In my current jaunt through Scripture, much quicker than last time, I recently read this passage in I Chronicles and reflected on how significant it has been in the last five years or so of my life. When we moved from the Chicago area to Florida in early June of 2017, these verses were in the bulletin in the second church service we attended. I remember thinking how heavy it was, and decided I needed to memorize it. I couldn’t have realized how significant the truths David proclaims would be for me in the coming years.
The context is near the end of David’s life. He had developed plans and provided the resources for the Temple. Since the Lord would not let him build it because of all the blood he had spilled, he passed those on to his successor, his son Solomon, and he would be the one to build it. Then we read his effusive words of praise for the Lord his God:
10 David praised the Lord in the presence of the whole assembly, saying,
“Praise be to you, Lord,
the God of our father Israel,
from everlasting to everlasting.
11 Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power
and the glory and the majesty and the splendor,
for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, Lord, is the kingdom;
you are exalted as head over all.
12 Wealth and honor come from you;
you are the ruler of all things.
In your hands are strength and power
to exalt and give strength to all.
13 Now, our God, we give you thanks,
and praise your glorious name.
As we know, David had quite the tumultuous life, and while he sinned greatly, the Lord declared that he was a man after his own heart. The two are not mutually exclusive, which I why think his life is such a powerful object lesson, in addition to being a prophetic type of King Jesus.
We all sin greatly to one degree or another because the standard is the perfectly holy Creator God of the universe. Sure, compared to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao I’m a pretty good guy, but compared to God the only thing I deserve is the wages of the sins I commit, death. As I often say to anyone who will listen, I deserve to be a pile of smoldering ashes on the ground, so anything other than that is gravy.
What separated David from the average king was his laser like focus on God. Even when he sinned against Bathsheba and her husband, he said to God, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” Most of us, dare I say none of us, would have said such a thing, but David realized the essence of sin isn’t my sin against others or others against me, but ours against God. All the personal and interpersonal misery and dysfunction flows out of that. If we get that backward we don’t get the gospel.
For me, David’s praise, especially at that time in my life, helped sharpen my focus on the God he is so effusively praising. The temptation all sinful humanity has is to focus on our circumstances or other people. It’s terribly easy to do because, well, it’s all we can see! So, instead of living by faith, i.e., trust, we live by site, the opposite of what Paul says we should do.
Speaking of trust, that is the I Chronicles 29:10-13 lesson of these last five years, and the focus of the rest of my life; trusting God who worthy of my trust. The lack thereof is my greatest sin, and something for which I repent daily. I know I don’t trust him if I allow fear, worry, anxiety, doubt, frustration, and anything else that cannot be defined as “perfect peace” into my life. I didn’t say it would be easy!
I realized how important this was for me as I began to understand the word faith or belief in the New Testament. When we come across those, or any variations thereof, they do not mean intellectual assent. The Greek word used for both English words is pistis-πίστις, so it is far more than merely intellectually accepting that something is true. We can “believe” something is true, and it make absolutely no difference in our lives. Will that airplane get me to Tuscaloosa, Alabama safe and alive? Trust gets me on it. Or ice fishing. I don’t quite get the appeal (probably because I was born and raised in L.A.), and I believe the ice will hold up, but you would never get me out on the ice. I believe, but don’t trust.
What David’s declaration of praise did for me was convince me the ice will hold up no matter how thin it looks, no matter how many cracks appear. I learned how addicted I am to circumstances, how easily I treat them as more sovereign and powerful than Almighty God. It’s kind of pathetic when you think about it, but the problem is we don’t often think about it; we react. Our peace of mind isn’t determined by who God is, a la David’s accurate declaration, but by how we interpret our circumstances. When the trust challenge comes, as it did for me so often in the early years of our time in Florida, I didn’t pass the test. But in due course because I was determined to focus on this God and his power and glory and majesty and splendor, I slowly developed my trust muscle. You can too!
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