The Tabernacle of David
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Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way, which obviously includes 42. I’m your host, Bryan Broome, and I’m joined today by Greg Uttinger and Emily Maxson.
Last week we discussed the death of Saul and the impending coronation of David, and today we’re discussing the arrival of the ark by David’s hand to Jerusalem. Greg, why don’t you start us off.
The ark of the covenant levels mountains, shoots electric…no, that’s a movie. The ark of the covenant had been more or less the focus of the Mosaic covenant. It’s God’s footstool. He would be enthroned above it on the wings of the cherubim and in the midst of the praises of Israel. But toward the end of the period of the judges, the children of Israel had decided it would function like some kind of magical attack device and had taken it into battle against the Philistines and had promptly lost it. The ark and God himself had gone into captivity amongst the Philistines, taking Israel’s punishment upon himself, the punishment of exile.
Once in Philistine territory, God had waged war against their gods and returned on a cart, because that’s how the Philistines sent it back in desperation. The cart carrying the ark came to some random place in some random corner of Israel and people showed it disrespect. They committed sacrilege. They looked in it. Apparently at this time, this was also when the pot of manna and Aaron’s rod must have been taken out, because there’s no other record of anyone else ever moving that stuff, and this was the one time it was open. This was altogether bad, and God plagued his own people, so they decided to palm it off on a nearby Gibeonite city, Kiriath-jearim.
The Gideonites were Canaanites. What are they doing here? Shouldn’t they have been exterminated? Yeah, ideally, theoretically, possibly, but these Canaanites had come in disguise to Joshua and all Israel at the time of the conquest and pretended to be from very far away. They had put on old clothes and taken old food and old horses and whatever else they had done, and convinced Israel, who forgot to check with God, that they were from very far away and they had come because of God’s name, and Israel basically signed a non-aggression pact with them. They then suddenly discovered, “Wait, you guys live just over the corner there. What’s this all about?”
“Sounds good to us,” and so they were. They had become Levitical servants, serving some of them with the tabernacle, and other Levitical cities or near them, and this had been a thing.
So when God’s people feel the holiness of God pressing upon them a bit too much, they take this ark, which should be the thing that ties the whole Mosaic covenant together, and they do not send it back to the tabernacle where it belongs. It never goes back to the tabernacle. They send it to Kiriath-jearim to the Gibeonites, and it stays there for a long time.
Just within the first text, which is 1 Samuel 7:2, it was there at least 20 years, but that’s just 20 years until the revival led by Samuel. Then there was more time after that, during which Samuel continued, then all of Saul’s 40-year reign, and now at least 7 years by David, plus a bit. So it’s been sitting in this Gentile town for a long, long time, and God’s people have been apparently just fine with that.
David has now come to the throne and he’s taken Jerusalem, the old city of Melchizedek, and he’s understood probably by divine revelation that this is where his capital should be and that this is where God wants the ark to be. See Psalm 132 in this context, where he describes a bit of his seeking out a place for the ark of the covenant. It says that God desires Zion.
Zion was this little crag of a mountain in the middle of Jerusalem where David would build his palace, and David decides that his palace is there and therefore God’s palace should be there. He’s going to bring God’s throne or footstool there first. In a moment of great rejoicing after his coronation, everybody says, “That’s a great idea. Let’s do that,” so they all get excited and they’re having this big revival meeting, as it were, and David says –
And let us bring again the ark of our God to us, for we inquired not at it in the days of Saul. And all the congregation said that they would do so, for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people.
So David gathered all Israel together, from Shihor of Egypt even unto the entering of Hemath, to bring the ark of God from Kirjathjearim. And David went up, and all Israel, to Baalah, that is to Kirjathjearim, which belonged to Judah, to bring up thence the ark of God the LORD, that dwelleth between the cherubims, whose name is called on it. And they carried the ark of God in a new cart…
Uh-oh. See, the Philistines had transported the ark of the covenant when they wanted it to go away. They attached it to some milk cows and said “shoo” and trusted that if this was really a God-thing that God’s providence would lead them home, and it had. So somehow David and the Levites get the idea, “Hey, that’s faster than carrying it the way we’re supposed to. Let’s do that.” In other words, “Let’s find out how the pagans worship, because it’s more efficient and more effective. It’ll speed things up. Let’s adopt their technology for worship.”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with carts. Israel used carts. There are places for carts. This was not one of them. The prescription of the law was that when the ark was transported, there were little loops on the corners of the ark that staves went through, and you lifted up the ark with these staves or sticks. There were one or two guys in front, one or two guys in back, and they carried the ark on their shoulders. That’s how it was supposed to be done. That’s not how Israel was doing it.
People are not noticing this because everyone was so excited that this thing is from the Lord. It’s a thing that needs to be done. It’s a great thing. Everybody agrees this is what God wants, and no one seems to notice, “Uh, guys, you’re not doing it the way God said.”
And David and all Israel played before God with all their might and with singing and with harps and with psalteries, and with timbrels and with cymbals and with trumpets.
