1 Chronicles 4:23

1 Chronicles 4:23

I. Notice how work links men to kings. Here we have potters, gardeners, and hedgers mixed up with the king. The men and women who work, whether with brain or hand, or both, are the people who save the nation from ruin. Is it not so in Christian life and experience? What is a man's religion worth if it does not teach him to labour? Are we not to work out our own salvation, and that for the best of reasons: "It is God that worketh in us"?

II. Kings need different kinds of workers. God needs us. Not that He could not have done without us, but He has elected to win the world by human instrumentality, and let it be said with reverence the interests of God are very greatly bound up with the progress of humanity. There is a sense in which God needs us, and cannot carry out His plans without us.

III. "There they dwelt with the king," willing to stay in his service "all the days of their appointed time." Let us be willing to stay. Heaven will keep. Some day we shall go to dwell with the King in another sense. We shall go from the soot of the pottery and the burning heat of the garden to dwell in "quietness and assurance for ever."

T. Champness, New Coins from Old Gold,p. 193.

References: 1 Chronicles 4:23 Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiv., No. 1400; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 155. 4 Parker, vol. viii., p. 331. 1 Chronicles 5:26. E. H. Plumptre, Expositor,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 230. 5 Parker, vol. viii., p. 335. 1 Chronicles 6:31. Ibid., Fountain,May 15th, 1878. 6 Ibid.,vol. viii., p. 341. 7-8 Ibid.,p. 346. 1 Chronicles 9:22. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. x., p. 341. 9 Parker, vol. viii., p. 351. 1 Chronicles 10:9; 1 Chronicles 10:10. Expositor,2nd series, vol. vii., p. 309.