So what is there of the glory of Christ in the description of David’s administration? Have you ever looked around at the tremendous detail and order of the creation which God has made? The more that I look at creation, the greater becomes my awe of my Creator’s work. Day to day his glory pours out of His creation. Night to night it streams forth. When we organize ourselves, we are in a way mimicking His glory. It is right to organize ourselves, but that organization should never be of greater focus than Him. When we organize, we increase His glory in a small way.
Nestled away in this description of administration is the report of Obed-Edom and his family. Remember that Obed-Edom was the Gittite/Levite who lived near where the Lord killed Uzzah, when he touched the ark while they were transporting it. In his anger, David decided to store the ark in Obed-Edom’s house. Can you imagine having the Ark of the Covenant stored in your house? How fearful/glorious would that be? During the three months that the ark was there, God blessed Obed-Edom. Moreover, Obed-Edom followed the Ark when it came to Jerusalem. He was rewarded with being able to become a door-keeper in the tabernacle. His descendants became doorkeepers and administrators in the temple. Wow! What a privilege! What an inheritance! Indeed we serve a glorious King. Speak His glory to someone today!
--Pastor john
PSALM 149
Let us rejoice in our Maker. When I study the works of creation, I am astounded, to say the least, concerning the greatness of our Master-Designer. The quantity, quality, complexity and brilliance of all that He has done is staggering to my mind. Revelation 4:11 says, “You are worthy, O Lord, To receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, And by Your will they exist and were created.” I like the way the Authorized Version translates it, “And for thy pleasure they are and were created.” He enjoyed creating us! It was thrilling to Him! It was joy for Him to do so! And unbelievably to us, He desires that we be passionate about our joy in Him! Listen to what Col. 1:16 says, “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.” He receives pleasure in our enjoying Him! It is “for Him” that we are created. When we refuse to delight in the praise of Him, The rest of the obedient creation hangs their head in wonder at our refusal. Satan rejoices.
The children of Zion are commanded to be joyful in their King. It would be easier to approach this passage by saying, “This passage is for the Jews in the land, particularly Zion. Therefore, it does not apply to me.” However, the writer of Hebrews 12:22 (NLT) says, “No, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering.” The Living Bible paraphrase says, “. . . and to the gathering of countless happy angels.” We then are spiritual children of Zion. As such we are commanded to be joyful in our King!
His name is to be praised with joy! One of the obvious out-workings of joy is dancing. Dancing means to whirl around in circular movements. When I am gone for a long time, my dogs dance upon my return. They will literally run around in circular movements in expressing their joy at my return. In a very real sense the creation dances to the praise of God! Electrons spin around the nucleus of an atom creating the bonds of physics that hold things together. The planets whirl on their axis and around the sun creating life that brings glory to God. The stars whirl around the centers of their galaxy declaring the glory of God! Is there ever such a thing as a dance of sadness? I think we usually refer to it as a dirge, but a dirge is usually just the music. It tends to lack the expression of physical music.
Unfortunately, Satan loves to corrupt that which should bring glory to God. I was raised in an environment that taught that almost all dancing was evil. Indeed the proponents of such teaching have one good point. They purport that the purpose of dancing is to excite sexual passion between a man and a woman. So, if a man and a woman, who are not in a marriage covenant, dance together for that purpose, then it can only lead to an illegitimate expression of sexual passion. I would guess that more often than not, it is true. It is interesting that in Exodus 32:19 when Israel became physical idolaters and spiritual adulteresses with the golden calf, and when Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, that Moses’ anger became hot! Israel was to be in a covenant relationship with Yahweh, not a golden calf (probably much like one of the gods of Egypt). She gave what should have been reserved for Yahweh to an idol. Dancing should have been a whirling in celebration of love for Yahweh. In contrast it became a whirling about in celebration of a golden calf.
So is it wrong for a husband and wife to participate together in dance? No it is not because sexual passion was invented by our Creator as a good thing that was to reflect His image. Within the godhead there is this infinite passion between the Father, the Son and the Spirit. That passion led to the creation. The creation in return dances for joy in the presence of the Creator. Indeed, it could be argued that between a married couple, a dance is a good thing, for that dance could create a passion that strengthens the bond between them and produces offspring as well.
But dancing wasn’t the only method of expressing joy in praise toward Yahweh. The timbrel and harp were also called upon for the expression of joy. In the worship wars of today, so many people focus on the style of music and the instruments of music as to what is godly and what is not. It seems to me that they are missing the point. The point is not what style of music but what condition of the heart. From this Psalm it would seem that the Lord wants His praise to be joyful (2&5), humble (4), vocal (6a) and Scriptural (6b). The question for each culture is what instruments can help us best as a group express joy, in humility according to Scripture. That will vary from culture to culture and even with subgroups within those cultures. But one thing is clear from this Psalm, that praise is to be joyous no matter how it is expressed! How dare we approach praise in any other manner! I like Isaac Watts poem that Robert Lowry set to music.
Come, we that love the Lord,Can we declare His praise in any manner other than joyously? Indeed we serve a glorious King! Speak His glory to someone today!
And let our joys be known;
Join in a song with sweet accord,
And thus surround the throne.
We’re marching to Zion,
Beautiful, beautiful Zion;
We’re marching upward to Zion,
The beautiful city of God.
