Bible Commentaries

David's Thanksgiving

1 Chronicles 16:2-3).

Here again is a service having a distinctly twofold relation,—the one upward towards God, and the other downward towards the people. David could not have blessed the people if he had not first offered the burnt offerings and the peace offerings commanded by the law. What is this whole office but another way of stating the two cardinal commandments—Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself? David's first and long lingering look was towards God, in his majesty and holiness and condescension: then, having, so to say, identified himself with the living God, David turned towards the people and pronounced a priestly benediction upon them. The people were blessed in the name of the Lord; that is to say, the benediction was intensely religious; humanity was baptised in the divine name, and glorified by that name, and united indissolubly in that name. Looked at amongst themselves men appear to be separated and dissociated one from another, each having his individual characteristic and each asserting his personal claim. The human race is thus an endless series of jealous and angry rivalries. Something is needed to bring the whole into vital relations part with part, and that something is "the name of the Lord." This was the designation given to the uniting force in the old dispensation; in the Christian economy the uniting energy is found in the Son of man. Apart from the mediation and rule of Jesus Christ men must live in perpetual conflict, misunderstanding one another, and urging upon one another unrighteous and unreasonable claims. The reconciliation of all human interests is in the Son of God. Where Jesus Christ reigns in the heart every concession is made to his authority; men ask one another what Christ would have them do, and they concur in sweet consent to seek his will and to abide by it, knowing that however much personal relations may be changed as to attitude and value, in the end it will be shown that Jesus Christ knew what was in 1 Chronicles 16:37). So it is in our own religious life. There are days of high festival and thrilling song, when the whole life seems to be given up to the joy of music; then there comes the time when we must descend from rapture to daily toil, to detailed and critical service, to all the minor industries which are at once a test of character and a blessing to those who are interested in their discharge. Every day has its work. We must see to it that there are no arrears in our Christian service. He who leaves over from one day to another what he ought to have done on the first will find his life crowded and confused. Discipline is the very soul of religion. We do not grow in grace by fits and starts, by doing two days" work in one, or by showing our great skill and energy in the discharge of arrears; we grow little by little, line by line, almost imperceptibly, and only at the end do we see how minute has been the process, how detailed the whole exercise through which the mind has passed. David himself had his detailed work to attend to; we read in the forty-third verse, "David returned to bless his house." We cannot always live in public; it is true that we have tent-work to do, temple-work, sanctuary-work, great public and philanthropic appeals to respond to, but when all that which is external or public has been done, every man must bless his own home, make his own children glad, make his own hearthstone as bright as he possibly can, and fill his own house with music and gladness. The danger of the day probably is that men may live too much in public; that they may care more for the platform than for the hearthstone, and be rather anxious to take part in the loud trumpeting of the sanctuary than in the quiet and loving household. This ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone. We are not called upon to give up either the public or the private, but to find a way of uniting them, and making the one balance the other in discipline, in service, and in gladness.