God Loves His People

Go ahead and pray and we'll get into God's Word. Thank you so much for joining me tonight for Coffee and Devotions. This is where every day we get together. We get into God's Word and we grow in our love for the Lord together. In this year, 2021, we'll make it through all the wisdom literature. Tonight we're in Psalm 48, so let's pray and we'll get into God's Word.
We thank you so much, Lord, for this day. We thank you for your love for your people. We thank you for your presence with your people. And we pray, Father, now that as we get into your Word, you would have us with ears to hear, and that you would prepare our hearts and be working in us now to believe.
In Jesus' name, amen. All right, let's go ahead and open up our Bibles to Psalm 48. And here we go. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, In the city of our God, in his holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.
God is in her palaces. He is known as her refuge. For behold, the kings assembled, they passed by together, they saw it, and so they marveled. They were troubled, they hastened away. Fear took hold of them there, and pain. as of a woman in birth pangs, and when you break the ships of Tarshish with an east wind. As we have heard, so we have seen.
In the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God, God will establish it forever. We have thought, O God, on your lovingkindnesses in the midst of your temple. According to your holy name, O God, so is your praise to the ends of the earth. Your right hand is full of righteousness. Like Mount Zion, rejoice. Let the daughters of Judah be glad because of your judgments. Walk about Zion, and go all around her. Count her towers, mark well her bulwarks. Consider her palaces, that you may tell it to the generations following. For this is God, our God forever and ever. He will be our guide, even to death. Well, what a beautiful passage we have for us. We need to kind of ask ourselves, what is this about? We feel maybe a little bit removed from this passage. Why?
Well, unless you're joining me from Jerusalem, you don't live in Jerusalem. You probably don't live in modern-day Israel. And even if you do live in modern-day Israel, you might go up to Jerusalem, and there you're not going to find the temple. There you'll find the temple mount, but the temple's not standing anymore.
But when the sons of Korah are writing, these are the musicians of the temple, the beautiful temple of Solomon's era is there. And this is the priests who are singing this psalm, right? Crying out about how beautiful the temple is. Look at the city. God is so pleased in this city. Why? Because God was dwelling there. Now we know that the temple is gone. We know that that's a sign of God's judgment. We know that Jesus prophesied that this was going to happen and indeed the Romans tore down the temple in 67 AD or 69 AD. But the question is, has God been forsaken his people? Is he still our comfort? Is he still our peace? Well, indeed he is, right?
It's amazing what the New Testament says in Ephesians chapter four. It says that the church is the temple of God, that we are living stones built one upon another with Jesus as the cornerstone and the apostles and the prophets and the evangelists as the foundation stones.
It's a church now. This is why Paul is able to say, right, he's able to say, do you not know that you are the temple of the living God and that the Spirit of God lives in you? Therefore glorify God with your body. The reality is now that God is even closer to us now than he ever was in the temple. and that we are closer to him. We, each and every one of us, are all priests.
Why? Because we are priests, because we are in Christ, and Christ dwells in the Holy of Holies, not made with human hands, but that which is in heaven, and he mediates for us. And so God is still with his people, God still loves his people, and we can sing this song with even more power than the sons of Gorah could. And so these beautiful verses here, the city of the city of the great king god is in her palaces he is known as her refuge we have thought oh god on your loving kindnesses in the midst of your temple for this is god our god forever and ever he will be our guide even to death how beautiful is that that god is our guide even to death even as we go to the grave we can remember the Lord's loving kindness, that even in that valley of the shadow of death, our shepherd is with us, and his rod and his staff, they comfort us.
Well, let's go ahead and pray. Father, we thank you so much that you love your people, so much so that you have made a temple not made with human hands, but Father, you have come and dwelt with us. Lord, we pray that we would look to your love and kindness, and that we would love you with all of our hearts. Father, fill us, and let us cling to you, to our dying breaths. In Jesus' name, amen. May the Lord bless you today. May he give you a great night's sleep, and I'll see you tomorrow morning. Bye.