1 Chronicles 15: The Worshiper Who Longs for God's Presence

Introduction

Many people, even those who do not believe in Jesus, know that God is powerful. Yet at this dawn service on Saturday, September 26, the pastor of Osaka Onnuri Church points to a common misunderstanding: thinking that power lies in an object, like the ark of the covenant, instead of looking for it in God himself. God is a person, he is Spirit, he is invisible. That is why the Bible speaks of his presence.

In 1 Chronicles 15:16-29, the ark finally enters Jerusalem. The text shows David's attitude toward the presence of God and toward God's rule over his life and his people. The preacher sees three actions: David praises, David offers sacrifices, David dances. And he confesses: “I envy him so much. How can anyone love God that much?”

Outline of the Message

1. God's Presence Is Not Locked in an Object

• The preacher remembers a visit to Rome, to a church dedicated to Saint Peter. Paul, arrested, was chained in an underground prison; Peter, who came from Jerusalem with Mark as his interpreter, was arrested too, and both apostles died as martyrs. As he remembers it, chains presented as theirs are displayed there, said to have miraculously joined into one. Visitors kiss them and bow before them. He smiled to himself.
• The ark had no power in itself. What mattered was the presence of the living God, who is Spirit and who shows himself with power. In a battle already lost against the Philistines, the ark was nevertheless brought in as if the object itself would grant victory, “like in some movies,” and the enemy captured it (1 Samuel 4).
• The Philistines formed five city-states around Gaza. They place the ark in the temple of their idol Dagon: the next morning the statue is found toppled, then broken the following day, and misfortunes follow one after another (1 Samuel 5:1-5).
• The misfortunes multiply and the ark becomes for them a “hot potato,” as the English saying goes: something you cannot hold on to and hurry to pass to your neighbor. It goes from city to city.
• To protect themselves, they make golden mice and objects representing the disease that strikes them, and they send the ark back on a cart pulled by two cows, which low all along the road toward the land of Judah (1 Samuel 6:7-12).

2. The First Transport: Sincere Love, a Borrowed Method

• David was a great man of God, well versed in the five books of Moses, but he did not know how to transport the ark. Today we have a Bible and can read it every day. Back then, Scripture was held in large scrolls: Genesis alone makes up one scroll, like the ones rabbis still carry in the synagogue. It was impossible to remember every detail, down to how the ark was to be carried. Nobody knew.
• The result: they used the method of the Philistines, the cart pulled by oxen. For the pagans, that cart was used to send away an object of curse. The presence of God, which is grace, gratitude and fullness, was handled the wrong way around, and the accident happened: Uzzah died (1 Chronicles 13:7-10).
• The ark stays three months in the house of Obed-Edom, and that house is blessed. Seeing this, David decides to resume the transport (1 Chronicles 13:14).
• David's greatness is not that he built a temple. He wanted to build one and had prepared everything, but God told him it would be his son. So David prepared a place in the city of David and pitched a tent there to receive the ark (1 Chronicles 15:1).

3. David's Spirituality: “Before God, I Am Nothing”

• What we must learn from David is his joy that God governs him and that God is the king of Israel. David was king, and yet he knew he was nothing before God.
• The preacher speaks of a question of values: those of Michal and those of David were completely different. For David, what mattered was God himself, king not only of David but of all Israel, coming to dwell in Jerusalem.
• David was so moved and so grateful that he loved God with all his heart, at the cost of his life. The text describes three actions: praise, sacrifices, dance.

4. Praising Together, Without Fear

• David asks the chiefs of the Levites to appoint their fellow Levites as singers, with lyres, harps and cymbals, to raise loud sounds of joy (1 Chronicles 15:16-19). The text names Heman, Asaph and Ethan.
• Those who knew how to sing taught singing so that everyone could sing. It is not only the worship team that sings: it is the whole people. “It is when we praise together that praise becomes praise.”
• The pastor tells how he asked the worship leaders of services 1, 2 and 3 not to put on a concert or a presentation of new songs while the congregation stands still. The result: they sang nothing but familiar songs. He smiles: “Do a few new songs too!”
• He then compared this passage with the first transport, where Uzzah died. The instruments were the same: cymbals, lyres, harps, trumpets. The singers too. After such a tragedy, one could have been afraid to try again: “What if someone dies again?” David changes nothing and praises without fear. “That is what is astonishing.”

