Somebody Has to Tend the Fire

Read this as part of my devotional for today. It's from the book "The Daily Chase" by Tommy Tenney. Thought it is pretty good. So I've typed it out, and hope that you gain something from it too!!

David did two things to make sure God's presence remained iun Jerusalem. First, he prepared a place for God's presence by constructing a tabernacle without walls or a veil. Second, he did something special once the Levites arrived at the tabernacle and set the ark of the covenant in place. He created a "living" mercy seat of worship in the tabernacle so God would be pleased to sit and remain in that humble sanctuary.

David learned a vital secret somewhere in the process of bringing God's presence into Jerusalem. He learned that if you want to keep that blue flame there, somebody has to tend the fire! "Do you mean we have to throw logs on the fire?" No, you don't fuel the blue flame of God's shekinah presence with earthly fuel. You fuel it through sacrificial worship. We have no right to call for the fire of God unless we are willing to be the fuel of God.

David was simply following the pattern Moses had received for the mercy seat:

And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work you shall make them at the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub at one end, and the other cherub at the other end; you shall make the cherubim at the two ends of it of one peice with the mercy seat. And the cherubim shall stretch out their wings above, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and they shall face one another; the faces of the cherubim shall be toward the mercy seat (Exodus 25: 18-20 NKJV)

The wings of the cherubim that Moses built touched each other as they encircled and covered the mercy seat where the presence of God would sit just above the lid or "covering". If you read this passage closely, you will notice that the two golden cherubim weren't cast or poured into molds. God said that the gold used to form the covering cherubim had to be "beaten" into the proper shape and position.

The way we can build a mercy seat is to take our positions as purified, "beaten" worshippers. One problem is that GOd still requires mercy seat worshipers to be formed of gold tried in the fire (purified), conformed (beaten) into the image of perfection, and moved into the proper position of unity for worship. (See Revelations 3:18; Romans 8:29). This speaks of purity, brokenness, and unity - the three components of true worship under the new covenant of the blood of Jesus. Brokenness on the earth creates openness in the heavens.

It is interesting to me that when gold is refined over extreme heat, the first things to come to the top and be skimmed off are the "dross", the obvious impurities and foreign matter. The last thing to be seperated from gold is silver, a lesser precious metal that often blends with the raw gold ore. We often have a hard time seperating the "good" from the "best".