Psalm 84 is a perfect introduction to Psalm 134, which is our text today, so if you please turn in your Bibles to Psalm 134. We've come now to the final Psalm of Ascents. I trust that in singing these songs, we are learning how to envision our whole life in relationship to God. That is, our entire existence is seeking first the kingdom of God. And just walking back through the Psalms of Ascent, we started out as pilgrims of peace in a world of war. This present world system is lying and warring pardon me, so we long to live in peace with God. And so we lifted our eyes to the hills in Psalm 121. The Lord is our keeper on our journey to the new Jerusalem. And so, We long for the joy of union and worship in the new Jerusalem, as Psalm 122 looks forward to, and thus we are engaged on our journey through all the difficulties that it entails. Lift up your eyes to the Lord for mercy, Psalm 123 tells us. We're trusting in the Lord to keep us. If God before us, who can be against us? Psalm 124 taught us. And looking for security in the Lord. The Lord surrounds his people like the mountains around Zion, Psalm 125. On this journey, we sing the Lord has done great things for us and we are glad, Psalm 126. Though we sow in tears, we will reap in joy. We trust the Lord multi-generationally to build his house, Psalm 127. I see in our families and ultimately in our churches bearing spiritual children and sending them forth as arrows. We know the blessedness of fearing the Lord, Psalm 128, calling upon the Lord to give us peace by sending out his blessing from Zion. We experience affliction from the enemies of the Lord in Psalm 129, but we call for the Lord's just judgments to defeat them. And then, out of the depths, we call upon the Lord who forgives and wait upon him for redemption in Psalm 130, In humble trust, we rest upon him like a weaned child with his mother, Psalm 131, and rejoice in hope. And then, in the final three of these Psalms of ascents, we come in this vision to the new Jerusalem, following David with the ark. as God is faithful to his promises to David in Jesus Christ in Psalm 132. In Psalm 133, we are seeing that in the church, the foretaste of the unity of all things in Jesus Christ. And we look for the blessing of eternal life. And that leads us right into this final Psalm of Ascent, Psalm 134, the capstone of these songs. And in many ways, the capstone of our very pilgrimage, as we understand this rightly before God, is dwelling with God in his house. We have to remember that everything the Old Testament saints looked forward to is coming to reality in Christ Jesus. That's what we're gonna see coming as we sing this psalm together today. Hebrews 12 tells us, but you, that is you new covenant believers who are here together today, you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels and festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Folks, this is present reality for those who are in Christ. By his spirit, you are a participant in the worship of the heavenly Jerusalem. And that access now is going to flower into the fullness of resurrection participation in the new heavens and the new earth. And so in Psalm 134, we get a musical glimpse into life with God in his house. So what is life with God in his house like? Well, there's an obvious theme in this Psalm. Pay attention as we read it together, and I think you'll see it. Psalm 134, come bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord who stand by night in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord. May the Lord bless you from Zion, he who made heaven and earth. There's a word that occurs in every verse in this psalm. That of course is bless, bless. Life in God's house is a constant circulation of blessing. We bless Him, and He blesses us. So let's talk about this together. In verses 1 and 2, we have, bless the Lord. Bless the Lord. Behold, or come, the psalm starts out here. Pay attention to this. Bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord who stand by night in the house of the Lord. Blessing is what this psalm starts on. And we need to rehearse here. We've talked about this before, walking through the psalms together. I think most recently in depth in Psalm 103. But we need to rehearse here what it means to bless the Lord. God blessing man means that God gives us the power of life to fulfill, to be fruitful, to fulfill God's good purposes. You remember that from the very beginning, when God made mankind male and female, he blessed them and said, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth. That's blessing, right? The power to be, we might put it this way, fully alive, the creature fully participating in all of God's good life. So if that's the case, what does it mean for us to bless God? Clearly we cannot give him the power of life, make him fully alive. But here's what I think we do do. We take all of who we are as living souls, the life that God has given to us, and we give ourselves to God as a living response to his gift of life to us. That's what blessing the Lord means. So in awe and adoration, we come to recognize him as God. That's where the fear of the Lord is the beginning of this. We recognize Him as God, infinitely greater than us. He is the Holy One. He is the I Am of Himself, eternal, infinite, immutable, all-knowing and all-wise. He's all-powerful, everywhere present, the