God
Loves A Parade
Pageantry in the Old and New Testaments
Continued
Pageantry in the Old and New Testaments
Continued
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God
Loves A Parade
Pageantry in the Old and New Testaments Continued |
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material presented in the guise of pageantry or processional. Some of it has been incredibly powerful. What makes pageantry powerful? The same thing that makes a banner or a song or any other expression powerful: careful portrayal of the Word of God. It is the expressed Word of God that is powerful. If we look at Revelation 4 and 5 as a model of heavenly worship, we can extract the basics of powerful presentation. Those basics are that worship should be: throne-focused, Christ-centered, word-based, intercessory and prophetic in nature, massive in scope, militant in character, powerful in message. Let's take a walk through the Word and find some of the great processionals of all eternity, proof that God indeed, loves a parade! Starting in Genesis, we find perhaps the first recorded processional and also one of the best known. In Genesis 2:19 the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and paraded them before Adam to see what he would name them. In Genesis 7:14-16 God brought the animals two by two, into the ark to Noah in an orderly, "choreographed" fashion. One of our favorites is found in Exodus 33:18-23 where God Himself processed before Moses. "Then Moses said, 'I pray Thee, show me Thy glory!' And He said, 'I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.' But He said, 'You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!' Then the Lord said, 'Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand [there] on the rock; and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by. Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.'"Part of any processional, important to any pageantry, is order. Israel in the wilderness took part in several processions. Numbers 2:34 tells of the camping and marching order of the Twelve Tribes. "...according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so they camped by their standards, and so they set out, every one by his family, according to his father's household." In Joshua 3:17 we can read about them processing, crossing the Jordan, entering into their land of promise. |
A
bit of jest that went around Christian circles a number of years ago
was that God invented the marching band. Look
at Joshua 6:12-16, the famous account of a
powerful, God-filled processional, bringing down strongholds for the
nation. Now
Joshua rose early in the morning,
and the priests took up the ark of the Lord.
And the seven priests carrying the seven trumpets of rams' horns
before the ark of the Lord went
on continually, and blew the trumpets; and the armed men went before
them, and the rear guard came after the ark of the Lord, while they
continued to blow the trumpets. Thus the second day they marched around
the city once and returned to the camp; they did so
for six days. Then it came about on the seventh day that they rose
early at the dawning of the day and marched around the city in the
same manner seven times; only on that day they marched around the
city seven times. And it came about at the seventh time, when the
priests
blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, "Shout! For the Lord
has given you the city." And the walls came a-tumblin' down!
Later in Israel's history, remember Isaiah's experience, seeing Him high and lifted up with His train filling the temple. Remember King David bringing the Ark of the Presence back into Jerusalem to Mt. Zion (2 Samuel 6:12-15). Talk about massive in scope! They moved six paces and the King sacrificed oxen and fatlings (both plural). If David sacrificed every six paces, imagine the extravagance of such an offering of thanks. If an average pace under the load of the Ark was say 18", and if they offered two each of the oxen and fatlings, we're talking about 440 sacrificial stops, 1760 animals per mile! Plus the time to kill them and burn them. This was a simply massive undertaking, perhaps days or weeks long. The psalmist also was more than a participant in the processionals of his God. Like Moses and Isaiah, David experienced the supernatural movement of God and His angels in his own very natural world. Think about the angels moving in the mulberry trees or read in Psalm 68:24, "They [the chosen people] have seen Thy procession, O God, the procession of my God, my King, into the sanctuary." In the gospels, you know about what has come to be called the Palm Sunday processional. A little more than a week later, there was yet another |
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