Gratitude For Gratitude

Please turn to 1st Chronicles 29.

1st Chronicles 29, in this passage you see David giving thanks to God as people have

collected material for the building of the temple.

God had told David that he was not permitted to build the temple, but his son would build the temple.

But that did not prohibit David from gathering everything that was needed in order to build the temple.

So if you look at the work that was done in constructing the temple, David's really doing half of it,

and the people under him, but it is Solomon who ends up actually overseeing the

construction of it.

I would like to read the whole chapter, so let's go ahead and stand for the reading of God's Word.

And David the king said to all the assembly, Solomon my son, whom God alone has chosen,

is young and inexperienced, and the work is great, for the palace will not be for man, but for the Lord

God.

So I have provided for the house of my God so far as I was able, the gold for the things of gold,

the silver for the things of silver, and the bronze for the things of bronze, the iron for the things of iron, and

wood for the things of wood, besides great quantities of onyx and stones for setting, antimony,

colored stones, and all sorts of precious stones and marble.

Moreover, in addition to all that I have provided for the holy house, I have a treasure of my

own gold and silver, and because of my devotion to the house of my God, I give it to the house of

my God.

Three thousand talents of gold, of the gold of ophir, and seven thousand talents of refined silver, for

overlaying the walls of the house, and for all the work to be done by craftsmen, gold for the

things of gold, and silver for the things of silver.

Who then will willingly offer, who then will offer willingly, consecrating himself today to the

Lord?

Then the leaders of fathers' houses made their freewill offerings, as did also the leaders of the tribes, the

commanders of thousands and of hundreds, and the officers over the king's work.

They gave for the service of the house of God five thousand talents, and ten thousand derricks of gold, ten

thousand talents of silver, eighteen thousand talents of bronze, and one hundred talents of iron.

And whoever had precious stones gave them to the treasury of the house of the Lord, in the care of Jehiel the Gershonite.

Then the people rejoiced because they had given willingly, for with a whole heart they had offered freely

to the Lord.

David the king also rejoiced greatly.

Therefore, David blessed the Lord, and in the presence of all the assembly, and David said,

Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of Israel, our Father, for ever and ever.

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all it is in the

heavens and in the earth is yours.

Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.

Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all.

In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.

And now we thank you, our God, and praise your glorious name.

But who am I, and what is my people that we should be able thus to offer willingly?

For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you.

For we are strangers before you, and sojourners as all our fathers were.

Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding.

O Lord, our God, all this abundance that we have provided for building you a house for your holy name

comes from your hand and is all your own.

I know, my God, that you test the heart and have pleasure in uprightness.

In the uprightness of my heart I have freely offered all these things, and now I have seen your people who are

present here offering freely and joyously to you.

O Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, our fathers, keep forever such purposes and

thoughts in the hearts of your people and direct their hearts toward you.

Grant to Solomon, my son, a whole heart that he may keep your commandments and your testimonies and

your statutes, performing all that he may build the palace for which I have made provision.

Then David said to all the assembly, Bless the Lord your God.

And all the assembly blessed the Lord, the God of their fathers, and bowed their heads and paid homage to the Lord and to the king.

And they offered sacrifices to the Lord, and on the next day offered burnt offerings to the Lord, 1 ,000

bulls, 1 ,000 rams, and 1 ,000 lambs, with their drink offerings and sacrifices in abundance for all Israel.

And they ate and drank before the Lord on that day with great gladness.

And they made Solomon, the son of David, king the second time, and they anointed him as a prince for the Lord and

Zadok as a priest.

Then Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord as king in the place of David his father.

And he prospered, and all Israel obeyed him.

And the leaders and the mighty men and also the sons of king David pledged their allegiance to king Solomon.

And the Lord made Solomon very great in the sight of all Israel and bestowed on him such royal majesty as had

not been on any king before him in Israel.

Thus David, the son of Jesse, reigned over all Israel.

The time that he reigned over Israel was 40 years.

He reigned seven years in Hebron and 33 years in Jerusalem.

Then he died at a good age, full of days, riches, and honor.

And Solomon, his son, reigned in his place.

Now the acts of king David from first to last are written in the chronicles of Samuel the seer and in the

chronicles of Nathan the prophet and in the chronicles of Gad the seer with accounts of all his rule and

his might and of the circumstances that came upon him and upon Israel and upon all the kingdoms of the

countries.

You may be seated.

Heavenly Father, we ask that you would give us hearts of thankfulness.

We do thank you for what you have done.

You have done great things.

You have sent your son to earth to die for your people.

But God, we recognize that apart from you, we have nothing to offer and apart from you,

we have no heart that we desire to offer.

