Ps.27:4 – One thing I have desired of the LORD,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the LORD
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the LORD,
And to inquire in His temple.
There was something very different about David from all of the other Old Testament saints. This verse gives a glimpse into this unique life of David, it sums up what the life of David was all about. From the first time David experienced God’s manifest presence on his life his life was marked. It happened when David was anointed with oil by the prophet Samuel when David was still in his youth. The Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David and was with him all of his life. This anointing provided the supernatural aspect that characterized David’s life; killing beasts, giants and enemies and the supernatural song writing gift that was on him as well. In today’s verse David describes longing to be in the house of God to perceive the glory of the Lord. It was this passion in David’s life that made him a worshiper, caused him to erect the Tabernacle of David, and birthed a passion for the temple that his son Solomon completed. David loved God’s presence and the full expression of that was found in the corporate worship in the Tabernacle of David. Here is how Richard Sibbes describes David’s statement about the beauty or glory of the Lord.
“Beauty is too particular a word to express the fulness of the Holy Ghost, the pleasantness or the delight of God. Take the word in a general sense, in your apprehensions. It may be the object of all senses, inward and outward. Delight is most transcendent for pleasantness; for indeed God in his ordinances, is not only “beauty” to the eye of the soul, but is ointment to the smell, and sweetness to the taste, and all in all to all the powers of the soul. God in Christ, therefore, he is delightful and sweet…The beauty of the Lord is especially the amiable things of God, which is his mercy and love, that makes all other things beautiful that is in the church.”
We find that beauty today in the church, the place of corporate worship. This is what makes the church so special, it is the place God displays His glory. I know He lives in Christians individually but it is in the gathering of His people to worship Him that the beauty of the Lord is revealed. This one thing that David longed for becomes the passion of every worshiper of God.
