How Different Would Our Lives Be?

Meditations on Christ in the Psalms

January 16, 2023

How Different Would Our Lives Be?

When the Israelites escaped from Egypt—

    when the family of Jacob left that foreign land—

the land of Judah became God’s sanctuary,

    and Israel became his kingdom.

Psalm 114:1-2

Psalm 114 is a celebration of God’s presence with His people, the Israelites.

For almost one thousand years, Israel was blessed with the presence of the LORD in her midst. God’s presence was manifested through Moses when he pleaded with Pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery. After the Israelites were released and crossed through the Red Sea, God was made manifest as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. The Israelites constructed the Ark of the Covenant as a depository for the stone tablets, whereon God had inscribed the Ten Commandments. The Ark represented the presence of God wherever the Israelites traveled. When Solomon built the Temple, the Ark was placed in the Holiest of Holies of the Temple. When the Temple was destroyed in 586 B.C., the abiding presence of God in the midst of Israel was lost. When the Israelites returned to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity, they longed for the coming of God’s Messiah, knowing one of the missions of the Messiah was to restore the presence of God in the Temple.

What has distinguished the people of God from every other form of religion in the world is the actual, abiding presence of the Living God. In Psalm 121, the psalmist asked a rhetorical question, “I look up to the mountains—does my help come from there?” Looking to the mountains was his way of contrasting God with the worshippers of the pagan god Baal, who believed Baal lived in the mountains. The psalmist answers his question with “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth!” (Psalm 121:1-2) The best contrast between Israel’s Living God and Baal, who was worshipped by the Canaanites, is in the great story of Elijah and the Prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:17-40).

Jesus, the Messiah of God, did restore the Temple of God. However, it is no longer a building of stone: “Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). Still today, the followers of Jesus are not distinguished by our church buildings, liturgies, or good deeds. We are distinguished through justification by faith and thus, the presence of the Living God is with us: “For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20).

My Takeaway: How different would our lives, our churches, our worship be if we believed this?

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

 

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com.

 

Copyright © 2023 by Alex M. Knight

 

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.