Skip to main content

Psalm 48:4-8 The city of God - Day 249

Good morning friends,

Some thoughts on the city of God and the cities of man.

Blessings,

Jeff

What is the difference between Jerusalem and every other great city?  It seems that everyone from a "great city" boasts about the city for its culture, sports, education,  architecture, etc. But only the Jews could boast that Jerusalem is the city of the Great King, the city of our God, the city that God will establish forever.  So the difference seems to be that other cities boast about what man has done while Jews boasted about the God who dwelled there.

The occasion of this psalm is some great deliverance of Jerusalem from some foreign armies.  The author rightly gives credit to God.  However, eventually, there was a transfer of credit from God to the Jews themselves.  They started to see themselves as a great people because of Jerusalem, not because of the God who took up residence there or because of their obedience to God's law. 

While the modern Israel is linked to the past, I don't think that modern Jerusalem is described by this psalm.  God no longer resides there as He did when the psalm was written. 

The Church is where God dwells today in the lives of individual believers.  It isn't the physical location or beauty of architecture, it is the testimony of changed lives.  The Church alone is build on the foundation of prophets and apostles with Christ himself as cornerstone.  The reason for the church is to glorify God, not ourselves.

  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leviticus 18:21 - Partial restoration of creation order

Dear Friends, Some times we forget that Moses wrote Genesis.  Obviously, he did not have first hand knowledge of the events of creation.  But God did and revealed them to Moses.  The "story arc" is clear to Moses despite the millenia of history between Genesis and Leviticus.  The plan for ultimate restoration is hazy, but God is at work repairing some of the damage. Blessings, Jeff What is the prohibition on child sacrifice doing in the list of prohibited sexual relations? Be fruitful and multiply - First commandment in Genesis.  God made the world to be inhabited.   Having children is how this  was to happen.  So child sacrifice was a direct violation of this first command to Adam and Eve. Marriage is one man and one woman is the creation order. Seems simple enough.  I can imagine men thinking, Yeah but God didn't say which woman.  I will do the one woman thing if she is my sister, or aunt or …..  So God gives all these examples of unlawful unions.  To this day, man stil
Post a Comment
Read more

1 Chronicles 24:1-6 How about those Levites! Day 332

Good morning friends, Good foundations are important.  Our author turns to the religious life of the returning exiles. Blessings, Jeff We have seen the emphasis on the Davidic line in the  political life of Israel.  The other area of emphasis is the Aaronic priesthood and Levitical workers. In this passage we have a quick review of the somewhat sanitized picture of the start of Aaron's line.  The returning exiles would have known that Nadab and Abihu did not just "die before their father without children".  They rebelled against God by offering unauthorized fire and were themselves consumed by fire from the Lord. Leviticus 10.  The case of Abiathar  son of Ahitub son of Ahimelech, who was faithful to David, but later rebelled with Adonijah is also not mentioned. But the passage points to the importance of the Aaronic line to the rebuilding of the temple by the exiles.  The history of the northern kingdom which was without the Levites from the beginning could not be repeat
Post a Comment
Read more

Revelation 22:3-5 Final and eternal restoration - Day 365

Dear saints in the Lord, Congratulations!  You made it.  We have been through much turmoil in the last year ('20-'21).  But God is faithful to His promises.  I trust that you have been blessed in your reading and have drawn closer to God.   Since we didn't get the blog up and running at the beginning of the challenge, I am going to go back and post entries to cover that first month or so.   Blessings, Jeff Nothing accursed in the city of God, the new Jerusalem.  The presence of sin will be gone.  I am working on memorizing Westminster Shorter Catechism and currently on question 82.  Is any man able perfectly to keep the commandments of God? No mere man since the fall is able in this life perfectly to keep the commandments of God but does daily break them in thought, word and deed. I think our passage today points to the truth of this question.  Do you notice how this answer is not exactly the same as the question. "Any man" becomes "no mere man since the fall
Post a Comment
Read more