We pray that you would give us gratitude and willing hearts as we wish to

follow your will and to be servants who give generously to you

with hearts of thankfulness.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So I've been studying first chronicles and I'm almost at the end of it.

I've been studying for several months now.

And this passage struck me because of what it says about thankfulness.

You could call it a late Thanksgiving sermon.

I don't know when Thanksgiving sermons are supposed to be preached, if it's last week or this week.

Or you could call it a late sermon on my series on giving.

But this passage really struck me about everything it says about thankfulness.

Because if you think about how counterintuitive what is

going on here, David gives.

He gives generously, not just as a king assembling funds and assembling materials.

But then he says even of his own treasure.

So even his own private goods he also gives the Lord.

And then he calls the people to consecrate themselves.

You know there's no distinction made here between people giving their own goods and people giving of themselves.

He asks them to consecrate themselves and so they do so by giving.

And what you would expect when someone gives a gift to someone else, who says thank

you?

It's the one who receives the gift.

But in this case what happens?

What counterintuitively happens?

After David and the people give a gift, they come to the Lord and they say thank you to the Lord for

even having things to give.

For even the heart to want to give.

It's very counterintuitive but it explains how we should think about our thankfulness to

God.

And that we should even be thankful for giving and we should even have gratitude for having gratitude.

Because it's God who gives us a whole heart to want to do what is right.

To want to give.

He is blessed alone forever.

Blessing, being blessed means to be content and full and overflowing with goodness.

So he is overflowing with good things.

And for us to be overflowing with goodness that we would give to others, that we would give back to God means that he has given

of himself to us that we might give of ourselves to him.

And so it is a wonderful position that someone stands in to be able to give.

So let's look through this and I ask the primary thing I want to look at is how we ought to be

thankful for the opportunity to give and for even the heart to give.

Verse 10.

I just want to look at verses 10 through 22.

Therefore, David blessed the Lord in the presence of all the assembly.

And David said, Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of Israel, our Father, forever and ever.

You know, as I just explained, the word blessed means to be happy.

That's what you see in some older translations of the Bible or of songs.

To be content, to have everything you need, to lack nothing.

And so God is blessed in a distinct way when we are blessed.

He is blessed of himself.

He has everything he needs of himself.

And there's nothing that we can offer to him.

This is what you see later, too, after Solomon is done building the temple.

You know, he points out that God has no need of anything.

There's no house that could contain him.

There's no sacrifices we could give to him that he would need them because he's not hungry.

He doesn't eat.

So he is blessed in a way that when we say blessed, our blessedness is only

a reflection of his blessedness.

Right?

He is the one who is truly lacking nothing and is truly overflowing with

goodness.

And us, as we are blessed by him and have goodness, whether it be

physical prosperity, whether it be joy in our soul.

And as that overflows, it's only in a secondary way because it is not of ourselves.

These things are given by God.

So God is blessed alone forever.

He's eternally blessed, and only he is blessed in this manner of being blessed of himself.

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory

and the majesty for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours.

See, all things are God's.

And that includes not just things in heavens and earth that are physical, but it even includes these

abstract concepts.

Glory and victory and majesty.

All things are God's.

He is the one who possesses all these things.

All goodness is God's.

You know, when we talk about God as being good or being true or different attributes, we're not saying

that God conforms to this external standard of goodness or truth.

God is that standard of goodness and truth.

Right?

These things come from him.

This is the sense in which he is blessed.

He is the one that defines these things.

He is the definition of all these good things.

They are all his.

Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.

God's is the kingdom.

Now, not only this kingdom of Israel, but pointing forward to the new nation that Christ

would establish.

This is God's kingdom.

And you see this prayer of David's.

I'm not sure what the best way of saying it is.

Recaptured or recalled.

Jesus' prayer, the Lord's prayer, has reference to this.

You see some of these same phrases.

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory.

You know, Jesus is appealing to this prayer of David as he

leads the people in how to pray.

And so this kingdom that is being talked about is not just that earthly kingdom of Israel, but a greater

kingdom that is to come referenced from this time period.

It's the kingdom that we enjoy that Christ has established.

This kingdom is the Lord's.

And as he has established it and created it and guides

it, that we, as we construct it, you know, by our own hands and being

involved in different ministries of the church, we would be incorrect if we thought, oh yes, we

built this.

We built this kingdom.

This kingdom is ours.

Just as if David and his people were, would be incorrect if they said, you know, we built this kingdom

of ourselves.

No, it is the Lord who owns the kingdom.

All things are Lord's.

You know, if you were to make a catalog of everything that was God's and then everything that was not

God's, this would be a very, very long list.

And the list itself would be included in that list.

Everything is Lord's.

