Taking the Time to Prepare for Worship Time All of the Time
27 And at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem they sought the Levites in all their places, to bring them to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication with gladness, with thanksgiving and with singing, with cymbals, harps, and lyres. 28 And the sons of the singers gathered together from the district surrounding Jerusalem and from the villages of the Netophathites; 29 also from Beth-gilgal and from the region of Geba and Azmaveth, for the singers had built for themselves villages around Jerusalem. 30 And the priests and the Levites purified themselves, and they purified the people and the gates and the wall.
31 Then I brought the leaders of Judah up onto the wall and appointed two great choirs that gave thanks. One went to the south on the wall to the Dung Gate. 32 And after them went Hoshaiah and half of the leaders of Judah,
Jesus cautioned the pharisees about praising God in public to draw attention to themselves. He told them to go and pray in their closet, in secret, so the God who hears in secret would answer their prayers. Their hearts weren’t in the right place. They wanted to pray and draw attention to themselves from other people, not necessarily God.
In this event we are reading about today, Nehemiah and all of the Israelites have been exiled in Babylon for 70 years. They didn’t even want to sing a song about Jerusalem while they were lost and destitute in Babylon. It was miserable.
But now they are back, they have rebuilt the wall around the city, and it’s time to party. Look at the effort they put into their worship! They went and tracked down all of the Levites they could. The Levites were the only ones that could do special parts of the worship process at the temple. They had to keep genealogies for 70 years to remember who was a Levite before the exile and who their descendants were.
Each of those Levites had to be taught by their fathers and grandfathers. They had to learn all about the temple when the temple was thousands of miles away. Talk about virtual training! They had to learn how to handle articles in the temple that didn’t even exist anymore, but someday might exist again.
They had instruments and they had songs that they had learned for decades…just to prepare for a day like this.
Today, we can kick on your phone’s voice recorder during church or go up to the worship team afterwards and ask “What song was that? I want to learn the words!” We can find playlists with songs to sing and praise God every day of the week.
If they had half of the choir of Judah stationed at the Dung Gate to sing songs, I’m sure we can find some creative ways to sing and worship the Lord in 2022.
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