Psalm 48:8

Psalm 48:8

As we have heard, so we have seen

We are beckoned to stop and reflect here about what we know of the city of the Lord Almighty. Firstly, the song considers what we have heard? In times past the ancestors of Israel had lived out amazing lives that had seen the intervention of the Lord time and time again. The stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the Hebrew slaves, Moses and Aaron, Joshua and the Judges, David and Solomon - all of these men and women and their experiences were told and retold in families and in the community, endlessly. Now, when the pilgrims came to Jerusalem and saw the Holy Mountain and the Temple and the priests and the sacred place, they saw the fulfilment of God’s purposes for their nation and they knew who they were.

When a congregation of God’s people meet today, surely we should be retelling the stories of what we have heard and what we have seen? Surely, we should be encouraging one another with accounts of the Lord’s intervention and His blessing in our lives? For we are His temple, the ancient ceremonies are still being enacted as we take the bread and wine, or we baptise a new believer. We have the Holy Spirit and as we come together the Lord God means us to have experiences of Him that embellish all that we have heard of Him and His ways. Our “what we have heard so we have seen” give us the faith to know that we are in a safe citadel with our fellow believers and with God. Hebrews puts it far better than I could. “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly,  to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” Hebrews 12:22-24.

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