SHARE:  

Note: You can also find Matt's Weekly Devotional on our website.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2025

“Walk about Zion, go all around it, count its towers, consider well its ramparts; go through its citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever.

He will be our guide forever.” –– Psalm 48:12-14


“Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” –– John 2:19-22


They say it was a cigarette or an electrical short circuit, but history has shown us repeatedly that tiny embers can stoke mighty flames. Contemporary wildfires in the West; the 17th Century inferno in London; the massive 19th Century Chicago Fire; the Lahaina blaze –– They all shared humble origins –– a campsite, a bakery on Pudding Lane, poor ol’ Mrs. O’Leary’s barn whether or not the cow was involved, or a spark landing on a patch of roadside weeds. Run a spent match under the faucet or the remains of your candlestick may be on the front page of every news website from Weddington to Yokohama.


A cigarette or an electrical short circuit, it is hard to believe something so minor could spread so fast that within an hour and a half, people all across the globe were gasping in horror as the venerable steeple of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris collapsed. The cathedral, built in the 12th Century, had survived coups, wars, and centuries of wear and tear. To see the charcoal remains of the magnificent and architecturally brilliant roof strewn across the nave’s floor was sobering, particularly so when considering that most of those timbers had held forth for over 900 years, making the reign of Napoleon nothing more than a blip on a timeline. Recently, I saw a clip of home restorers marveling at a cellar’s 17th Century wooden staircase in Salem, Massachusetts. Notre Dame contains offering envelopes older than that. If you lined up all the kings, queens, presidents, fuhrers, popes, and cultural luminaries who had walked down the aisle of that sanctuary and invited them to a mass there, only a small fraction of them would get in. Yet, the fire exposed that even the venerable are vulnerable.


“Walk about Zion, go all around it, count its towers, consider well its ramparts; go through its citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever.” Here, the psalmist refers to the fortress of Jerusalem to convey the unassailable strength and eternal Lordship of God. While we believe the psalmist was right about God, we also know the psalmist was naively optimistic about Jerusalem. Like the roof of Notre Dame, Jerusalem’s towers, ramparts, and citadels would fall not once, but twice, destroyed by the armies of Babylon in the 6th Century BCE and the forces of Rome in the 1st Century CE. Even the most ingenious architect and the most meticulous builder cannot guarantee the permanence of the structure they build. When Jerusalem’s walls came tumbling down, did that mean the God they praised was also vulnerable to attack, susceptible to the elements, or prone to decay? Of course, not. That’s why Jesus was intent to convert the people’s idolization of the Temple into the worship of God alone. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” We reserve all worship for our Triune God alone. All else is impermanent and can offer but fleeting comfort. A building, a car, a salary, a trophy –– These offer little solace for loneliness, estrangement, crisis, or injury. The prophet Habakkuk is fairly blunt, “What profit is an idol when its maker has shaped it, a metal image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes speechless idols!” 


We worship, not a building that decays, a singer whose voice will fail, a body that deteriorates, or even a steeple that is felled by the last embers of a cigarette. We worship a God who is, who was, and whoever more shall be, from whose love not even death can separate us –– “We look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”(2 Corinthians 4:18) 

Grace and Peace,

Matt  


STAY CONNECTED

Visit our Website
Facebook  Instagram


LIVE STREAMING WORSHIP

SUNDAYS, 10:10 A.M.


ON WWW.SMPCHOME.ORG, THE BOXCAST APP ON YOUR TV, AND FACEBOOK LIVE.



Streaming.jpg
Join our mailing list!