Look what just arrived in the mail!

It’s a book I wrote exploring the big plot of the entire Bible through the metaphor of a Divine Symphony or the Dance of the Trinity. Just in time for Christmas! I can order you a copy for $15 if interested. See my other books here.

This version includes some bonus material — 55 pages worth — of favorite quotations I’ve collected over the past decade or so. I’m calling it Shaken & Stirred: Quotes That Have Moved My Soul.

Here’s a description of The Father’s Song:

“In this creative overview of the Bible, Jeremy helps train our “ears to hear” the penetrating God-beat at the center of redemption history. The story of the Bible sweeps and flows, builds and develops like a masterful musical piece with many movements. From the explosive energy of the opening of Creation, to the somber sounds of Sin and Lament along the way, the song rises and falls and rises again to the grand crescendo at the End. Leave the dissonance of the world and learn to move to the “unforced rhythms of grace” (Matt 11 MSG).

I want to share (for the first time) the final chapter where I draw together the previous chapters and bring the Divine Symphony to a climax with the Book of Revelation.

First, here’s the Table of Contents:

CHAPTER 14

WEDDING DANCE (REVELATION)

We end where we began —The Dance.

The Book of Genesis opened up with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit enraptured in the Eternal rhythms of perfect love. The interpenetrating divine love radiating amongst the three persons of the Trinity—perichoresis—was so good it just had to be shared. God apparently wanted a barn dance more than a private romance.

“Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us…” So God created human beings in his own image…male and female he created them. Then God blessed them and said,“Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:26-28).

Perhaps the Dance is just one more reason God created a pair—a man and woman—rather than just a man. For it takes two to tango, and like your friend trying to set you up at a dance, God desires to find us a “suitable partner” too.

Also don’t miss the fact that the first assignment given to the two love birds is to follow the example of the Trinity and multiply the number of dancers on the floor: “Be fruitful and multiply.” Like a wedding DJ, he wants to get as many people dancing as possible.

And so we’ve followed the Father’s Song through the grand sweep of biblical history, seeing the tragic effects of stubborn tone deaf people trying to sing their own songs and move to their own groove. The result is our mosh pit world of sin—bodies flailing this way and that, lives crashing up against other lives, and spirits crushed on the ground.

We’ve seen the Father’s attempts to call out of the noise a people for himself. Abraham heard the song first. Moses wrote the lyrics down on stone tablets, and tried in vain for forty years to get his band to perform it. The psalms give us 150 songs to help lead us onto the divine dance floor. The prophets, like country songs, warn us of the heartache that results when we walk out on the Dance like a man walking out on his wife and kids.

Finally, in the fullness of time, Jesus slip-slides onto the scene, and at last put the Father’s Song into action, not just humming it quietly to himself in a remote field but living it out loud in public, showing us all the moves. Jesus was “taking it to the streets” as the song goes. His invitation to learn the Kingdom Dance echoed forth to “all who had ears to hear” (Matt 11:15). Sadly, many did not.

Remember your first awkward school dance? Remember sitting shyly in the dark corner on a metal folding chair with aplastic cup of punch in your hand, eyes avoiding all potential invitations? Then it happened. Time stood still as someone approached you, extended their hand and said, “Wanna dance?”

A similar scene was played out by the sea of Galilee when Jesus extended his hand toward Peter, Matthew, John, James, Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and others—each with the invitation to join him in learning the Kingdom Dance:

“Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life…Dance with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace…Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly” (Matt 11:28-30 my adapted version of The Message).

That same invitation to join Jesus in a life of learning his rhythms has been the drumbeat and theme song of the church ever since Jesus left this earth. “Go, therefore, and make disciples, or kingdom dancers, of all nations” were his last words and the urgent task bestowed upon his followers, the church.

Whether or not we use this language or metaphor, the invitation to The Dance has been the plea of millions of preachers and teachers, missionaries and evangelists, longing to bring as many people to that Eternal Dance when this earthly concert plays its final encore and the curtains come down.

Now, as we begin to wrap up this sweet sounding survey of the biblical story, we come to that climactic book that itself has the dramatic sound of an emotionally riveting rock opera. We call it Revelation.

But what exactly is being revealed? Well, at great risk of oversimplifying, I suggest the entire book, or rock opera, with all its various movements, its joy and pathos, its minor notes and jubilant choruses, leads eventually to the climactic moment of a Bride coming down out of Heaven like a princess descending a grand staircase to meet her prince. John describes the scene:

“And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (Rev. 21:2).

“Come with me! I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:9).

Yes, after all the bowls of wrath, the seven trumpets, the plagues, manifold warnings of judgment, the lake of sulfur, and all the rest, the book eventually leads us back to a metal folding chair in a dark corner of a middle school gymnasium where we now receive the ultimate invitation to dance: Wanna dance?

The holy city, the new Jerusalem, the beautifully dressed bride is the collective family of all the redeemed who have RSVP’d “yes” to the wedding supper of the Lamb. The entire goal of history is being consummated in this scene, as the Eternal Love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit now pulls his people irresistibly into the arms of Agape. God and his people are together on the dance floor at last, free from the sin that kept them apart for so long. The bride and the groom embrace.

“Look, God’s dwelling is now among his people! He will live [or dance!] with them, and they will be his people [or kingdom dance partners!]. God himself will be with them” (Rev. 21:3).

“God himself will be with them.” Those two words sum up the goal of Father’s Song and the essence of Kingdom Dance. At the wedding supper of the Lamb Jesus’ prayer for the church is at last fulfilled:

“I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me” (John 17:21).

