This is now the seventh installment of the Home blog series. This series has at its foundation a premise that I identified at the beginning of the series: we have all experienced homesickness. Here is what I wrote at the outset of this series:
“Home. The story of the Bible is the story of God getting us back home with him. This is enchanting in its own right. Whether a warm home life has been your experience or the elusive dream you’ve wished for but never had, we have all experienced homesickness.”
For this entry, I want to double-click on one half of the qualifying statement before the premise: “Whether a warm home life has been your experience or the elusive dream you’ve wished for but never had. What if you don’t have a home? Some go through this life without ever really having the experience of home. They may even struggle with the concept of “home” because they have never truly had a home to which they felt they truly belonged due to different life circumstances such as constant moving from place to place, being a foreigner in a foreign land, etc. That one might read “the elusive dream you’ve wished for (a warm home life) but never had” and say, “I don’t even understand that idea. I’ve never had a home; therefore, I don’t actually know what to dream or imagine. I just know I want it, I’ve looked for it, but I have yet to find it.” If you are one whose life story has unfolded in such a way that a perpetual feeling of homelessness pervades, then, in God’s mysterious and gracious providence, you’re actually in prime position to cherish the promise of your future home with God as it should be cherished. You are a sojourner and you know it. And you are in good company with other sojourners in redemption history.
In Psalm 119:54, the psalmist writes, “Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my sojourning.” This is striking. Why? Well, before we answer that, just consider this word sojourning. Who were some sojourners in Scripture?
Abraham was a sojourner. He was a man sojourning in a place that was not yet his home and that would never truly be his home, but it would be the home of his offspring, so the promise goes,
“And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God” (Genesis 17:8)
Therefore, Abraham was a sojourner his whole life with God, though the promise was his, he never really had a permanent home.
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise (Hebrews 11:8–9).
Abraham was not the only sojourner, though. Jacob also saw his life, along with his father Isaac’s life, as lives of sojourning,
And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning” (Genesis 47:9).
Just as Abraham sojourned, so too, according to Jacob, did Isaac and Jacob himself. They did not know a permanent homeland.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all sojourners. They were literal foreigners in a literal foreign land that they never fully owned except for a family burial site, a prophetic plot of the fulfillment to come (Genesis 23:16; 25:9–11; 50:13).
So back to Psalm 119:54. It is striking when we read Psalm 119:54 and the psalmist describes himself as a sojourner. Why? Well, the author of Psalm 119 is anonymous, but there are candidates. David could be the author around the height of Israel’s kingdom (I’m partial to Davidic authorship). Or, it could have been written pre or post Babylonian exile with Daniel, Jeremiah, or Ezra as possible candidates. Keeping these candidates in mind, let’s consider their circumstances.
If David wrote this psalm, then it staggers us to read David refer to “the house of my sojourning” because David is the king reigning over God’s kingdom in the promise land. The land that God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the land they longed for. David is not a sojourner, and yet he describes himself as one. However, he does have experience. Perhaps he wrote this during his time or reflecting on his time on the lam from Saul (ie Psalm 57). David knows what sojourning is all about.
If this was written during or after the exile, then it staggers us to recall the loss of Judah’s kingdom “home” and their “sojourn” in exile. If this was the land that God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, what does it mean that God’s people are now exiles and sojourners once again after having received it? They had their home. They had their country. But it didn’t last. Even if they have returned, their home bears little resemblance to its former glory. God’s people were once again sojourners. Will God keep his promises?
The takeaway is this: God’s people have always been, in the big scheme, sojourners and have experienced acutely the life of a sojourner. The land of promise itself is simply a picture of the true homeland, the better country that God’s people await. God’s people are sojourners, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, on the way to and awaiting their promised land-home with God. God’s people are sojourners like David remembering the house of his sojourning even while sitting in the house of his kingdom, longing for a better home with God. God’s people are like those of Judah exiled to a foreign country or even the returned exiles living in their dilapidated homeland, who recognize that no matter where they are, they are still sojourners and exiles on this earth.
What kept these OT sojourners going even when they did not know home here? The promise of the home to come with God. Consider the archetype of such faith, Abraham. What sustained Abraham in such a “homeless” sojourn? Looking to and longing for his future home with God,
For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God (Hebrews 11:10).
What Abraham modeled by his faith, the saints of old replicated,
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city (Hebrews 11:13–16)
As Christians, we should indeed consider ourselves sojourners on this earth. And if your life story has made that sense of homelessness and sojourning even more pronounced, then consider the blessing in that. Your lack of home here should give you an even stronger desire for your true home. To trust God with making good on that future promise requires great faith and humility. Great faith and humility in order to quash every prideful desire that would tempt you to not endure in your sojourn but to cease your pilgrimage. Throw in the towel. Make home here. But you are an Abraham in an even more particular way than others and God’s promise to you is that there is home awaiting you. Moreover Jesus’ promise to you is that he will actually take this earth you feel so foreign in, and transform it into your inheritance, your heavenly home, where you will reign with him (Matthew 5:5; 2 Timothy 2:12).
So, sojourner who has no home here, count yourself blessed. For you have been providentially given the grace to know with a little more certainty what many of us can so easily forget in our comforts. What you know with rock solid conviction is this,
For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come (Hebrews 13:14).
And Jesus will deliver that city, that better country, your true home, to you. Come, Lord Jesus.
