God’s Word for You
1 Chronicles 17:16-19 The man who ascends
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, January 30, 2024
16 Then King David went in and sat before the LORD and said, “Who am I, O LORD God, and what is my house, that you have brought me this far? 17 And this was a small thing in your eyes, O God. You have spoken of your servant’s house for a long time to come, and have seen me as the path of the Man who ascends, O LORD God! 18 And what more can David say to you for honoring your servant? For you know your servant. 19 For the sake of your servant, O LORD, and according to your will, you have done all these great deeds, in making known all these great things.
“Kind David went in and sat before the Lord.” Where did this sitting take place? (This is also the record of 2 Samuel 7:18.) There only seem to be two possibilities. First, David could have traveled the few miles northwest to Gibeon and entered, with permission, into the Holy Place (not the Holy of Holies, of course) where the lamps burned all night to the left and the bread of the presence was set on its table to the right. Or (and I think this is more likely) David actually went into the tent he had set up for the ark, which was perhaps near to his own palace at the north end of old Jerusalem. While this comes as a surprise, we can say that David did not offer “unauthorized fire” as Aaron’s sons had done, and that it was a bold act. God did not strike David down for this entrance even though he had said that even the high priest “is not to come whenever he chooses into the Most Holy Place behind the curtain in front of the atonement cover on the ark, or else he will die” (Leviticus 16:2). The temporary tent David had set up was not the Most Holy Place, and therefore, as we have said, this was not strictly forbidden, but certainly a bold act.
The Lord did not strike David down, but David prayed. The prayer begins with humility, “Who am I?” He knows that he has not deserved any of the blessings God has given him. What seemed like grand victories and the rise of the nation of Israel are just “a small thing in your eyes.”
Verse 17 and its companion verse (2 Samuel 7:19) have some challenging poetic terms. Here the main clause says literally: “You have seen me // as - a plait/turn-of // the man (of) // the ascent // LORD God.” We recognize that David is seeing this message from God through Nathan as a Messianic prophecy. David emphasizes both natures of the coming Christ. The human nature is clear, the form of a man. The divine nature is also clear: He will be the Son of God, with his throne established forever (verses 13-14 above) and he is “the LORD God.”
The two natures of Christ are always connected when the Savior is described in the prophets and in the Psalms. Isaiah said, “To us a child is born” (truly human), “and he will be called Mighty God, Everlasting Father” (truly God), Isaiah 9:6. And Jeremiah said, “I will raise up to David a righteous Branch” (truly human), and “This is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord our Righteousness” (truly God), Jeremiah 23:5-6. We reflect this in our creeds, for Christ is the Father’s “only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,” etc. (Apostles’ Creed). Augustine said: “He is God because he is the Word of God; man, because flesh and a rational soul came together to the Word in the unity of the person (Enchiridion ch. 35).
And yet when Jesus, a man, was proclaimed as the Messiah on account of the many proofs that were offered (his words, his works, the confession of John the Baptist and of the people of Israel), the Jewish leaders regarded the Lord’s own confession as blasphemy. “Tell us,” they said, “if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” And he said, “Yes, it is as you say” (Matthew 26:63-64). For this they said he was “worthy of death” (Matthew 26:66). But the Apostle John says: “Who is a liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the Antichrist—he denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:22-23). To deny that Jesus is the Son of God is to tear oneself away from the faith of David proclaimed here in our verse, and away from the faith of Moses, Israel, Isaac, and Abraham, who came before and believing the very same thing. The very angel who announced to Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus said: “The Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). And at his birth, the angel appeared in Bethlehem teaching the shepherds: “He is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11).
David goes on to say again that he is honored by God for all of this news, first, because God has done these things for him, and second, because God has made this known to him and to others. This is a pattern we want to follow in our own praise for God: (1) About what he has done, (2) that he has made this known to us. The first part is the action of God in the world; the second is the word of God that proclaims what he has done. In our time, the Scriptures provide both sides of this, but we can also praise God for his specific gifts and actions in our lives. Doing this helps our friends and co-workers to hear about God and to see that the Lord touches our lives directly, and that he blesses us in many ways, every day. By taking our friends from this realization to, “Let me tell you what else Jesus has done…,” is a quick transition from their life to the cross, the resurrection, and their own resurrection, and their own assurance of eternal life.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.