That’s something new. We have a slight use of musical instruments in the past. The only ones that were ordained in the law was the blowing of trumpets over the sacrifices to lift them up to God, so there was an idea there but there wasn’t any explicit provision for it. We can think of after the Red Sea crossing and defeat of the Egyptians, the women go out with basically tambourines, and it’s mentioned in Judges when Deborah sings her song that Barak seems to be there doing some kind of accompaniment. So Israel certainly had musical instruments and they were not afraid to use them in some forms of worship, but God had never made a big deal over it.
But David of course is a musician. He’s a psalm writer and plays the harp himself. He may have played other instruments, so this seems a great time to celebrate with music. There’s nothing here where God suggests, “Wait. That’s wrong.”
Throughout all of this, when the issue is “Are you worshiping God right?” no one criticizes the music. God never says, “Oh, and by the way, that music stuff? Where’d you get that idea?” No, this seems to be exactly right, and David seems to be moved by the Spirit to understand that this is appropriate. We’ll see more music as we go along. But carrying it on a cart is still an issue. Verse 9 says –
And when they came unto the threshing floor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the ark, for the oxen stumbled.
Here’s the situation. They’re going along. They’re going to a threshing floor. Threshing floors have a lot of significance in scripture because they’re a place where you thresh things out. They’re symbolically appointed for decision making. Israel is God’s threshing floor. Jesus comes to his threshing floor, John the Baptist says. So here’s a point of decision, and something goes wrong. The ox had stumbled or tripped or something happens, to the point that the cart is shaking.
Uzza, who’s a Levite and whose job it probably was to carry the thing and instead he’s riding the cart, sees the ark start to totter and tip and, with what few seconds of time he has, he thinks, “If this thing falls it’s just a box. It’s got heavy stone tablets in it. It’s likely to break.
“Moses had a pair of these tablets and he broke them pretty easily by throwing them down. This would be horrible – not simply historically or archeologically or esthetically, but this is the covenant document. If the tables break, this could amount to tearing up the covenant with God. Even failing that, if just the box breaks, this is God’s footstool and the cherubim are his throne. This is really bad. Surely God would not mind if I just touched it a little to steady it, because it would be bad for it to break,” and it would be bad for it to break, no doubt.
How to carry it carefully. I’ve got to push back on that a little bit. Couldn’t it just have been instinctive even, like when you see something out of the corner of your eye and it’s falling over so you reach out to catch it?
Sure. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that he actually thought about this. Could it be pure instinct? Of course it could. “I purely instinctively committed sacrilege.” I don’t think that helps. I’m kind of giving him the benefit of the doubt in saying he had a second to process it and took his chances. If not, that was stupid beyond believe.
You blindly reach out and touch something holy, when God has said it carries the death penalty because you’re in a position that you’re so casual that you’re not even thinking what’s going on? I’m sorry, that’s no improvement. But whatever happens, he does put his hand out. He does stop it from falling, so so far so good. But it says –
And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzza and he smote him, because he put his hand to the ark, and there he died before God.
God’s presence went with the ark. God was there by his special presence, by sacramental presence with the ark, and God killed him. This was not that he didn’t know. The law contains specific instructions about how to transport the thing, but the law also here and there contained warnings about touching the holy things. In fact, one of the jobs of the Levites was to protect the holy things so people didn’t touch them.
In fact, the ark isn’t even supposed to be out in the open. Anytime it was carried it was supposed to be covered with the cloths of the tabernacle, so he was supposed to know this. When God gives you a job, you’re supposed to read the user’s manual so you can be competent with it. Sometimes you maybe don’t have a lot of time to read all the manuals if it’s a field promotion, but the Levites hadn’t had anything to do for a long time. They should have known. They should have been paying attention.
I think too that’s something that people forget when they bring this us up as like a criticism of God or anything. “Well, he was just trying to help. He was just being helpful, a Good Samaritan. Isn’t that what Jesus talks about?”
The problem with that – and this is a detail I’d even forgotten or completely missed – is that he’s a Levite. He is, for lack of a better modern analog, a preacher and he’s supposed to be held to a higher standard of what the law says to do.
Right. It’d be akin to saying, “Well, he thought he was doing the right thing,” in some kind of misguided defense of somebody embezzling funds from a church fund. You are held to a higher standard, or to bring it into something at least more similar it’s like, “Well, he thought what he was doing was right as he was teaching heresy to his congregants, based on his misunderstanding of scripture.”
I doubt he had any ill will. I think he had the best of intentions, even if they were instinctive intentions. “Oh, protect the thing so it doesn’t fall and break,” but he wasn’t supposed to do that. It was presumption, and God judged him by the standard that God had set for him.
David was displeased because the LORD had made a breach upon Uzza, wherefore that place is called Perezuzza to this day. And David was afraid of God that day saying, How shall I bring the ark of God home to me?
Sometimes even great godly men, if they’re leaders of a movement, see the goal so close, “Just three steps and we’re there. This is what everything has been leading to. This is God on the move,” and ignore the fact, as you say, that it involves some dishonest handling of funds, or it involves putting someone on the platform with me who’s actually not trinitarian in his theology, or all the things we might do that we can justify because we’re so close.
In the history of the Church, and perhaps a bit personally, I have known men who have been so strongly motivated by the cause, and certainly in political circles all the time, that the cause justifies this. Sometimes you talk to them and it’s like they can’t even hear or process. “But no, the cause! You’re talking trivialities. We’re almost there. Let’s just do this and get it done.” But God is not pragmatic. God is holy.