There is nothing that is not his.

Everything else that we own, we own secondarily.

You know, as a, as a steward of his possessions.

Verse 12.

Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all.

In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.

So you see, all things come from the Lord.

He is the source of all things.

So before it was talking about how he possesses all things.

Now David's talking about how God gives all things.

Anyone who has might, they have might from the hand of the Lord.

Anyone who has power, they have power from the hand of the Lord.

Anyone who is great, anyone who has strength, where does it come from?

It comes from the Lord.

There is nowhere else.

And so, because of that, we ought to thank the Lord and praise his glorious name.

See, God gives things in order to, that we might see his gloriousness.

You know, he is already glorious.

He is blessed forever.

There's no one that can add or subtract from him.

But, but we don't all witness that gloriousness.

And it is only as we acknowledge that God is the source of all these good things we receive, that we begin to

witness that gloriousness.

So you ask, why is God good?

Why does he give us all these good things?

Well, it's not because you deserve it.

It's not because he has to or he's required to.

He is not obligated to anyone.

But he gives these things that we might see that he is glorious.

Because he is so overflowing with goodness, he wishes us to know of his goodness as well.

You know, why did he create humanity in general?

He wished to share his goodness with his people.

You know, when we were looking at that psalm in Isaiah last week, when we were,

we were looking at what Isaiah was saying about God's purposes in giving warnings,

so that he might be merciful to those who heed those warnings.

Right?

And why does God, why does God wish to be merciful to people?

So that they can know his goodness.

You know, when he created the world, he created it to communicate himself to

people, his gloriousness.

This world that we live in, where it's full of sin and evil, why is it, why is it that it exists that way?

It exists that way so that God might show his mercy.

Otherwise, without evil, without sin, there would be no revelation of his mercy.

He desires us to know him fully.

And so for us to recognize the purpose of God's gifts, for us to treat them

sanely, responsibly, is to give God thanks for the things that

he has given us.

If we fail to give him thanks, we fail to recognize the purpose of the gifts.

And why would he give gifts to one who is not going to thank him?

If we want to continue to be blessed with the Lord, let us continue to thank him for what he has given, recognizing him

as the source of all these good things.

Verse 14,.

And what is my people that we should be able thus to offer willingly?

For all things come from you, and of your own have we given.

David asked, Who am I?

What is my people?

David is, compare him to Saul, right?

Saul was head and shoulders above everyone else.

David was the lowest of his brothers, a shepherd boy.

David was no one special.

His people, no one special.

Deuteronomy 8 .8 says that they were the least of all people.

There is no one, including David, including the low people, including the high

people, who have of themselves anything to give the Lord, but that it comes from him first.

For all things come from you, and of your own we have given you.

This is why, David, after he gives to the Lord, the Lord doesn't thank him, but he thanks the Lord, because this didn't come

from him.

It came from the Lord to him that he might give it to the Lord.

For we are strangers before you, and sojourners, as all our fathers were.

Our days on earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding.

David refers to him and his people as sojourners, which this is once again very counterintuitive, once

again very surprising, because they were sojourners for a long time, but now that they've come to the land, now that they've rid the land

of enemies, now that they've established a stronghold in Jerusalem and are about to

establish a temple, they're not really sojourners anymore.

They own the land.

And David says that they are still sojourners.

What he is acknowledging is that this land, this stronghold of Jerusalem, once again,

it is still the Lord's and it is not properly theirs.

They are just sojourners in God's land.

You know, a sojourner, one who is temporarily in the land, has no property of his own, right?

That's why Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were called sojourners, because they didn't have their own property.

They lived in the land, but did not get to enjoy any of it as their own.

But David and those men, as it says in Hebrews 11, 16, were looking

forward to something more than just that land of Canaan.

Right?

Hebrews 11, 16 says, but as it is, they desired a city, a

heavenly one.

Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Excuse me, they desired a country.

So, you have this statement, these people of old were looking forward not just to that land in Canaan,

right?

And David knows that that land in Canaan is not enough to make him no longer a sojourner.

He is still a sojourner, waiting for something that the Lord would give, ultimately.

We ought to be looking for the same thing, recognizing that we are sojourners, that we have nothing, ultimately, to give

the Lord, but that he gives us to us.

There is something more awaiting us that will be more than just a temporary stewardship.

That will be a permanent stewardship that we will be over.

Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding.

As it says in Peter, we are like grass.

We are only short -lived.

So, for us to imagine that we, these temporary beings, are giving something to the

eternal God of ourselves, it's misguided.

It is God who gives to us, and who gives us what we might give to him.

Now, here you see something more.

It goes beyond the So, first, David acknowledges that all things are the Lord.

