God’s Word for You

2 Chronicles 29:25-30 The singers sang

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Thursday, May 22, 2025

25 He stationed the Levites in the temple of the LORD with cymbals, harps and lyres in the way prescribed by David, by Gad the king’s seer, and by Nathan the prophet; for a command by the hand of the prophets is a command by the hand of the LORD. 26 So the Levites stood ready with the musical instruments commanded by David, and the priests stood with their trumpets. 27 Hezekiah gave the order to sacrifice the burnt offering on the altar. As the offering began, singing to the LORD also began, accompanied by trumpets and the musical instruments commanded by David king of Israel. 28 The whole assembly bowed down in worship. The singers sang and the trumpeters played. All this continued until the burnt offering was completed. 29 When the burnt offerings were finished, the king and everyone present with him knelt down and worshiped. 30 King Hezekiah and his officials ordered the Levites to praise the LORD with the words of David and of Asaph the seer. So they sang and sang praises with gladness and bowed their heads and worshiped.

Here we witness the kind of worship that happened when Solomon dedicated the temple, and on a just a few other occasions. First, the musicians were placed at particular stations in the temple. David and his prophets Gad and Nathan had written down where the musicians should play. These stations or musical areas are not recorded, but we know that David’s reign was recorded by these two men, since the Book of 1 Chronicles ends with this statement: “The acts of King David from beginning to end are written in the records of Samuel the seer, the records of Nathan the prophet, and the records of Gad the seer, including everything about his kingship, his mighty deeds, and the events that happened during his time, to him, to Israel, and to the kingdoms of the other lands” (1 Chronicles 29:29-30).

What we should notice right away is the doctrinal statement of our prophet: “A command by the hand of the prophets is a command by the hand of the LORD” (verse 25). There is an attitude today among some Reformed churches that if a thing was spoken only by an Apostle such as Peter or Paul, and not directly from the mouth of Jesus (or in one of the Gospels), that it does not have the same authority. This reasoning is flawed:

1, The verse before us (2 Chronicles 29:25) and others show that the writings and preaching of the prophets has come from God. If someone rejects the messenger, he has rejected God who gave the message, like the wicked servants who “beat one, killed another, and stoned a third” (Matthew 21:35). Jesus said about those who reject his servants: “God will bring those wretches to a wretched end” (Matthew 21:41).

2, “Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). The Apostles were sent out to make disciples by using the means of the sacraments and the preaching of the gospel (Matthew 28:19-20). If someone rejects the Apostles or the preaching of the ministers of the Gospels, he has rejected Christ. For “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me” (John 12:26).

3, Because Scripture (all of Scripture) is God-breathed, published, and promulgated by divine inspiration, therefore it is credible in itself, having credibility from itself. Augustine warns: “Faith will stagger if the authority of the Sacred Scriptures wavers.”

4, The potential argument that the Gospels are to be preferred over the Epistles is mistaken in several ways. First, two of the Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses of Jesus, and therefore should we reject Luke and Mark as inferior? Also, many things recorded in the Gospels are not from the lips Christ at all. Some statements are actually from unbelievers, demons, and Satan (John 18:38; Mark 1:24; Matthew 4:6). Should those things be held up as superior and better for our faith than Paul’s “The wages of sin is death,” or John’s “God is love”?

5, Here in our text, the words of David in the Psalms are also held up as prophetic and on the same degree of divine inspiration as Moses and Isaiah. It is vital to remember the judgment of Christ and the ancient church as to the Canon of the Scriptures, and not to any present or modern church.

6, It is one of the marks of the Devil that he tries to put divisions into the church, and questioning which parts of Scripture are supposedly superior to others is a terrible and wicked division indeed. For Satan challenged Jesus by setting one doctrine over against all others in the temptation in the wilderness, but Jesus our Lord calmly and resolutely stood on the judgment of Scripture in each case, “For articles of faith must not be set against each other.” And Paul warns: “Watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching that you learned, and keep away from them” (Romans 16:17).

7, Our Lutheran Confessions agree with these things, and we confess: “We pledge ourselves to the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments as the pure and clear fountain of Israel, which is the only true norm according to which all teachers and teachings are to be judged and evaluated” (Formula of Concord).

Our prophet describes their worship lasting all day, as long as it took to make all of the sacrifices (not all have been listed yet; they appear in the verses that follow). But we are not obligated to do exactly as they did; we certainly do not slaughter bulls and lambs.

But someone might ask, “If we just finished saying that the Scriptures are all equally valid and part of God’s holy word, then why are we not required to worship the way Moses and David commanded?” This is because the text before us is not a command, but a description. There is a vast difference between a prescriptive passage (a command from God) and a descriptive passage (an historical event). For Christ freed us from the Laws of Moses, kosher foods, worship on Friday evening, slaughtering animals, and so on. But we still set aside time for worship. As far as differences between churches or congregations, we also confess: “Churches will not condemn one another because of a difference in ceremonies, when in Christian liberty one uses fewer or more of them, as long as they are otherwise agreed in doctrine and in all its articles and are also agreed concerning the right use of the sacraments, according to the well-known axiom, ‘Disagreement in fasting should not destroy agreement in faith.’” (Formula of Concord X,6).

One final thing that is related to these things should be said. Some of our churches, including the one where I serve, distribute the Lord’s Supper in a continuous flow of recipients sometimes called “convention style” because it is commonly used in our Synod and District Conventions. But I have frequently heard members of other churches deriding this form as “drive thru communion.” This must stop. The sacrament is the pure gospel, and to say anything disparaging about the form of its distribution is a sin under the Eighth Commandment as well as others. It does not support the faith of those who receive it. It very nearly approaches blasphemy, for Christ did not prescribe one or another form of distribution. We must be loving in the way we talk to each other and about one another. “Dear friends, let us love one another.”

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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