Psalms of Sennacherib’s Siege #3: Great is the Lord

I. Introduction
A. Our next series is on hospitality and it begins next week. We have one more week to think about the Sennacherib incident, and bring all that we’ve learned together in Psalm 48.
B. We started these Sennacherib sermons by shouting at this wall over here, pretending it was the wall of Jerusalem.
1. But boy have times changed! Thanks to Gainesville Theatre’s upcoming show Camelot we now have an elegant and authentic-looking stone wall to end our series on.
2. And that’s really cool because Psalm 48 is all about admiring the city walls of Jerusalem.
C. Now there’s nothing in the Bible that tells us that Psalm 48 is connected with the Sennacherib story, but I think it will become obvious as we go through the psalm how well the two fit together.
1. “Now there is one event, and only one, in Jewish history, which corresponds, point for point, to these details [in Psalm 48]—the crushing destruction of the Assyrian army under Sennacherib.” {MacLaren, A. (2009). Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms 1–49 (p. 352).}
II. Psalm 48
A. Our series started in the same location as it now ends: just outside the city walls of Jerusalem.
1. At first it was the Assyrian field commander standing there shouting his threats to the people up on the wall of the city.
2. But now that God has delivered the city and put His hook in the nose of King Sennacherib and sent the Assyrians back to Nineveh (Is.37:29), the psalmist is walking around outside the city walls contemplating the great God who came to rescue His people and His city.
B. 1-2 “Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised in the city of our God! His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King.”
1. Footnotes
a. The great king is God Himself: Jesus interprets it this way in Matt.5:35.
b. The word meaning “far north” was an idiom used of the heavenly places.
2. One of the striking things here is the strong connection between the glory of God and the glory of the city of Jerusalem.
a. This sounds strange in our ears. Jesus changed things: John 4:20-24. So, we don’t think about holy places and holy buildings like the OT believers did.
3. But if we’re going to understand a lot of the Bible, we’ve got to understand the way they thought about Jerusalem and its temple.
4. “The Jew’s glory in Jerusalem was a different thing altogether from the Roman’s pride in Rome.” {MacLaren, A. (2009). Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms 1–49 (p. 353).}
5. The city was indeed beautiful. And things look especially beautiful when they’ve been threatened. It was beautiful in its setting; it was beautiful in its architecture. But for OT Jewish believers, the one and only thing that gave Jerusalem its glory was the fact that God lived there. In those days, God had an address.
6. It began when God delivered His people from Egypt and protected them from pharaoh’s chariots and led them through the wilderness in the form of a glory cloud.
a. After the Red Sea, He led them to Mount Sinai, and gave them the 10 commandments, and four chapters of elaborations on them: This is who I am and how I want you to live. And what was the next thing God said to His people? Six chapters of details about the construction and management of the tabernacle. The tabernacle was eventually replaced by a temple, but they were essentially the same.
7. Now a temple is a house for a god. But the temple of Israel was the only temple in the world in which a God actually lived: in the form of the glory cloud.
8. God led David to set apart Jerusalem as His holy city, where God Himself would dwell: God’s hometown.
9. After the Israelites had settled into the city of Jerusalem, David wanted to build a temple for the Lord. God said no, BUT promised David a son who would build the temple, and reign on the throne of Israel forever.
10. David’s son Solomon did build the temple, the same temple that stood in the days of Hezekiah and Sennacherib. When the construction was completed, they had a big grand opening celebration and the glory cloud moved in while the people watched in awe: 2Chron.5:2-14.
11. And now in the days of King Hezekiah, just when the city looked like it was going to be ruined and God’s people overrun, God stepped in and intervened.
12. It’s no wonder the psalmist is worshiping God and admiring the beauty of Jerusalem at the same time! It’s no wonder the psalmist calls Jerusalem “The joy of the whole earth” (Ps.48:2).
C. 3 “Within her citadels God has made himself known as a fortress.”
1. This is where God showed Himself to be our fortress.
2. Just when it looked like the fortified city of Jerusalem was not going to hold, God stepped up and became a mighty fortress, didn’t He?
3. Then the psalmist begins to recount the story...
D. 4 “For behold, the kings assembled; they came on together.”
1. Remember how the Assyrian army, aided by the armies of the lands they’ve already conquered, came against Jerusalem. Remember how cocky and boastful they were!
2. But that’s when God spoke up: “The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.” – Psalm 46:6.
3. “And the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.” – Isaiah 37:36
E. 5-7 “As soon as they saw it, they were astounded; they were in panic; they took to flight. Trembling took hold of them there, anguish as of a woman in labor. By the east wind you shattered the ships of Tarshish.”
