.)

Far from being "ineffective," it seems more likely that Paul tailored the sermon to the audience. He preached the gospel full well (we can see correlations from Romans in what is recorded in Acts), and it had the intended result.


I confess I'm mystified by the motivation to cast doubt on the effectiveness of this sermon. I can only speculate, and I don't really want to do that without more information; but I can't explain why a discussion concerning the audience and the likely abbreviation of the sermon as recorded in Luke wasn't even mentioned.