We’re talking here about, “You want to come into my presence, and yet you disregard the standards I’ve set for being in my presence. This is not going to work well.” So Israel, Judah and David, they need a wake-up call.
The question of course is ironic. “How shall I bring the ark of God home to me?” How about the way God said? But David’s not there.
Also you’re not bringing the ark home to you. You’re bringing the ark home to God and his presence, in the place that he said the ark should dwell.
God has been in charge of where the ark has been this entire time. It doesn’t need to be brought somewhere.
“You know, God really hasn’t been doing a good job at keeping this where it’s supposed to be, and I’m going to fix that.” Hmm.
So David brought not the ark home to himself to the city of David, but carried it aside into the house of Obededom the Gittite. And the ark of God remained with the family of Obededom in his house three months. And the LORD blessed the house of Obededom, and all that he had.
Oh yeah. These ironies are just over-abundant here. “Let’s just park it at this house over here.”
What? Apparently the man was a believer, perhaps a God-fearer, perhaps a circumcised member of Israel now. We’re not told a whole lot, but we find out something more about him later. Something happens to him.
We’re not told what it means that God blessed his house. In three months, what exactly can happen? His wife and all of the married daughters get pregnant? He makes a million dollars in the stock market? We don’t know what it means. It was something very visible where people said, “Whoa, that is visible.” Apparently he was a godly man already and no doubt prospered in God’s service, but God did something that was really, really visible. And Obededom did nothing, one assumes, except not touch the ark – a very passive kind of obedience. “Okay everybody see that? Don’t go near it. Draw the curtain.”
“No, just stay away from it. Go about your business. We have stuff to do. We’ve got a lump. We’re not priests. We’re not Levites. We’re barely Israelites, so just leave the thing alone,” and for three months it just sits there, and the house is blessed.
Eventually in the Chronicles account some other things happen during that time, but Samuel moves a little more directly to the conclusion. David eventually hears about this, and during that time he’s had time to think it over. This is 1 Chronicles 15 –
And David made him houses in the city of David and prepared a place for the ark of God and pitched for it a tent.
Then David said, None ought to carry the ark of God but the Levites, for them hath the LORD chosen to carry the ark of God and to minister unto him forever. And David gathered all Israel together to Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the LORD unto his place which he had prepared for it. And David assembled the children of Aaron and the Levites. Of the sons of Kohath…
And there’s a list of all kinds of Levites from the various divisions of the tribe, and who was who.
Ye are the chief of the fathers of the Levites. Sanctify yourselves, both ye and your brethren, that ye may bring up the ark of the LORD God of Israel unto the place that I have prepared for it. For because ye did it not at the first, the LORD our God made a breach upon us, for that we sought him not after the due order.
There’s a prescribed order for coming to God in worship. Now, under the gospel it’s much simpler than it was in Israel. Israel was sometimes rather complicated. Certain people had to do certain things at certain times in certain ways with certain items.
With us it has an awful lot to do with preaching the gospel in purity and humbly listening and then responding with praise and prayer. We don’t have the strict liturgies that the Old Testament had, although we do have patterns for a reasonable and logical approach in how to conduct our services. It’s not nearly as tight, but God is even more tight about, “and you will not commit heresy while you’re preaching the gospel.”
That’s where the overwhelming weight of Paul’s warnings, the writer of Hebrews, Peter and James come down on John. “And while you’re doing this don’t pollute the gospel message, because that’s how God presents himself to us in the new covenant.” Anyway, there is an order in the old covenant. In the new covenant there’s a due order. We don’t get to make up how we come to God. We don’t get to think, “What would God like?”
From Abel forward they didn’t think, “I wonder what God likes. You know what? God would like a dead animal. Everyone likes dead animals. Let’s get God a dead animal.” That’s not how that came about.
I actually knew a pastor who said something very much like that. He said that since there was no prescribed sacrificial rules in Genesis 3 and 4, and we shouldn’t add to scripture by inserting any or imagining any, obviously Abel just came up with the idea himself.
That’s also not in scripture. I was just reading earlier today about the covenant of works and how people object to the idea of a covenant of works because the word covenant doesn’t show up in Genesis 1-3. It’s like, “You’re right about the terminology not being there, but is the substance there?” and it seems very clear that it is.
Anyway, this time they’re going to do it right. They’re going to actually obey God when it comes to worship and not follow their imaginations or insert current technology where some other form has already been appointed.
God tells us to come together as his people, and together as his people in any room hear from the voice of a living man the lively preaching of the Word and the confessions that direct us in worship.
Are there other ways to communicate gospel thoughts and words than that? Of course there are. You can telegraph them. You can send smoke signals. You can play it on the radio, and there may be times and places when all of those things are valid, but that’s not the way that God wants to be worshiped on the Lord’s day by his people, except in the most extreme of circumstances.
The fact that we may have a technology that speeds things up and makes it more comfortable for us, and is more trendy because everyone’s doing it, does not validate that kind of worship or that attempt to create something that’s worship.
