Psalm 27:4

Instead, he prays for one thing, the first and greatest thing he could ask for, and that is communion with God. That is where his confidence lies. That is what he wants more than anything. He writes in verse four,

one thing have I asked of the Lord that 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.

And yes, David has needs. He needs protection. His life is threatened and he wants victory. But the thing is, he doesn't ask for those things in this particular prayer. Instead, he asks God, for God. He knows if he has the protector, He will find protection. He seeks God above his perceived needs.

And so tonight, I hope we're stirred to do the same, regardless of whatever our immediate needs are. To forget about everything else and just think about one thing for 20 minutes. To seek the healer, not just healing. The protector, not just protection. The giver, not merely the gift.

I hope this passage reminds us that we are to seek God above all else. And that is the message tonight. Seek God above all else. And the psalmist points us to three things of God to seek after. And so if you're looking for a roadmap, that's gonna be the heading, three things of God to seek after.

Seek the presence of God

First, he points us to seek the presence of God. That's the one thing he asked for. the one thing he seeks, to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life. He wants unbroken communion with God.

And in David's time, the house of the Lord would have been the tabernacle of God. This was the tent given to God's people in Exodus, the place where God's glory dwelt among his people. It represented and visualized the presence of God among his people.

But the place where the glory of God actually resided, the Holy of Holies, would not have been accessible to David. It was only accessible to the priest, and even then the priest would first have to offer sacrifice, sprinkle and splatter blood all over the place, and only then he would approach, and not with intimacy, but he'd approach with fear and trembling. And so it seems to me that the type of unbroken communion that David seeks, one sustained over all the days of his life, could never actually be found in the tabernacle. Their communion with God was bloody.

It was limited. It was mediated. It would have been a depressing shadow of the communion with God man had with God in the garden. It was, that's the type of communion David wants. And so I think his hope ultimately pointed forward to a time where man would have that kind of communion with God once again. And the New Testament shows us that the tabernacle ultimately pointed forward to God's presence among men in the person of Christ.

John 1.14 says,

the word became flesh and dwelt, tabernacled among us

in Christ. God became man and dwelt among us. Divinity united with humanity, immortality with mortality, the creator united with his image, and he came in this way, in order to bring man back to where he was designed to be, where David wants to be, in the presence of God.

In Christ, God paved man's path, our path back to Eden, and he did this by dealing with what got us kicked out in the first place, right? Sin. Christ came to deal with the problem of sin. He redeems us from our sin as our substitute, both in life and in death.

He lived the life, Adam, that we never did or can, that all in Christ might be viewed by God with innocence. He satisfied the justice of God against the sin of man by laying down his innocent life. And that's the great wonder of the cross. the life of the innocent given for the guilty, the life of the Son of God given for the lives of sinners.

And if you're here today and you're not a Christian, the only reason we believe any of this is true is because after three days in the tomb, Christ rose from the dead. His resurrection is our hope. His resurrection is how we know He is who He said He was, and that is the God of life. The resurrection is why we too will rise from the dead to eternal life, a life that'll look a lot like the life man gave up in the garden, life in the presence of God, the life David wants.

The vision of God

And in the presence of God, what David wants to do is to gaze upon God. He wants the vision of God. And that's the second thing we should seek after as well, the vision of God. He says he wants to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. And David here isn't just asking for an aesthetic appreciation of God from the things in the tabernacle. The word gaze here is often used for prophetic visions. He's saying he wants to see God in a way that mirrors the vision of the prophets.

He wants spiritual vision to behold God with the eyes of his soul. And I think David's longing is echoed in every human heart. Even if we don't know what we're looking for, we can all recognize beauty. We all like to look at beauty, the sunset, the mountains, the ocean, people even. But the problem, is that the eye is not satisfied with seeing these things, the things of dust, for we are made to gaze upon God, whose face has been hidden from us since the fall, and the vision of God is what Christ came to give to us once again.

John 1.18 says,

no one has ever seen God, the only begotten God who is at the Father's side.

He has made him known.

Jesus is the image of the invisible God. To see Christ is to see God, and we see this clearly in the transfiguration of Christ. Right there, the disciples are given a glimpse of the true beauty of the Lord, the radiance, the light, the glory of God piercing into the world in the face of Christ. And that's the vision David longed for, the vision of God. And that vision is what we who are in Christ will have for all eternity.

Ultimately, we are waiting for a day where we will see the face of God. Then there will be no more veil, and as the scripture says in Revelation 22, four,

we shall see his face

, the face that shines like the sun, the face that radiates divine light, the face that makes visible the invisible God. We will see his face. And you might ask, what could that possibly be like to see the face of God? Well, let me give you four quick descriptions of that vision from scripture.

First, it'll be clear. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13,

now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

Second, it'll be transformative. John writes in his first letter,

when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.

And third, it will be satisfying. As David says elsewhere,

as for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness. I will be satisfied with your likeness.

And finally, it will be eternal. This vision is the prize we will have in the new heavens and the new earth. and there will be no more sin to blind us, no death to bring an end to our sight, our eternal hope.

