DAVID’S TENT

Acts 15:16,17 – After this I will return
And will rebuild the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down;
I will rebuild its ruins,
And I will set it up;
So that the rest of mankind may seek the LORD,
Even all the Gentiles who are called by My name,
Says the LORD who does all these things.’

The Lord has always shown up in the most unexpected and obscure locations. He was there in a tent in the travels from Egypt to the promised land, again the tent was His chosen abode on Mount Zion when David danced in His presence. Later on He revealed Himself through the voice crying in the wilderness and was born of a virgin in an animal stable. James again spoke about the return of David’s Tent in the last days. He said that the church was actually a restoration of David’s tent, the place where God had chosen to dwell. Here is how Matthew Henry describes this prophesy.

“The covenant was made with David and his seed; but the house and family of David are here called his tabernacle, because David in his beginning was a shepherd, and dwelt in tents, and his house, that had been as a stately palace, had become a mean and despicable tabernacle, reduced in a manner to its small beginning. This tabernacle was ruined and fallen down; there had not been for many ages a king of the house of David; the scepter had departed from Judah, the royal family was sunk and buried in obscurity, and, as it should seem, not enquired after. But God will return, and will build it again, raise it out of its ruins….The church of Christ may be called the tabernacle of David. This may sometimes be brought very low, and may seem to be in ruins, but it shall be built again, its withering interests shall revive; it is cast down, but not destroyed: even dry bones are made to live.”

The Lord has continued to show Himself in strange ways through history. There was the teenagers in Wales, the son of a one eyed slave in the horse stable in Los Angeles, and the hippies in the Jesus Movement in the seventies. I wonder what He has in mind for this generation? Just take a look at David’s tent and you might understand; it wasn’t ornate. It was a place of singing, shouting, and dancing before the Lord.