I will not give sleep to my eyes
Or slumber to my eyelids,
Until I find a place for the Lord,
A dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob."
—Psalm 132:3-5
The first days of a ruler’s incumbency reveal his priorities. David's first act as Israel’s king was to search for the Ark of the Covenant. "David said to all the assembly of Israel... 'Let us bring again the ark of our God to us, for we did not seek it in the days of Saul.' So all the assembly agreed to do so, for the thing was right in the eyes of all the people" (1 Chronicles 13:2–4).
King Saul, David’s predecessor, was a thoroughly secular man. He cared nothing for the ark, but left it to rot in a tangled thicket for forty years while the nation descended into spiritual and moral ruin. David, on the other hand, could not rest until he retrieved the ark, and placed it in the little tent that was its “dwelling place” (2 Samuel 6:1-15).
The ark was just a little box about the size of an army footlocker that contained the tablets of the Law (2 Chronicles 5:10). There was no magic in the ark, Raiders of the Lost Ark notwithstanding. It was representative—symbolic of God's presence and the importance of his word. King David longed to bring God back to his nation—“to find a place for him.”
This was the "David Doctrine”—God first and foremost in the hearts of his countrymen, a top-down platform that began in the heart of the king: David wrote in another place, “One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I might gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple” (Psalms 27:4).
Oh, that God would give us such a “king.”
David Roper
10.7.20
