Psalm 27:13

Psalm 27:13

The goodness of the Lord

     This is a good text to memorise, it’s full of positivity! Forget the “10 steps to thinking positively” and their like, that are promoted by the booksellers, and instead put your trust in the Lord God who keeps His word. What was the “goodness of the Lord” that David hoped to see? 2 Samuel 7 gives us a good idea for in that chapter the king prays to the Lord and give thanks for all that has been done and will be done. There are two dominant themes: - firstly that David’s house and line will be established forever, as the Lord had promised. We know, of course, that this happened, and that Messiah came from the house and lineage of David, for both Mary and Joseph could trace their ancestry back to the great king. It is an intriguing thought that the earthly “parents” of the Lord Jesus might, in different circumstances, have been members of the royal family!

The other promise was that the Lord would build a house for David, knowing that David longed to build a house for the Lord! This house-building project seems to be interchangeable in 2 Samuel 7. David longs to construct a permanent temple in Jerusalem for the Lord God’s dwelling and the Lord says, “I will do it for you, through your son!” If, what we want, is what God wants, it gets done! All of this would happen in the land of the living, in other words, on earth. And as you know, it did! That’s why we have every reason to be positive, for we can pray, “Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”

 This house building needs further thought. God does not dwell in buildings made with hands as we discover in Isaiah 66;1-2, Acts 7:48-50 and Acts 17:24. The whole of creation is His temple, what use are man-made structures? And yet the Lord God gave the precise instructions for the building of the Tabernacle and He conferred with David and Solomon about the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Why? Is it because He knows that we need these things, these spiritual aids, these structures that draw us to Himself? The Lord God is certainly not in competition with the pagan gods and their temples, but He does know the human heart and perhaps it is better for us to have somewhere to worship Him than nowhere? Because we are so feeble, so weak in our faith, too dull in imagination to seek Him everywhere? Somewhere is better than nowhere because we are unable to seek Him everywhere!! Interestingly, there was no temple after the Roman demolition of Jerusalem in AD 70 and for 300 years, followers of Christ managed without specific buildings. But, like David, men needed to build, to have a house for the rituals of their faith to be enacted, to have somewhere tangible in which God could be honoured. So, in the ensuing centuries, in Christian countries, every city, town, village and hamlet constructed buildings for the glory of God. However, the argument still exists today, do we need a dedicated building to worship God or are we content to know him through His Word, through fellowship with others and through the inner dwelling of His Holy Spirit?  The Apostle Paul, as usual, has an answer to the dilemma. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” 1 Corinthians 6:19. We may need to build because of the weakness of our faith, but God still does not need our structures; His chosen dwelling place is our own bodies, dedicated and set apart for Him and for His purposes. These are His true temples. 

 

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