I was raised under the lights. Western church, every Sunday: the band up front, the words on the screen, and I sang along for most of my life. I watched a video called Fireside Worship, God behind Bars. Rough men in a circle, no stage, nobody to impress, singing as they meant it.
I can’t stop asking what that would feel like in a “church” full of people.
Set two texts side by side. In Shemot, Exodus 31:3, HaShem says of Bezalel that He has filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship. Skill is the gift, and God is the giver. In Divrei HaYamim, 1 Chronicles 25:7, David’s singers number two hundred and eighty-eight, every one of them trained in the songs of the Lord, every one of them skillful. Then the same God speaks through Amos: take away from Me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melody of your harps, Amos 5:23. As I read Amos, the men He refused to hear were not amateurs. One chapter later, in Amos 6:5, the prophet says they devise instruments of music for themselves like David. David’s skill. David’s instruments. God covering His ears.
What we were handed makes sense of the first two texts and skips the third. Excellence is an offering. Rehearse on Thursday because David’s men rehearsed, and put the best voices up front because the Levites stood where the people could hear them. Build the set so every song carries the sermon’s weight, because a divided service is a distracted room. A faithful worship pastor can sign every line of that, and he can point to the text.
But Amos could sign it too. The harps in his chapter were the right harps, in the hands of men who knew the songs. Whatever turned David’s music into noise, it was not a lack of skill, and it was not a lack of order. If the skill was real and the instruments were David’s and God still would not listen, what was missing in that room, and is it missing in ours?
The word I keep coming back to is qahal, the assembly. In Devarim, Deuteronomy 5:22, Moshe (Moses) reminds Israel that the voice at the mountain spoke to all your assembly, kol qehalkhem, the whole gathered people, not a delegation up front. Centuries later, Sha’ul (Paul) tells the believers in Ephesus to speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, Ephesians 5:19. The Greek is heautois, among yourselves. The way I take this, the song moves sideways through the room before it goes up. What that looks like in a big room, and where the mountain’s assembly shows up again in the New Testament, I am saving for the full piece.
Pastor, this part is for you, and I am not writing from outside the walls. I sat in your rooms for many years and sang at the stage with everyone else. The man in Amos 6:5 held David’s instruments and played them well, and God would not listen. You cannot tell which room you are standing in from the stage. There is one way to find out, and it takes one Sunday. Pull the band off the stage and seat them in the room, the guitarist in row six, the singer three seats to your left. Same skill, no front. Do not announce it, do not film it, do not build a sermon illustration out of it, and do not do it to grow. Do it to find out. If the room falls apart, you'll know what was holding it up. If the room sings, you have a different answer, and I would want to hear about it.
I am at the same fork. I would be in the seats, singing loudly. Tonight, with your own Bible open: Shemot, Exodus 31:1-6, then Divrei HaYamim, 1 Chronicles 25:6-7, then Amos 5:21-24, then Ephesians 5:18-21, in that order.
The room itself, the lights going down and the first voice coming from the seat next to you, and the road from the mountain’s assembly to a room in Acts, wait in Hand the Room Back, on my notebook at sergiodesoto.com.
Your brother in the Way,
Sergio
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Thanks! I know that this is not for me (I'm not a pastor), yet it still resonates strongly and personally. While reading it, I could not help thinking of God rejecting the sacrifices (Isaiah 1, Hosea 6 among others) and the cause appears to me to be the same as the one you point to in this piece.
"With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:6-8
Acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly have all to do with what makes the actual ecclesia.