INTRODUCTION
Earlier in today’s service I showed the video, ‘David the worshipper’ [Angel Studios]. I’ve really liked all the videos in this series but I especially liked this one.
Young David in the video loves to sing praise to God! He’s joyful, exuberant! His joy and exuberance are catching. Before long, loads of other people are singing too.
I think the video gives us a good picture of what David was like. Almost from the moment we meet David in the Bible, he’s playing a lyre and singing. David is THE person in the Bible we associate with praising God. He wrote about half of the Psalms – and the Psalms are full of mentions of praising God. There are more references to praising God in the Psalms than in the whole of the rest of the Bible.
Charlotte read a passage for us from Chronicles. David is about to bring the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem and he’s organized a praise event. He’s got cymbals, harps, lyres and trumpets. David wants the musicians to raise sounds of joy. It’s going to be loud. There’s going to be shouting. It’s the same as the video. David wants music, joy and exuberance as people praise God. It’s a great example for us!
DAVID, ZEALOT FOR GOD'S HOUSE
Today, we come to the last talk in our series, ‘Learning from David.’ I’ve called it, ‘David, zealot for God’s house.’
A zealot is someone who is really, really committed to a cause. Often, when we use the word today it’s quite negative. Rishi Sunak called protesters from Just Stop Oil ‘eco-zealots’. People might call the Taliban fundamentalist zealots. People in the United States talk about anti-gun zealots. It’s a dangerous thing to call someone a zealot. But David was one, and so was Jesus.
Let’s look where this comes.
David wrote Psalm 69. In it, he wrote this: ‘For zeal for your house has consumed me’ [Psalm 69:9].
‘Consumed me’ means that I feel so strongly about something that it completely dominates my life.
Here are a couple of examples. One writer wrote that he struggled for years with some question. ‘It CONSUMED ME, overwhelmed me, and made me crazy.’ Another writer wrote, ‘The possibility that the book would fail CONSUMED ME ... I felt as though the world were coming to an end.’
David said he was consumed with zeal for God’s house. His zeal, his passion for God’s house was eating him up. Someone who is consumed with zeal is a zealot. David was a zealot for God’s house.
Now let’s turn to Jesus. There was a time when Jesus went down to Jerusalem. He went into the temple and found people there selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and changing money. Jesus was so passionate for God’s house that he made a whip of cords and drove the traders out of the temple.
I think Jesus’ disciples must have been surprised! Then we read, ‘His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me”’ [John 2:17]. Jesus’ disciples saw Jesus’ zeal for God’s house and they remembered the words David had written.
As in so many of the talks in this series, here is another example of David being a type for Jesus.
But what did David’s zeal for God’s house look like? How do we see David consumed with zeal for God’s house?
The story of David’s life is mainly told in two books of the Bible: 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles. Broadly, 2 Samuel gives us the bad stuff and 1 Chronicles gives us the good stuff.
For example, 2 Samuel tells us about David’s adulterous affair with Bathsheba. 1 Chronicles doesn’t. 2 Samuel tells us about the problems David had with his sons, Amnon and Absalom. 1 Chronicles hardly mentions them. But 1 Chronicles tells us about many good things David did – things which 1 Samuel doesn’t talk about.
You may wonder why the Bible would give us David’s life in two books and why one contains much more bad stuff and one contains much more good stuff. There are reasons for that and I think I understand them, but I don’t want to spend time on that now.
Here are three examples of David’s zeal for the house of God in 1 Chronicles.
My first example is David bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.
The Ark of the Covenant was a wooden box that the Israelites had constructed in the time of Moses. It was the most important symbol of the Jewish faith. It was probably about 400 years old in David’s time.
Before the time of the temple, the Ark would normally be in the tabernacle – a large tent. But before David became king, the Philistines had captured the Ark. Later, they sent it back. It came to someone’s house and after that, it had remained there. No one had bothered to collect it and put it back to the tabernacle.
Off David goes to get it. But it ends in disaster. God strikes down two men who touch it. So, David gives up – for a while. But then he figures out what went wrong the first time. The people hadn’t carried the ark in the way God had told them to. David tries again and this time, he succeeds.
This is a great example of David’s zeal for God’s house. David knew the Ark had to be in the tabernacle. He was determined to make it happen and he did.