uncreated One. And yet He's also faithful, good, just, merciful, gracious, and loving. We recognize this character in our God, and we recognize it through his works, through what he has done, his works of creation, of providence, ultimately of redemption, understood according to his word that we have in the scriptures. And we see him supremely in Jesus Christ our Lord. This is our recognition of who God is in relationship to us. And then we respond to that revelation in faith working through love. Pardon me. So blessing the Lord, I like to put it this way, is intelligent, personal, skillful, gifting of ourselves to God for all the goodness, all the blessing, all the benefits He has given to us. That's why I don't think we should think of this blessing as simply praise. It certainly includes praise. But sometimes people think, well, we bless the Lord, that means we praise the Lord, right? We say good things about God. And that's certainly part of it. I mean, it could hardly be blessing without praise, correct? But it's not reducible to simply praise or gratitude or merely a striving to God greatness. In other words, it's not only a declaration, it is a special commitment of ourselves to the glory of God being enacted in our lives. That's why blessing the Lord kind of takes up all of this about praise, and worship, and service, and love, and faith, and it wraps it all together with everything we are, and makes it into a promise, or a pledge, or a commitment, and praise, and thanks, and worship. When the worshiper blesses the Lord, he is by that very act making the Lord great, and famous, and fulfilling the Lord's purposes effectively. He's connecting himself to the Lord in love. Blessing the Lord is confession and commitment and consecration in the mode of joy and delight in response to the Lord's good gifts. You see, it involves a recognition that all of life comes from the Lord and then returning that life to him for his glory. In other words, I think one of the best summations I can come up with scripturally of what it means to bless the Lord is Romans chapter 12, verse one. After the great exposition of the gospel and our life in Christ, life in the spirit as Romans shows it to us, God's righteousness accomplishing salvation, we see this exhortation, I beseech you therefore brothers by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable, or well-pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship or your reasonable service. Folks, if you've been reading your Old Testament, you can't help but see that's sacrificial language, that's priestly language. This is life in the temple of God, right? But now we are the sacrifice. Now we are living sacrifices. giving ourselves, presenting our bodies to God. He is given to us in Christ and we give ourselves entirely back to him. Folks, this is blessing. And that whole idea of giving our bodies as living sacrifices brings us right back to Psalm 134. Look at what it says, come bless the Lord. Who is this calling upon to bless the Lord? all you servants of the Lord who stand by night in the house of the Lord." It's addressed to servants who stand, servants who stand. And clearly these servants in this Old Testament context are the priests, those who are ministering in the temple where God himself dwells among men. They have access to his presence. They glorify and praise him. They are carrying out their priestly service intercession, carrying out the sacrificial ritual of the Old Testament law. They are communing with God, and then by that very communion with Him, being mediators between God and His people. This is who this psalm is particularly addressed to. And so when we sing this psalm today, we need to make sure you know, you, Church of God, of Jesus Christ, are a royal priesthood. That is true of you in Christ. If you're united to Christ as your great high priest, he is making of you a royal priesthood. And because of your union with Christ, it is your privilege to be invited into God's very presence on earth to offer sacrifices and to commune with him. So not only do you become living sacrifices, you offer up sacrifices. Again, all of life becomes being taken up into this communion with God. What does Hebrews 13 tell us? Through Him, that's through Jesus Christ, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name. One aspect of this priestly service is offering praise to God. Pardon me. singing to the Lord. In fact, we know from the Old Testament, and this may be very much what the author of Hebrews has in mind in his background here, that in the Davidic reorganization of temple worship, David appointed singers. to worship the Lord in shifts, one after another. So the Lord was constantly being praised in his temple. We read about this happening even after the exiles came back to the land in 1 Chronicles, and how they organized themselves day and night to sing praises to the Lord. This was the blessing of this, pardon me. And so now we as God's people offer up this sacrifice of praise to the Lord. We acknowledge His name, Hebrews describes it. We do that in every way possible. Yes, we pray in Jesus' name, but acknowledging His name means the whole course of our lives. Everything about us is now in light of Christ and His name. We submit to his authority. We do all that we do in his name. We carry out his mission in his name. We pray and