Year 5, Day 221: Psalms 83-84

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Calling           

• Calling asks whether or not God has called the person to the particular work at this point in their life.

I’ll confess that Psalm 83 doesn’t have much to do with calling – outside of the fact that the psalmist is being called to remind the people of the power of the Lord while he exhorts the Lord to take action against his enemies and the enemies of the nation.  Psalm 83 is a psalm about God’s omnipotence.  But we’ve had plenty of those lately, so I am going to let Psalm 83 stand on its own and instead focus in on a very narrow idea found in Psalm 84.

I was impressed by the humbleness of the psalmist in Psalm 84:10.  “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.”  Now, let’s remember exactly what a doorkeeper did in the days that this psalm was written.  We’re not talking about a bouncer who checks the guest list and welcomes everyone by name.  We’re not talking about a door greeter here.

No!  The door keeper in ancient days was the person who was in charge of greeting guests and washing their feet.  In ancient days, most people did their travelling but foot.  Their feet would get dusty as they walked along the dirt roads.  Their feet would pick up little bits of everything that they stepped in along the way.  The door keeper was in charge of taking the people as they came in and cleaning off their feet so that they would feel refreshed as they came in.  This is a position of incredible humble service.

But it isn’t just a position intended to make people clean.  It isn’t about protecting the cleanliness and integrity of the inside.  What it is really about is a position focused on the guest and making sure they felt refreshed.  It is about making sure that the guest is quite literally meeting their host and putting their best foot forward.  Being a door keeper is not just a position of service but a position of sacrificial service.  It is a position where the door keeper puts aside his own agenda in order to meets the needs of the guest in service to them.

The psalmist is saying that he would rather do that for God than dwell in a place where he can live out his own agenda.  That’s the place to which the psalmist feels called.  The psalmist isn’t feeling called to serve his own glory and build his own reputation.  Instead, the psalmist is called to be in a place of absolute sacrificial service.

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