TO INQUIRE IN HIS TEMPLE

This is another psalm in which David is in trouble; he is surrounded by his enemies. The psalm breathes confidence in God, and the high-point occurs in verse 4 where, as dwelling in the house of the Lord (he refers here to the tent on mount Zion), he desired “to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple”. This last phrase has been rendered by another author as “to look with pleasure upon his temple”.

Whereas it is, of course, true that believers today can look for instruction in the local church as they enquire into the pages of Scripture, yet here we shall use this alternative rendering. Our own desires, as members of a local church, must be to gaze (i) upon the Lord, and (ii) His holy temple. The former has the chief priority; He has the pre-eminence.

In the creation, God created man in His image; some of the divine characteristics were passed on to man before the fall. Similarly with the tabernacle and temple; their design and embellishment typified something of the nature of God. And similarly with “the beauty of the Lord”. Moses knew this: he said, “let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us”, Psa. 90. 17. Speaking through Ezekiel, God implied the same thing with regard to Israel: “thou wast exceeding beautiful … thy beauty … was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee”, Ezek. 16. 13-14. (Though tragedy followed: “thou didst trust in thine own beauty”, v. 15.)

The implications of this are that first we see the beauty of Christ, and then we see His beauty in our fellow-believers in the local church. Something is seriously wrong if this is not possible. If we have put on Christ, then we are in Him; in an ideal gathering of believers, Christ will be manifest in all and through all. If there are “debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults”, 2 Cor. 12. 20, then Paul, whose heart was full of Christ whom he had seen in glory, would fail to detect Christ in men who allowed such carnality to exist in a local church. But when things are “true, honest, just, pure, lovely”, all is well, Phil. 4. 8.

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus”, Phil. 2. 5.