How Shall We Worship?

We have been studying over the last several Sundays Old Testament characters, remembering their stories as perhaps we learned them as children in Sunday School and then considering the rest of the story and what it means for how God calls us to live. This morning, we reach the pinnacle, the mountaintop of the story of God’s people, Israel, as a nation.

Remember that Moses led them out of Egypt, where they had been slaves for generations with no power, or need, to have a system of rules for community. They went when and where they were told, ate what they were given, and did what they were commanded. When they found themselves free, they wandered in the wilderness. They needed a guide for how to live together. God told Moses to chisel into two tablets of stone 10 rules to live by, the Mosaic Covenant, the Law; we now know them as the Ten Commandments. Then God said, “Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them. 9 Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you.” So, the Ark of the Covenant was built and in it were the two stone tables with the 10 rules to live by. Along with the Ark, God gave instructions for a Table with twelve loaves of unleavened bread, a Lampstand with seven candles, curtains to form a tabernacle (which in Hebrew means tent), an altar for burnt offerings of animals to be in a courtyard marked off by curtains, an altar for incense and for grain offerings (to be placed close to the inner tabernacle, and a basin for washing.

This tabernacle moved with the Israelites as they crossed into the Promised Land. For a time, the people asked for a king like all the surrounding nations, but God refused to give them a king to rule over them. Their primary allegiance was to be to God and not to a king. Instead, God raised up judges to govern the people. The first judge was Moses’ successor, Joshua. The book of Judges tells the stories of 12 judges, you may remember Deborah from Sunday School, and Samson was one of them. And then, I Samuel tells the story of the last 2 judges, Eli and Samuel, who also were priests at Shiloh. When the Israelites crossed into the Promised Land, Shiloh is where the Tabernacle was set up and the Ark of the Covenant came to rest.

God hears the cries of the Israelites for a king, and he finally tells Samuel, “Listen to them and give them a king.” So, Samuel anoints the first king of Israel, Saul. During Saul’s reign, the ark of the covenant is captured by the Philistines, and the tabernacle, without the ark is set up in Gibeon. In time, Samuel goes to Saul and tells him, “I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD. You have rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD has rejected you as king over Israel!” God sends Samuel to anoint a successor, from Bethlehem, one of Jesse’s sons, David. Samuel dies. Then, after 42 years of being King, Saul and his sons die at the hands of the Philistines and David is crowned king.

David’s story is enough for its own sermon series. He reigns forty years. During that time, he brings the Ark of the Covenant, which has essentially been in storage since the Philistines returned it because so many people died when it arrived back in Philistine, to Jerusalem and sets it up in a new tent. He also builds himself a palace, the nation is enjoying a time of peace without threats from neighboring nations. And one day he realizes, “Look, I am living in a palace made of cedar wood, but the Ark of God is in a tent!” And God replies through the prophet Nathan who has a dream. In it, God reminds David that he has always been with him, even when he was a shepherd boy in the field playing his harp, and that God has been with him in battles, and now God has brought them peace. But, David is not the one to build a temple. God says, “‘When you die and join your ancestors, I will make one of your sons the next king, and I will set up his kingdom. 13 He will build a house for me, and I will let his kingdom rule always.”

So, when David was in his last days in bed, he names Solomon his successor…there was a brother trying to usurp the throne, but Solomon succeeded in securing the crown. And the first thing he does is marry an Egyptian princess as part of an agreement with her father, aligning the two nations. Then Solomon goes to Gibeon, to the tabernacle Moses built, to offer sacrifices, and while he is there he dreams that God grants him a wish, and he wishes for a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. He dreams that God is pleased with his wish and grants it and also wealth and honor. And then he wakes up and realizes it is a dream. The way the story reads, you could read it and mistakenly think that Solomon wakes up and realizes it was only a dream. But, Solomon clearly understood that God was speaking to him in his dream because he got up and returned from offering burnt offerings at the tabernacle in Gibeon to Jerusalem to sacrifice burnt offerings and fellowship offerings at the new tabernacle where the ark of the covenant resided.

Solomon was, indeed, wise. I Kings tells us that, “He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five. 33 He spoke about plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also spoke about animals and birds, reptiles and fish. 34 From all nations people came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom.” Probably the story I remember best about him from Sunday school was the story of the two mothers whose children were just 3 days apart in age. One died in the night, and both claimed the other child was hers. Solomon calls for his sword and offers to cut the child who was still living in two. He knew that the true mother would give up her child before she saw him hurt. So, when one said, “Go ahead.” And the other said, “No, let her have him.” He knew which one was the child’s mother.

John Goldingay, an Old Testament professor at Fuller Seminary explains the importance of this story for building Israel as community, “The king’s task is to see that decisions get taken in a proper way for people. His vocation does not focus on economics or international relations, but on seeing that right gets done.”

And Solomon prepares to build the Temple. He agrees with the king of Tyre for cedar to be cut and shipped from Lebanon to what is now Tel Aviv, where it will then be transported over land to Jerusalem. Stone is cut in the quarry and brought to be set into place – 90 feet long, 30 feet wide, 36 feet tall. You can read the whole description in I Kings, chapter 6. It is patterned off of Moses’ tabernacle.
The building site was silent. All the cutting and chiseling and hammering was done off-site and everything was set into place. Seven years, 180,000 workers, 4,000 supervisors, and when it was finished, the furnishings prepared and dedicated by his father, King David were brought in and set into place, all the elders from all of the families of Israel led the Ark of the Covenant as it was brought and set into place. And as they were worshiping, the cloud of the glory of the Lord filled the place. And Solomon prayed before the altar. “There is no God like you. You keep your covenant of love with your servants. But will you really dwell on earth? The heavens cannot contain you. How much less can this temple that I have built! Now, my God, may your eyes be open and your ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place!”
This is the climax, the mountaintop moment, of the whole Old Testament.

And yet, in the midst of it, Solomon has broken the rules for kings in Deuteronomy, that include that kings mustn’t accumulate horses or wealth or wives, all of which are a sign of status and power. Solomon has 4,000 stalls, each with 10 horses and one chariot. He had ships for trade and international gifts and taxes. One estimate was that his income in US dollars today exceeded 1.1 billion dollars annually. Samuel’s warning has come to pass. Samuel warned them when they wanted a king that a king would require the services of his people to drive his chariots and plow his fields and cook for his palace, and that a king would introduce a system of taxation. The people have gone from working their own family farms with occasional times of working off debt to a neighbor to working as day laborers for families with larger farms to being forced labor for the king.

In addition to great wealth, Solomon had 700 wives of royal birth (princesses) and another 300 concubines (servants who were used as wives without gaining any of the rights of marriage). These marriages to royalty were about international agreements, partnerships, peace deals. Part of Solomon’s commitment was to make it possible for them to worship their gods. So, he built places for worship in Jerusalem…they could be seen from the Temple…and sometimes he would join them in worship…and the Israelites began to worship other gods. Solomon is the last king over a united Israel.