Exactly. As I say, there may be exceptions. If the whole congregation is literally in bed sick and no one can come – this can happen. That really can happen, and in some churches I think in the last year it has happened where everybody’s sick. Okay, that’s a great time to communicate in other ways, but that’s normative, and this was not normative.
Because the people thought they knew better than God, God got very upset with them. Well, now they got it right. We’re going to seek God after the new order. So the Levites and priests do what they were told. They sanctified themselves.
And the children of the Levites bare the ark of God upon their shoulders with the staves thereon, as Moses commanded according to the word of the LORD. And David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be the singers with instruments of music, psalteries and harps and cymbals, sounding, by lifting up the voice with joy. So the Levites appointed…
…and we’re given a bunch of names and some of their instruments. They were to sound with cymbals of brass and psalteries and harps. We’re told who the instructor in all this music was. But a name that keeps coming up among these people is Obededom. Now, what?
So David, and the elders of Israel, and the captains over thousands, went to bring up the ark of the covenant of the LORD out of the house of Obededom with joy. And it came to pass, when God helped the Levites that bare the ark of the covenant of the LORD, that they offered seven bullocks and seven rams.
It’s almost like they’re surprised that God is being so good to them. “If you’d done it right the first time…”
We’ll come back to this in a second, but Obededom shows up both in the list of Levites, and yet he’s there, and when we’re done he’s given a particular title. He becomes a doorkeeper to the ark of the Lord.
Now, it’s possible there are two Obededoms, but there’s no distinction made. The only hint would be that one’s a Levite and the other’s a Gittite, so they’re obviously different, but you see the last chapter of Leviticus makes provision for how anybody can become a Levite by offering proper sacrifices and giving the proper entry fee.
You have to also wonder why a Levite would be named Obededom. It’s kind of odd.
By the way, Obed is a Hebrew word that means servant or slave. Obededom and Jehiah were doorkeepers for the ark, so let’s just hold onto that.
Here’s an amazing thing. David had just said in no uncertain terms, “We must seek God after the due order. We mayest not innovate in worship, so let’s learn how to sing and play musical instruments and introduce cymbals and psalteries and all that right now.”
Apparently not. Apparently there was some small precedent for it, and now David says, “And it’s time to really push that,” and God is not upset with it.
While there hadn’t been prescription for musical instruments in the liturgies or the feasts that we’ve been given, didn’t God point out one specific family for instruments earlier in Exodus or something. Maybe I’m making stuff up.
In Exodus it was pointed out those who were good at making stuff in general. And of course Miriam and the women went out with tambourines. You mentioned the feast days. During the Feast of Trumpets, trumpets of various sorts were allowed and encouraged and in fact were part of the ritual, so there was that.
I thought there were those skilled in musical instruments, but I guess this is what I was thinking of.
Yeah, and this is one of the things that becomes a big deal here. There was no prohibition in the Mosaic covenant or earlier against musical worship or singing, and we know that one of the psalms at least Moses wrote, Psalm 90. The title says “A psalm of Moses, the man of God.” And there’s Deborah’s song, and there’s a song of the words of the Lord at the crossing of the Red Sea, and there was a song in the desert when they were digging water, “Spring up, oh well.”
But this is a time when that thing for which there was some most certainly divinely-given precedent suddenly just mushrooms into this big thing here, and it will survive into Solomon’s temple. But it’s not born with Solomon’s temple, it’s born here. The reason I’m making a big deal about this we can clear up in a little bit.
And David was clothed with a robe of fine linen, and all the Levites that bare the ark, and the singers, and Chenaniah the master of the song with the singers. David also had upon him an ephod of linen. Thus all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the LORD with shouting, and with sound of the cornet, and with trumpets, and with cymbals, making a noise with psalteries and harps.
This is the occasion – and Chronicles doesn’t really spend any time with it – that Michal looks out and despises David’s enthusiasm in worship, and it costs her being the mother of the heir of the throne. But we skip over that in chapter 16.
So they brought the ark of God and set it in the midst of the tent that David had pitched for it, and they offered burnt sacrifices and peace offerings before God.
And when David had made an end of offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD.
They have this big feast, and again we get a name of the people who were there doing the music.
And he appointed certain of the Levites to minister before the ark of the LORD [that is, they became permanently assigned there] to record and to thank and praise the Lord God of Israel.
Chief among them is Asaph, and as you read through the Psalms you will see Asaph as the author of many of the Psalms. Again there are psalteries, harps, cymbals, and trumpets continually before the ark of the covenant of God.
Then on that day David delivered first this psalm to thank the LORD into the hand of Asaph and his brethren.
Then we have a psalm that appears in various forms in the book of Psalms, but it’s here too. What’s significant is this psalm was written to be played and sung by these people with these musical instruments. Again, this is kind of a liturgical revolution.
I haven’t read everything here, but in some of these texts these guys are called prophets. They’re prophesying with cymbals and with music. It’s not that God is sitting there saying, “What are they doing now?” God is inspiring them to write the psalms and to play the music and to prophesy by means of these things.
As David writes this, he rehearses the history of Israel. I’m not going to read the whole thing, but some of the things we get near the end are interesting. He sings these kinds of things –
Give unto the LORD, ye kindreds of the people, give unto the LORD glory and strength.
Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name. Bring an offering and come before him. Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.
