I Chronicles 17:16 And David the king came and sat before the LORD, and said, Who am I, O LORD God, and what is mine house, that thou hast brought me hitherto
In the last two months, I have had the privilege of meeting retired pastors and retired missionaries in nearly every church I have been in. It is always good to see how God has worked in the lives of people who not only are trusting God for the future, but can point to the past and show how God has been faithful in their lives. Hopefully we all want to live that way, to give our lives to God. At least if you are reading this, that is probably an interest you have, yet I think it is harder to do that when we are in “full-time Christian ministry” than if we are giving what we think of as a “regular” job to God. The fact is honor is living in submission to God’s design.
In I Chronicles 17 King David had a great ambition, although not necessarily for himself. It was an ambition to build a temple to God. It was a good ambition and one that the prophet Nathan approved and said, “Do all that is in your heart for God is with you.” It was only later that God told Nathan, “David will not build Me a house to dwell in. I am going to build him a house.”
Verse 16 says, “And David the king came and sat before the LORD, and said, Who am I, O LORD God, and what is mine house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?” David was saying, “I was going to build You a house, and now You are talking about building me a house.” He was not just speaking about bricks and mortar, but of people and ultimately the Messiah. What is instructive about this is that in verse 16 David is called the king, but ten other times in this chapter David is referred to as God’s servant. The point to think about here is honor is living is submission to God’s design.
In verse 18 David said, “What can David speak more to thee [God] for the honour of thy servant? For thou knowest thy servant.” In other words, “God, what can I do that would give me more honor than simply submitting to You and who You know me to be?” So many times, when we are involved with Christian work or serving the Lord, we think of ourselves as building a ministry. I don’t think that is the way to look at it. Your serving is more important than your ministry. Now, ministry is serving, but sometimes we think of ministry as a thing, bricks and mortar, an organization, or people that we control. The fact is that ministry is service. So, my service to God is more important than my ministry.
Think about two things in particular. One, God’s heart trumps my ambition. God’s heart is more important than my ambition. In verse 20 David says, “Oh LORD, there is none like thee, neither is there any God beside thee.” In verse 26 David says, “And now, LORD, thou art God.” In other words, he says, “I’m not God. I am a servant. I have this great, spiritual ambition that seemed to be virtuous, but it is not what you wanted.”
It is also interesting to note the progression. In verse 2 we find what was in David’s heart, a good thing but not God’s thing. In verse 19 we find what was in God’s heart. It says, “O LORD, for thy servant’s sake, and according to thine own heart, hast thou done all this greatness, in making known all these great things.” So, there was something in David’s heart and there was something that was revealed to him that was actually in God’s heart. The result is in verse 25, “Therefore thy servant hath found in his heart to pray before thee.” So, David went from following what he thought was right, to hearing what God wanted, to submitting to what God wanted. That is why David was so greatly used. We say David was a man after God’s own heart.
Numerous times as God gave David an answer, God tells David what He has done and will do. II Samuel 7 says, “I took thee from the sheepcote, from following the sheep, to be ruler over my people, over Israel. And I was with thee…I will appoint a place…and caused thee to rest from all thine enemies. Also the LORD telleth thee that he will make thee an house…I will establish his kingdom.” God says, “I will, I will, I will.” David’s open, tender heart led to the ambition to build the temple, but his soft heart led to doing whatever God revealed that He wanted. So, God’s heart is more important than my ambition. God’s heart trumps my heart and ambitions.
Second, my service is more important than my ministry. One is eternal and one is not. I will not always be in charge of the things I am in charge of now. They will eventually go to someone else, as it has always been. I will not be forever; no one is. I can’t promise that any particular ministry, whether a church or something else, will always be here. My point is that my service is eternal, but my ministry is not. The gates of hell will not prevail against God’s church, but there are local churches, mission boards, and colleges that have come and gone. My ministry, whatever that may be, may not be here forever, but my service can always be.
My service can outlive me in a number of ways, one of which is in Heaven. In Heaven we will be serving the LORD God, that is not because I am going to be in charge of something in Heaven or because there is some organization I will devise in Heaven, but because I have a God to serve in Heaven just as I have a God to serve right now. That is wonderful because that means my success is not primarily based on something I build, but on what God has given me that I give to Him and acknowledge belongs to Him.
So, whether you are retired or are young and haven’t begun your life’s work, living honorably is living submission to God’s design. That is something you can do today and forever.