5. It Is the Little Birds That Sing

• In the morning, on your way to dawn prayer, you hear the birds singing. But have you ever heard an eagle or a hawk sing? Only little birds sing: the sparrow, the canary, the birds of the tropics.
• Birdsong has a purpose. It is a declaration of love: the male sings to say “I love you, come to me.” It is also a way of marking his territory, because the little bird has no strength. The great bird of prey does not need to.
• “When you feel weak and without strength, praise God. Praise has an astonishing power.”
• Some time ago, an elder organized a dawn prayer every Thursday for a particular group: political leaders, members of parliament, ministers, heads of large companies, members of Onnuri Church or not. When Pastor Ha Yong-jo, who was ill, could not come, the preacher stood in for him. During the time of praise, almost nobody opened their mouth. The rich and the powerful sing little; the poor sing wholeheartedly.
• He remembers his grandmother in the early 1960s. In spring, in March and April, there was nothing to eat. He, hungry, came home from school in the rain. She, sitting on the wooden porch, sang songs of praise with great joy. He thought he would die of hunger and was irritated by it; she praised. “How can anyone praise God on an empty stomach?” he wondered. We hum when we have eaten well; yet it is when we are weak that we start to praise.
• He encourages the church, which is in the middle of moving to new premises: now is the time when praise is needed.

6. Offering God What Is Most Precious

• In verse 26, because God helped the Levites who were carrying the ark, seven bulls and seven rams are sacrificed. This time, nobody died. David is grateful, and that gratitude becomes an offering.
• When you offer something to God, offer him your best, a precious gift. We give gifts to those we love.
• David gave three thousand talents of gold for the temple, a colossal sum that would be worth hundreds, even thousands of billions today (1 Chronicles 29:3-4).
• Yet, according to the preacher, the one who offered the most precious thing was Elijah. On Mount Carmel, facing the 450 prophets of Baal, the true God was to answer by fire. After three years of famine, water was worth more than meat. Elijah nevertheless had water poured over the burnt offering and around the altar.
• The fire of the Lord fell and consumed everything, even licking up the water in the trench (1 Kings 18:38). “The Bible's wording is really interesting.”
• Why offer so much? Because it is no longer a fragile man who governs Israel, but the King of kings, the Creator. David is so happy about it that he praises and he offers.

7. David's Dance and Michal's Gaze

• David wears a robe of fine linen and a linen ephod, and all Israel brings up the ark with the sound of trumpets, cymbals, lyres and harps (1 Chronicles 15:27-28).
• Michal, daughter of Saul, looks out of the window. She sees the king leaping and dancing, and she despises him in her heart (verse 29). According to 2 Samuel 6:20, David danced with such passion that he uncovered himself. It was no small dance.
• The preacher sees in Michal one of the unhappiest women. A princess, from a good family, probably beautiful, she was given in marriage out of political calculation. After the victory over Goliath, the women sang: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7). Saul, jealous, tried to kill him for thirteen years, according to the preacher. He even throws his spear at him while David plays the harp before him, and God protects David.
• Saul makes David a commander of a thousand men, and the people love him even more. He then looks for a “legal” way to get rid of him: he promises his daughter to the one who brings back the foreskins of a hundred Philistines, hoping David will die in the attempt. David brings back far more (1 Samuel 18:25-27). Saul sacrificed his own daughter out of calculation.
• Saul sends men to kill David. Michal notices first and lets David down through a window (1 Samuel 19:11-12). According to the preacher, this was on their wedding night, and they were separated before they had even lived together.
• Saul then gives her to another man, Paltiel, with whom she lives, according to the preacher, for more than ten years. Once king, David has her taken back as his first wife, and her husband follows her, weeping (2 Samuel 3:14-16).
• Back with David, she could have lived in gratitude. But all she sees is the king's lost dignity. The preacher asks the wives present: if your husband danced like that before God, would you not rather say: “My husband really loves God, hallelujah”?
• David answers: it was before the Lord, who chose him over Michal's father, that he danced, and he is ready to appear even more contemptible (2 Samuel 6:21-22).
• According to the preacher, Saul had been chosen by the royal standards of the time, which were about appearance: handsome, a head taller than all the people (1 Samuel 9:2). David did not fit those standards: he was the youngest of eight sons, and his father did not even bring him before Samuel, leaving him to keep the sheep (1 Samuel 16:11). “God rejected that man, and he chose me. Before him, I am nothing. Even my life is nothing next to the joy that God reigns over this country.”

