Marcus Mecum - Rebuilding The Ruins of Worship
Acts 15:16. Actually, let's look at verse 15. "And with the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, 'after this I will return and will rebuild the tabernacle of David which was fallen down. I will rebuild its ruins and I will set it up'". That's what I'm gonna talk to you about, rebuilding the ruins of worship. "So that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the gentiles who are called by my name".
So, this is all the people out there that we don't think know God in any way. According to this, if we'll rebuild the tabernacle of David, if we'll rebuild the ruins, and we'll talk about that. "It's so that the rest of mankind," those who do know, they're not in covenant with God, "May seek him'. Known to God from eternity are all his works. Therefore, I judge that we should not trouble those from among the gentiles who are turning to God".
In other words, what that's saying is a lot of times we try to apply a bunch of religious rules to people that are just coming to God, and it's saying if you'll just introduce them to worship, introduce them to the presence of God, God can get in there and start working on the areas of their life that they're a little off biblically, amen. And so, it refers to the tabernacle of David. David, if you had been in church any time at all, you would know that 1 Samuel 13:14 says that, "David was a man after God's own heart". And the Bible specifically says that, "God was seeking for a man after his own heart".
In the Old Testament this is the only time God seeks anybody. All kinds of times man is seeking God, people are on the search for God, on the search for a relationship with God. But this is the only time God flips the script and he goes on the search. God's looking for a man of all things, most importantly who has a heart for him. The phrase, "Heart for God," translates worshipper. What God was looking for is he was looking for a worshipper. His eyes are scanning the planet. They lock onto king David and God says, "There is a man who understands worship".
Abraham, the Bible gives him ten chapters. The father of our faith. Moses, the Bible gives him 11 chapters. Elijah and Elisha get ten chapters. David get 66 chapters, over twice as many as Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Elisha combined. Twelve hundred times the Bible makes a reference to David. Fifty-nine times in the New Testament the scripture is nudging us back to this prominent person in the Bible, king David. The most prominent person in your Bible outside of our Lord Jesus Christ is David. And I think we can see as we look through this why God is trying to teach us something through this man. Abraham teaches us about faith. Moses teaches us about God's standards and laws. Elijah and Elisha teach us that nothing is too hard for God and that miracles are around the corner for anyone who will trust him.
But David teaches us about worship. He was a musician. He was a songwriter. We know him as a warrior and as a king. But God's defining characteristic of David is that he had a heart after God. And 1, 200 times the scripture is pushing us back, "Look at David. Look at how he worked through sin. Look at how he worked through his issues. Look at how he worked through trouble and struggle. Look at David". If you could take the Bible and boil it down to a theme, a singular idea, if you wanted to take what's the overarching concept that God is trying to get to us in scripture, the thing that should stick when we walk away from church, the thing that should stay with us, not leave us no matter what, is this idea of worship.
That the scripture is pointing us back to this Revelation that God wants us to have through the power of worship. Everything God emphasizes ultimately comes back to us worshipping him. Jesus in Samaria finds a woman at a well and begins to talk to her about her life and her sin specifically, that she has had five husbands and the one that she's with now is not her husband. But Jesus never talked to her about how she needs to repent and how she needs to, that sin, he never gets explicit with how her sin is hurting God. He just starts to talk to her about worship. He says, "Your fathers worshipped on this mountain".
And as they began to talk about worship, as they began to talk about how her fathers worshipped, her life begins to change. She goes back to the city that all knew what her reputation was, and she starts to tell the city about Jesus Christ and all he did was have a discussion with her about worship. I guess I'm just coming back to this point that I don't have answers for all the problems in the world. I don't really know how to solve all the disagreements, and all the opinions, and all this and that, and that thing. But I know for sure that if you'll just get into the presence of God and worship him, you'll begin to experience... I love it like this that the Bible says that, "We enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise," right? And the Bible says, "In his presence is fullness of joy".
So, what I know is I don't get into his presence without thanksgiving. I don't get into his presence without looking at some good in my life, right, that God has been good. Anybody in here experience some goodness of God? Well, if you haven't, I just wanna remind you that you woke up and you had breath, okay. I just wanna remind you, your heart was beating today. I know it's kinda basic, but for most of you, you all walked in here on your legs. You do have something there. You do have a lot that God's been good, and most of us have even more that God's been good. We sang that song, "The story I'll tell if I were through all my battles and all my struggles".