Fear before him, all the earth. The world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice and let men say among the nations, The LORD reigneth.
Let the sea roar and the fulness thereof. Let the fields rejoice, and all that is therein.
Then shall the trees of the wood sing out at the presence of the LORD, because he cometh to judge the earth.
O give thanks unto the LORD for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever.
And say ye, Save us, O God of our salvation, and gather us together, and deliver us from the heathen, that we may give thanks to thy holy name, and glory in thy praise.
Blessed be the LORD God of Israel for ever and ever. And all the people said, Amen, and praised the LORD.
Did you notice ‘the nations’ and ‘the earth’ and ‘the world’? There is an emphasis here, as there is throughout the Davidic covenant, which is what we talk about next time, not simply about Israel surviving, enduring, or militarily conquering her neighbors, that little corner of the world we call Palestine, but there is a great deal here and throughout the book of Psalms about the nations, about the Gentiles. God is coming to not only rescue his people, but to call the Gentiles to come and worship at his footstool. So that’s a huge background here.
At this point we’ll talk about some things that happen from here on out. David wants to do the next step and make a more permanent palace for the Lord, and God tells him through Nathan, “No, you’re not the one. This is not the time. Good idea, but not you.” Nathan the prophet prophesies, “You want to make God a house? No. God’s going to make you a house. He’s going to give you seed and he’s going to reign forever,” and we’ll talk more about what that means next time.
When David hears this he goes in before the Lord and sits down. Now, that is incredibly huge because the one piece of furniture that did not exist in the tabernacle was a chair. The priests were never done with their work since it was typical of what Jesus would do, so they never ever sat down. The priests never rested. They went home at the end of the day and rested in their houses, but not in the tabernacle. It was a site of perpetual work, so there was no place to sit. The only person enthroned in the tabernacle was God himself.
But now David as an adopted son of God by this covenant comes and sits down at the right hand of his Father, and he isn’t struck dead with lightning. God receives him and we’re not told there was an intervening sacrifice or mediating priests. This adopted son of God goes right into the presence of his Father and sits down as one enthroned and talks to God, while all about him there are choirs singing and people with musical instruments praising God.
First, that’s really cool. Secondly, this thing called the tabernacle of David doesn’t get a lot of press from here on out, but note that it is on Mount Zion, and when Solomon builds his temple it’s not on Mount Zion, it’s on Mount Moriah, which is like next door. But as we read through the psalms and through Isaiah and the other prophets, as we speak more and more about the coming of Messiah’s kingdom and about God’s greatness and what God is going to do for his people, the name that comes up again and again associated with God’s presence, his kingdom, his power, and Israel’s future is never Moriah, it’s Zion.
There are lots and lots of people who have sung songs about Zion in church. “Zion, city of our God. We’re marching to Zion,” and so on.
The writer of Hebrews says, “You are come unto Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” And in Revelation, the 144,000 are standing on Mount Zion with the lamb. That becomes the symbol of God’s kingdom, of Messiah’s kingdom, of Messiah’s coming, and Moriah as a name fades into the background. And yet the temple was on Moriah, so what happens?
Well, when the temple is built, the ark and that worship kind of just moves over and plants itself – God plants it – in this new temple. It’s as if Mount Zion moved and went over there, because whenever we talk about the temple and the prophets talk about the temple, they say it’s on Zion – geographically incorrect, covenantally exactly right, which means we maybe should look a little bit at this.
In the last chapter of Amos, after many prophecies of judgement and destruction, God says, “But wait. There’s going to be a time when I’m going to turn all this around.” In Amos 9:11 he says –
In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen and close up the breaches thereof, and I will raise up his ruins and I will build it as in the days of old. That they may possess the remnant of Edom and of all the heathen which are called by my name, saith the LORD that doeth this.
Yes. I was going to go on but we’re going to stop there. If you’re a good Jew your first reading is going to be, “Well, so that old way of worship, God’s going to revive that. The temple was a lot nicer. That’s what Ezekiel talked about. What is Amos going on about? Oh, we are going to possess our enemies – Edom and all of the heathen. That means military conquest, right? What do you mean they’re called by God’s name? What? Since when are the heathen called by God’s name? What is this talking about? I don’t know.” He goes on –
Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed, and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.
And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof. They shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.
So it sounds like the restoration period. Israel is coming back from captivity and God’s blessings are going to be so abundant that before you’re done sowing the crop – you’re sowing it, it’s growing, it’s springing and it’s producing fruit – it’s already being harvested while you’re still sowing.
The hills are just pouring down wine and milk and all this other stuff, and everybody has their land and everybody is comfortable and safe and excited. And in these days, Israel will possess the heathen who are called by his name. That’s how the book ends. There’s no further mention of it until Acts 15.
This is the Council of Jerusalem. A simple background – Paul and Barnabas had gotten into an argument with certain Judaizers, Jews who thought that to be a good Christian you had to become a good Jew first. You had to be circumcised and keep the Mosaic dietary laws and such, and they fought them on this. In their minds this is justification by faith at stake. This is the gospel at stake. “Trust in Jesus and do something else – no, that’s not it.”
The thing is finally is appealed up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders who were there, and after a long debate – this one is obvious, guys, what’s your problem here? – well, 1400 years of doing it one way is the problem. Tradition is very strong.
