“Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon His name, make known His deeds among the people” (I Chronicles 16:8).

In this chapter, King David delivered an address to the people of Israel upon the occasion of the triumphal return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. He begins by telling his people to “give thanks” and to “call upon” the Lord and then to “make known His deeds among the people” and to “talk ye of all His wondrous works” (v.9).

God’s wondrous works were to be communicated from one generation to another. “For He established a testimony in Jacob . . . that they should make them known to their children: That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments” (Psalm 78:5–7). Unfortunately, however, David’s admonition to “remember His marvelous works” (16:12) was practiced by only a few godly kings who succeeded him, and the prophet Jeremiah, just prior to the Babylonian captivity, pronounced God’s indictment against His own children: “Their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal” (Jeremiah 23:27).

No doubt one of God’s purposes in having His children “declare His glory among the heathen” (16:24) was not that He Himself needed the witness, but that if they had continually rehearsed the goodness of God with their own children and neighbors, they would have inoculatedthemselves against the creeping spiritual paralysis that soon engulfed them.

We should take heed to this lesson and say with the psalmist, “I will sing of the mercies of the LORD for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations” (Psalm 89:1). CJH