My second example of David’s zeal for the house of God is him organizing the people who served in the tabernacle. I Chronicles 23 talks about the Levites – the tribe which had the task of supporting the priests in the temple. It tells us, ‘And David organized them’ [1 Chronicles 23:6]. I Chronicles 24 talks about the priests. It tells us, ‘David organized them’ [1 Chronicles 24:3]. I Chronicles 25 talks about the musicians. It tells us that David and ‘the chiefs of the service’ set them apart [1 Chronicles 25:1].
I don’t know why these people needed organizing. But David was king. He was in a position to do it and he did. He got the people who served in the tabernacle working well.
My third example of David’s zeal for the house of God is his preparation for a temple. David commissions his son Solomon to take on the project. He gives Solomon a plan. He receives gifts of gold and other precious metals for the temple, and he gives about 100 tonnes of gold from his own treasury [1 Chronicles 29:4]. That weight of gold would have a value today of more than £6 billion. That is a huge amount. There are people today who could give £6 billion, but not many.
These examples show us David as a man who wanted God’s house – especially the tabernacle and later the temple – to flourish. But ‘wanted’ is too weak a word. David didn’t just WANT it. He wanted it passionately. His zeal for God’s house consumed him.
But why? Was a magnificent temple an end in itself? Of course it wasn’t. There was something else which motivated David to build God’s house.
We find it almost at the end of 1 Chronicles. David gives Solomon the task of building a temple. Then he turns to the people of Israel and tells them this:
‘Now therefore in the sight of all Israel, the assembly of the Lord, and in the hearing of our God, OBSERVE AND SEEK OUT ALL THE COMMANDMENTS OF THE LORD YOUR GOD, that you may possess this good land and leave it for an inheritance to your children after you for ever’ [1 Chronicles 28:8].
David tells the people, ‘OBSERVE and SEEK OUT all the commandments of the Lord your God.’
David gives two commands. The first command is ‘observe.’ David urges the Israelites to OBSERVE the commandments of God. Observe means obey. To honour God, we must obey him.
But there a second command. The second command is ‘seek out.’ David knew that a person doesn’t discover God’s commandments unless he goes looking. So, he tells the people to seek them out. Then they can observe them. The same is true today. We won’t observe God’s commands if we don’t know what they are. To know what they are, we have to read our Bibles.
David was consumed by zeal for the house of God. But there is a strong sense in the bible that the people of God are the house of God [see e.g., Hebrews 3:6 and 1 Corinthians 3:16].
David didn’t just want to have the Ark back in the tabernacle. He didn’t just want people efficiently doing their jobs in the tabernacle. He didn’t just want a glorious temple as a centre for worship. David’s final, solemn command to the people of Israel in the book of Chronicles was, ‘OBSERVE AND SEEK OUT ALL THE COMMANDMENTS OF THE LORD YOUR GOD.’
I said earlier that David was a type for Jesus. Jesus’ disciples saw Jesus’ zeal for the house of God when he drove the money changers out of the temple. On that occasion, the house of God meant the physical temple in Jerusalem. But the Bible tells us that there’s another way to understand the house of God. God’s people are the house of God. Jesus’ zeal for this house of God took him to the cross.
After Jesus was raised back to life, he gave a very similar final instruction to his disciples as David gave to the people of Israel. He told them: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, TEACHING THEM TO OBSERVE ALL THAT I HAVE COMMANDED YOU’ [Matthew 28:20].
Jesus wanted exactly the same as David. God’s people must observe God’s commandments. God is boss.
This series is called ‘Learning from David.’ David wasn’t perfect. But he got a lot of things right – and in doing so, he left us a great example. Are we willing to be zealous for God’s house, zealous to the extent that is consumes us? The church desperately needs people like that, people who are deeply committed to building God’s house. People who understand that in the deepest sense, God’s house is the people of God, and therefore, seek to build his people. Building God’s house involves going, making disciples, baptizing, and teaching people to observe all that Jesus has commanded us.
David was one of the greatest kings of Israel. But at the end of his life, David’s great passion wasn’t to build his own kingdom. What consumed him was building God’s house, God’s kingdom. There’s a song from the 1980s which goes like this:
‘I want to serve the purpose of God
In my generation
I want to serve the purpose of God
While I am alive
I want to give my life
For something that will last forever…’
It seems that David had decided what he would give his life for. The question for us is, what will we give our lives for?
TALK GIVEN AT ROSEBERY PARK BAPTIST CHURCH, BOURNEMOUTH, UK, 17TH NOVEMBER 2024, 10.30 A.M. SERVICE.
