A City Under Siege

 

Tuesday, June 7, 2022

How great is the Lord, how deserving of praise, in the city of our God, which sits on his holy mountain!  It is high and magnificent; the whole earth rejoices to see it!  Mount Zion, the holy mountain, is the city of the great King!  God himself is in Jerusalem’s towers, revealing himself as its defender.  The kings of the earth joined forces and advanced against the city.  But when they saw it, they were stunned; they were terrified and ran away.  They were gripped with terror and writhed in pain like a woman in labor.  You destroyed them like the mighty ships of Tarshish shattered by a powerful east wind.  We had heard of the city’s glory, but now we have seen it ourselves—the city of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.  It is the city of our God; he will make it safe forever. 

Psalm 48:1-8

The Psalmist recounts how the people of Jerusalem in that generation (seven centuries before the birth of Jesus) had only heard how powerful their God had acted in the past, delivering the children of Israel from many disasters.  Now they needed to know – needed to see that power with their own eyes.  The Assyrians and their allies were camped outside the gates of God’s holy city, and the outlook was bleak.  Then God revealed Himself to the enemy as the city’s defender, and the mighty army ran like a rabbit being chased by a hungry lion.

Talk is cheap; so goes the old saying.  It’s true, and particularly so, when there are no fact-checkers around to hold the talker accountable.  On the flip side is that which is priceless – demonstration, the enfleshment of promises or claims. 

The legendary boxer, Muhammad Ali[1] was known for boasting about his superiority over his opponents in the ring.  He once stated flatly (and loudly) I am the greatest!  When asked by a reporter why he would brag so boldly, he replied:  It isn’t bragging if you can back it up.

That is what the Assyrians found out.  It is also what the residents of Jerusalem found out.  Before that moment when the Assyrian army fled like a bunch of field mice in an elephant stampede, they’d only heard of God’s greatness.  Now they saw the mighty power of God with their own eyes.

For You Today

You might see or hear a hundred claims to greatness today, everything from a laundry detergent that will get your clothes cleaner than any other, to a politician who is going to solve everything that’s wrong with our country.  Every commercial on TV or a billboard is bought as an investment to bolster those claims.  In the end, it’s merely boasting. 

You will make a lot of judgment calls in your life about what is boasting, and what is true.  Sometimes you’ll get it wrong, and sometimes you’ll get it right.  Those decisions about which laundry detergent, or who should get your vote, are minor blips on the radar.  The vital life decisions center on whom you will trust to show up when the city’s under siege.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road with Jesus; have a blessed day!  

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] Image courtesy of Wikipedia.com