Back to sermon search

Full transcript

I am what is known, actually, to keep the record straight, as an improved Englishman. I was born in England, but I have lived for thirty one years in Northern Ireland, and in that sense, as the Irish even themselves admit, I am an improved Englishman. Let us now begin with a selection of brief readings from the Word of God as we find them in the First Book of Kings. The First Book of Kings, some select readings beginning in chapter one and verse one. And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, and he began to build the house of the Lord. Chapter eight and verse five: And King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel that were assembled unto him were with him before the ark, sacrificing sheep and oxen that could not be told nor numbered for multitude. And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the Lord unto its place, into the oracle of the house, to the most holy place, even under the wings of the cherubim. For the cherubim spread forth their wings over the place of the ark, and the cherubim covered the ark and the staves thereof above. And the staves were so long that the ends of the staves were seen from the holy place before the oracle. But they were not seen without. They are there until this day. There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone which Moses put there in Horeb, when the Lord made a covenant with the children of Israel when they came out of the land of Egypt. And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. Verse twenty seven: But will God in very deed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee. How much less this house that I have builded? Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, O Lord my God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer which thy servant prayeth before thee this day, that thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place whereof thou hast said, my name shall be there. So hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall pray toward this place. And hearken thou to the supplication of thy servant and of thy people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place. Yea, hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place. And when thou hearest, forgive. And God give us good understanding of his holy word. My dear brethren and sisters, it is nothing but an honor and a pleasure to be with you on this occasion. I thank you for the generosity of your invitation and for the warmth of your welcome that I already feel radiating towards me. In the brief time that I am here in this area, I trust I shall be able to get to know some of you more closely and thereby to be enriched. For my part, this afternoon and in the remaining four sessions of the conference, I would like to invite you to listen with me to the prophetic word of God that comes to us through the inspired record of one and second Books of Kings. I say to listen to its prophetic word. I am not thinking in particular of prophecy in the sense that it foretells events that are still to come, though to be sure, some of the historical events recorded in these two historical books form prototypes and adumbrations of events that yet shall be. I use the term prophetic in the sense of listening to the word of the living God, recorded and interpreted by the living spirit of the living God, for our edification, comfort, rebuke, instruction, exhortation, and encouragement. These two ancient books from our Old Testament are more, are they not, than a mere collection of anecdotes, more indeed than simple records of historical facts, though they are, of course, historical and accurate in their recording. But they are more than that. They are a prophetic interpretation of those historical facts. A prophetic interpretation whereby God's Holy Spirit brings out the significance of those Old Testament facts and moves the historian to develop a thesis founded on those historical facts, bringing home and applying to us the wisdom of the ages here stored up for our benefit, applying to us the lessons that we in our day need to learn from a survey of these ancient happenings. In the Hebrew canon, as you know, the books of first and second Kings are classified as belonging to the former prophets, or the ancient Hebrews themselves saw that these historical records were not mere historical records. They were a prophetic voice to the people of subsequent generations in that nation. With that estimate, of course, agree the words of our Lord Jesus, who expounded to his apostles all the things in scripture confirming himself from Moses, that is the Pentateuch, and the prophets, that is the former prophets and the later prophets, and from the, from the writings, the third division of the canon. Paul himself is on record, isn't he, in his advice to Timothy as declaring that all these ancient Old Testament scriptures are inspired of God, for which, of course, every true evangelical would be prepared to go to the stake to witness to the glorious fact of the inspiration of the Old Testament scriptures. But then sometimes, while we are inclined to say that we would go to the stake for our faith in their inspiration, when it comes to their study and application, we tend to leave them severely alone. But Paul insists that they are not only inspired, they are actually profitable. They are to be expounded. They are to be listened to, for they contain encouragement and instruction in righteousness, if need be rebuke. They bring us joy of heart and new visions for our spirit. One striking lesson among others, it seems to me, dominates the historian's mind as he pens these records. We may sum it up thus, if we will. In those days, from the death of David onward, God made glorious, majestic, and spectacular provision for the maintenance of his people Israel throughout all their history, to maintain them, to increase them, to save them from falling and disintegration. And in his mercy, not only so, but should it happen that they declined, as every man and woman does from time to time, God made provision for the restoration of his people, for the revival of his redeemed, that they may recover themselves and enjoy the blessings of God. He made that provision, according to these books, by having built in Jerusalem the house of the Lord. And the thesis of the historian is simply this, backed home, of course, by many an incident, many a story. His thesis is this, that when Israel took advantage of this glorious provision that was the house of the Lord, when they perceived the meaning of those great spiritual realities that were symbolized in the contents and order and ritual of