...they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason...they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.”
—Acts 17:5b, 6b, 7
The Psalms are a wonderful preventive medication against the turmoil of a world gone mad, a world that seems to make every effort to imitate the brokenness and rejection of guidance that the Lord called Jeremiah to cry out against. If I'm honest, the Psalms are a wonderful antidote to my tendency to despair at the grief pouring out of the pages of Jeremiah, combined with dismay at so much of the daily news.
Not to mention the (anti-)social media posts that intrude when trying to check up on family and friends. Angry messages that leave me feeling as though I'm standing on Main Street in Thessalonica.
The self-seekers criticized in the Psalms are very much like that mob that was willing to attack Jason for no crime other than hospitality. Blessed are those who are reviled and persecuted and slandered for being the Lord's people. I am humbled by the faith of Paul and Silas, who continued to put their trust in the Lord instead of letting the threats of the mobs silence them. The disciples, first at Thessalonica and then at Berea, understood the urgency of removing Paul from the path of the beast.
They did not try to reason with the mob, because a mob has a mouth and fists but no mind. And no heart.
The song we call Psalm 146 praises the Lord whose heart hurts for the oppressed and the weakest. And the courage and work of Paul and and Silas and their co-workers praises the Lord who also was hounded by mobs and whose heart was pierced to give life to His people, who acknowledge Him as King.
Fret Not
Fret not yourself because of evildoers;
be not envious of wrongdoers!
—Psalm 37:1
Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
...
Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed,
who gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the sojourners;
he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
—Psalm 146:3-9
...they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason...they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.”
—Acts 17:5b, 6b, 7
The Psalms are a wonderful preventive medication against the turmoil of a world gone mad, a world that seems to make every effort to imitate the brokenness and rejection of guidance that the Lord called Jeremiah to cry out against. If I'm honest, the Psalms are a wonderful antidote to my tendency to despair at the grief pouring out of the pages of Jeremiah, combined with dismay at so much of the daily news.
Not to mention the (anti-)social media posts that intrude when trying to check up on family and friends. Angry messages that leave me feeling as though I'm standing on Main Street in Thessalonica.
The self-seekers criticized in the Psalms are very much like that mob that was willing to attack Jason for no crime other than hospitality. Blessed are those who are reviled and persecuted and slandered for being the Lord's people. I am humbled by the faith of Paul and Silas, who continued to put their trust in the Lord instead of letting the threats of the mobs silence them. The disciples, first at Thessalonica and then at Berea, understood the urgency of removing Paul from the path of the beast.
They did not try to reason with the mob, because a mob has a mouth and fists but no mind. And no heart.
The song we call Psalm 146 praises the Lord whose heart hurts for the oppressed and the weakest. And the courage and work of Paul and and Silas and their co-workers praises the Lord who also was hounded by mobs and whose heart was pierced to give life to His people, who acknowledge Him as King.