The sorrows of the mind
Be banished from the place;
Religion never was designed
To make our pleasures less.
Let those refuse to sing,
Who never knew our God;
But children of the heav’nly King
May speak their joys abroad.
The men of grace have found
Glory begun below;
Celestial fruits on earthly ground
From faith and hope may grow.
The hill of Zion yields
A thousand sacred sweets
Before we reach the heav’nly fields,
Or walk the golden streets.
Then let our songs abound,
And every tear be dry;
We’re marching through Immanuel’s ground
To fairer worlds on high
--Verses by Isaac Watts and Refrain by Robert Lowry
--Pastor john
ZECHARIAH 11
Today’s passage is a marvelous double fulfillment prophecy of the rejection of the Messiah and the consequent destruction of the nation by Rome and then again in the day of Jacob’s trouble. Verse 4 presents God the Father speaking to God the Son as the Good Shepherd. The flock, Israel, was prepared for their slaughter because of their rejection of the Messiah. The Messiah takes two staffs. The oriental shepherd used two staffs, “one to protect the sheep from wild beasts and the other to assist the sheep in difficult and dangerous places. “ He calls them Beauty and Bonds or grace and unity respectively. It is interesting that it is grace that gives the body of Christ the gifts to build itself up to protect itself and it is unity that encourages us to propel us through difficult times and dangerous places
When Jesus presented Himself as King to the nation, He was rejected by the officials who fulfilled the roles of prophet, priest and king of that day. Perhaps that is what He meant by the reference to dismissing the three shepherds in verse 8. They rejected Him; He in turn dismissed them. So He demanded His wages. They weighed out 30 pieces of silver as they valued Him. Exodus 21:32 values a maimed servant at 30 pieces of silver. He is valued cheap, not even the value of a healthy slave. The priests who gave Judas his blood money would have been well aware of the Scriptural value which they paid Judas. It was probably an intentional insult. The command is given to throw the money to the potter. So it was thrown in the house of the Lord for the potter. The potter makes things of the earth. He was not even valued on a spiritual level. In sarcasm He calls it that “princely price.” The poor of the flock were watching. The spiritually humble, the disciples, were the ones that eventually recognized the prophetic impact of the events. One of those disciples, Matthew, clearly understood the import of the action of the chief priests and appears to quote Zechariah but attributes it to Jeremiah. The KJV Commentary has this to say about designating the source of the quote.
Some have expressed concern over the mention of Jeremiah in this passage on the basis that the quotation apparently comes from Zechariah. While there is an allusion here to Zechariah 11:12–13, the actual words do not agree with either the Hebrew or the LXX. The major difference is the addition of the word field, upon which the fulfillment claimed is based. This word, and the conception behind it, comes from Jeremiah 32:6–9, where the prophet refers to the purchase of a field for certain pieces of silver. It is obvious that Matthew’s concept of prophetic fulfillment rests upon both passages. Thus, he combines both passages into one quotation, giving credit to Jeremiah as the older and more predominant of the two prophets. Hendricksen (p. 948) draws the same conclusion, noting that a major prophet is preferred over a minor one in a similar double reference in Mark 1:2–3. There Isaiah is credited instead of Malachi (see Mal 3:1). This is certainly to be preferred to Plummer’s suggestion (p. 386) that it was a “slip of the memory.”What an amazing thing about our Lord! He controls even the details of His death! He knew the rejection He would experience. He knew the price at which they would value Him. He did it all for us. Indeed, we serve a glorious King! Speak His glory to someone today!
--Pastor john
2 PETER 1
The glory of Jesus is a brilliant thing! Do I have eyes to see it? Peter, James and John saw part of it physically on the Mount of Transfiguration. Just a moment in that glory and it forever etched His great power in their minds and spirits. His majesty was partially and briefly shown there. The Father's command was to listen to Him. For John it gave him the ability to pursue Jesus even when he did not understand what Jesus was doing. He is the one who helped let Peter in the door at the trial of Jesus. He, alone among the disciples, accompanies the women at the cross. He believed upon seeing the empty tomb. Then he understood the Lord’s warnings about the cross. Peter saw the glory of Christ and was ready to lay down his life for the glory. He only became weak hearted when he did not listen to the Lord's instruction about the cross. He held to his own ideas about the work of the Messiah. There was too much of his own thinking about the glory in his mind. There was not enough thinking about the Lord's instruction concerning the cross and the glory. But even then the vision of His glory at the Mount sustained him to the end of his life. For James the glory led him to fearlessly proclaim the glory of Jesus. James found his head on a chopping block as a result.
Such divine power leads us to cooperate with changing our character. Because of the glory, we pursue knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love. James and John were previously known in the community as 'the sons of thunder.' One hardly gets the impression that knowledge and self-control were foremost virtues in their lives prior to Jesus coming to them. These virtues lead us into great usefulness in spreading the kingdom of God. Is it not amazing that His glory is so powerful that by focusing upon it, we are changed. These virtues are added to our lives as we gaze upon Him. As we gaze upon His glory, we realize that everything that we need pertaining to life and godliness is found in His glory. The glory of Jesus is a brilliant thing! Do I have eyes to see it? If I am focusing on His glory, His virtue is increasing in my life. Indeed we serve a glorious King! Speak His glory to someone today!
--Pastor john
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