More Coffee & Gummy Worms
Sacred Blankets and Another OT Road Trip to Rebuilding the Altar
If you have kids, you’re no doubt familiar with one of their most sacred, fundamental laws:
Blankets are made for forts. Duh.
The sofa? A load-bearing wall. Chairs? Ramparts. Pillows and cardboard boxes and myriads of household items — all for building a blanket fort.
In the storm of ensuing excitement and squeals of delight and (inevitable) tears shed at the destruction of their once eminent fabric metropolis, there’s something easy to miss. Something intriguing: even children understand the importance of building things.
In one way or another, each of us is building something.
A monument. A legacy. Some people build companies. Drug cartels. Skyscrapers or new apps. Humans have an inner longing to touch the transcendent. Build something that will last. The sentiment is echoed in Hazlitt’s assertion: “No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.”1 We long for significance. And we do it through building.
Which is funny, because in the Scriptures, building is worship.
Grab some more coffee. Another pack of gummy worms. Road trip time.
No matter how cliché it may be, we do all worship something.
So, how do we worship God, express authentic love and devotion for Him?
I know for me (and maybe some of you), one way has always been music.
Music is nearly inexpressible.2 From my earliest years, it was my first passion. My wife can tell you I'm always singing or playing air-guitar or pointing out musical compositions (probably annoying her). But it's truly a part of me, and as a worship pastor, I hope what I'm building is God's Kingdom, and some of my tools are rhythm and harmony. The blueprint? A sacred atmosphere for people to worship God.
“Worship God.” Man. What does that even mean?
So many times I've asked myself that. Though I don't have it all figured out, following Jesus has led me to some answers. A few weeks back, we looked at the story of Moses and Israel. Here’s a refresher:
So it came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain.
Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently. When the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and God answered him with thunder.
— Exodus 19:16-19
Well that’s… apocalyptic (as in, “revealing”). There's an air of expectancy. This is a coronation and the King just showed up. Though it’s expressed in many things, meeting with God is the essence of worship.
Words definitely don't do justice to this scene. Commentators have written volumes about this passage, but I'd just like to point out a few key terms:
The Hebrew word for thunder here is qol — simply, "sound, voice." Over 300 times in the OT this word is used in reference to a voice or voices, often denoting the voice of God. It describes thunder roaring in over a dozen other verses. I don't think it's coincidence that God's voice is like thunder (Revelation 4:5, 14:2).
Lightning is from the Hebrew word baraq. It’s used over 20 times to evoke the "flash" or "gleaming" or "glittering" of lightning in the sky. NOTE: when Moses or John or Daniel use these descriptors, sometimes words like "lightning" are the closest cognates to convey the transcendent. In John’s vision, God's glory is marked by flashes of lightning (Revelation 11:19, 16:18). Daniel says the divine being (possibly Jesus?) he meets “had the appearance of lightning, his eyes were like flaming torches." (Daniel 10:6). Pretty epic.
The cloud is the Hebrew word anan. Literally — "a cloud mass, cloud," used 58 times for the theophanic cloud — a visible manifestation of Yahweh. The LORD appeared as a "pillar of cloud" to talk with Moses and invite Israel’s worship (Exodus 33:9-10). Throughout their time in the wilderness, the cloud provided Israel with protection (Exodus 14:19-20) and direction (Exodus 13:21-22, Numbers 9:15-23).
Okay. Keep that epic imagery in your mind.
God is breathtaking. And He can also be terrifying. It’s crucial for us to hold those two truths close in hand if we are going to worship Him.
Because what we build really matters.
The children of Israel had no temple. They were nomads. Vagabonds. Always on the move.
An endless road trip.
Instead, they had a mobile shrine: The Tabernacle.
Everywhere they went, the would erect the poles, fabric, facade, the altar, acacia — everything needed for the worship space to be ready for the LORD. This is the place they would sacrifice, bring offerings of worship, experience absolution. It was placed right in the middle of the camp and was the literal epicenter of civic, cultural, economic and religious life.
Think of it as… the world’s most sacred blanket fort.
Here’s an interesting concept to toss your way: to encounter God, they were constantly building His house.
