The Bible Binge: Take Me Home (1 Chronicles 21:13-22:1)

D-Day at Normandy

This week marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the largest air, sea, and land invasion ever attempted. Storming the beach at Normandy to free France from the Nazi’s turned the tide of World War 2. If you’ve seen any of the pictures or video, the numbers of troops that participated are staggering. 156,000 troops landed at Normandy… more than 44-hundred lost their lives that day. Just a couple of days later, that number of troops in France had doubled. Within two months, France had been liberated.

Numbers are a big piece of war planning. Typically, if you have more numbers… troops, planes, tanks, boats… you win. That’s not always the case. We live where we live here in Los Fresnos pledging allegiance to the United States flag because Zach Taylor was able to beat a Mexican army much bigger than his own. Every General planning a war wants to know the numbers. Numbers provide confidence for victory.

Chronicles: The Storyline of the Temple

Unless… your confidence isn’t supposed to be in the numbers. This is a running theme in the Bible. God isn’t really about the numbers. It’s why he promises the children of Abraham will be more than can be counted… the number isn’t important. His Promise is what is important. His Good News for the whole world is what’s important.

That’s our story today as we continue our Bible Binge in Chronicles. Chronicles is much like the book of Kings. There are a lot of the same stories that we’ve already read in Samuel and Kings found in Chronicles. But the writer of Chronicles is putting the spotlight on something else. The stories and even the genealogies in Chronicles are all about the temple, the place where God has made his home among his people. Chronicles is all about temple.. the books of Samuel and Kings follow the stories of David and the Kings.. Chronicles follows the stories of David, the Kings, and the Temple.

Chronicles is very interested in numbers. At the beginning of Chronicles we have all these genealogies… our eyes glaze over when we read them. We wonder… why is this in here. This is ancestry.com. Names of people we’ve never heard of… names that sound weird to us at that. It all starts with Adam… and there are families here that provide history for all of the 12 tribes of Israel. And the kings… especially Saul and David. But these families are connected to the temple in some fashion. God wants us to see that this idea of Him making his home among His people isn’t just some fancy tale. It’s not a myth. It’s not abstract theory. There are real people involved with real families. The people of Israel have a stake in the worship life of Israel and God living among His people. It’s an incarnational temple… with real people in real time and space attending to all that happens in God’s home as he lives among His people.

There are also numbers in the genealogies. Military numbers provided by God… the fighting force that protect the nation and God’s home. The opening of Chronicles gives us a sense of Israel’s nationhood… God’s promises to Abraham have been realized. In fact, God has made good to give Abraham a people that cannot be counted.

David wants to know: how strong am I?

Unless the king decides he wants to know that number. Throughout the Old Testament, God is constantly reminding kings that they are not in charge. Nations are a gift. The people are a gift. Chronicles is full of David’s military success… and it goes to his head. He wants to know: how strong am I? We come to chapter 21 and we get this:

1 Chronicles 21:1 Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to count the people of Israel… this command was also evil in God’s sight, so he afflicted Israel..so the LORD sent a plague on Israel, and seventy thousand Israelite men died.

When we think of David and his sin as a king, we typically think of his sin of stealing another man’s wife, and then killing the husband. The writer of Chronicles doesn’t even mention that sin. David’s big sin in Chronicles is taking a census, and as a result of that sin, 70,000 military men die. God did this to Pharaoh in Egypt, when he got to thinking too much of himself. God did this to Nebuchadnezzar, the world conqueror, when he got to thinking too much of himself. Those guys were Gentiles. David should know better. David is starting to believe the hit song about him… Saul killed his thousands, David killed his ten-thousands. “Way to go, ME. I did all this.” Nope. 70-thousand guys die because David trusts in horses and chariots rather than in the name of His God.

David is crushed. David pleads for mercy, just as he did when he sinned by taking another man’s wife. David throws himself at the very one who has punished the sin. And you know what God does? God tells David… I’m coming home to live with you. What transpires is a forgotten story in our Bibles, but I’m convinced it is one of the best.

David finds grace at a threshing floor

God doesn’t just tell David. The angel of the LORD is there. This pre-incarnate Christ who keeps showing up throughout the Old Testament. Whenever he shows up, you can be sure that he is doing something that is paving the way for the Messiah to be Israel’s ultimate savior.

1 Chronicles 21:18 The angel of the Lord ordered Gad to tell David to go and set up an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.”

The threshing floor in agricultural countries was where the wheat was sifted from its chaff. This became a symbol, throughout the Old Testament, of salvation, where God saves His wheat from the chaff which will be burned… a picture of both salvation and judgment. And David is sorely in need of salvation and forgiveness in this moment of judgment on his people. And this is what happens. The idea actually comes from God himself. And he tells Gad, who is a prophet for the King, to relay the instructions to buy the threshing floor where the death plague stopped. David buys the threshing floor, and then..

1 Chronicles 21:26 David built an altar to the Lord there and offered burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. He called on the Lord, and he answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt offering… and (the angel) put his sword back into its sheath.

Oh my. There’s that fire from heaven again, the same fire we saw with Elijah on Mt. Carmel. The same fire at Mt. Sinai where God talked to Moses. The same fire that led Israel through the Red Sea… that same fire that always seems to be around this angel of the Lord figure when he shows up.. this is God himself consuming the sacrifice in a blaze of forgiveness and salvation and life. This is God saying, Yes, David you sinned, but I forgive you. The threshing floor is where God himself shows up and tells David once again “My sword is in its sheath. And it will stay there. You’re mine. You’re always mine. I’m always here. I forgive you.”

But even better… that threshing floor where sacrifices for sin are made, sin is atoned for, and forgiveness and grace are poured out to sinners… that floor becomes God’s home. David, I’m coming home… my home will be here. My home will be a place where I live with you. My home will be a place where sinners are forgiven. David knows this...

