Scripture Daily

Context No. 430 of 4322 · 1 Chronicles

Context · Reflection

1 Chronicles 17:16-27: in context

16Then David the king went in and sat before the LORD; and he said, “Who am I, LORD God, and what is my house, that you have brought me this far? 17This was a small thing in your eyes, O God, but you have spoken of your servant’s house for a great while to come, and have respected me according to the standard of a man of high degree, LORD God. 18What can David say yet more to you concerning the honor which is done to your servant? For you know your servant. 19LORD, for your servant’s sake, and according to your own heart, you have done all this greatness, to make known all these great things. 20LORD, there is no one like you, neither is there any God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears. 21What one nation on the earth is like your people Israel, whom God went to redeem to himself for a people, to make you a name by great and awesome things, in driving out nations from before your people whom you redeemed out of Egypt? 22For you made your people Israel your own people forever; and you, LORD, became their God. 23Now, LORD, let the word that you have spoken concerning your servant, and concerning his house, be established forever, and do as you have spoken. 24Let your name be established and magnified forever, saying, ‘The LORD of Armies is the God of Israel, even a God to Israel. The house of David your servant is established before you.’ 25For you, my God, have revealed to your servant that you will build him a house. Therefore your servant has found courage to pray before you. 26Now, LORD, you are God, and have promised this good thing to your servant. 27Now it has pleased you to bless the house of your servant, that it may continue forever before you; for you, LORD, have blessed, and it is blessed forever.”

God has just made David an astonishing promise, that he will establish David's dynasty, that David's own son will build the temple, and that his throne will be secured forever. It is the kind of promise that could inflate a king's sense of his own importance. And David's response is the opposite of inflation. He goes in and sits down before the LORD, and the first thing out of his mouth is a question of pure wonder: who am I, LORD God, and what is my house, that you have brought me this far?

That question is the heart of the prayer, and it is worth lingering on, because it is exactly the posture that so much good fortune erodes in us. David is the king, the anointed one, at the height of his success, and instead of receiving the promise as something he had earned or deserved, he is floored by it. Who am I? He cannot get over that God would do this for him. He says it was a small thing in God's eyes to make such a promise, and calls himself simply your servant, over and over, and then adds a line of quiet rest: you know your servant. He is not performing humility; he is genuinely staggered by grace. And then the prayer does something bold. Because you have promised this, David says in effect, your servant has found the courage to pray for it. He takes God's own promise and prays it back to him, asking God to do exactly what God has said. His confidence to ask comes not from his own worthiness but from God's word.

Both halves are worth learning. When God is good to me, do I still have David's who am I, the wonder that God would do this for someone like me, or has a run of good things quietly hardened into entitlement, so that I now receive God's kindness as simply my due? And have I learned David's boldness, to take the promises God has actually made and pray them back to him with confidence, not because I deserve them, but because he said them first?

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