Fast forward. In the Apostolic imagination, New Testament authors identify followers of Jesus as a “building” (1 Corinthians 3:9, Ephesians 2:21) or spiritual “house” (1 Peter 2:15, Hebrews 3:3-6). Emphasis is placed not on a physical meeting place, but the mutual building up of one another to collectively function as the meeting place of God — The Church. People. Imagers of God. Us.
I’ll say it again: what we build really matters.
What are you building?
Let’s make a pit stop. Mid-9th century BC.
Har haKarmel was a placed long-revered. High places usually were.
Sculpted between upper Israel and their border with the Phoenicians, the mountain range spied out their northern neighbors along the coast in almost prophetic fashion. Wild olives and terebinth and grapes were woven like lace between the caves and grottos throughout the promontory ridge. This was hallowed soil. In a place thought to be the vineyard of God, a showdown between the gods was fermenting on Carmel.3
Now, you may remember this story.
Yahweh and His prophet Elijah vs. Ba’al and his prophets.
Four hundred and fifty pagan acolytes mutilate themselves and scream for hours, begging their god to answer them with fire. Crickets.
After some well placed pot-shots, Elijah gets to work:
30 Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come near to me.” So all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord which had been torn down. 31 Elijah took twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, “Israel shall be your name.” 32 So with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he made a trench around the altar, large enough to hold two measures of seed. 33 Then he arranged the wood and cut the ox in pieces and laid it on the wood. 34 And he said, “Fill four pitchers with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood.” And he said, “Do it a second time,” and they did it a second time. And he said, “Do it a third time,” and they did it a third time. 35 The water flowed around the altar and he also filled the trench with water.
— 1 Kings 18:30-35
Elijah prays earnestly. Boom. Divine fire.
One writer characterized worship as “the intersection of love and lordship.”4 Here on Carmel, Elijah epitomizes the idea. He’s bold enough to put action to his conviction that “The LORD, He is God.” And he leads the people in this by having them witness (“Come near to me”) and participate (“Fill four pitchers”) in the process of building the altar.
Because, what we build really matters.
That’s because, building is an act of worship.
Our sweat and our investments and our passions are all worship — the act of ascribing worth to something. It reveals what we truly love. But what we’re building must point to the preeminence of our value of God above all else. In his book How to Worship a King, Zach Neese riffs: “If worship is ascribing worth to God, then the price of our worship shows God and the world how much we value Him… Our worship shows the world how valuable our God is.”5
Mm. You feel that? I do.
It’s called conviction. And it’s good.
Followers of Jesus must be able to thrive in a lifestyle of worship by building, and often re-building, God’s Kingdom in self-sacrificial ways. It may be in confessing your sin to a friend and engaging in repentance, or authentically singing songs of praise to God out loud in a communal worship setting, or starting an outreach project in your city or volunteering in ministry to disciple young children to know Jesus.
Like Moses to Sinai or Elijah to Carmel, worship is a journey.
One where we display our willingness to ascribe value to God in real-world ways. Looking to encounter Him by constantly building His house. Our own frail and fallible systems of value will crumble in the storms of life, but what we do for God will be refined like gold in the fire.
So go, friends. Build. Worship.
Because as in the cases of Moses and Elijah, God wants to answer us.
READ PART I:
William Hazlitt (2015). Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated). Delphi Classics, 1105.
Victor Hugo (2016). William Shakespeare. Library of Alexandria, 62. Hugo said “Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
Mt. Carmel and Elijah. (n.d.). NET - Near East Tourist Agency. https://www.netours.com/info/holy-land/galilee/mt-carmel-and-elijah. Carmel is a lush landscape with rich soil ideal for vegetation, temperate climate and a natural spring. "Grapes and olives can grow on the Upper Carmel, for their roots go deep. Some think that the very name Carmel derives from kerem el, 'the vineyard (or olive grove) of God.' "
Neese, Z. (2015). How to Worship a King: Prepare Your Heart. Prepare Your World. Prepare the Way. Charisma Media, 73.
Ibid, 55-57.
Honestly haven’t even read it yet but coffee & gummy worms are two of my favorite so I can’t wait
Really enjoyed this piece! Framing the Christian life as building (and building as worship) is a unique way to conceptualize discipleship.