1 Chronicles 22:1 Then David said, “This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of burnt offering for Israel.”

David’s response to the blaze of fire and the presence of the pre-incarnate Christ is almost the exact same response as Jacob had when he saw a ladder to heaven and the Son of God standing next to him… surely this is the house of God. Jacob wants to dedicate the space as a gateway to heaven and David immediately wants to dedicate the space to a dwelling place for God on earth. And that’s exactly what happens a few years later:

2 Chronicles 3:1 Then Solomon began to build the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah where the Lord had appeared to his father David, at the site David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

The very place where God shows up in a blaze of forgiveness and mercy becomes his home. This is where he wants to be. God wants to live among his people and He wants his place to be at the very place where He is known for his forgiveness and mercy and grace. The temple is where God lives with his people and gives them forgiveness through sacrifice. What love and what grace… poured out on David, even though he had perpetuated a great sin. That’s God’s home.

The amazing thing is that this has always been a place of forgiveness, life, and salvation. This threshing floor is the same spot where the angel of the Lord stopped Abraham from killing his son Isaac while he was laying on the altar, hundreds of years before. That spot where a ram was sacrificed instead of Isaac is now the place where David is being forgiven of his terrible sin… and where God wants to come live with David. God is going to make his home where he has been providing salvation for hundreds of years.

A New and Better Temple

But there is now a new and better temple where God lives with his people. In the New Testament, we have a story where once again, God shows up in the temple in an act of threshing the wheat from the chaff… in salvation and judgment. And God makes an absolutely shocking statement.

John 2:13–25 The Jewish Passover was near, and so Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling oxen, sheep, and doves, and he also found the money changers sitting there. After making a whip out of cords, he drove everyone out of the temple with their sheep and oxen. He also poured out the money changers’ coins and overturned the tables. He told those who were selling doves, “Get these things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace!” And Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.”

Of all the things that Jesus did to tick off the establishment, the gospels are pretty much agreed that this was the last straw. This is what ends up getting Jesus killed (humanly speaking). "after making a whip out of cords"… a phrase that speaks to the pre-meditation and determination of Jesus to rid the temple of the illicit trade. Jesus turns the temple into a threshing floor where he is weeding out the bad and the old, so that the only thing left is the new… Jesus himself. As the new temple.

God has returned to make a home among His people in a most unexpected way. Here comes a new rabbi to the threshing floor, throwing out the money changers and declaring "destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it". Jesus breaks into the mundane and declares himself to be the dwelling place of God among His people… a new temple that will be accomplished in his death and resurrection. The temple veil rips in two and Christ becomes the eternal dwelling of God among men… so that we read in Revelation, there was no need for a temple because the Lamb is the temple. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is where God takes up his residence among men forever.

Jesus is Our Home

Jesus is the sinners’ home. That must have been a rancorous site at the temple that day. Wasn't easy driving out the merchants and cattle (by the way… no need for cattle to sacrifice when the Lamb will replace it all). Jesus in the uproar declares himself to be the place of peace. He is the new temple. And in 1 Corinthians and in Ephesians, the church is called the temple. Because we are in Christ, Christ's home is our home… he is our home… he resides among us. And all of those good things we desire from our earthly home are to be found in him. Safety. Peace. Contentment. Rest.

Jesus is THE home for us. There’s a popular myth these days that Israel must have a new temple in order for the Messiah to return to Jerusalem. I grew up believing that myth until I understood what it means for Jesus to be THE temple. The idea that we can expect another temple to be built in Jerusalem.. that’s a misreading of the Old Testament and its promises. When Jesus declares himself the new temple, he’s the new temple. Period. There’s no need for another temple. Jesus is it. Jesus is our dwelling place.. Jesus is the when and where God dwells among his people.

Take me Home

One of my favorite cultural pieces from the eighties is entitled Take Me Home… and it expresses the inward thoughts and emotions and desires of a mental health patient who is stuck in a mental health institution drowning in a sea of insanity… and the only thing he knows, the only thing he wants, the only thing that is real.. or safe.. is home. In the midst of brokenness is a plea from someone, anyone, to Take Me Home.

I'm almost sure that Phil Collins did not intend this, but the sad desperation of Collins song ironically expresses the very thing we have been talking about this morning. There is a longing and desire for us to be home, and Jesus is it. All of life is irrational and insane because of our fallenness and sin. The world is irrational and the world is insane, by righteousness standards. We are part of that mess. We contribute to the insanity of sin. But because we are in Christ, we are His, we are new creations… our soul longs for that one thing that we know to be true… the one place we know to be safe… the one place we know where we are completely accepted, where there is no hurt.. we long for home… where Jesus is. Home.

There will be insanity today. There will be instances in which your house and home don't feel like home. There will be irrationality of sin in your life today. In that moment, remind yourself that what is happening doesn't have the last say nor does it define you. It doesn't define "home". Home is where Jesus, the temple, is… he resides in us through His Spirit. He makes his dwelling with us in the community and in His word and in His sacrament. He lives with us. All of the time. There's never a moment when He is not dwelling with us. Caring for us. Reminding us whose we are.

So, take, take me home. Take me to Jesus… The old temple, the old dwelling place is gone… the new has come in the person and work of Jesus.. he has taken up residence among us. He is Home and He has made us His home. Home is where Jesus is.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

This table is where Jesus makes his home with us. This is where we find our home… our safety, our security, our rest. This is God’s threshing floor where sinners find forgiveness, life, and salvation. This is where Jesus tells us that we are home because it is here that Jesus delivers on His promise to be our home.

Benediction

Numbers 6:24–26

May the Lord bless you and protect you;

may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;

may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.