The knowledge of God

The greatest gift God could give us is himself, to behold the face of God, to behold the beauty of the Lord without end, without interruption, without veil, and in the end, having the presence of God, having the vision of God, we shall come to possess a true and full knowledge of God. And that's the last thing David calls us to seek in this verse, the knowledge of God. David says he wants to dwell in the house of the Lord, to gaze upon the Lord, and to inquire in his temple. And while a desire to know God is implicit and parallels David's desire to see God, I think inquiry has another kind of texture than gazing.

Gazing conveys awe, wonder, and enjoyment even. Inquiry conveys depth, intellectual pursuit, curiosity. And I think that comes out even from the word, the root of the word inquire here carries a sense of plowing, like the ground. It carries a sense of breaking forth, searching for something, seeking something, discovering something.

He's saying he wants to know God with depth, and I don't think the knowledge of God he wants is merely facts about God, the doctrine of God, God through the lens of systematic theology. And while knowing God is not without doctrine, it's not merely knowing doctrine. To know God is to know God relationally. And that's what David wants. He wants to know the who of God. the being of God. It's why he wants the presence of God, the vision of God, that he might know God in an intimate and relational way, the way man was made to know God in the beginning. And once more, that knowledge is what Christ came to restore to us. John said in John 17 3,

this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

And God can only truly be known in Christ.

Yes, we can know him from creation. We see reflections of his power, his beauty, his order in the heavens and the seas and the animals and in the earth. But we can only know him as he is, as father, as son and spirit. If we are in Christ, we can only know that from the word of God. We can only know him and experience God as he is if we are in Christ. We can only know him as our father if we have been adopted as his sons. We can only be adopted as his sons if we know the one true son, and we can only know the son if the spirit reveals to us who he is.

The knowledge of God is a gift. It's a gift given to us in Christ, a gift we can maximize now, in time, by maximizing our knowledge of the word that reveals God. And yes, there is coming a day where we will know Him fully, even as He has fully known us. But we don't have to wait for that day to know Him in a truly satisfying way, in a life-giving way, in a relational way. We can have that now.

The Word of God is sufficient for that. It contains the promises God has made to you. In it, He tells you what He thinks of you. Through it, he reveals himself to you, and in it, we can behold the beauty of the Lord. And therefore, we should plow into it, meditate on it, inquire of it, that we might grow in our knowledge of God.

God alone can truly satisfy the soul

The mind is only satisfied when God is the chief object of its inquiry. The soul is only satisfied when God is the chief object of its affection, and David understood that. even in the face of enemies and trials, even in the face of threats to his life, in the face of real and extreme perceived needs, the first and foremost thing he sought after was communion with God. God was his one thing. Above all, he sought after God. And it seems to me that David seeks God in this way, because he finds God to be genuinely enjoyable as the chief object of his affection, attention, and gaze.

And I wonder if that's true for us. I mean, do we genuinely find God to be enjoyable? Is God himself enjoyable, or do we just ask him to give us things we can enjoy? Is he enjoyable in reality, or only in word and theory? Does God himself make us happy, or do we only find happiness in the things he gives us?

Friends, if we want the things God gives us, but not God himself, we are no better than the younger son in the parable of the two sons. We're saying to God that we want the inheritance he can give us, but we don't actually want him as our father, and that shows us how disordered our desires are, doesn't it? How sick the heart is. to desire the gift above the giver, created things over the creator. And the problem with the false gods we choose, the things of this world, is that even if we get the things we want, no matter how good they are, they all leave us in the pursuit of happiness because everything under the sun is dust. It's a mist, it's short-lived.

God alone can truly satisfy the soul. Consider the wisdom of Augustine who captures this in his confessions. He wrote,

I was eager for fame and wealth and marriage, but you only derided these ambitions. They caused me to suffer the most galling difficulties, but the less you allowed me to find pleasure in anything that was not yourself. the greater I know was your goodness to me.

And friends, if we want to know God in that way, to seek God and to know God as our ultimate pleasure the way David, Augustine, and the saints of the past have known God, here's a place to start. Ask. Only God can give God. Only God can reveal himself as ultimately enjoyable. We can merely ask. I can merely talk at you. Only God can reveal God. Ask for his presence. Seek his face in the word and in prayer. Pursue him with all your mind, your soul, your strength. Pray this prayer. Train your heart to seek him above all. And as we close, I want to be clear.

It's not always bad to pray for other things. David himself prays for other things in other places. Christ himself taught us to pray for our daily bread. But even still, because of our sin, I think we need to be reminded frequently that the things we seek in this world, although they may be good things, are still lesser things.

God is above them all. We should seek God above all else, seek the presence of God. the vision of God, the knowledge of God. God must be our one thing. I pray that he would truly be our one thing. Let's pray. Father, we come before you to ask for one thing, to seek after one thing, that we would dwell in your presence all the days of our lives and for eternity, that you would give us vision of your beauty, both now and in eternity, and that you would grant us knowledge of yourself, both now and in eternity. And we pray that in the name of your son, amen.