On that Day, all the other competing songs and dissonant chords that once kept us out of step and out of tune will be absorbed into, or silenced by, the one Father’s Song.

Its fitting that the closing scenes of the New Testament bring us to a wedding banquet with plenty of food and refreshments, a glorious venue, and, of course, “out of this world” musical entertainment. Heaven spared no expense to bring to the celebration Twenty-four musicians with a special song request to be sung during the supper:

“Each had a harp…And they sang a new song: 

Worthy! Take the scroll, open its seals. Slain! Paying in blood, you bought men and women, Bought them back from all over the earth, Bought them back for God” (Revelation 5).

After dinner the Dance of Dances begins, as the angel choir strikes up the Father’s Song:

I looked again. I heard a company of Angels around the Throne, the Animals, and the Elders—ten thousand times ten thousand their number, thousand after thousand after thousand in full song:

The slain Lamb is worthy!

Take the power, the wealth, the wisdom, the strength!

Take the honor, the glory, the blessing” (Revelation 5).

Angels singing in unison is nothing extraordinary. They have been singing the Father’s Song since the dawn of time. But then a pregnant hush falls over the heavenly banquet hall, and angels hold their breath in anticipation for the moment they have been longing for aeons and aeons. The rest of God’s creation, now rescued and redeemed, is about to join in the Song and Dance at last!

“Then I heard every creature in Heaven and earth, in underworld and sea, join in, all voices in all places, singing:

To the One on the Throne! To the Lamb! The blessing, the honor, the glory, the strength, For age after age after age” (Revelation 5:13-14).

Perhaps some are standing on tables, swaying back and forth with arms on one another’s shoulders. Its all smiles and laughter and singing in Heaven’s banquet hall. Finish your dessert and push back the tables. Let the dance begin!

But two words are perhaps necessary as we bring our song to an end. First, a word of reassurance to those who may feel the idea of an eternal wedding dance or never ending sing along more in line with your vision of Hell. I, personally, would rather paint a fence or pull weeds all day than attend a wedding dance. Likewise, watching cat videos on YouTube all day sounds more interesting than a never ending church service with harps and choirs.

Let it be very clear that the images of the Father’s Song and the Kingdom Dance are only metaphors for a much greater reality. The New Heaven’s and New Earth described in Revelation, and the New Jerusalem radiant like a bride are also pointers to a reality we can all grow faint with excitement as we begin to contemplate it.

The Song and the Dance all point toward an experience of ultimate shalom—wholeness, peace, oneness, tranquility, and fullness of life in the absence of conflict—with God, others and ourselves. It’s the “life that is truly life” that Jesus came to give us, and the very thing the Thief has been working overtime to “seek, kill and destroy” (John 10:10). You were made for it, and it was made for you.

Finally, a word of challenge to all who have said “yes” to the wedding invitation and are already staking out a table in the heavenly banquet hall. Jesus made it very clear in his parable of the wedding banquet that He desires a full house when the celebration begins:

“God’s kingdom,” he said, “is like a king who threw a wedding banquet for his son. He sent out servants to call in all the invited guests. And they wouldn’t come! “He sent out another round of servants, instructing them to tell the guests, ‘Look, everything is on the table, the prime rib is ready for carving. Come to the feast!’ “They only shrugged their shoulders and went off, one to weed his garden, another to work in his shop….“Then he told his servants, ‘We have a wedding banquet all prepared but no guests. The ones I invited weren’t up to it. Go out into the busiest intersections in town and invite anyone you find to the banquet.’ The servants went out on the streets and rounded up everyone they laid eyes on, good and bad, regardless. And so the banquet was on—every place filled” (Matthew 22:1-10 Message).

All of us who know the Father’s Song and are learning the Kingdom Dance, are called to be like the servants in this parable inviting others to the Dance: “Look, everything is on the table, the prime rib is ready for carving. Come to the feast!”

We are to invite not only our family and friends, but also awkward people sitting on metal folding chairs in dark corners with eyes averted and partly hoping we just pass them by silently (though secretly hoping for an invitation, if they can just muster the courage to accept). Let’s never forget that there was a first dance for each of us now enjoying the Kingdom Dance. There was that first moment when our ears first heard the Father’s Song cutting through all the other noise—and a warmth filled our soul and hope embraced us.

Do you remember your first Dance with Jesus?  Do you remember who God sent over to your table , extending their hand and inviting you off your seat and onto the dance floor? A youth pastor? A friend? A parent? A mentor?

Do you remember who taught you the first lyrics of the Father’s Song (maybe “Jesus Loves Me” or “This Little Light of Mine”)? Do you remember who showed you your first steps to the Kingdom Dance (maybe praying the Lord’s prayer, collecting coins for the food shelf, or helping someone in need)? A Sunday school teacher? A grandparent? A godparent?

*******

Eternity beckons. The wedding banquet is already being prepared. The invitations are going out. The Father’s Song echoes out of the Heavenly Hall as we speak, reaching down to Earth to “all those with ears to hear.” God is forming his band, he’s training up his symphony, he’s auditioning parts for the Big Dance.

He’s sending us out as four season carolers into a noisy world filled with competing choruses with a song of redemption on our lips and the unforced rhythms of grace in our souls. To all who open the door of their hearts we bring an invitation to join in the Father’s Song.

“O sing to the LORD a new song, for He has done wonderful things!” 

Psalm 98:1