And just start, when I'm singing that song, I'm like, "Oh, man, it's pretty amazing how good God has been". And that's how I enter his presence. Well, what happens? In his presence is fullness of joy. The seed of thanksgiving, listen, the seed of thanksgiving is how you get joy. If you want joy into your life, if you want God to give you a sense of that he's for you and with you, worship is where you get that Revelation. John 4:23, "God is looking for those who will worship him in spirit and in truth". So, true worship includes two things, the right spirit and the right truth. The right spirit and the right truth. "Those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth".
This week I was praying and spending time with God and worship, and I had this experience that was a little unusual for me. And I'm in prayer and I'm complaining about a situation, and I'm really upset about this situation, by the way. I'm worked up. I know I don't look like it right now but in that moment, I was upset. I was mad. It's one of those, what did Paul pray that God would remove the thorn in his flesh and then God just kept saying, three times God said, "No, no, no, my grace is sufficient". It's one of those areas of my life, right, where I'm like, "God, would you deal with this"? "No". "God, would you help me with this"? "No". "God, would you do something"? "No". But I'm upset about it, and I'm not really praying to God as much as now, I'm telling this person everything I wanna tell him, right? You may know what I'm talking about.
So, I've gone from prayer to I'm venting to a person that's not even there. I know you guys don't do this stuff. I know you don't. So, I'm gonna go ahead and just throw it out there so you can feel better about your own sanity and by watching me work through stuff. And so, I felt the Lord stop me and you know how he told Simon Peter, "Get behind me, satan"? I had that moment. Jesus was like, "Get behind me, satan". I was like, "Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah. I thought I could come to you in prayer". And I remember the scripture where the Bible says, "Satan, who is the accuser of the brethren, goes before the throne of God, day and night to accuse the brethren".
And I felt the Lord tell me, "How do you think the devil gets access to my throne day and night? He's not omnipresent, right? Which means he can't be everywhere at one time, which means he can't know every single person's sin at one time. He's not God". How does the devil then get before the throne of God accusing me, accusing you day and night? How does he get there? And the Lord told me, "Because my people bring him here. My people bring the accuser into my throne room. And they accuse one another, they accuse themselves, they beat themselves up, they beat everybody else up, and they act like God is their personal vendetta, like, he's their personal assassin. Get them, God".
Everybody else like that sometimes, "Get him, God"? And God is like, "You know, you better get behind me, satan". And that the purpose of prayer is not accusatory in nature. It's not, "God, get 'em," in nature. It's, "God, get me. God, get me". I worship him with the right spirit, right spirit. But what corrected my spirit was truth, right? I had a wrong spirit, but I had a right truth. And I had to listen to the truth to get my spirit right and then I could worship. So, a lot of times we have a wrong spirit 'cause we don't have truth. A lot of times we have a lot of truth, but we don't got the right spirit.
So, you gotta let the spirit and the truth begin to work together in his presence, that's worship. A lot of times, we're seeking for God to fix a problem or give us an answer, but let's remember God is also on the search, and many times the key is not finding answers but it's becoming a worshipper. I have to become a worshipper and the answers I'm looking for find me. David wrote the book of Psalms, a song book. Songs about David talking to God, singing to God, worshipping God. And Jesus, not by accident, quoted more of the Psalms than any other book in the Bible because even Jesus love to read songs of worship. Pointing us back to worship. Pointing us back to the life that we live and having a heart for God that's yielded and surrendered to him.
Think about how David would say things like, Psalms 13, "How long are my enemies gonna prevail? How long is this trouble gonna exist? How long is this issue gonna continue"? And he's just going on and on, and then he says, "But I'll align myself with your love and kindness". But, in other words, he's saying in worship is where you make a decision. "I'm not gonna align my life with my circumstance. I'm gonna align myself with his love, his mercy, and his grace for my life".
As a result, you see David in the high times, in the good times. When he's anointed as the king over Israel the first thing he wants to do is go get the ark and worship, and praise God. Take six steps, six steps. He won't take seven steps without first stopping and praising God. That's how important it was to him. In his highest point of success to worship. But yet, you see, David immediately, when he's in his greatest failure after the sin Bathsheba, and the murder of Uriah, and then the death of his own child, but yet, once again, he finds a way to worship. You can find David in Ziklag after every single person that had stood by his side up to that point turned their back on him.
David has no one else but he encouraged himself in the Lord. David understood how to keep his worship strong. And did you know, nothing in this world is authorized to stop your worship? Only you can stop it. Only you can hold it back. Only you can block it. The Bible talks about how Jesus comes to this island, and he shows up. And there was a guy who had 2,000 demons runs up to Jesus, falls on his knees, and starts worshipping. So, if 2,000 demons can't stop a man from worshipping God, can I tell you, whatever you're struggling with should not be able to stop you from worshipping God. Not demons, not circumstance, not disease. Nothing should stop our worship.
