The Psalm 23 Adventure, Part 48

 

July 14, 2017

 

And another good Friday morning to y’all.  Guess I really thought I’d be able to wrap up this discussion on David’s statement, Thou anointest my head with oil, but after seeing notes that I’ve taken with the ongoing, almost daily revelations from Holy Spirit, it is apparent that we are going to be at this for a few more weeks.

 

Let’s wrap up that portion of this topic that we’re taking out of the book of Revelation before we change gears entirely. 

 

Revelation 5:8-10:  And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.  And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;  And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.

 

Revelation 5:13-14:  And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.  And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever.

 

Revelation 11:16-17:  And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God,  Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned.

 

These 24 elders are representative of the 12’s that come out of Israel and out from “among the children of men.”

 

You have the 144,000 (12 taken to its conclusion) taken from Israel.  12 elders represent each of the 12 tribes.  This is metaphoric, you understand.  What John is seeing is both metaphoric and prophetic.  Then you have the 144,000 taken from among the children of men.  12 elders are taken from this group of 144,000.  Again, the picture is metaphoric, and it is prophetic.  Now, watch what John sees next in reference to these elders!

 

Revelation 19:4-7:  And the four and twenty elders and the four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the Throne, saying, Amen: Alleluia.

 

And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great.   And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.  Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.

 

Got it?  “Let us be glad and rejoice, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready!”

 

That “readying” has come in the Paths of Righteousness.  That readying has come through continual responding to the preparation processes that have taken place in Ekklesia.  That readying is for the anointing that comes when the Bride and the Bridegroom are joined to one another, and they become One for the eternity of the eternities.  That anointing comes when the Lord has a fully-prepared and readied Bride who IS the continual sound of praise and worship.

 

That anointing comes with a people whose sounds — sounds intrinsic to each individual — radiate and reverberate before the Throne with the sounds and songs of praise and worship that literally are them!

 

What is so cool about this is the harmony that results between Bridegroom and Bride!  I remind you that the Lord Himself sings over us.  He has His own sound, and it is a sound that we all respond to.  But consider what happens when He sings and the Bride sings with Him!  Consider what John wrote — and this is where we will wrap up for today — and saw coming out of the Throne when the worship went forth:

 

Revelation 4:4-11:  And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold. 5And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.

 

And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.  And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

 

And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.  And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever,  The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying,  Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

 

That’s us, Folks!

 

We’ve been drawing a whole lot of pictures over the past weeks concerning David’s understanding when he wrote, “Thou anointest my head with oil.”  We’ve talked about David’s anointing to become King of Israel.  We’ve talked about the anointing that took place when Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan.  We’ve talked about the sounds that took place with the worship when Jesus was conceived, when He was born, and when He had His triumphant entry into Jerusalem prior to His crucifixion, death and resurrection.

 

We’ve talked about Lucifer’s anointing and commissioning for surrounding the Throne of God with praise and worship and how, when he attempted to usurp the Throne for himself, he was thrown out of Heaven along with a third of the angels.  We’ve talked about the plan and decision of God to replace him with a family of beings just like Himself who would take Lucifer’s place and surround the Throne with a new dimension of praise and worship.

 

Today, I’d like to take you on a journey through time in order to understand David’s focus on the anointing, his understanding of its significance, and why he wraps up (and I’m getting ahead of myself here) the 23rd Psalm with the statement, “And I shall dwell in the House of the Lord forever.”

 

Let’s retrace some of what we’ve already covered.  When David sat on the hillsides tending his father’s sheep, he was receiving downloads from Heaven on an almost daily basis.  What we have written and transcribed in the Psalms represents a very small portion of all the downloads he received.

 

As he shared with me when we had our conversation in Heaven when I asked him how he could possibly write such extravagant praise and worship, “I didn’t write all that!  It didn’t originate with me.  I only wrote and sang what I heard coming out of Heaven.”

 

What David heard and what he experienced developed an understanding in him of the purpose of our existence.  He saw and understood our ultimate joining with the Lord in a transformative union through an anointing and commissioning for praise and worship.  With that said, consider the following.

 

There is a picture that is worth taking a look at in Revelation 3:7-13.  The seven letters, as you know, are addressed to the seven Ekklesias, and represent a single letter to the Bride.  The message to the Bride is the overcoming of the seven spirits (exemplified in the seven nations which occupied Canaan) or ruling principalities which comprise the nature of the Beast (seen throughout Revelation), and are the counterfeit for the Seven Spirits of God.

 

Without getting into all of the areas of overcoming identified in this particular letter, the message to the Ekklesia in Philadelphia is “I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it…”  The “open door” is identified with the “key of David.”  The phrase, “the key of David,” is a very well-identified Hebrew metaphor which means, The power and authority of David,” and represents “the authority to access all that is within.”

 

The authority represented by this key is that He who holds the key, openeth and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth.”

 

The “key of David” also has another very specific application: the “Tabernacle of David.”

 

The “Tabernacle of David” was nothing like the Mosaic tabernacle with the outer courts, the Holy Place, the Table of Shewbread, the Golden Candlestick, etc.  It had only one thing: the Holy of Holies.  The Holy of Holies contained only one thing: the Ark of the Covenant.  David’s tabernacle was nothing more than a simple tent (no complicated structure, no complicated procedure to gain access to the Holy of Holies — the “Secret Place,” the “Inner Chamber”) pitched over the Ark of the Covenant.

