This is my 500th blog post since joining Blogger in 2006!
Without further ado, here it is….
Throughout these chapters, the Chronicler emphasizes the qualities
that made King David a great man of God. David…
- Inquired of God. (1 Chronicles 14:10, 14)
- Commanded the gods of the Philistines to be burned. (14:12)
- Did as God had commanded him. (14:16)
- Prepared a place for the ark of God and pitched a tent for it. (15:1)
- Commanded that no one but the Levites were to carry the ark of God. (15:2)
- Appointed certain of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the Lord… (16:4)
- Appointed the singing of praises to the Lord by Asaph and his kindred. (16:7)
- Went home to bless his household. (16:43)
- Desired to build a house for the ark of God (17:1 ff.)
Notice that when the ark is brought up to Jerusalem, David dances
before the ark, just as in 2 Samuel, and his wife Michal despises him. However,
there is no suggestion here, as there is in 2 Samuel, that David did anything
risqué. The Chronicler definitely presents a stained glass image of King David.
In 1 Chronicles 16 we have an example of a psalm, presumably composed
by Asaph whom David appointed. This same text appears as Psalm 105.
C. S. Lewis has this excellent comment on why we praise in his book, Reflections on the Psalms….
I
think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely
expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is
not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they
are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have
discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to
come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected
grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for
it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one
to share it with (the perfect hearer died a year ago). This is so even when our
expressions are inadequate, as of course they usually are. But how if one could
really and fully praise even such things to perfection—utterly “get out” in
poetry or music or paint the upsurge of appreciation which almost bursts you?
Then indeed the object would be fully appreciated and our delight would have
attained perfect development. The worthier the object, the more intense this
delight would be. If it were possible for a created soul fully (I mean, up to
the full measure conceivable in a finite being) to “appreciate,” that is to
love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every
moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in
supreme beatitude. It is along these lines that I find it easiest to understand
the Christian doctrine that “Heaven” is a state in which angels now, and men hereafter,
are perpetually employed in praising God. This does not mean, as it can so
dismally suggest, that it is like “being in Church.” For our “services” both in
their conduct and in our power to participate, are merely attempts at worship;
never fully successful, often 99.9 percent failures, sometimes total failures.
We are not riders but pupils in the riding school; for most of us the falls and
bruises, the aching muscles and the severity of the exercise, far outweigh
those few moments in which we were, to our own astonishment, actually galloping
without terror and without disaster. To see what the doctrine really means, we
must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God—drunk with, drowned in,
dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves
as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly
again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy no more separable from the
praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror
receives is separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism says
that man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” But we shall
then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In
commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.
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