God’s Word for You
1 Chronicles 17:20-22 To redeem his people
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, January 31, 2024
20 There is none like you, O LORD, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears. 21 And who is like your people Israel? The one nation on earth whom God came down to redeem his people, making for yourself a great name, doing fearsome things, in driving out nations before your people whom you redeemed from Egypt? 22 And you made your people Israel to be your people forever, and you, O LORD, are their God.
This part of David’s prayer combines these elements:
1, The God of Israel is one true and only God.
2, God’s people, the true Israel, are especially blessed.
(Notice that the two tables of the Law of Moses touch these very points). And then, following this:
3, God came down to redeem, ransom, the nation of Israel, making them his people.
4, God is Israel’s one and only God.
First: The LORD is the one true and only God. David rightly says, “There is none like you… no God but you.” “He is one, and there is no other besides him” (Mark 12:32). And his own proclamation is this: “I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God” (Isaiah 44:6). “We know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4).
Then David humbly gasps: “And who is like your people Israel?” He does not mean that Israel is mighty, nor a voice the whole world will listen to, but a people blessed by knowing who the true God is. Who else could say such a thing? What had the uncircumcised Philistine said to Saul’s army? “I defy the ranks of Israel!” (1 Samuel 17:10), but what did he know? David defeated him and killed him without a sword in his hand. God’s chosen people are blessed, and he looks after them. Here we are naturally moved to remembering that the commandments have two parts: Love for the one and only God, and love for one’s neighbor. The love for our neighbor is spurred forward by God’s love for us, but it is also demonstrated for us by God’s love for his dear people.
In verse 21, David proclaims that God “came down to redeem his people.” That wonderful word, “redeem” or “ransom,” means to pay what might be required for someone who is enslaved or kidnapped. But in God’s case, redeeming Israel from Egypt was something very different.
Who paid the ransom for Israel to leave Egypt? Ask the Egyptian families who lost their firstborn sons, firstborn donkeys, firstborn rams and bulls, firstborn camels and yes even dogs—they all died on the night of the Passover.
Who paid the ransom for Israel to leave Egypt? Ask the Egyptians who gave Israel their silver, their gold, their precious gems and jewels, their beautiful cloth and silk and fabric, their ebony, their ivory, their teak, and their incense and myrrh. God himself made the Egyptians “favoraby disposed toward the Hebrews” (Exodus 3:21, 11:3, 12:36) and they plundered the Egyptians.
Who paid the ransom for Israel to leave Egypt? Ask Pharaoh Thutmose whose army chased the Hebrews to the edge of the Red Sea and followed them onto the path that God himself made so that chariot, horse and rider were all buried when the Hebrews had crossed and the sea closed back in on Pharaoh’s cavalry. He lost the best, the cream of his army that day. “Some trust in chariots and some in horses,” David said, “but we trust in the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm 20:7). And again, “He saved them from the hands of the foe, from the hand of the enemy he redeemed them” (Psalm 106:10).
But let us ask this question of the other, larger, infinitely larger, redemption of mankind, paying the price for our sins: Who paid the ransom for the sins of mankind against the debt of sin? The Son of David paid that debt. Who paid the ransom for my sins, the debt of sin that I owe? The same Son of David, the Son of God, Jesus Christ my Lord paid the ransom for my sins with his own suffering, for he truly suffered the agony of hell in my place (for the one who sins will be thrown into hell, Mark 9:43), and he paid the price for my sin with his own blood, for the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), and the death he died, he died on account of sin (Romans 6:10), but not his own sin, for he is the sinless Son of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
What other God do we need? There is no other, and we desire no other. We pray with David: “You O LORD are their God,” just as You, O LORD, are our God, too. And praise God that he has taken us for himself. We are saved by his grace, by his compassion, and by his love.
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.