“You mean God’s asking us to change everything we’ve done? Old time religion, it’s good enough for Moses.”
So Paul has to argue, and Barnabas. Peter has to explain yet again – this is like the fourth time – how God had first used him to open the gospel door to the Gentiles. Finally after that, then Paul and Barnabas come back and declare all the miracles that they’ve wrought among the Gentiles, that is God has supernaturally sealed their ministry with signs and wonders, just like the prophets.
Everybody is being quiet and saying, “Hmm, hmm,” and James (the Lord’s half-brother) says –
Men and brethren, hearken unto me. Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name.
He’s referring back to how Peter had described him going to Cornelius and preaching the gospel, and God poured out the Holy Spirit. He baptized them with the Holy Spirit and then Peter baptized them with water because, you know, obvious here.
James is saying, “This is not something that came out of nowhere. This is what God said he would do. We just missed it for 1500 years.” He says prophet(s) so he’s just quoting one as a sample. He may at the time have quoted others, but the one that’s recorded for us is Amos.
After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down, and I will build again the ruins thereof and I will set it up, that the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.
Possessing the Gentiles turns into the Gentiles calling upon God, and James has no sense that he is distorting the text. He’s simply saying, “This is what it meant. We should have seen it.”
Israel is going to possess the Gentiles not by military conquest but by evangelizing them and incorporating them into God’s kingdom. And when that happens, the worship will not be the elaborate worship of the tabernacle, or later of Solomon’s temple. It’s going to be that simple worship of the tabernacle of David, where we can come into the presence of God and sit in God’s presence. You notice when we go to church we sit down? When we eat the Lord’s Supper we sit down? Jesus invited us to his table, not to stand there but to sit there and to eat with him and eat with one another in his presence.
And because this is where the whole explosion of musical instruments and singing started, presumably then this also carries over, that this is where we have authorization for using musical instruments in church worship, because church worship is like the tabernacle of David. Now, it carried over also to Solomon’s temple, but it started in the tabernacle of David.
Also, Gentiles. Remember Obededom? A Gentile apparently becoming a Levite. Now all of God’s people are going to be Levites in the sense that they will all have access to God. They will all be priests and kings to God. They will all have direct access to God through Christ, and it will be a much simpler, and in some ways yet more beautiful kind of worship, being adorned by music that lifts up God.
The Levites lifted the ark up, in a physical sense lifted God up and exalted him. Now we get to do something that’s as great and greater by singing God’s praises and lifting him up publicly in the midst of the congregation. We’re back to, “Thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.”
Where is God? He’s in our praises. He’s in our songs. When we sing his Word then God is there and God is in our midst, and it’s okay to have musical instruments to do that with, although there are some Presbyterian bodies that demur from that.
Those particular Presbyterian bodies – I love them, and I just want to preface that before I completely disagree with them. It has never made sense to me that when the fullness of the gospel came, that suddenly we would lose an aspect that contributes to the richness of the praise.
God is a God of beauty and he does find pleasure in a cappella voices as well, but it doesn’t track in my mind that God would say, “Now this thing that’s really beautiful, we’re going to take it out now because it was Jewish. It was Mosaic only and now it’s gone because Christ has come.” It does not track for me personally.
Along with that goes the exclusive psalmody discussion. It seems odd that God would not want us to sing about Jesus by name, or that he would have us sing, “Praise the Lord with harp and lyre” while not actually using any harps or lyres. It’s like maybe we’ve lost something if we’re so hung up on using the exact words, which aren’t the exact words but a paraphrase to make it metrical in English, while not actually obeying the words.
Of course, one of the retorts is, “Well, it also says to bring to sacrifices.”
There is this fine point of at what point do we allow metaphorical language to enter the psalms. I am extremely uncomfortable when a pastor says, “Come let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker,” and we all stand up.
We have to be careful, obviously, and I think everyone probably agrees with this, that some of the language can legitimately be transferred through New Testament images, because the apostles do it all the time. Paul says, “I’m poured out like a drink offering,” and “Present your bodies a living sacrifice.” We have ample justification for that, but for some of the other things we need a little more proof than just a blanket assertion that these things aren’t allowed anymore.
Is there any verse or any passage or argument in scripture that says that the human voice was for a time supplanted by musical instruments but now God has restored that? Do we not rather see in the book of Revelation, both in heaven and on Mount Zion, that we have the saints using musical instruments.
Yeah, and? Can you produce something that says, “and that’s all they are”? There’s an incense altar in Revelation, so maybe you can find an argument that way, but you need to make it. You can’t simply assume it.
The New Testament, unfortunately for a lot of us, is rather short on information because it assumes we’ve mastered the Old Testament and doesn’t really feel it needs to repeat a lot of stuff. And, of course, the emphasis is simpler in the new covenant, for which we owe God thanks. If you’ve just planted a missionary church in some obscure corner of the world and they hardly have two nickels to rub together, you can’t really expect them to have a cathedral or even necessarily a guitar.
If all they have are warm human voices and they get together under a tree, God is completely satisfied and happy, as long as it’s around the gospel. So on the one hand worship can be very simple and there’s nothing wrong with that.
