Sermon

Click here to print this Sermon

November 11, 2007
Building Together Anniversary
1 Chronicles 29:10-18
Pastor Joel Zank

Praise Be To You, O LORD!

(1 Chronicles 29:10-18)  David praised the LORD in the presence of the whole assembly, saying, "Praise be to you, O LORD, God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. {11} Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. {12} Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all. {13} Now, our God, we give you thanks, and praise your glorious name. {14} "But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. {15} We are aliens and strangers in your sight, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope. {16} O LORD our God, as for all this abundance that we have provided for building you a temple for your Holy Name, it comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you. {17} I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. All these things have I given willingly and with honest intent. And now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you. {18} O LORD, God of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Israel, keep this desire in the hearts of your people forever, and keep their hearts loyal to you.

In Christ Jesus, who has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor, dear fellow redeemed,

As you may know, Dr. Martin Luther wrote volumes upon volumes of letters, papers, and sermons. I’m sure you’re familiar with and have memorized more of his words than you can remember. But are familiar with the last words he wrote?  Just two days before his death, the great Reformer put pen to paper one last time and wrote: “Wir sind bettler. Das ist wahr.”  “We are beggars. This is true.”

What would prompt such a great man to write such humble words? We would answer, not “what,” but “who would prompt such a thing”! For it was God’s Holy Spirit who enabled Luther to see himself and all his fellow Christians for who and what we are,  spiritual beggars who have no natural right or claim whatsoever to all the blessings God showers upon us. Wouldn’t you agree? I hoped you would! King David certainly does. Inspired by the Spirit, David teaches us a prayer today that celebrates the goodness and mercy of God. We’ll take the opening words of that prayer for our theme and so say with David: “Praise be to you, O LORD!” – for the wealth you share with us and for the grace you show to us.  

Let me set the scene for you. For some time, King David had wanted to build a temple for God. But the LORD had told David that his son and Israel’s next king, Solomon, would have that honor and responsibility. David, of course, accepted God’s will in the matter and found a new way to help with the project. He gathered an offering, and what an offering it was. David and his people gave nearly 4,000 tons of gold, more than 33,000 tons of silver and an even greater amount of bronze and iron. Now mind you, this wasn’t a government tax. This was a free-will offering. Amazing, isn’t it!  And even more so when you read in the verses of Scripture that the people’s generosity was surpassed only by the joy they experienced in being part of something so wonderful.

Their joy could not be contained, and so with King David, they celebrated, not the building of the temple, not yet, that would come much later. No, for now, they celebrated their offering. But how do you do that? Do you pile up all the gifts, form a big circle around them and say, “Hey, look at what we’ve done!”? What a tempting thought, one that our sinful nature finds quite appealing and perfectly acceptable. I would imagine the same was true for the Israelites. Like us they all possessed a sinful nature. But their leader, King David, a man after God’s own heart, took the celebration in a very different direction: “Praise be to you, O LORD, God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. {11} Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours...{12} Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all....{16} O LORD our God, as for all this abundance that we have provided for building you a temple for your Holy Name, it comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you” (vv.10b-11a,12,16).

Israel’s celebration was a worship service in which David and his people praised God by acknowledging him to be the Creator, Owner, and Chief Executive Officer of the entire universe. That’s a pride-busting thought for us! We throw around pronouns like mine and ours without thinking. We balance our checkbooks and calculate our net worth supposing that all these numbers tell us something about what we have and own. But that’s not true. There’s no “mine” and “ours”, only “yours,” O LORD.

God has made and holds in his hands the heavens and earth and all their wealth. That means that if you and I find ourselves managing some small fraction of God’s belongings, there can be only one reason for this – God has decided to share with us what is his. That, too, is quite a thought, one that leads to a rather obvious question: Why would God do such a thing? Again, never at a loss for an opinion, our sinful nature is quick to answer: God helps those who help themselves!  In other words, we deserve it; we work hard; we’ve earned it.

As I say, that’s the sinful nature’s ready explanation for all that we are and all that we have. King David knew that very well. Thankfully he also knew the truth of God’s law and its answer to David’s question in our text: “But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this?”  Who are we? The law shows us that... “We are aliens and strangers in [God’s] sight, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope” (v.15).

God made the whole human race to be members of his immediate family. It was his intention that the earth be ours forever, that our days on this planet should never end. But all that changed with one sin. With one sin we estranged ourselves from God. With one sin our lives lost all meaning, all value, all substance. We became mere shadows on earth, visible one moment; vanished the next. Do you see David’s point? Shadows have no claim to wealth. They don’t collect a paycheck, and even if they could, they wouldn’t be around long enough to spend it. So from now on, let every shadow we see silence the claims and boasts of our proud sinful nature. Who are we? We are beggars, hopeless and helpless. This is true, just as Luther wrote.

But please understand that when Luther penned those words, it was not in a spirit of despair, but with a spirit of gratitude. For while Luther was painfully aware of his natural condition and ours, he rejoiced to know that God is merciful to us beggars beyond all comprehension. King David rejoiced in this same truth and said so in the opening words of his prayer: "Praise be to you, O LORD, God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting” (v.10).   Father Israel was none other than Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham. It was Jacob with whom God made his one-sided covenant, promising on oath to bless all nations on earth through Jacob’s greatest descendant, Jesus Christ (Genesis 28;14). God made this promise to a planet of beggars who deserve nothing but God’s anger and punishment. God made this promise because he is Pure Grace, showing love to condemned sinners who in no way deserve it. And the news gets even better! Because our Gracious Lord is from everlasting to everlasting his promised grace cannot fail us.

But of course, you know that even better than Jacob or David did. You know the fulfillment of God’s promise to Jacob. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich., yet he became...”  the beggar in your place. He spent his holiness on you, making sure that his perfect life on earth was enough to cover all your greed, all your pride, all your sin. He spilled all his blood for you on the cross as a sin offering freely given to God to atone for all the evil you were born with and produce day by day. Jesus spent your eternity in hell, tormented by God’s anger for you, so that you might live out your days here on earth in God’s peace and spend life unending with God in his heaven. You know how Jesus died for you and then rose again so that he might bring his kingdom to your heart and rule there without rival. Yes, by God’s gracious gift of faith, you know how God’s own Son became “...poor so that you through his poverty you might become rich” in every way that matters both here in time and in eternity (2 Corinthians 8:9). Praise be to you, O LORD, for the grace you show to us in Christ!

Think of it, my friends! In this grace, Jesus has restored us to a place in God’s family. He has made us sons and daughters of the King of Kings, and in doing so he has given us all that we need to respond to his love in kind. What a miracle he has worked! These hearts of ours once knew only selfishness, but now God’s love has recreated them in the image of Christ. His grace has gifted us, not only with wealth both material and spiritual, but with the desire to spend these treasures in thanks and service to God. And still there’s more, for this same grace also brings us the joyful assurance that our gifts are pleasing and acceptable in God’s sight. That’s the truth David states so beautifully in verse 17 of our text: “I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. All these things have I given willingly and with honest intent. And now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you.”

Friends, I know the joy of which David speaks, and you, God’s people, are the source of that joy. I look around me and I see God’s love at work in you and through you. I see how generous you are with offerings that have built and are paying for the new addition to God’s House that we dedicated to His glory just two years ago. I’m still marveling at the $20,000 offering you brought last May when we told you of our synod’s financial need. I see how your thank offerings for the ministry we do here in Appleton and throughout the world are on pace to wipe out the $90,000 budget deficit we thought we’d be facing by year’s end. And still there’s more! Five weeks ago Pastor Berger told me that as of the beginning of October we had only reached half of our annual goal of $10,000 for our Mission Partner in Arizona, Santo Thomas. With so little time left in the year, it seemed quite likely we would fall short of our pledge. We took the matter to you, and as of this week, our goal has been reached. In fact now we’re in a position to do even more than we had promised.

All this generosity is something to celebrate because we poor beggars know where it comes from! Both the means and the motive are supplied freely by God. And as if that were not enough, in the same love, God promises to remove from our hearts and our gifts, any sin remaining, so that all that is left in Christ, are the purest offerings flowing from the most sincere and honest hearts. Leave it to God to make not only us, but also our gifts perfect in his sight.