 

This was an extraordinary departure from the Tabernacle of Moses.  Not only did it not have all of the accoutrements of Moses’ tabernacle, it did not even have a veil which covered the Ark from view.

 

Picture, if you will, what David set about to accomplish in Israel.  His first act as King was to appoint singers and musicians whose responsibility it was to minister unto the Lord in praise and worship, 24-hours per day, 365 days a year — CONTINUALLY!  Yes, of course we know that the Levites continued in their normal priestly duties, but these praisers and worshipers did not concern themselves with any of the traditional priestly duties.  They had only one responsibility: to minister unto the Lord.

 

They did not minister unto the multitudes.  They did not offer burnt sacrifices.  They did not take, or receive from the people their sin offerings, etc., etc., etc.  Under the direction of three families (the families of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun), they ministered in rotating shifts or “courses” before the “open door” of the Tabernacle, praising and worshiping the Lord continually.

 

This presented a living photograph to Israel of the very core of God’s desire for His people.  It presented a picture of the wedding chamber — the bridal chamber — having been opened by the Lord to receive a Bride who was expressing her great love and great desire for Him.  The praisers and worshipers replaced the Golden Candlestick.  They were the flame of love and passionate desire for the Lord, burning continually before him, night and day.  There was no need for a Table of Shewbread, because the table was spread before Israel night and day in God’s provision for them.

 

There was another picture as well.  When the families of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun took their respective turns in ministering to the Lord around the Tabernacle of David, they were demonstrating in a literal, physical sense our destiny to minister to the Lord around Him!  They were a demonstration of our replacement of Lucifer.

 

A prophetic demonstration of what we have in store with this anointing followed in the years following David’s rule and the continuous praise and worship that went forth.

 

From a purely historical standpoint, Israel prospered economically and militarily, and was provided for by the Lord in a never-ending display, so long as praise and worship went forth unhampered and unhindered.  During the forty years of David’s reign, Israel never lost a battle.  David took territories and dominions which had been promised to Abraham, and commanded to Moses and Joshua, but never attained by any leader in Israel’s history to that time.  He subdued the last of the Hittites, and eradicated the remaining traces of other nations which had contaminated Israel with their co-habitation.

 

The Jebusites, which had occupied Jerusalem since Shem’s death, were subdued and destroyed; and David purchased from Ornan, the Jebusite, both the hill, and the threshing floor as the site of the temple which would later be built.  He refused to take as a gift, or recognize Ornan (whose title was Araunah, or “Lord King”) as a king, or his equal, even though Ornan was the last of the Jebusite rulers.

 

Never before in history had a people prospered as they did with continual praise and worship going forth. Israel saw its land produce agriculturally and yield an abundance such as never had been seen.  The surrounding nations turned to Israel for leadership.  Kings, who before times had been constant enemies and invaded the cities of Israel, sought after peace treaties.  The Philistines, who had invaded the land with their armies for hundreds of years, were decimated militarily, and were unable to so much as raise an army against Israel (or anyone else, for that matter) for more than three hundred years.

 

The picture of Moab, Ammon and Syria was similar.  Each time they came against David, and against Israel, they were defeated.  In each case, and after their third incursion, the defeat was so great that they were unable to raise an army capable of offensive action for some fifty years.  The Moabites, the Ammonites and the Syrians all became servant to David.

 

For the first time in Israel’s history, the nation had the Lord God as its focus.  The nation as a whole served God.  Idols were demolished.  Places of heathen worship were destroyed.  Israel as a nation developed more of a relationship with the Lord than it had ever seen since the days of Moses and Joshua.  God’s people prospered as they had never prospered.

 

This pattern and picture continued throughout the reign of Solomon, who saw an expanded ministry of praise and worship.  One of David’s last acts as King was to increase the number of families who ministered to the Lord under the direction of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun.  Twelve people were chosen from each of twenty-four families, making a total contingent of 288 worshipers, twelve for each hour of the day and night, around the clock.

 

Let’s take a break here and we’ll pick this up again next week.

 

 For those of you who’ve been participating in our Monday night Healing Prayer Conference Call, we just want to let you know that beginning with the month of July and continuing until the first Monday night in October, we will be taking a break for the summer.  We’ve found during the past three years of doing this call that participation during the summer months drops significantly because of folks taking their vacations, and being involved in other activities.  That said, we will resume our prayer calls on Monday night, October 2nd.

 

At the same time, in case you are missing out on real fellowship in an environment of Ekklesia, our Sunday worship gatherings are available by conference call – usually at about 10:45AM Pacific.  That conference number is (712) 770-4160, and the access code is 308640#.  We are now making these gatherings available by Skype.  If you wish to participate by video on Skype, my Skype ID is regner.capener.  If you miss the live voice call, you can dial (712) 770-4169, enter the same access code and listen in later.  The video call, of course, is not recorded – not yet, anyway.

 

Blessings on you!

 

 

Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES

RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Temple, Texas 76504

Email Contact: CapenerMinistries@protonmail.com

 

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