Do Not Go To Church Without Reading This!
A New Love For Church
“They go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion.”
“Three times a year all your men must appear before the Lord your God at the place he will choose... No one should appear before the Lord empty-handed.”
If you’ve taken my class The Tabernacle Of David on TheosU (where I go through a butt-load of Scripture that develops the Zion theme, ad nauseum), you’re already there with me.
For those of you that haven’t, let me catch you up quick:
Unless you’re a Dispensationalist, you believe that the Church is the new Zion—and when we read Canonically as Christians (meaning, standing in light of the New Covenant, you can go back to the Old Covenant and see New Testament fulfillment and architecture in Old Testament Scripture) we are reading Johannine and Pauline theological themes every time David drops a “Zion.”
Zion was the center hill in Jerusalem—the City of David—where David built his Tabernacle. David’s Tabernacle was unlike Moses’ or Solomon’s—with all the stricture and furniture—it was more like a 24/7 Charismatic Worship Circus that ultimately prefigures and anticipates the Church that you experience today. Moses and Solomon didn’t have instruments in their tabernacles. David had a wall of liner-rays, a Marshall stack with a volume knob that went to 11, and drums with no gay cage on it—pearl clutching Mildred’s on the front row had their wigs blown off from the get-go.
David basically made up his liturgies—well, they were by the Spirit, as Jesus informs us (Matthew 22:43)—but in a sense, personally crafted: he took the holiness and reverence features of God and mashed them with expressions of praise accompanied by music—a prophetic atmosphere that zeroed into the heart of God. Moses was like, “Do this and God won’t kill you.” David is like, “These things melt God’s heart and peoples faces.”
Mosaic liturgies are designed for hard hearts; Davidic liturgies are designed for soft hearts. Now, soft hearted people aren’t sinless—in fact, they’re often cretans! But they seek the Lord, repent, and renew their hearts. Hard hearted people are religious, and prefer a ton of distance from God and self-reliance.
Getting back to Zion as a type and shadow of the Church, consider the verse that I shared at the top of all this: people that go from strength to strength appear before God where? At the tabernacle of David—at Zion—the Church, the place of His choosing.
God made an everlasting covenant with Zion. Check Psalm 133:13-14:
“For the Lord has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His dwelling place: ‘This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it.”
Zion isn’t just the place, it’s the relational, covenantal, and spiritual dwelling of God.
“In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s house will be established…” That’s Zion that Isaiah is talking about, bro.
The author of Hebrews will then say, “You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” The author is writing to Jewish Christians that are trying to make heads and tails of the rowdy low Church experience in comparison to the stuffy high Temple vibe that gave airs of security. Read that again! And that verse will give those Jewish Christian a cup check.
The Mount Zion Worship Circus theme would have been a concept so well known to the First Century Judaism audience that the hearers would recall this authoritative Old Testament precedent for what the Spirit was doing in the Church—and that’s exactly what these hearers desperately needed from this letter written to them. Now they could go back to Church with confidence thinking, “YHWH built this crazy worship circus in David’s day, and like David, I’m not going to miss what YHWH is doing in my day through the son of David, Yeshua the Messiah. My heart and spirit witness with what David is saying in the Psalms!”
Zion is the Church—the place God has chosen to dwell forever! Imagine the lights going off in the hearer’s mind. But let’s not skip over the really important part, the root of all this Zion business—“Zion is the city of the great King.” (Psalm 48:1-2) Yeah, that’s Messianic—David’s House is the House of Jesus Christ.
And don’t lose sight of the zeal that Jesus shows for the House—words from David, the human author paralleling the passion of the Divine author—David’s Tabernacle is indicative of 1. Messianic Identity 2. Davidic Worship that results in 3. God’s Presence In Glory.
So when James the lead Apostle of the Church remarks in Acts 15 regarding what the Spirit is doing among the Gentiles in building the church globally, “God is rebuilding the Tabernacle of David (or the Booth of David or the House of David)…” brains start to explode.
If you’re sitting here trying to make sense of what I’m saying, here’s the long and short—before I launch into the full blown tirade: TOMORROW YOU APPEAR BEFORE GOD IN THE PLACE HE HAS CHOSEN TO DWELL IN FOREVER, AND THE LITURGIES OF PRAISE AND SINGING AND LIFTING HANDS AND GIVING MONEY AND PRAYER AND HEARING SCRIPTURE ARE WHY THE GREAT KING HAS MADE HIS HOME THERE!
Alright let’s break it down even harder for some of you crazies, because I’m throwing a lot at you—so here are the layman’s terms—and the eyeballs you need to put in your head before you go to church:
