Gods Original and Final Intent - part 2

This is my final paper for The International Healing Rooms School of Transformation in Spokane Washington. Its is very long paper so I am breaking it down in to smaller portions to post here.
This is part 2 of that paper. I hope you enjoy it. I love to hear your feed back in the comments.

Thanks, Margot

Gods Original and Final Intent - part 2
Spirit: 

• The original intent for the people of God is to worship and honor and enjoy his goodness in a intimate unveiled, face to face relationship with him. (To Worship Him in Spirit and in truth) JOHN 4:24 NKJ "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” Because of the fall the sprit of man is essentially in coma like sleep. We must have the antidote found in the blood of Jesus Christ to cause our spirit to live or be reborn.  Leviticus 17:11says “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life.” It is Jesus who’s sacrifice has become our atonement through his shed blood. 

When I originally thought about the three areas for my report one verse and story kept nagging at me. David’s Fallen Tent is mentioned in Amos 9:11 It talks of how God plans to restore David’s tent that is fallen into ruin. I thought first that it was David’s tent as a shepherd boy. A tent of intimacy and solitude, silence to listen and songs of thanks. I have researched it further and found it to be quite an interesting story. I think it is not only a good example of God’s original and final intent to meet with us face to face but also our role in making God accessible to others. 

David’s Fallen Tent 1 Chronicles 15-16

In this story the Arc of God’s presence had been captured by the Philistines who found it caused them too many problems, everything from tumors to the statues of their gods crashing down for no apparent reason. Eventually they decided to return it. They put the Arc on a cart pulled by two milk cows who but for an act of God would have simply headed back to their barns to nurse their babies. Instead they complain and moo all the way to Israel. 

About the same time David is finally king and has moved his family and people to Jerusalem. He wants to bring the Arc to be there with Him in Jerusalem. The Arc should have gone to Gibeon to be returned to the tent of meeting where sacrifices were still being made. It is interesting to note that the presence of God had left but they continued on in their traditions. We need to be careful that we don’t choose the familiarity of tradition over the presence of a Holy God. So while the prescribed manner of encountering the God of Israel was by bringing your sacrifices to the priests who would prepare it and present it to God. Only the High priest could stand before the Arc of God’s presence and only once a year. They would tie a rope around his ankle and attache bells to the bottom of his robes so in case the sacrifice made was not sufficient they could pull his dead corpse out from the Holy of Holies. David somehow finds a loop hole. I can only imagine that it is because of his long relationship with God that he was able to see and do what other would never even have considered. David sets up his own tent for the arc in Jerusalem. In David’s tent there no veil separating the arc from the worshiper. Where the blood of animals is offered in Gibeon and the arc rested behind a veil, at David’s tent what is offered is 24 hour praise, worship and prayer.  This is an unprecedented move on David’s part. There are some commentaries that suggest that David’s background is questionable that he may have been an illegitimate child. When Samuel calls for the sons of Jessie to be paraded before him the family leaves David out with the sheep. It is only at Samuels questioning that they admit there is one more son and bring him in from the sheep fields. For some reason he is an embarrassment to his family and not well liked by his brothers. In this time one could not enter God’s presence if there was a deformity or issues of sin or disgrace with ones family line. You had to be a levite with no birth defects or blemishes to your heritage. You had to be ceremonially clean, not having touched anything dead and a number of other rules. Somehow David has side stepped all these rules and regulations. I believe it is because out watching sheep day in and day out David developed a relationship with the Lord. Relationship is what God desired of Adam and Eve when he walked with them in the cool of the day. Relationship is what he wants from us as well. I believe that what started as David singing songs to the Lord while watching the sheep grew into the 24 hour worship around David’s tent in Jerusalem. God never needed a temple to be built but it was on David’s heart to create it to bless and honor the Lord. David’s tent was later abandoned for the newly built temple. David discovered that through relationship, praise and worship that one could enter God’s presence without the blood of animal sacrifices. Many people today think that restoring David’s fallen tent mentioned in Amos 9:11 is about 24 hour worship and prayer, I think that merely an outward expression of an inward intimate relationship shared between David and Papa God. Yes God sits enthroned on our praise but it is a heart that desires to know Him and be in relationship with him that must be foundational to what ever praise is offered up.  

We like the people who followed Moses have a choice to make. Do we want to have our own relationship with God or will we look to others and live off the crumbs of their experiences with the Lord. The people at the time of Moses did not want to meet with God face to face so they left that to Moses and then to the high priest. Moses face would shine from being in God’s presence and the people asked him to cover or veil his shining face because it frightened the people. God’s original intent was to have a face to face intimate relationship with His people. Sadly His people wanted a medator. We opted for religion over relationship and took to making sacrifices of animals to somehow atone for our sins and to help make us right with a Holy God. You can see from the following scriptures that God desire is for other things than sacrifice. He says in Isaiah 1: 12 Who asked that of you? 

Isaiah 1:11-14 (Tanaka from traditional Hebrew Text)

11 "What need have I of all your sacrifices?" Says the Lord.  "I am sated with burnt offerings of rams, And suet of Fatlings, and blood of bulls; and I have no delight in lambs and he-goats.12 That you come to appear before Me - who asked that of you?  Trample My courts  13 no more; bringing oblations is futile, incense is offensive to Me.  New moon and Sabbath, proclaiming of solemnities, assemblies with iniquity, I cannot abide.  14 Your new moons and fixed seasons fill Me with loathing; They are become a burden to Me.  I cannot endure them.

In Hosea we discover that it is obedience that God desires over sacrifice. Hosea 6:6  Tanaka “For I desire goodness, not sacrifice; Obedience to God, rather than burnt offerings.” 

In Psalm 40 we find that it is to have God’s teaching in our innermost parts that is more important. Psalm 40 7-8 “You gave me to understand that you do not desire sacrifice and meal offering; You do not ask for burnt offering and sin offering. 8 Then I said, "See I will bring a scroll recounting what befell me. 9 To do what pleases you, my God, is my desire; Your teaching is in my innermost parts.”

 In Psalm 51 it is a contrite sprit and a repentant heart. 

Psalm 51:18 You do not want me to bring sacrifices; You do not desire burnt offering;19 True sacrifices to God is a contrite spirit; God you will not despise a contrite and crushed heart.

Another example is the life of Enoch. He walked with God so closely that one day he walked out of our world and was seen no more. He didn’t die. 

His story is found in Genesis 5:24 

“Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.”  In his case relationship was what translated him out of this world so that he did not grow old and die as is common to men. 

Hebrews 11:5

“By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.” For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.”

While we do not have the book of Enoch included in our bible we know from Hebrews that he pleased God. At the time of Jude the writings of Enoch were still being quoted. From Jude we know that he spoke prophetically. He also said stuff that was probably pretty unpopular. 

Jude 14-15 (NIV)

“They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.

14 Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones 15 to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

The first time the word Worship is mentioned in the Bible is in the story of Abraham taking Isaac to Worship God. In this story Abraham is taking that which is most precious to him, his long awaited son of promise and being willing to sacrifice him to the Lord. We find this story in Genesis 22:3-10.  In this first example of worship, there is no singing or playing of instruments, it is about obedience, willing sacrifice. It is about trust of a father and son of The Father. Too often God tells us things that he is going to do and we get hung up on how it will happen. In this case, it is God who provides the sacrifice.  In the case of Abraham the sacrifice is his willing obedience to trust God and offer his son. 

HIs is a trust born out of relationship.  

Romans 12 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Relationship has always been God’s heart. God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden before the fall.  I think this is just another of many days in the garden but it is mentioned because it is the day that things changed. Genesis 3:8 “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”  The relationship had been broken and they knew it so they hid. It is sin that separates us from God’s presence. It is the sacrifice of His son that makes a way that we can again be restored to that relationship. 

James 4:7-8 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse [your] hands, [you] sinners; and purify [your] hearts, [you] double-minded.

In yet another example the people of Israel want to have a king like the nations around them. It is their lack of relationship that agains causes them to attempt to place an intermediary between themselves and God. The priests and prophets were not enough. They wanted to be like their heathen neighbors and have a king. Sometimes when we bug God long enough and we refuse to listen he will give us what we have asked for. In this story in spite of God and Samuel’s warnings the people insisted they have a king. On the out side Saul looks, and acts like a king. He is the best looking and the strongest, he is head and shoulders above everyone else. Of course he is the one who should be king. While we look at the external God looks at the heart.  Acts 13:22 (KJV) 22 And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king; to whom also he gave their testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all my will.

It should be infinitely clear to anyone who knows even a small bit of David’s or Abrahams stories to know that they were not a perfect men. Yet they had relationships with God when others preferred to trade relationship for ritual and tradition. We too can have a relationship with Papa God because of the sacrifice of Jesus. This is good news for us because religion is a heavy handed task master. It is God who restores us in a sense to the Garden before the fall. We are no longer banned from the tree of life.