Psalm 48
November 30, 2025 O Lord, your dwelling place is a deep source of deep admiration, appreciation, and joy. Your dwelling place is secure. Your dwelling protects your people. Your dwelling was no match for your enemies. Truly, your dwelling place is beautiful, worth praising, worth singing about. Thank you for this psalm that does that.
Beautiful was your dwelling place under the old covenant: Jerusalem, Mount Zion, the temple of old. Together with the psalmist, we revel in this tour of ramparts, towers, and citadels—granular expressions of your protection of your people, your defeat of your enemies. You were your people’s fortress and your people’s praise. Your unfailing love, your righteousness, your justice found expression in the beloved city and temple.
How the beauty of your dwelling has been enhanced and sharpened and brought into brilliant focus as we consider it from the standpoint of the new covenant under which we live. Your dwelling took astonishing shape in Jesus Christ, the new temple, Emmanuel, God with us, whose advent into this world we especially celebrate in this season of the year. Your dwelling came amazingly near in the gift of your Holy Spirit, who dwells in each of us, our bodies—remarkably—his temples. And the beauty of your dwelling is present right here, right now, if we have eyes to see it, in your gathered church, the collective temple of the Holy Spirit. And with our eyes to the future, we await the age to come, when the heavenly Jerusalem will be united with earth and we enjoy your presence up close as our ultimate temple.
How priceless, Lord, is the blessing of your presence with us! How amazing that you desire to be near your people, and your nearness today is nothing less than the indwelling Christ through your indwelling Spirit. With the psalmist we can say, how beautiful! What a joy this is! What protection we have with our God so near! What victories you have won over the world, the flesh, the devil, and sin and death through the life, death, and resurrection of the Christ who is in our midst!
May we, too, meditate on your unfailing love that has brought all this about. May we turn from our unbelieving fears, worries, and anxieties, and be renewed in our felt security in you. May we turn from being distracted and subverted by lesser beauty and be renewed in reveling in your presence above all else.
May we share the psalmist’s grasp of your worthiness to be worshiped all around the world. May we work toward the goal of every people group on the planet embracing the good news that God has come near in Jesus Christ and seeks worshipers among whom he may dwell. To that end we pray for our global partners in ministry, that you would prosper their work. We pray that the good news will come with power to the peoples of North Africa, southeast Asia, east Asia, and all the language groups who have yet to possess your written Word. We pray also for the persons who are near to us, in our spheres of life and influence. Through our actions and our words may many come to embrace, in Jesus Christ, your amazing desire to dwell with them.
This morning we pray also for the persecuted church around the world. We think especially of our brothers and sisters in Christ in Nigeria who are suffering for their faith. Protect them, deliver them, sustain them, shine through them. May they know your nearness amid their griefs. Have mercy on their persecutors.
Finally, Lord, as the psalmist exhorts us to tell the next generation about all these marvelous realities, we pray for the young ones who are dear to us: children, grandchildren, the youngsters in Explorers, the youth in the Edge. May we tell them. May we tell them well. May they have ears to hear and hearts to embrace with joy the beauty of your dwelling place near to us.
We pray because of Jesus Christ our Lord—Emmanuel, God with us—and all God’s people said, “Amen!”