Then David ordered all the leaders of Israel to help his son Solomon. – 1 Chronicles 22:17

Today’s Scripture Reading (June 30, 2016): 1 Chronicles 22

Football is back. Okay, it is the Canadian variety with an extra player on each side, a longer and wider field and a rouge or single point, but it is football. (And sorry, I am not talking about soccer. An oblong ball that is thrown, carried and only occasionally kicked with the foot.) It seems like it has been a long time since I saw the game played (and that would have been the American variety in the Super Bowl in February). As I sat down to watch my first game of the new season, I asked myself why I have come to love the game so much. Maybe some might argue it is the typical North American need for violence, but I am really not sure that that is it. I love the intricate teamwork of the game. Yes, it is a physical, hard-hitting game. But when it is played right, it is also a delicate dance. Every person on the field has an important job to do. No one on the field is redundant. As with any sport, stars are important, but one dominant player cannot dominate a football game. Football is teamwork at its best. It is a great description of the way that life is supposed to work – and the way that the church is supposed to operate. Just like you can’t live life on your own, you can’t play football all by yourself either.

David understood the lesson about life. Historically, we remember King Solomon. The son of David is known for a lot of things. He was wise. He was rich. He had many wives and relationships and he was an influence on the world around him. He inherited a stable empire from his father. But none of that was enough if Solomon was to accomplish his finest achievement – the building of the Temple in Jerusalem. Dad wanted to build it, but God had said no. And so Dad made the plans and gathered the materials to give his son a head start. And he made sure that Solomon had the beginnings of the team he needed to get the job done. These were men that David trusted, and he knew that they would serve Solomon well.

Nothing has changed. Whatever the task, if it is worth doing, then it is worth doing together. The church has never been an individual pursuit. It is a people, a fellowship, a congregation, and a team. We are the new Temple – and our pursuit of God is something that we do – together.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Chronicles 23

And God sent an angel to destroy Jerusalem. But as the angel was doing so, the LORD saw it and relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was destroying the people, “Enough! Withdraw your hand.” The angel of the LORD was then standing at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. – 1 Chronicles 21:15

Today’s Scripture Reading (June 29, 2016): 1 Chronicles 21

It would be easy to suggest that, maybe, the Temple in Jerusalem should be built somewhere other than on Temple Mount. After all, churches move all the time. But that suggestion misses the importance of Temple Mount, a place that many hold to be Mount Moriah of the Hebrew Bible. To understand the importance of Temple Mount in Jerusalem, you have to understand the story. It is not just a piece of real estate in the Old City of Jerusalem – and it is the story that makes it important.

The story of Mount Moriah begins with that travels of a father and son riding away from home to make a sacrifice to their God. The father was Abraham and the son was Isaac. And what Abraham knew, and what Isaac didn’t know, was that God had instructed Abraham to sacrifice his only son as a way of proving his trust in his God. It must have been the worst camping trip in history. But just as Abraham was about to sacrifice his only son on a crude altar he had built for his God, God stopped him. A ram was found caught in a thicket close by, and it was the ram that lost its life that day, and not Isaac. The Mountain, Mount Moriah, became the place that death stopped. It was a place of life and joy because Isaac lived and went home. I can’t imagine the depth of despair as Abraham went up on the mountain to carry out the sacrifice. And I can’t imagine the height of joy as Abraham and Isaac both came off of the mountain alive.

Time passes, the children of Abraham and Isaac eventually leave the area. The nation of Israel which sprang from the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was not born in Canaan, but rather in slavery in Egypt. But, eventually, they escape their slavery and they come back. The land is inhabited by different peoples who have built cities that did not exist when Jacob and his sons had left the land. Mount Moriah still existed, but it existed within the walls of the city of Jebus, the home of the Jebusites. We know Jebus by a different name, Jerusalem. David conquerors the city of Jerusalem and he makes it his capital

But David’s disobedience near the end of his life almost caused him to lose his city. God sent a plague to Israel as punishment for the King’s sin. And Jerusalem was not supposed to be spared. I love the translation the NIV uses of this verse. And God sent an angel to destroy Jerusalem. But as the angel was doing so, the Lord saw it and relented concerning the disaster … Just a little word, it. What exactly was it that God saw? According to the story, the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite was at the top of a very familiar mountain – Mount Moriah. Is it possible that as the angel moved into Jerusalem, what God saw was a memory of a man who had come to this mountain to sacrifice his son? I think David thought so. And so death stopped here for a second time, at the top of Mount Moriah.

As David began to put things together, as the story started to come together in his mind, something else became apparent. David had always wanted to build a Temple for his God. The plans had probably been a little vague up until this point. But now everything was coming together. David would buy this spot off of Araunah, and this would be where the Temple of Jerusalem would be built – at the place where twice death stopped.

When you know the story, it isn’t hard to understand the meaning that Temple Mount holds for the Jews. It is so much deeper than just the place where they worshiped in ancient times. It is the place where death stops. A place, where from the beginning time, God was worshiped. Mount Moriah was important to two of Israel’s great men of faith, Abraham and David. So why would they not want to worship there?   

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Chronicles 22

… praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe – Psalm 150:4

Today’s Scripture Reading (June 28, 2016): Psalm 149 & 150

A number of years ago I attended an interdenominational worship event designed for young adults (even at that time I was really too old to qualify, but I went anyway.) Worshippers of every stripe gathered in the sanctuary of a large inner city church to worship God. The worship at these events tended to be a little varied. The people who came were from many different worship traditions. Admittedly, my worship tradition was a little staid. In my tradition, we didn’t dance in worship, and if we did our feet definitely did not come off of the ground. It might be better to say that we swayed with the music. But at this event, everyone came; those that swayed and those that jumped and those that danced. We had all gathered in this place with the sole purpose of worshipping God.

But on this night, what drew my attention were some dancers in the front row. They came equipped with their own tambourines (effectively what the psalmist calls a timbrel) and they were ready to dance. My brother-in-law would have probably called them the “Vestal Virgins” of the event, charged to keep the fire of the worship burning through their dance. And dance they did. On this night, I watched more of the dance than I normally would have as the crowd worshiped God. Okay, I was kind of laughing at the dance as the rest of the people gathered worshiped. It wasn’t that they were bad dancers – they were great. But they had long ribbons tied to the end of their tambourines that would whip around as they danced. What I found so funny were the worshippers standing behind the dancers. I have a feeling that the worship environment of which they were accustomed was very similar to mine, but on this night even they danced. They had no choice but to dance. With each beat of the tambourines, the ribbons from the dancers in front of them whipped back threatening to hit them in the head. And so the dancers danced, and the worshippers in the second row dodged in their own awkward kind of dance.

I am not sure that the psalmist really imagined either the conservative worship that I was accustomed to growing up or the “Vestal Virgins” of the interdenominational worship service. The Bible says that David danced. I am not sure that he cared overly much what the other worshippers were doing, nor did he impose his dance on others. He simply responded to the dance of God happening in his life. I think true worship might be like that. Just us and God involved in our dance. Sometimes the timbrels are beaten, sometimes the feet are lifted, but other times it is nothing more than a gentle sway to the music with the feet firmly planted on the ground. What matters is that we respond to God moving in our lives, we let him take the lead in the dance.

And that is what I really want my life to look like. God and I dancing together, oblivious to what others might think. Just moving to the God-music that he has placed on the inside of my being.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Chronicles 21