Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Greetings, dear ones.

My brother, Louis, just left a bit ago…along with his two nephews, Austin and Levi. They rolled in late last night to flop for the night…surrounding a moving project to help Stephanie, his daughter, complete her move to Washington. Lots of other stuff is happening at the same time. It’s another confirmation that I’m not very good at multi-tasking. I’m best with one thing at a time. So when I get this off, then I’ll be free to select something else to consume my attention. There’s a lot to choose from.

May the rest of your day be a good one.

Blessings on your day.

Love, Dad/Ray.

The event recorded in 1 Chronicles 29 is very near the end of King David’s reign—and his life. He strategically calls together a gathering of the entire leadership of Israel. It becomes a highly successful event on four counts:

1. He announces the building project for the temple, about which he is absolutely passionate. His passion is contagious as others catch the vision.
2. He sets the stage for giving to the temple building project. By demonstrating himself to be a joyful extravagant giver to this cause, that too is contagious—people participate by happy giving. And, of course, these are the kind of givers God likes best—giving as an expression of worship—“Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7-8). I suppose it’s possible that David is even exerciseing a bit of psychological manipulation—influencing even the non-joyful givers to contribute from the motivation of shame—shame if they don’t give.
3. He effectively sets up his son Solomon as his successor. It made for an extremely smooth transition—no assasinations necessary. (Not yet, anyway.)
4. He so effectively communicated his passionate vision and passionate HEART AFTER GOD that revival fires were lit—it was like a Spirit-inspired altar call of renewed surrender to the Lordship of the LORD. “Then David said to the whole assembly, ‘Praise the LORD your God.’ So they all praised the LORD, the God of their fathers; they bowed low and fell prostrate before the LORD and the king” (29:20).

Truly worshiping God is not really a natural tendency of the human heart—at least not without some form of crisis that puts one at or near the absolute end of their own resources. When a person is successfully engaged in the physical world of cause and effect, I observe that the strong temptation is toward arrogant independence—“Look what I have done! Look at all my stuff! Look at the goals that I have met! Am I not the cause of this impressive effect?!” My hunch is that King David’s challenge to his people at this time had some corrective effect on this kind of erroneous and dangerous thinking. In his public prayer of praise following the congregations joyful spontaneous giving he exclaims, “Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand” (29:14) “…it comes from you and all of it belongs to you” (29:16). Now there’s a vital foundational truth on which to build the rest of your life—ALL OF IT BELONGS TO HIM! If you and I can keep our dirty little hearts wrapped around that premise, I think I can guarantee that our life courses will be much more stable than without it. Far more important, He guarantees it.