depend upon him. We worship ultimately in his name. Of course, Hebrews goes on here to say, do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. You know how we say here worship drives culture? How your praise to the Lord then flows out into all of life, and even the good deeds that you do then become an offering of praise, a sacrifice to the Lord. Don't neglect to do that, it says. Such sacrifices are pleasing to God. This is the kind of a sacrifice God delights in, to see lives that are conformed to Him, that are drawing their life from Him and showing forth that life in all that they do. So in God's house, we delight Him by offering up spiritual sacrifices. And the psalm here goes on to say, of these servants that they stand by night in the house of the Lord, I don't know about you, but this intrigued me. Why night? Why not day and night? That was true too, all the priests ministered day and night. In fact, a lot more happened at the temple during the day than during the night. All the sacrifices were offered during the day. There was the morning sacrifice and the evening sacrifice, and all this happened during the day, and then the night is the quiet time. Why night? I doubt that the poet was simply throwing in filler words here. That's not the way good poetry works. He's trying to draw our attention to something. And I think, here's my thoughts as I think about this. In 1 Samuel 3, we see Samuel, who himself has been devoted to the Lord, given by his mother from birth to serve God constantly. We see him lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the Ark of God was, when of course the Lord called him. He had the privilege of dwelling in God's house all the time. Now that was kind of a unique privilege, a unique place of service that he was being given. But this is what we desire. This is what all of God's people desire. And I think there's something here even that comes out in the Psalms that shows us that this is where things are heading. We do not want to be simply periodic guests in God's house. We want to live there. We want to be there. We want to see his glory all the time and commune with him. That's what we were made for. Psalm 23.6 closes with this confidence. I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. It won't just be coming and going like the Old Testament pilgrims had to do. We come on our pilgrimage, we go, and then we leave. There will come a time, a way, somehow God will make it possible for us to live with Him forever. Psalm 27 verse four says, one thing, pardon me, of all the things that I could ever long for, this is what I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek after. In other words, this is the whole orienting desire of my life. You wanna know what drives me? You wanna know what orients me, what I'm after? This is what I will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. Our psalm, it seems, singles out those who stand by night as those who get to stay in the presence of the Lord, in communion with him, blessing him night after night after night. Even at night, they get to do this. Yes, the work of the day is done. The offerings are all done, the sacrifices, they're all taken care of. But now, pardon me, they get to devote themselves to praising Him. What a calling, what a blessing. Even more, I think the day-night service in the temple and the focus even on the night now in this psalm points the creation order looking forward to the day beyond night in the new Jerusalem with no temple. In other words, our constant worship will issue an eternal worship. The limitations of our earthly frame will be transcended by God's power and we will never have to stop blessing him. We will get to do this forever. That's what it's calling upon the servants of the Lord to do, those who get this privilege. Bless the Lord, you servants of the Lord, who stand by night in the house of the Lord. And then it says, pardon me, lift up your hands. Lift up your hands to the holy place or in the sanctuary. It could be either one, depending on where exactly we're picturing the priests ministering here at this particular place. But the whole point is obviously to the Lord's dwelling place. It's the Lord that you are looking to bless here, right? Lift up your hands. Why that? Why that instruction here? Why that call of joy for them to lift up their hands? After Aaron was consecrated to his office as a priest, and he performed the sacrifices, it says in Leviticus 9.22, that he lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them. He lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them. Hands are what you give with, right? Having been endued with this from God, Aaron blessed the people. But what about in relationship to God? Here our text is talking about blessing the Lord, right? And here we see some more aspects of this come out. At the dedication of the temple, the actual temple itself, not the tabernacle, Solomon, the Bible says in 2 Chronicles 6, knelt on his knees in the presence of all the assembly of Israel and spread out his hands toward heaven and said, oh Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven or on earth. This is how Solomon prayed. how he reached out to God. Hands are not only what you give with, hands are what you receive with, right? And this comes out in our worship. In some cases in the Bible, stretching out our