8. Letting Jesus Become the Master of Your Life

• Moses and Elijah existed, and so did many other figures of the Old Testament. Yet, the preacher stresses, the Bible says of only one that he is a man after God's own heart: David (Acts 13:22).
• Before God, neither your reputation, nor your position, nor your wealth counts. It is when you lay all of that down and serve Jesus with the heart of David that he can become the master of your life.
• “Because we do not think about Jesus that much, we keep becoming our own masters again.” The preacher calls us to give up self and to hand the sovereignty of our lives entirely over to Jesus.
• In his prayer, he reminds us that it is not we who loved God, but he who loved us (1 John 4:10), and asks that this love spring up in us like a river, so that we can praise the way little birds sing with all their strength.

Key Takeaways

• Power is not in a sacred object: it is in the presence of the living God, who is a person and who is Spirit.
• David's zeal was not enough the first time. God's presence is received in God's way.
• Praise is the business of the whole congregation, not only of the team at the front.
• It is often the weak who praise best. When you feel you have no strength, it is the moment to sing.
• David knew he was nothing before God. His joy that God reigns came before his image as king.

Personal Application

1. Is there an object, a habit or a place where you look for God's power rather than in God himself?
2. During praise, do you sing with the congregation or do you stay a spectator?
3. In what weakness can you choose to praise God this week, like the preacher's grandmother on an empty stomach?
4. What would be a precious offering for you, like Elijah's water in the middle of a famine?
5. Do your reputation, your position or your possessions keep you from rejoicing fully before God, as David did?

Verses Cited

• 1 Chronicles 15:16-29
• 1 Chronicles 15:1
• 1 Chronicles 13:7-14
• 1 Samuel 4
• 1 Samuel 5:1-5
• 1 Samuel 6:7-12
• 1 Chronicles 29:3-4
• 1 Kings 18:30-38
• 1 Samuel 18:7
• 1 Samuel 18:25-27
• 1 Samuel 19:11-12
• 2 Samuel 3:14-16
• 2 Samuel 6:20-22
• 1 Samuel 9:2
• 1 Samuel 16:11
• Acts 13:22
• 1 John 4:10

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did the first attempt to move the ark go wrong?

David loved God, but he did not know how the ark was to be carried. In his day there was no Bible within reach, only large scrolls. So the ark was placed on a cart pulled by oxen, the method of the Philistines, who had sent it back as an object of curse. Uzzah died. The second time, the ark is carried by the Levites, as God had prescribed.

Why did David dance before the ark to the point of being despised by Michal?

Because he was filled with joy that God himself reigns over Israel. David was king, yet he knew he was nothing before God. He tells Michal that it was before the Lord, who chose him over her father, that he danced (2 Samuel 6:21). Michal saw the dignity of the king; David saw the glory of God.

Why praise God when you feel weak?

The pastor notes that it is the little birds that sing, not the eagles. In the same way, it is often the poor and the weak who praise God with all their heart. He remembers his grandmother singing with joy in the early 1960s, when the family had nothing to eat. When you feel you have no strength, praise has an astonishing power.