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Sermon for midweek of Trinity 9
1 Chronicles 29:10-13
God is faithful, Paul wrote to the Corinthians. That’s our hope, our strength, and our comfort in the face of every trial and temptation, as long as we’re standing on God’s faithfulness and not our own strength. When God’s faithfulness doesn’t inspire faithfulness on someone’s part, as in Jesus’ parable about the unjust steward from Sunday’s Gospel, who grew lazy and negligent in his stewardship of his master’s things, that’s a sure sign that such a person has taken his eyes off of God’s faithfulness. Because when a person is clinging to God’s faithfulness, then His faithfulness also inspires faithfulness on our part.
That’s what had happened toward the end of King David’s reign, when he spoke the prayer recorded for us in tonight’s First Lesson. God had faithfully delivered David from all his enemies and had made him king over Israel. God, through David, and, sometimes, through direct and miraculous means, had delivered Israel from all their enemies. He had given them the covenant of His acceptance, of His blessing, of His forgiveness to be earned by the coming Son of David, and He had faithfully kept His word to them. And now, as Solomon, the immediate son of David, is about to take over for his father, the Lord has also provided the plans and designs for the temple that would house the ark of His covenant and the ministry of His priests, and He has given Solomon the wisdom to oversee the building of it. And then, inspired by God’s great faithfulness to them, the leaders of Israel, including King David himself, donated the equivalent of about $15 billion worth of gold, silver, and other precious materials, all of which was necessary to make God’s temple the one-of-a-kind, glorious place it was supposed to be. God’s faithfulness inspired that kind of faithfulness in His people, when they relied on God’s faithfulness.
St. Paul, too, inspired by God’s faithfulness, had conducted his ministry faithfully and was nearing the end of his days on earth when he wrote his second epistle to Timothy, including the words you heard tonight from the Second Lesson. But before he finishes his race, he writes this letter to Timothy to inspire him, likewise, to faithfulness in the ministry God had given him.
In the same way, our faithful God urges us to focus on His faithfulness, and in so doing, to be inspired to faithfulness in the tasks and with the things He had entrusted to us, whatever they may be. Because whatever those things are, they all come from Him. And faithfulness to God begins and ends with recognizing that very fact, with thanksgiving. In fact, faithfulness to God is a form of thanksgiving.
The faithful thanksgiving offering on the part of the leaders of Israel for the building of the temple inspired the prayer of thanksgiving that David spoke to the LORD, Yahweh, the God of Israel.
Blessed are You, Lord God of Israel, our Father, forever and ever. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, The power and the glory, The victory and the majesty; For all that is in heaven and in earth is Yours; Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, And You are exalted as head over all.
As we’ve mentioned before, when God blesses man, it means to bestow favor and kindness. When man blesses God, or declares God to be “blessed,” it means to acknowledge God as the source of all blessings, the Giver of all favor and kindness, worthy of all praise. He is the Lord Yahweh, whose very name implies faithfulness to His word and promises. David addresses Him as “our Father,” just as Jesus teaches us to do in the Lord’s Prayer. And maybe you noticed that this verse is a very close paraphrase of the doxology at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, “For Thine (or Yours) is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.” David uses the same words here: “Blessed are You, our Father, forever and ever. Yours is the kingdom. Yours is the power and the glory.”
David acknowledges something else in this verse. All that is in heaven and in earth is Yours. That includes all you have, all you’ve ever had. It includes your wealth, your possessions, your opportunities, your safety, your family, your body, your soul. It includes you. You, and all you have, and all you are, and all you’ll ever be, belong to the Lord, Yahweh, our Father. And David blesses God for it, for being the Owner of all things, and for graciously entrusting David, and all of us, with so many wonderful things to manage, to practice stewardship over. He acknowledges God’s ownership of himself and of all things, not with bitterness, but with thankfulness.
Both riches and honor come from You, and You reign over all. In Your hand is power and might; in Your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.
Having riches, having wealth, having honor isn’t evil. But thinking that it comes from you—that’s evil. Thinking that God owed it to you—that’s evil. Thinking that your times are in your own hands—that’s evil. But that’s not how prosperous, rich, wealthy, honorable King David thought. He recognized, as must we, that not only does God own all things, but He also is the Giver of all things, who loans them to us for a little while, so that we may manage them faithfully. And so David teaches us to view our lives with great humility, to look at all we have, and then to look up to our Father in heaven as the One who gave it.
Now therefore, our God, we thank You and praise Your glorious name.
Again, God’s faithfulness toward David inspired David’s faithfulness toward God, which, in turn, inspired the faithfulness of all Israel to God, which broke out immediately in thanksgiving. Faithful service to God begins with recognizing, and relying on, God’s faithfulness, which leads immediately to thankfulness in the heart. And notice: not only was David thankful, but he went a step further: he actually said so, out loud—to God, but also in the presence of the church that was gathered around him.
Learn from David to bless the Lord, too, for all His faithfulness to His Church, and to you—to bless our Father, above all, for sending His only-begotten Son into the flesh to redeem those who were enslaved to sin and bound for temporal and eternal death. And then bless Him for reaching out to you in time, bringing you into His kingdom, making you part of His beloved Church, for daily bread, for daily forgiveness, and for so much more. And as you bless Him in your heart, bless Him also with your mouth, both here among friends in the Church and out in the world, wherever you have the opportunity to tell the lost who this God really is, because they do not know Him rightly. And then be sure also to bless God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—by faithfully carrying out the tasks He gives you from day to day. Make it your daily commitment to respond to God’s faithfulness with faithfulness, surrounded, always, by thankfulness. Amen.
