From His Hand to His House
Introduction: The Grammar of Giving
We come now to one of the high water marks in the Old Testament. David, the warrior king, is at the end of his days. He is old, full of years, and he has spent his final energies not in consolidating personal power, but in preparing for the great work that his son Solomon will complete: the building of God's house. An immense treasure has been gathered, a staggering amount of gold, silver, bronze, and precious stones. The people have given willingly, joyfully, and extravagantly. And at this moment of supreme national achievement, David does not give a speech about the greatness of Israel. He does not commend the people for their generosity. He turns his face toward Heaven and he prays. And in this prayer, he gives us the foundational grammar of all true worship, all true giving, and all true kingdom enterprise.
Our modern world, and sadly, much of the modern church, is shot through with the heresy of autonomy. We think in terms of "my money," "my time," "my accomplishments." When we give, we think of it as a laudable act of parting with what is ours for the benefit of God. We think God is the recipient of our charity. David's prayer comes like a thunderclap to shatter this pathetic, man-centered view of reality. He teaches us that we are not owners; we are stewards. We are not benefactors; we are couriers. We are not the source of the wealth; we are merely the channel through which God's own wealth flows.
This passage is a profound corrective to the prosperity gospel, which sees God as a means to our enrichment, and also to the poverty gospel, which is embarrassed by wealth and material blessing. David shows us the third way, the biblical way: God is the owner of all wealth, and He entrusts it to His people for the purpose of building His kingdom, and our role is to joyfully return to Him what was always His in the first place. If we do not get this right, our giving is nothing more than proud patronage, and our worship is nothing but self-congratulation.
The Text
So David blessed Yahweh in the sight of all the assembly; and David said, “Blessed are You, O Yahweh, the God of Israel our father, from everlasting to everlasting. Yours, O Yahweh, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the kingdom, O Yahweh, and You exalt Yourself as head over all. Both riches and honor come from You, and You rule over all, and in Your hand is power and might; and it lies in Your hand to make great and to strengthen everyone. So now, our God, we are thanking You and praising Your glorious name.
“But who am I and who are my people that we should be able to offer as willingly as this? For all things come from You, and from Your hand we have given You. For we are sojourners before You, and foreign residents, like all our fathers were; our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no hope. O Yahweh our God, all this abundance that we have prepared to build You a house for Your holy name, it is from Your hand, and all is Yours. And I know, O my God, that You try the heart and delight in uprightness. I, in the uprightness of my heart, have willingly offered all these things. So now with gladness I have seen Your people, who are present here, make their offerings willingly to You. O Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, our fathers, keep this forever in the intentions of the heart of Your people, and prepare their heart to You; and give to my son Solomon a whole heart to keep Your commandments, Your testimonies and Your statutes, and to do them all, and to build the temple, for which I have made preparation.”
Then David said to all the assembly, “Now bless Yahweh your God.” And all the assembly blessed Yahweh, the God of their fathers, and bowed low and prostrated themselves to Yahweh and to the king.
(1 Chronicles 29:10-20 LSB)
The Foundation of All Reality (vv. 10-13)
David begins where all theology, all worship, and all life must begin: with God Himself. Before he says a word about the offering, he offers a doxology.
"Blessed are You, O Yahweh, the God of Israel our father, from everlasting to everlasting. Yours, O Yahweh, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Yours is the kingdom, O Yahweh, and You exalt Yourself as head over all." (1 Chronicles 29:10-11)
Notice the immediate God-centeredness. The first word is about blessing God, not congratulating the people. He grounds this praise in the covenant: this is the God of "Israel our father," the God of the promises, from everlasting to everlasting. Then he unleashes a torrent of ascriptions. Greatness, power, glory, victory, majesty. These are not things God has; they are what God is. And then he makes the claim absolute: "indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth." There are no exceptions. There are no square inches of the cosmos over which God cannot say "Mine." This is the deathblow to all dualism, all secularism, all attempts to carve out a little patch of reality for ourselves where God is not king. Because "Yours is the kingdom." His rule is not a future proposal; it is a present fact.
He continues by drawing the practical implication:
"Both riches and honor come from You, and You rule over all, and in Your hand is power and might; and it lies in Your hand to make great and to strengthen everyone. So now, our God, we are thanking You and praising Your glorious name." (1 Chronicles 29:12-13)
That pile of gold? It came from God. The honor of the king? It came from God. The strength of the army? It came from God. God is not a distant, absentee landlord. He is the active ruler, the one who dispenses wealth, status, and strength as He sees fit. Therefore, the only sane, logical, and righteous response is thanksgiving. Praise is not flattery we offer to God; it is the simple, joyful acknowledgment of the way things actually are. We praise His glorious name because His name is, in fact, glorious.