On the other, to say that something that God put a huge stamp of approval on and that is echoed as being basic to New Testament worship – in fact, it’s an emblem of New Testament worship, the tabernacle of David that God restores, not Solomon’s temple, not the tabernacle of Moses, but the tabernacle of David is the symbol – it came with musical instruments. It came with sitting down in the presence of God. It came with immediate access to God. Which of those are you going to slice out? It came with Gentiles becoming Christians, becoming believers.
Not to end on a note of argument, I think the basic thing we’re going to walk away with is just a great deal of joy and excitement for the pure simplicity and beauty of gospel worship, and how it is not Gnostic. It involves the whole man. We get to get in there with our voices, even those of us who don’t sing very well, and those who maybe don’t sing but can play musical instruments or have a sense of rhythm or can only bang together some cymbals – I’m sorry, I’m sure that’s a great art, I just don’t know anything about it – but we all can participate. We can all celebrate God and it can be a big loud beautiful thing, and it doesn’t have to be something where we bow down and contain everything within our insides. It can be an external thing.
We’re not Eastern mystics, where worship is sitting with ourselves and looking inward.
Yeah, we’re not bowing into our navels. There was one heretical group in the East way back in the early Church that focused on the navel because it was the center of man’s spiritual being. They were called the navel worshipers. I believe their leader has a feast in the Eastern church now.
Again, let’s end on the positive note that it’s okay to go sing. It’s to go play musical instruments. Here’s the side effect – when worship includes music, the whole culture will, and the whole culture will be touched by worship. Not everything has to be a worship song, but if you learn how to play the piano, people are going to grab you outside of worship situations and say, “Hey, we want to sing! Come play the piano for us,” and you probably will, unless you’re a teenage boy who doesn’t want to play music in praise band because you’re too cool. But they’ll grow up and get a little more mature. “My mom gave me music lessons for some reason. I guess this is it.”
You get out there and start playing music, and music flows out into the entire culture. This is a wonderful and beautiful thing that we need to thank God for, not push it into the corner with embarrassment.
I think that’s a good place to wrap up. Thank you so much for the discussion. Let’s move on to recommendations.
I do. I recommend kombucha. I’ve not been drinking alcohol for the last several months, for reasons that may be obvious, but I really enjoy interesting beverages. The first trimester and not being able to drink coffee because it turned my stomach, that was a real rough time. Anyway, kombucha is great. It’s very interesting and it’s supposed to be exceedingly good for you, so there’s that. It does at first taste like it’s exceedingly good for you.
I haven’t tried making it myself. I’m not quite that crunchy, but the brand that I have settled on and enjoy is Brew Doctor. I tried one a couple years ago called Health-Ade. The coffee shop where I worked sold that brand and I honestly didn’t enjoy any of them. Try different kombuchas. They’re good. Put some slices of fresh fruit and it’s as good as a cocktail when you can’t have cocktails.
I found out very early on into my relationship with my now-wife that she loves kombucha. I know her favorite brand. I know what it looks like. I can’t remember the name off-hand, but if I go to the store I know what it looks like, so I can surprise her sometimes. I don’t like it that much personally.
I have a question, which maybe you two might have answers for because I don’t. It just seems that at certain times within certain circles, particularly Christian ones, things that my generation never heard of, suddenly everybody knows and likes and talks about, like kombucha. I know how it entered it our experience. First of all, our pastor showed us some brewing in his refrigerator and it was disgusting beyond words.
But then before too long my girls were picking it up from their Slavic friends and now are becoming connoisseurs of the thing, and then here you are recommending it. Suddenly everybody knows about this stuff. So my question is not so much about this, but is there a transmission belt here or is it just sudden intuitive experience that we all at once all decide that this new thing is great? Is it being transmitted from one denomination or Christian tradition to another? Any thoughts about that or is that just speculation?
I feel like it’s mass marketing. It’s the same thing with alternative milks. Oat milk is all the sudden available at every grocery store, where a few years ago it was a complete specialty.
The same with cashew milk ice cream and what not. I would feel like it would hang on the marketing industrial complex.
I definitely think it has something to do, especially more recently with more things that flare into popularity, especially social media like Tik-Tok is huge. Remember last year? Actually, I was on the train before it was a Tik-Tok trend and I’m still on it, when sea shanties were a thing.
Oh yes. My girls have been doing sea shanties of late. I didn’t know they were a thing. I thought it was just them. In fact, they came home from work today singing a sea shanty.
It was a huge thing. Everyone was doing it last year, like in June or something like that, so I’m not sure what the reason is for your daughters doing it now, but it’s great.
They’re the last to jump on trends. Usually they’re the first, but I don’t know. “Weigh, Hey, and Up She Rises” – who is she there?
I just realized that it’s not a submarine, so I wasn’t sure. Anyway, I’m going to recommend, because I did this last Sunday, holding babies. Holding babies is a good thing. When my eldest daughter was first born I was very frightened because I’d seen all the TV sitcom things about new dads holding babies and how they always screw it up and hurt children.
My wife reassured me and so she gave me Emily to hold on many occasions, and a couple times when she wasn’t in the room I dropped Emily and let her kind of fall on my lap.
