Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2855
“And David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and with singing and with harps and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets.” 1 Chronicles 13:8.
“AndDavid was afraid ofGod that day, saying, How shall I bring the Ark of God home to me?”
1 Chronicles 13:12.
“So David, and the elders of Israel, and the captains over thousands, went to bring up the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord out of the house of Obed-Edom with joy.”
1 Chronicles 15:25.
DAVID had, in his heart, an intense love to God. During Saul’s reign, God had been well-nigh forgotten in the land. The ordinances of His house had been almost, if not entirely, neglected, and when David found himself firmly seated upon his throne, one of his first thoughts was concerning the revival of religion, the reestablishment of that form of worship which God had ordained in the wilderness by the mouth of His servant Moses. So he looked about him to see where the Ark of the Covenant, that most sacred of all the ancient symbols, was, and he wrote, “We heard of it at Ephra-tah: we found it in the fields of the wood.” Out of pure love and reverence to God, he called the people together, consulting with them so that the thing might not be done by himself, but by the nation. It was agreed that the Ark should be brought up and placed upon Mount Zion, near the palace of the king, in a conspicuous position where it should be the center of religious worship for the entire nation. It was to be placed near that sacred spot where Abraham had, of old, offered up his son, Isaac, that, in the great days of assembly, the Israelites might wend their way there and worship God as He had commanded them.
David’s intention was right enough, no fault can be found with that. But right things must be done in a right way. We serve a jealous God, who, though He overlooks many faults in His people, yet, nevertheless, will have His Word reverenced and His commands obeyed. “Be you clean,” He says, “that bear the vessels of the Lord.” He will be honored by those that attempt to draw near to Him. So it came to pass that, though David had a good intention and was about to do a right thing, yet, at the first, he had a great failure. When we have considered the cause of that failure, we shall note that this failure worked in David a great fear. And when we have meditated for a while upon that fear, we shall see that when David set to work to honor his God after the due order, he did it with such a great joy that, perhaps, we have scarcely another instance of such exuberance of spirit in the worship of God as we have in the case of David who leaped and danced before the Ark of the Lord with all his might!
I. First, then, we are to consider DAVID’S GREAT FAILURE. It followed almost immediately after “David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and with singing, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets.” This was David’s first attempt to bring up the Ark of the Covenant into the place appointed for it.
Observe, dear Friends, that there was no failure through lack of multitudes. It is, to my mind very delightful to worship God with the multitude that keep holy day. I know some people who think themselves the only saints in the whole
world. They do not imagine that any can be the elect of God if there are more than seven or eight, “because,” they say, “strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leads unto life, and few there are that find it.” And, therefore, simply because they are few in number, they straightway conclude that they have passed through the strait gate into the narrow way. It needs far better evidence than that to prove that they are on the right road and, for my part, I love, as David did, to go with the multitude to the House of God—to keep time and tune with many hearts and many voices all on fire with holy devotion as they lift up the sacred song in a great chorus of praise unto the Most High! There was no failure, in that respect, on this occasion, for, “David gathered all Israel together, from Shihor of Egypt even unto the entering of He-math, to bring the Ark of God from Kirjath-Jearim.” Thus they came, from all parts of the land, in their hundreds and their thousands—an exceedingly great multitude—yet their attempt to bring up the Ark proved a sad failure. So, you see that it is of little value merely to gather crowds of people together! However great the multitude of nominal worshippers may be, it is quite possible that they may offer no worship that is acceptable to God. We, ourselves may come and go in our thousands, yet that alone will not guarantee that the Presence of God is among us. It would be far better to be with a few, if God were in the midst of them, than to be with the multitude and yet to miss the Divine blessing.