Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but endures forever. (Psalm 125:1)
Zion appears 176 times in Scripture, and in most cases it is spoken of in the most glowing of terms. Six times it is called the “holy hill” (Ps 2:6, 3:4, 15:1, 43:3, 99:9), and rightly so, for ten times the Bible tells us that the Lord dwells there (Ps 9:11, 76:2, 132:13, 135:21; Is 8:18, 33:5; Joel 3:17, 21; Zech 2:10, 8:3). In the mind of the psalmist Mount Zion is more than just one of many mountains; it is the mountain, and it is exalted above all other mountains. It is “beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth,” and it is “the city of the great King,”Yahweh (Ps 48:2). The prophets of Israel referred to it as “the mountain of the house of the Lord” (Is 2:2-3; Mic 4:1-2), and they declared that it . . .
. . . shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above all hills; and peoples
shall flow to it. Many nations shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the
Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; he will teach us his ways, and we shall walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion the law shall go forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Micah 4:1-2)
But what blows my mind about Mount Zion is that it is the City of David: Jerusalem! When David waxes eloquent about Mount Zion and elevates it in his mind and with his words above every other location on earth, he is not speaking of a fantasy land that he hopes to one day discover; David is speaking of his own place, his own house, his own city!
David says, the place where I live; that is the dwelling place of God, and that is the joy of the whole earth, and that is the elevated place – the exalted place! God established me here and he laughs at every attempt of the nations to rage against his anointed one!
One of the problems with contemporary Christianity is that we love to prophesy about where we are going, about the good land that the Lord will one day take us into. But we need to start prophesying about where we are! How bout you get on your knees today and say, Lord, my body is your temple; it is your dwelling place, and you indwell it by your Spirit. And rivers of living water are flowing from it, and they have the power to make the lame walk and the blind see!
Start making your boast in the Lord today, and allow him to remove the blinders from your eyes so that you stop longing for a better time and a better place and realize that right now, right where you are, in the midst of whatever you are going through, you are the dwelling place of God, the city of the great King, and the joy of the whole earth! This is why the psalmist says Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion. If you can get this in your spirit today, it will set you free from the oppression of your fantasies. Instead of fantasizing about where you’re going, you’ll start boasting about where you are!
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What hit you this morning as your read this devotion?
