AP

Psalm 74:4-8  Your foes roared in the place where you met with us; they set up their standards as signs.  They behaved like men wielding axes to cut through a thicket of trees.  They smashed all the carved paneling with their axes and hatchets.  They burned your sanctuary to the ground; they defiled the dwelling place of your Name.  They said in their hearts, “We will crush them completely!”  They burned every place where God was worshiped in the land.

At the church I belong to, we are going through the early chapters of 1 Kings and are currently looking at Chapters 5-7 with all the details of Solomon’s building of the First Temple in Jerusalem.  It is hard to take in the absolute glory and  splendour of this magnificent building, especially with the way Solomon used beaten-out gold leaf so extensively for wallpaper.  It was all intended to display the unsurpassable glory of the LORD, Israel’s faithful, Covenant-keeping God who had rescued them miraculously from Egypt and established them in his Promised Land of Canaan.  His power and greatness could neither be equalled nor denied.

But in Psalm 74, the Psalmist writes a song of lament as he contemplates the conquering Babylonian army wielding its axes and hatchets and totally vandalising and destroying everything and burning it all to the ground.  It was important for these enemies of God to ‘prove’ beyond doubt that the ‘Name’ (standing and reputation) of the God of Israel was nothing, and only to be despised.  We can understand how the Psalmist, and those who sang his lament, felt with the evidence that lay clearly before them at its ruin!   And, I must admit, that I can identify with them as I see how effectively the militant anti-Christian forces appear to be exerting their infuencing throughout our world today through both violent, merciless physical persecution in places like Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and the more subtle, but equally destructive, re-booting of our culture in the West through the media.

As we read Psalm 74, it is good to reflect on how God has worked, and is still working, in human history in the light of what he has revealed in Psalm 2: “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?  The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the LORD and against his anointed [Messiah/Christ], saying, ‘Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.’  The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them.  He rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, ‘I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain’” (verses 1-4).

And we know how definitively this was fulfilled in his sending his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, among us, to die to conquer sin and to rise again to conquer sin’s outcome, death,.  We know what finally happened to Babylon, and we know how Jesus said to his disciples, “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18)  So let us take heart.  The new (Third) ‘Temple’ is the Church, built on Christ as its ‘cornerstone’ and ‘capstone’ (Epesians 2:20) – its ‘author’ and ‘finisher’ (Hebrews 12:2 -KJV) – and the Gospels give us graphic descriptions of what his enemies did in their attempt to destroy him; so we should not be surprised to find that the more his Church strives to display his glory to the world, the more the world will attack it ruthlessly.  So let us not lament, but take heart as we wait for him to return in power, as ‘God’s King in Zion’.

– Bruce Christian