hands to the Lord is a form of supplication. In other words, it's looking to receive his goodness. The New Testament will tell us in 2 Timothy that, excuse me, 1 Timothy 2, that the men are to pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and quarreling, right? This is God's instructions for our worship to him. Hands are what you give with, hands are what you receive with. A supplication, appealing to the Lord, receiving from the Lord, but then also giving to the Lord. Stretching out our hands to the Lord is a form of blessing in a couple instances in the Bible, giving ourselves to him, as we see, for example, in Psalm 63, verse 4. So I will bless you as long as I live. In your name, I will lift up my hands. Pardon me. That certainly might include supplication, intercession, those kinds of things. But in this very verse, it's put in the realm of blessing. I will bless the Lord. I will be a total life, a living sacrifice to Him by lifting up my hands to Him. So, coming back to Psalm 134, we as priests in Jesus Christ today lift up our hands to the Lord. We do it to entreat Him, no doubt, but we also do it to bless Him. We do it as a means of giving, giving all that He's given to us back to Him. Pardon me. And that reminds me just once again of Romans chapter 12 verse 1. Because what does the text say there? It says that we are exhorted, urged to present our bodies as living sacrifices to the Lord. Right? That's this flesh and blood. All given back to God. In gratitude, in delight, our bodies become instruments of righteousness, the scene of action, so to speak, in which this communion with God is going on. And it's a wonderful and a fitting thing to be able to do this with the Lord. Sometimes people feel a little bit, oh, I don't know, pardon me, even how I would describe myself in times past as diffident, uncertain, or awkward in thinking about lifting up your hands to bless the Lord. I mean, my hands just kind of naturally sit right here, right? But when do your hands sit right here? When you're not doing anything. That's when your hands just hang by your side, when nothing's actually going on, really. Whenever you're doing something, even talking, your hands start moving, don't they? Your body is engaged with who you are, what you're doing, what you believe, what you do, and ultimately even our worship. Pardon me. We are giving ourselves away to the Lord to honor Him. So putting all of this together here, you and this psalm are called to be, you are called as a holy temple, you are called as a royal priesthood, you are called as the assembly of the firstborn to bless the Lord. The saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ has been manifested in your lives. He has given you life. And you're consuming desire now is to give your life for him. Worship becomes the central focal point of your pilgrimage to glory. Pardon me. And let me pause on that. Do you see how this whole psalm of us, all these psalms of ascents have brought us right to this focal point of worship in the presence of God? Folks, that is why you were made. That is why you were made to know God as the kind of creature you are. And nothing fulfills your life like true worship. That's what you're being drawn to for eternity with God. And that will be the last thing from a boring thing that the unbelieving world sometimes thinks heaven will be. This will be the fulfillment of all of your desires. And that's, when you recognize that, when you, by faith, you see that, you know what starts to happen in our pilgrimage on earth right now, living in between the times? Worship starts to become a central focal point of your life. you begin to orient your whole life around worshiping God, giving yourself to him in praise, in prayer, in adoration, in learning humbly before him. Together with his people, pardon me, behold how good and pleasant it is, brothers sitting down together in unity in the presence of God. This becomes a driving desire of your life. And so let me ask you as you sing this psalm together today, does your heart long for worship? Or is this something you always have to tack on because you have more important things to do in life? You know, the world system in which you live is going to be applying relentless pressure on your life to say something else is the real focal point of your life. Yeah, if you wanna throw in worship in the cracks somewhere, fine. But all these other things we have to do really matter, right? Look at the way corporations are organized, Wall Street is organized, human governments are organized. They're not organized to say, worshiping God is what really matters. They're all organized to say, no, here and now, right now, what you can get, what you can do, that's what really matters. And it's gonna apply that pressure to you to conform you to its image. Is it any accident that Romans 12 one is followed by Romans 12 two? Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, right? God has to become your love and your desire. Worshiping him has to become the true fulfillment of your souls. And you begin to organize your life around that. I trust that's coming true in your lives, that you begin to organize even the time of your lives, every single week, by your worship, by blessing the Lord, And then when you do worship, the psalm teaches us something else very important. Your worship is about blessing God, not about you. How much of what passes for worship is really about us, about making me feel good and making me feel excited. Pardon me. It's really about glorifying man and not ultimately about giving our lives away to him as living sacrifices. There's a powerful truth here in even what worship is all about. Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord. That's what we're here for. So folks, when you're hearing this song and you make it your own, what you do is you join the song of the elders and the thousands upon, pardon me, thousands, when they sing worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. Right? This is where the worthiness lies. You cry out with every creature in heaven and on earth, to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever. Dwelling with delight in the presence of God, we bless his holy name. That's what we are called to do. This is what life is in the household of God. It is blessing. But you remember we said it's a circulation of blessing as well. Where does our blessing come from? It ultimately comes from the Lord. And this Psalm appropriately has this word for all the pilgrims. May the Lord bless you from Zion, he who made heaven and earth. The Lord blesses us. Life in the Lord's house is a circulation of blessing. The Lord's blessing is giving the power of true life to us, which we would never have in our own flesh. He's calling us to eternal life with him. That's what his blessing is all about. And as the one who gives this life, I think it's fitting that this psalm calls him the one who made heaven and earth, the Almighty, the very one who has the power of life and fulfillment in his hands. This is the one who is called upon to bless you from his dwelling place in Zion. And so today I would simply like to ask you to consider, as pilgrims meeting together before the face of God, blessing his name, looking for his blessing on you, Consider how he has blessed you. Consider that today. How has God blessed you, that is, given you the power of a fruitful and fulfilled life? Doubtless, you can think of all kinds of things, maybe little things, maybe answers to prayer, maybe health after sickness, maybe a job after unemployment. All these kinds of things we look at and say, this is God's blessing. And that's true. But remember, all those little things find their place as a blessing precisely because they are connected to, and only as they are connected to, the ultimate blessing, which is that God has brought about the redeeming, atoning power of Christ's work to bear on your life. You guys, without that blessing, without God giving himself to you to that extent, All those other little things like your health or your job, your bank account, would ultimately not amount to blessings at all. They wouldn't do you any good. No, when we say consider how God has blessed you, what you have to do is look back on your life thus far in your pilgrimage and say, how has God brought my life into union with Jesus Christ and all that he's accomplished? How am I the beneficiary of God giving himself to mankind so closely that he actually united our nature to himself and all of Christ's seed in him? If you have that, you have true life. And of course, that leads me to ask you to consider what blessings God has in store for you. If that is true, if you're here today and God has united you with Jesus Christ by faith, then you have a future to look forward to. that is nothing like any blessing on this earth can provide. How does the Apostle Paul put it? Eye has not seen, ear has heard, or has entered into the heart of man, the things that God has in store for those who love him. Consider, think often on the blessings that God has in store for you. And that will fuel your worship. When you think of the promises of God are yea and amen in Jesus Christ, that everything he has promised you in Christ, his kingdom. In fact, as the Apostle Paul would put it, all things are yours in Christ. When you think about all he has promised you, pardon me, and made secure and certain in Jesus Christ, how can you not want to bless him in return? How can you not freely give away your life to him? Because you have nothing left to protect, right? I don't need to hoard my life for the future just in case something bad happens. He's the one who's providing life for you. He's giving you everything in Christ. So give yourself to him freely. Why would you hold anything back? And you know what? When you're released into that freedom of the sons of God, when the elementary principles of this world no longer dominate your thinking, you begin to live a life that's a little foretaste of glory, of the true freedom of the sons of God. You see what worship is calling us to, folks? This is glory we're tasting, we're touching here. This is the glory of God shown to us. This is what your life was made for. So let me just close by asking, do you want your earthly pilgrimage to culminate in life in God's house forever? then live in the blessing now, right? Worship God in spirit and in truth, in faith based on Jesus Christ and look for his blessing. If that's your hope today, life with God forever, would you confess today as part of giving your life to Jesus that Jesus is Lord? Let's do it together as his people assembled in his presence right now. Let's bless him by confessing this. Jesus is Lord. Amen.