Emily was fine afterwards. She didn’t even cry particularly, so I found out that it wasn’t this big technical thing where you have to do it just right and you have to be trained and licensed and all that. Just be careful and don’t be stupid and don’t do anything too terribly violent. Babies are very resilient. If you love them and are careful with them they’re not going to break. Some babies really like to be held.
Our friends, Emily and Jacob, have a little baby and apparently she likes me, at least well enough to let me hold her for a very long time.
Does she? I didn’t know that. Anyway, so that was really neat. What was interesting to me though was the people who walked by and said, “You’re holding a baby?” What made it ironic was that two of my daughters were standing within like 6’ of me, and not just that but also holding babies. Moms in our church were just giving babies away to be held and I got this one, and I was just fine with the baby. I think there’s the humanizing factor – “He can hold babies? Wow.”
“He’s not just a fancy elder beyond the rest of us. He can hold babies, too.”
Yes, I too have a minor dose of this super power, but I think there are other more compelling reasons that have to do with humanity and learning to love children and not thinking too highly of yourself as well, because things can happen, like the child can mess all over you or throw up all over you.
In this case, the child suddenly decided to throw her head back real fast. I had her just fine, but when she did that it scared her and so she started going into cry mode. I tried to comfort her but was unsuccessful and had to give her back to mom. Okay, we’re all human. Rather than saying, “We all put our pants on one leg at a time,” we all hold babies and sooner or later they cry. It’s okay. Hold a baby today. Take some weight off of mom.
I was listening today to an interview with Jordan Peterson, who was talking to a man about the role of fathers in the house – a really good interview. If we ever do show notes again I’ll put a link to it.
He talked about when he and his wife first had kids and he was very scared. His wife was ready to have kids and he was a little bit hesitant. He was like, “Okay, here’s the deal. Let’s have these babies and you take care of them for the first two years and I’ll take care of you. That’s the deal.”
It was entertaining. There was a lot of good to come out of that perspective, of that’s kind of what dads can do at that point, but also you do learn to like the kids.
I understand the priority of taking care of your wife who is recovering, and I did a lot of that. I remember making my wife a lot of different foods to help get her back on her feet and produce milk and all that kind of thing, bringing her lots of strawberries and mushrooms and such. But you know what? While she’s down somebody has to watch the baby. That’s part of taking care of your wife.
My wife needed lots of sleep. I got really good with my Emily. She would wind up to cry and I would hear that from the other room. I would roll out of bed, run around our bed and down the hallway, dive underneath her crib, come up with her pacifier and stick it in her mouth! I was really fast, and I managed to do it without waking Kate up, which was kind of a necessary thing then. Emily had that blue binky forever. She called it her ba-ba.
I have four things to recommend, because this was a very good week for recommendation-worthy things. First is a food, which is possibly also something that everyone has at once decided is a popular thing now, and that is lentils. They are high in protein.
They’re very cheap. I was very happy with that when we went shopping and picked them up. We also picked up a new Instant Pot pressure cooker, so we made an Indian lentil soup/stew thing that was phenomenal. I was surprised it didn’t have meat in it, it was that good. I was like, “This doesn’t have meat! I’m amazed.” So lentils, if you’re interested in healthy eating. They’re very tasty.
We also made Ethiopian-style chicken. One of my wife’s friends is Ethiopian and she came over on Sunday night and helped cook. Berbere chicken is the name of it. Berbere is very heavy on paprika and it’s delicious, so that’s the first thing.
The second thing is a movie and that is Knives Out directed by Rian Johnson. I only mention it because in the past week the director put on his Twitter a short clip from the sequel that’s coming out later this year and I’m so excited because the first one was so good.
He’s got his vibe as a love letter to mystery novels and mystery adaptations, so very heavy on the Poirot references and more than one kind of sly reference to the Clue movie, as there ought to be, so I’m very excited to see what he does with the second one.
The main character is sort of this Southern gentleman who goes by the name of Benoit Blanc and he speaks in a very inaccurate Southern stereotype accent. It’s played by Daniel Craig, who loves the role.
It’s phenomenal. Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc – I want eight more. I’m so glad there’s a sequel because I’m going to ask for seven more sequels.
I’m pretty sure they’re booked for two more sequels already, but the second one is coming out this year. So that’s the second thing.
The third thing is an activity and that is working out, because that is something I did not really focus on too much in my life until I got married and needed to stay alive longer. It also sucks. Working out when you haven’t worked out for a while sucks, but we went two nights this week.
The first night we were like, “Alright, we’re doing it! We’re excited,” and afterwards we were like, “We are sore and we are tired.” The second night was like, “I don’t even know if we want to go,” and I said, “We always feel better after we go,” and then we felt better after we went and it was great.
The fourth thing is a book, which all of you have read and probably a sizeable chunk of our listeners have also read, Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis, which I have just started reading aloud to my wife. The third book is the one I’m most familiar with and the one that I believe is the piéce de resistance of the space trilogy that Lewis wrote, but Out of the Silent Planet is also very good and I’m excited to read through it because I think the last time I read through it myself was in high school at Cornerstone.
Those are my recommendations. Go forth, ye listeners who heedeth and enjoy.
With that, we’ll wrap up. Thanks to both of you for joining me for this conversation. It was a pleasure.
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