1 Chronicles 23:1–2: “So when David was old and full of days, he made his son Solomon king over Israel. And he gathered together all the leaders of Israel, with the priests and the Levites.”

September 11th, 2023 by Pastor Ed in devotional

In 1 Chronicles 22, King David carefully gave a list of all the materials his son would need to build the temple after his death. In this chapter, David divided the Levites into organizational lists for the various jobs in and around the temple. He also carefully arranged the “ministers of worship” so that good worship would be a part of the temple. David understood the importance of worship better than anyone we find in the Old Testament. He wrote the majority of the psalms and was clearly not afraid of worshiping God in front of people.

There is an interesting story about worship in the life of another author from a later time. Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) was deeply immersed in meditation during a church service and failed to kneel at the appropriate moment. His enemies hurried to the bishop and demanded that Dante be punished for his sacrilege. He defended himself by saying, “If those who accuse me had had their eyes and minds on God, as I had, they too would have failed to notice events around them, and they most certainly would not have noticed what I was doing.”

“LORD, when we worship You this day, may we be so intense in our worship that we simply forget what others are doing or saying around us.”