Construction or Destruction - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2026

Lift up Your feet to the perpetual desolations. The enemy has damaged everything in the sanctuary. Your enemies roar in the midst of Your meeting place; they set up their banners for signs. They seem like men who lift up axes among the thick trees. And now they break down its carved work, all at once, with axes and hammers.
Psalm 74:3–6

Construction or Destruction
In Psalm 74, we have a complaint of Asaph concerning the destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar. He tells us that at one time a man was accounted famous for going to Lebanon and, with an axe, hewing down trees, and with a hammer shaping them for the ornamentation of the temple. He used destructive weapons in the right way, for you will remember that, in the construction of the temple, neither of these tools was used in the house itself. We learn from this psalm that they were used outside the house in order to secure material for its construction. There have been famous men in our own day who, by the gospel, cut men down from their lofty places in this world, and were thus instrumental in producing spiritual material for the house of God. But Asaph goes on to say that the axes and hammers were now being used inside the temple, not outside, and the skilled work of others was being destroyed.

It is much easier to drive people out than to get them in. I have had the sad experience of seeing men active in sowing discord in the gatherings, and as a consequence people have been driven away. How much more blessed would it have been to labor in seeking men’s conversion, and helping them in view of their becoming material to beautify the house of God. Is it to be said of any one of us that we have driven people away, and have not been active in seeking to get them in? Destruction or construction—which is true of us?

George Davison