The Humility of the Conduit (vv. 14-16)
Having established God's absolute ownership, David now turns to define humanity's position in relation to Him. And this is where the rubber of theology meets the road of our pride.
"But who am I and who are my people that we should be able to offer as willingly as this? For all things come from You, and from Your hand we have given You." (1 Chronicles 29:14)
This is one of the most staggering verses in the Bible. David looks at the mountain of treasure and the joyful givers, and his response is not pride, but astonished humility. The question is not, "How were we able to give so much?" but rather, "How is it that we were even given the ability and the desire to give?" He recognizes that even the willingness of our hearts is a gift from God. And then he states the central principle of all Christian stewardship: "from Your hand we have given You." We are not giving God anything He doesn't already own. We are simply returning a portion of His property to Him. This transforms giving from an act of sacrifice to an act of worshipful transference.
This perspective is rooted in a clear-eyed view of our own creatureliness.
"For we are sojourners before You, and foreign residents, like all our fathers were; our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no hope." (1 Chronicles 29:15)
We are tenants, not landowners. We are here for a short time. Our lives are like a shadow, insubstantial and fleeting. And apart from God, "there is no hope." This is not morbid pessimism; it is biblical realism. It is the necessary death of self-importance that must precede any true worship. When we realize we own nothing and are here for but a moment, it radically reorients our relationship to "our" possessions. They are not ours to hoard, but His to be deployed for His purposes. David then applies this directly to the pile of gold: "all this abundance... it is from Your hand, and all is Yours" (v. 16). Every last bit of it.
The Prayer for the Heart (vv. 17-19)
David knows that God is not ultimately interested in the stuff, but in the heart behind the stuff.
"And I know, O my God, that You try the heart and delight in uprightness. I, in the uprightness of my heart, have willingly offered all these things. So now with gladness I have seen Your people... make their offerings willingly to You." (1 Chronicles 29:17)
God is a heart-inspector. He is not impressed by the size of the gift, but by the integrity of the giver. David can stand before God and declare that his own motives are pure, and his greatest joy is seeing that same willing-heartedness in the people. A pastor's true joy is not a big budget, but a congregation full of cheerful givers who understand the grammar of grace.
But David is a realist. He knows that human hearts are fickle. So he prays for divine preservation.
"O Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, our fathers, keep this forever in the intentions of the heart of Your people, and prepare their heart to You; and give to my son Solomon a whole heart..." (1 Chronicles 29:18-19)
He asks God to do what only God can do: to "keep" this attitude in the people's hearts and to "prepare" their hearts for continued faithfulness. He knows that spiritual renewal is not maintained by human effort but by divine grace. He then prays for his son, Solomon, asking for a "whole heart" to be obedient and to complete the task. The success of the kingdom depends on the heart of the king being wholly devoted to the King of kings.
The Corporate Conclusion (v. 20)
Finally, David turns from speaking to God on behalf of the people to directing the people to speak to God themselves.
"Then David said to all the assembly, 'Now bless Yahweh your God.' And all the assembly blessed Yahweh, the God of their fathers, and bowed low and prostrated themselves to Yahweh and to the king." (1 Chronicles 29:20)
He leads them in corporate worship. The giving project began with worship, was centered in a prayer of worship, and now concludes with an act of worship. The people respond correctly, blessing Yahweh and bowing down. They prostrate themselves before Yahweh first, and then before the king. This is the proper order of loyalties. They honor the king as God's ordained authority, but their ultimate allegiance and worship belong to God alone. All earthly authority is derived and must be honored as such, but only God is to be worshipped.
All is from Christ's Hand
This entire chapter is a glorious foreshadowing of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We, like Israel, are sojourners. We are spiritually bankrupt, with nothing to offer God. Our days are like a shadow, and in ourselves, there is no hope. We are debtors with nothing to pay.
But God, the one from whom all riches flow, did not demand payment from us. Instead, from His own hand, He provided the offering. He gave His only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The true temple that this earthly one pointed to is the body of Christ. And the cost of building that temple, the church, was not gold and silver, but the precious blood of the Lamb.
Everything we have is from Him. Our salvation is from His hand. Our faith is from His hand. Our repentance is from His hand. Even our desire to serve Him is a gift from His hand. And so, when we come to offer our lives, our time, our money, our praise, what are we doing? We are simply taking what Christ has purchased for us and placed in our hands, and joyfully giving it back to Him, saying with David, "For all things come from You, and from Your hand we have given You."
Our prayer, then, should be the same as David's. First, that God would search our hearts and see that we give willingly and with uprightness. And second, that He would "keep this forever in the intentions of the heart of Your people." We pray that God, by His sovereign grace, would preserve in us a spirit of radical, joyful, God-centered generosity, until that day when the greater Solomon returns to reign in the glorious house He Himself has built.