The book of Psalms is mainly a book of the enjoyment of the temple. When you read many of the Psalms you can realize that when the Psalmists talked about the temple they became very excited. To them the temple was so lovely. It was better to stay one day in the temple than a thousand days at other places (Psa. 84:10). What is the temple? Today the temple is the church life (Eph. 2:21-22), a building of humanity with divinity. This is why the church life is so lovable, so sweet, so beautiful, so wonderful, so marvelous, so glorious! When we come into the church life we have the sensation that it is better to be here for one day than to be some other place for a thousand days. Sometimes our relatives may condemn us, saying that we only care for the church life. We don’t care for anything else. How marvelous! Eventually, though, some of the relatives also have come into the church life. The church life prevails! The church life convinces and subdues and wins. Nothing can stand against the church life.
First of all the temple is a dwelling of blessing (Psa. 84:4, 10). Surely when we dwell in the church life we get the blessing. There is no curse and no loss in the church life.
The temple is also God’s rest that satisfies Him forever (Psa. 132:14-16). It is a place for God to rest. According to the Old Testament without the temple God had no place to rest. Although God had the heavens, God had no rest (Isa. 66:1-2). Religion talks about going to heaven. This thought of going to heaven is a pagan, heathen thought. In the Western World this thought was invented by gnosticism. In the Orient it came from Hinduism and Buddhism. All the Chinese who are Buddhist expect to go to the Western Heaven. This kind of pagan thought was adopted by Catholicism. From Catholicism it spread into Protestantism. God doesn’t love heaven so much. He loves the earth. The Lord Jesus prayed, “Let Your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth” (Matt. 6:10). God expects to have something on this earth. His temple is not in the heavens; in the Old Testament His temple was on the earth. Today the church is His temple. God loves the church, the house of the living God (1 Tim. 3:15). The church is God’s home. If you want to find God, come to the church. Although I may visit a foreign country, if the church is there, I am home, because the church is God’s home and my home. The church is the resting place of God.
The church is also a place of rich provision for God’s people (Psa. 132:14-16). In the church there is the rich supply of spiritual food and spiritual clothing. Nothing is short in the church. When you come to the church life and stay in the church life you get the supply. You get the rich provision.
With the temple there is also the satisfying of God’s people abundantly with its fatness and with the river of God’s pleasures, the fountain of life, and the divine light (Psa. 36:8-9). The church life has its fatness. It is so rich! Here in the temple, the church life, we drink of the river of God’s pleasures. Pleasures in Hebrew is the plural form of the word Eden. This implies when you drink of the river of God’s pleasures in the temple, your drinking brings you into Eden. When we are in the church life we are in Eden, the garden of pleasures.
Within the temple, the house of God, there is also the fountain of life and the divine light. All these are the enjoyment of the rich Christ in God’s house.
The Psalmist goes on to tell us that we could be planted in the temple and that we could grow as a green olive tree in God’s house, full of sap and fruit (Psa. 52:8; 92:13-14). Psalm 92:12-14 says that the people who are planted in God’s house shall flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon, and shall still bring forth fruit in old age. All this portrays the enjoyment of Christ in the church life, and this is the result of God’s dispensing Himself in Christ into our being. By such a dispensing even in our old age we can bring forth fruit, and we can be full of sap and green.