Daily Meditations

Psalm 74:11 Why no action? As we have commented before, the right hand of God symbolises power, authority and also salvation. It is the hand of action and leadership. The one who stands at the right hand is raised up in status, to “sit at the right hand” speaks of equal status! Thus, Jesus was raised up and sat down at the right hand of God.  When Asaph longs for God to act he asks,  “Why do You hold back Your hand, Your right hand?” Our psalm writer then gets a bit cheeky! He doesn’t just ask for God to act in power, he accuses the Lord of hiding His hand in the folds of His garment! In other words, God is resting His hand, He’s not even ready for action.  There are those who believe that we have no right to ask anything of God, that we must simply trust and obey, and take the consequences. God works to a divinely appointed plan, therefore we must accept all that happens without complaint and believe that “ all things work together for good.”  There is certainly som...

Psalm 74:10 God has a plan Well, we could consider our writer to be somewhat impatient!  “How long will the enemy mock you, God? Will the foe revile your name forever?”   The captivity in Babylon was spread over a period of 70 years, that’s up to three generations of people. Little children were now asking their grandparents what life had been like in the Promised Land! So, maybe it wasn’t impatience, maybe there was good reason to believe that the captivity was never going to end. We could read this verse another way and suppose it to be a kind of goad. You know, the moment when you slyly suggest to your friend in the playground that the mockery of the school bully has gone on long enough.  In other words, “Are you going to do something about it?” Is God going to stand up to those sneering Babylonians and if so, when? Or, this verse could simply be a tired and woeful admission that we can’t put up with it anymore. “You are God. We know You are patient and that ...

Psalm 74:9 No signs from God This verse gives us three reasons for spiritual hope and encourages us to understand what it is like when these three things are withdrawn.  The first reason for hope is when we experience signs from God. These can be varied; obviously miracles are signs from God. Answers to prayer. Circumstances that suddenly remind us that someone bigger is in control. Chance encounters that we later realise were meant to be. Prophetic words of guidance and encouragement. Moments of joy and peace under the shadow of His wings. Israel had none of these. Their enslavement in Babylon was accompanied by silence from heaven. They cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?” The second cause of hope is the word of the prophets. This does not necessarily involve inspiring predictions about the future. Prophet here means anyone who is hearing what God is saying, anyone who is receiving a word from heaven – even a word of chastisement! But for Israel there is nothing, th...

Psalm 74:8 The price of unbelief The wholesale destruction of the holy things, mentioned in verses 6-7, was not just confined to Jerusalem. Wherever and at whatever place God was worshipped in the land of Israel, the Babylonians destroyed it. This was the Promised Land. There were places devoted to the worship of the one, true God, places that bore His name. But the wave of terror swept across the land until nothing remained, the soldiers of Babylon were intent on crushing the Israelites completely. And then they took the people captive and marched them off, en masse, to Babylon.  This must have been a time of dreadful suffering, terror and humiliation for the Jews. Where was the God who had brought them to the Land? Where was the One who had protected and guarded them? Why was He allowing this calamitous chapter in their history? Would they ever return to their land? Isaiah, the prophet describes the history of the people prior to captivity against the backdrop of the Assyrian Emp...

Psalm 74:6-7 The dwelling place of Your name So, Solomon built the temple and completed it. He lined its interior walls with cedar boards, panelling them from the floor of the temple to the ceiling, and covered the floor of the temple with planks of juniper. He partitioned off twenty cubits at the rear of the temple with cedar boards from floor to ceiling to form within the temple an inner sanctuary, the Most Holy Place. The main hall in front of this room was forty cubits long. The inside of the temple was cedar, carved with gourds and open flowers. Everything was cedar; no stone was to be seen.”   1 Kings 6:14-18. (A cubit was about 457mm or 18 inches and was meant to be the average distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger.)  Verses 6-7 of Psalm 74 describe the destruction of all that Solomon had made. In came the Babylonian hatchet men with their axes and all that the Lord God had designed was smashed to piece...

Psalm 74:4-5 Babylonian brutality The next verses of the Psalm are painful indeed. They describe the Babylonian destruction of Temple in Jerusalem, and Asaph must have felt deep anger, and sorrow, as he recalled these events. The Babylonian soldiers did not enter the courts quietly, they roared with triumph as they smashed their way into the Holy Place, swinging their swords and spears like men who are cutting their way through a bramble thicket. This was no ordered destruction, it was furious, barbaric and brutal. The eyes of the destroyers glinted with elation as they smashed the holy objects and tore up the sacred coverings. They piled up those objects that had material value and salivated over the prospect of getting rich at Israel’s expense.  Where the altar of incense and the menorah had stood were empty spaces. Inside the Holy of Holies was an empty space too, for the Ark of the Covenant was removed and taken to Babylon, never to be seen again. Instead of the familiar object...