1. Before an arrow was shot, before a siege mound was built, God sent His angel.
2. And when morning came, there were all those bodies, and they were struck with panic and ran home to Nineveh. V.5-6 “As soon as they saw it, they were astounded; they were in panic; they took to flight. Trembling took hold of them there, anguish as of a woman in labor.”
3. The Lord shattered the Assyrians like a ship is shattered by a great storm. (A big chunk of the Spanish Armada was famously destroyed by a terrible storm in 1588 and this verse was written on the medal which was made to commemorate the event. “The Lord blew on them and they were shattered.”)
F. 8 “As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God, which God will establish forever.”
1. We heard all the promises of God’s deliverance to our fathers in the days of old (remember Ps.44:1). We heard the promises of the prophet Isaiah that God would protect us. But now we’ve seen with our own eyes right here in this city how the Lord intervenes on behalf of the city where He dwells.
G. 9 “We have thought on your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of your temple.”
1. The people of Jerusalem have gathered together in the temple to worship the Lord, to contemplate the manifestation of His steadfast love, to praise the great God greatly.
H. 10 “As your name, O God, so your praise reaches to the ends of the earth. Your right hand is filled with righteousness.”
1. By doing great acts of righteousness God is in the business of spreading His praise to the ends of the earth. It’s all about worship! God does what He does for the praise of His glory.
I. 11 “Let Mount Zion be glad! Let the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments!”
1. I imagine the psalmist shouting out the first two lines as he looks up at the walls of the city.
J. 12-13a “Walk about Zion, go around her, number her towers, consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels,”
1. I love this! The psalmist is taking a stroll around the walls of the city looking up at its glory (v.12-13) and admiring what God preserved.
K. 13b-14 “that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever.”
1. It’s not enough to enjoy God’s blessings. When God blesses you like this, you have a responsibility to pass it along to bless others. Others need to hear the story. Your children need to hear the story. You need to pass it along.
2. Others need to know about our God. Others need us to point to His mighty works and say, “This is our God!”
3. Part of God’s purpose for His mighty works is to help us and other people trust Him the next time we’re in trouble.
4. This scene before us tells us what our God is like. This is Him – right here! And He will take care of us like this for the rest of our lives. In other words, this is designed to help us trust Him in the future!
5. It is not enough to just know what God did. We need to consider it and survey it, we need to stroll through the story, we need to examine the scene.
6. We’re the recipients of the blessings of this story because people passed this story along. This wasn't just for those around at the time. It was for us too!
III. Application
A. Don’t we have a great God! Doesn’t He do great things for His people! Is He not worthy of being trusted? Is He not worthy of being loved? Is He not worthy of being worshiped?
B. Take time to give attention to what God has done. Don't take it lightly. Attribute to it the attention and the weight it deserves.
1. Take a walk around the place of crisis, the places of deliverance and divine intervention and thank God for what He did.
2. Don’t just breathe a sigh of relief when God comes through for you. Stop and have a worship service. Stop and give Him the praise He deserves.
C. There is something a little strange in v.8 I didn’t mention earlier: “As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God, which God will establish forever.”
1. There is a promise here that God will establish the city of Jerusalem forever.
2. And yet, just over 100 years later, in the days of Hezekiah’s great-grandsons, God did allow the city of Jerusalem to be utterly destroyed and lay in ruins for 100 years.
3. Did the One who cannot lie break His promise?
4. The only good solution is that this promise can’t refer merely to the ancient city of Jerusalem. As in many other cases, God’s OT promise was fulfilled in NT realities, and His city is us, His people (Gal.4:26; Heb.12:22).
5. Ultimately the Son of David who was to build a temple and reign on David’s throne forever was Jesus!
6. The NT says that we are Jerusalem and we are God’s temple! The church is the New Jerusalem! When you come to Christ, “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” – Hebrews 12:22
7. Some say there is no temple today, but the fact is, we are the temple of God: “You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” 1Peter 2:5
8. All the connection we see in Psalm 48 between God and Jerusalem now exists between God and His people, between God and His church.
9. The church is the joy of the whole earth. Why? Because it is the city, the house, the people of God. In the OT, the temple and the city of Jerusalem were the earthen vessel containing the Treasure of Treasures. But now we are the earthen vessels that contain the Treasure (2Cor.4:7).
10. The only thing which makes us special is the fact that Jesus is here. He is the glory of His people and He is their Savior.
11. But the new temple and the new Jerusalem don’t contain the glory cloud. For God has now manifested Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. One day we will see Him face to face, but today through His Spirit the God-man is with us and in us, filling us with the fullness of God (Eph.3:19).