the Third Week after Easter
Click to donate today!
Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
THE CHARGE TO THE TEMPLE WATCHERS
Behold, bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord, which by night stand in the House of the Lord! Lift up your hands to the Sanctuary, and bless ye the Lord. The Lord bless thee out of Zion, even He that made heaven and earth. - Psalms 134:1-3
Figure to yourself the band of white-robed priests gathered in the court of the Temple, their flashing torches touching pillar and angle with strange light, the city sunk in silence and sleep - and ere they part to their posts the chant rung in their ears:
"Behold! bless ye the Lord,
All ye servants of the Lord,
Who by night stand in the House of the Lord,
Lift up your hands to the Sanctuary,
And bless the Lord."
The priests’ duty is to praise. It is because they are the servants of the Lord that, therefore, it is their business to bless the Lord. It is because they stand in the House of the Lord that it is theirs to bless the Lord. They who are gathered into His House, they who hold communion with Him, they who can feel that the gate of the Father’s dwelling, like the gate of the Father’s heart, is always open to them, they who have been called in from their wanderings in a homeless wilderness, and given a place and a name in His House better than of sons and daughters, have been so blessed in order that, filled with thanksgiving for such an entrance into God’s dwelling and of such an adoption into His family, their silent lips may be filled with thanksgiving and their redeemed hands be uplifted in praise. So for us Christians. We are servants of the Lord - His priests. That we "stand in the House of the Lord" expresses not only the fact of our great privilege of confiding approach to Him and communion with Him, whereby we may ever abide in the very Holy of Holies, and be in the secret place of the Most High, even while we are busy in the world; but it also points to our duty of ministering - for the word "stand" is employed to designate the attendance of the priests in their office, and is almost equivalent to " serve." The purpose of that full horn of plenty, charged with blessings which God has emptied upon our heads, is that our dumb lips may be touched into thankfulness, because our selfish hearts have been wooed and charmed into love and life.
The rabbis had a saying that there were two sorts of angels: the angels that served, and the angels that praised; of which, according to their teaching, the latter were the higher in degree. It was only a half-truth, for true service is praise. But whatever the form in which praise may come, whether it be in the form of vocal thanksgiving, or whether it be the glad surrender of the heart, manifested in the conscious discharge of the most trivial duties; whether we lift up our hands in the Sanctuary, and " bless the Lord " with them, or whether we turn our hands to the tools of our daily occupation and handle them for His sake; - alike we may be praising Him. And the thing for us to remember is that the place where we, if we are Christians, stand, and the character which we, if we are Christians, sustain, bind us to live blessing and praising Him whilst we live.
'Music For The Soul' daily readings for a year from the writings of the Rev. Alexander Maclaren, D.D., selected and arranged by the Rev. Geo. Coates, published by A.C. Armstrong and Son, 51 East Tenth Street, (1897). The original text is in the Public Domain and this electronic version is free for anyone without cost or obligation. This a year long daily devotional was written by the Rev. Alexander Maclaren over 100 years ago. This Scottish pastor had a heart to follow Jesus and a love for souls.