When it comes to the tabernacle of David, it wasn't just a place where worship existed. It was also a place where David begins to introduce creative music to God's people. Before the tabernacle of David, all that you had in church was voices that would sing and a shofar which was a ram's horn. So, "David," according to 1 Chronicles 23, "Begin to invent and create instruments". The windpipes, the string instruments, all the percussions, David begin to bring that into the house of God. I'm really thankful for David for that reason. Anybody else, like, just glad that church is getting a little bit better at worship than just a ram's horn and some singing. That we've evolved.
Now, I'm not saying anything wrong with that. But I'm thankful, personally, that the tabernacle of David speaks not only of worship but also of music, the importance of music, how music can help usher us into the presence of God. In acts 15 it says that, "God will restore and rebuild the tabernacle of David". It's one of God's last day promises that when you get to the end, one of the things that God's gonna do is he's gonna restore this idea of worship and creative music. God gave instructions on the tabernacle of David when it was to be built that there was to be no curtains. There were to be no walls. There were to be no veils. Everything was to open up.
Before this moment in the temple, there was the gentile court. There was the court where the men went. There was the court where the women went. There was all these different places that people could go and then they couldn't go any further. You can't go here because of your gender. You can't go here because of the way you were born, or the way you were raised, or your background. And so, there was all of this division in God's house. But David, when God told him to build his tabernacle, he said, "I don't want there to be no walls. I don't want there to be no veils. I don't want there to be any divisions, any separation. I want whoever wants to come and worship me, can come and worship me".
This was a whosoever-will type of church. He didn't matter what the background was. "Let the addicted come. Let the hurting come. Let the broken come. Let the doubters come. Let them all just come and they're welcome in my house". The tabernacle of David was not one service on a Sunday morning. The tabernacle of David was seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And worship went on for 33 years straight, 33 years, 4,000 musicians, and singers, and worshippers, surrounded the tabernacle of David and no one was excluded from worship. Anyone who wanted to worship God was welcome to come and worship God. Because the Bible teaches, when we create this kind of environment where whosoever will, can come.
Doesn't matter where you come from, you have access to the presence of God. And nobody is trying to hold you back from God, only you can hold yourself back. But if you'll just come to God, the Bible says, "He inhabits the praises of his people". And you may be saying, "Where has God been"? And I just wanna ask you, where has your worship been? Where has your praise been? Where has your acknowledging him been? The Japanese translation of that verse says that, "When you praise God a big chair comes down and hangs out". In other words, when you and I worship God it's like giving him a lazy boy saying, "Go ahead, come in here. Sit down. Let's have some conversations. Let's talk just a little bit".
And then this is the bigger idea, to me, of that verse. If we wanna know what makes God comfortable in his house, it's worship. When I worship him just when we're singing and we've got our hands lifted and our hearts lifted and we're just going after God, there's something about that kind of environment. God says, "You know what, I think I'll go sit down and hang out with those people". I hope you're comfortable here, but more importantly, I hope Jesus knows he's welcome here. And when we worship, we say that to him. We say, "Come and sit down in the middle of all that we're doing". Whatever we do, let's make sure that we give him a seat in his house in Jesus' name. I mentioned this scripture earlier, but the Bible says, "Day and night satan comes before the throne of God to accuse us".
Think about that kind of persistence. We need to be more determined to be in God's presence than satan is determined to be in God's presence to accuse you and I. In Bangor, Ireland, the largest praise and worship service in history went on. It was 842 monks worshipped 24 hours a day for 300 years straight. The moRavians in 1727 started a worship service that lasted 100 years, 24 hours a day and never stop, 100 years and never stop. John Wesley who is the greatest influencer in modern church history went to that worship service, that prayer meeting and it so changed him that the report is, "After he went to the moRavian worship service, he lived like a man possessed with a dream from that moment forward".
There's something about being in the presence of God that caused him to be obsessed, possessed with a dream. Just something about worship. That's all I'm trying to, I don't have all the answers. I'm not trying to tell you. I'm just saying, no matter what I'm going through, if I worship, it beings to turn the tide on that thing. Anybody know what I'm talking about? If my hearts getting hard. God don't need a perfect heart, but he needs a soft heart. Come on. He just needs a heart that says, "God, I know that I don't have all the answers, but I know the one who does".