He acknowledges that God gives all things, and that if he gives, it only comes from the Lord.

But now he acknowledges even that the heart to give comes from the Lord.

That it is God who maintains the whole heart.

Skip ahead.

It is not we ourselves that have this generous desire to give, and then as God gives to us, we give to him.

It is God that gives us both what we might give to him, as well as the heart to give to him.

Apart from his work, our hearts are ones that would be selfish.

Apart from his work, we would desire to keep everything for ourselves.

Yet what he has done in giving us hearts that reflect his heart, a heart that's overflowing

with goodness, to allow us to experience what that kind of

overflowing joy, that overflowing goodness is.

It's something incredibly merciful that God has done for us.

And he has done for us by his Son.

That Son who died, offering his whole life, offering us his Spirit,

by which we may begin to experience this heart of God,

the mind of Christ.

So David leads the people to bless the Lord.

Now, to bless the Lord is to declare that God is blessed, right?

It might refer to giving to the Lord, but here it refers specifically to giving thanks and to acknowledging him as

being the one who is eternally blessed forever.

And he speaks of God, of the Lord, as the God of their fathers.

You know, he's mentioned the father several times, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

He mentioned, yeah, you see that in several other verses here.

He repeatedly appeals to them because it is God's promises

to those men that have led God to give to this later generation.

And I find it interesting here where it says, where it says,

bless the Lord your God and all the assembly, bless the Lord, the God of their fathers.

The phrasing of some of these passages, well, especially

back in verse 10, blessed are you, O Lord, the God of Israel, our Father, forever and ever.

As you see, Jesus Christ, when he is giving the Lord's prayer,

and he tells us how to pray, no longer is it God of our fathers, but it is our Father

who is in heaven.

There's a pretty radical transformation between the two where they are appealing

on behalf of their physical lineage.

But we get to appeal on the basis of the spiritual seed within us that comes from God our Father.

We have such a greater standing that we have in the gospel by which we may come to the

Lord and thank him for these things by that spirit of adoption that causes us to cry out of the Father and

thank him as one who is truly our Father, to ask him to continue to give us hearts

that are willing to give, not just appealing on the basis of our

physical lineage, but appealing to him for what he has done for us in Jesus Christ.

And so we ought to, we ought to thank him, as you see here, David leading the people

in thanks.

We ought to thank him in private as we consider what God has done to us, done for us.

We ought to thank him corporately, together as a body, for all the wonderful things he has given, for the

gospel that he has given us and any other blessing that we have experienced.

And we ought to also thank him with Jesus.

You see how David is leading the people to praise the

Lord.

Jesus Christ has led us in the Lord's prayer to give thanks to God.

And so we are not doing this just by ourselves or together as a body, but we are doing it

together, even with Jesus Christ, him leading us by his word that we might

praise God.

You see, he has given us a spirit that we might have this heart and he has also given us

instruction by which we might express that heart rightly.

You see, there is nothing that truly comes from us.

Everything ultimately comes from God.

When I was a child, my parents around Christmas time would take me to the dollar store and

they would give me money that I could buy gifts for them or for other people.

And Sarah often does that with our kids too.

So, you know, here I am at the dollar store purchasing something for my parents with the money that they gave me.

I'm just so excited to give to them.

But, you know, like a foolish child, I felt that I was really being generous to buy this thing into this, you know, whatever cat figurine

I thought that they would like and give it to them.

But really, you know, they were giving to me and I should be, it's not them who should be thanking me for this gift.

It's I should be thanking them for the opportunity to give.

And so here we are in God's world where everything has come from Him and He has given us

so much.

He has given us His Son and this gospel that we can share with others.

And so as we do this work of ministry and as we give to Him financially, as we give to Him

even in evangelism and sharing this gospel with others, we should not pretend that we are the source of these things

and we are just so generously giving of our own hearts.

But it is God who owns all things.

He gives all things including His gospel.

And He even gives the heart that we desire to share this good thing with others.

Let us bless the Lord who is alone blessed forever.

Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we ask that you would impress this prayer upon our hearts

that we might bless you who are alone blessed forever.

I pray that you would give us our purpose and our thoughts, that you would maintain them,

that we might have spirits of generosity and spirits of thankfulness to you

for the opportunity to give, for the hearts to give.

I pray that we would not only have gratitude, but we would have gratitude even for our own gratitude.

God, you are good and you have given us many things, not least of all, which is your Son.

I pray that as we are found in Him and are able to appeal to you as not only the God of our

fathers, but as our own Father, that you would be pleased to see us

flourish, not merely with blessings, but with thankfulness and joy

in what you have done.

In Jesus' name, amen.