Bible Commentaries

1 Chronicles 17:3-4

I. It may often happen that what passes as zeal for the glory of God has itself no small mixture of self-seeking. It would have been so natural for David, knowing that the glorious work he had planned was to be taken out of his hands and committed to another, to have given up the thing, and left the execution of it to his successor, that we cannot sufficiently extol the strength, the sincerity, the fervency, of the piety that could labour as energetically and provide as magnificently for the structure in which he was not allowed to lay a stone, as though he had been assured of seeing it rise and of having his own name connected with it to the remotest ages.

II. There is many a temple such as that built by Solomon, but for which the materials were provided by David. It is the frequent, if not the invariable, ordaining of God that one party is empowered to commence, and another to complete, the work of moral renewal, through which men are builded together for the habitation of God through the Spirit. The prayers and instructions of parents, the warnings of friends, the exhortations of ministers, the dealings of Providence—these, spread, it may be, over a long course of years, are generally made use of to reclaim the wanderer and bring him to the Redeemer. If God honour us to the conversion of sinners, we do but enter into other men's labours, reaping what other men have sown. And though we may not visibly bring men to God, we may be preparing the way for them to be brought to Him by others. We may not be allowed to build the temple, but we may be preparing the materials with which another shall build.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 3643.

References: 1 Chronicles 17:3, 1 Chronicles 17:4.—G. T. Coster, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 157. 1 Chronicles 17:14.—J. Irons, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. x., p. 281. 1 Chronicles 17:26, 1 Chronicles 17:27.—H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons, 2nd. series, p. 299. 1 Chronicles 18:4.—G. T. Coster, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 261. 1 Chronicles 18:9.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. iv., p. 44. 1 Chronicles 21:1-30.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iv., p. 347.