that house. When they sought the living God who presents himself in that house, then they prospered. When they neglected that house and its provision, they faltered. When they positively disobeyed that house and its law, then they declined and they suffered. When finally they abandoned that house, then they came to disaster indeed. But when again, in their distress, they came to repentance, and they prayed towards their house, and God heard their prayers and restored them. And if that be the thesis of this ancient history book, then we of our age cannot help listening with both our ears pinned back. What is this? This concept of the house of God being the secret of Israel's welfare, progress, and maintenance. For we too knows what it is to be, not merely to have, but to be the house of God. In the celebrated words of Paul, these things I write to you, hoping to come to you shortly, that you may know how people ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, pillar and ground of the truth. If the house of God was God's provision for his people in that ancient day, spectacular and majestic, it will immediately drive us to consider again a similarly majestic provision that God has made for us, and even more majestic by constituting his redeemed people, the house of the Lord. So let us begin forthwith and without delay, and notice how the historian introduces his subject. Now David, says he with delightful simplicity, but with considerable sophistication. Now David was old and stricken in years, and they covered him with clothes, and he get no heat. Can you see the poor old boy now? Not the charming gallant who went out to face Goliath, but wizened and shriveled and lying in bed and shivering under covers. King David was old and stricken in years, and they covered him with clothes, and he got no heat. And with a remarkable frankness, the historian goes on to describe the strange kind of hot water bottle that they provided him to try and warm the cold limbs and revive the sinking heartbeat. All to no purpose. And in the end, they had to let him go. It was a dramatic and traumatic time in Israelite history, wasn't it? And you can well understand, surely, sympathetically, why they tried so desperately to keep him alive. Few of them living at that time had known the world without David. David had done everything. David had been everything. Some of the ladies that walk now with the help of a walking aid and a Zimmer, in their youth, when they were young and beautiful, remembered David. Oh, what a romantic hero he was, as he strode out to meet Goliath and took his head off with the giant's own sword. Some of them had led the women as they went out, much to Saul's annoyance, singing their praise, Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens thousands. David had fought their enemies. David had subdued the land around them. David had brought Israel to the verge of almost being a worldwide empire, like the Assyrians became and the Babylonians thereafter. David had not only fought that battle, but David was a great hand with the harp. He it was that wrote the lyrics and the hymns that all the young Israelites paid their money to buy the tapes. Of course they did. They'd be better if they paid the money to buy their tapes still. Everybody sang his songs. He it was that had organized the Levites to sing in the worship of God. David had been everything. Sure, in his middle life, when he became too plump and slack, he had tripped up and lost the sympathy of many. Those years still were past, now were past. He was still the favorite. They could not imagine life without David. How would it continue? What should they do? How would Israel be maintained in the position of glory and strength to which they had come? What would the future hold without him? Even in his dying moments, they had had to appeal to him to squash an incipient a- attempt by a certain Adonijah to seize the throne away from its rightful inheritor. And after David was dead, soon, all so soon, things began to go downhill. Surely his immediate success, uh, was a brilliant success for a part of his time and filled with more than human wisdom. Towards the end of his reign, Solomon, Solomon's heart was turned aside. His noonday sun eclipsed in a shadow of consummate folly. A few months after he died, the nation split from stem to stern, um ten tribes abandoning the house of David altogether. Some of the men that followed Solomon in the house of Judah were good men. Some of them even led revivals. All too many were bad men, and others were very little men. And little by little, as the ten tribes and the two tribes declined, the kings of Israel were sometimes extraordinarily wicked, many of them outright apostates. In the end, God took the ten tribes away to Assyria and the two tribes to Babylon. No wonder they tried to keep David alive. Look what happened when he passed away. And that simple history raises a very big question, doesn't it? Did God make no provision for his people, foreseeing what would happen after David's death? God, who could raise up one David fit to meet every giant on the face of the earth. Surely he could have raised up a whole succession of Davids, and that have kept Israel at the peak of their power and progressing from glory to glory. Then why didn't God raise up a whole succession of days. And if you start thinking like that presently, you'll come to New Testament times, will you not? For at the beginning of the Christian church, God raised up his apostles, Paul and Peter, and John and James. What mighty giants of spiritual men they were. What glorious things they achieved in those few years, Paul in particular taking the gospel around in a circle right round nearly the Roman Empire. Oh, glorious revelations of God's truth were made known to his people through them. Then you detect that the apostles were not yet dead, when spiritual rebels and heretics began to raise their heads in the churches of the Christians. And when the apostles died, as Paul warned the elders of Ephesus, all kinds of enemies and wolves and false teachers came rushing in like a flood, and oh, how soon almost impenetrable darkness spread upon the face of Christendom. Raises a big question, doesn't it? The God that could raise up one Apostle Paul, could he not raise up a half a dozen Apostle Pauls? A whole string of Apostle Pauls right down to nineteen ninety one? Then we should have all been well, shouldn't we? Indeed, we might have been able to sit back on our seats and do nothing while Paul did his all. But he didn't raise up a succession of Pauls, and the present company accepted. We've all been rather lesser men and women, haven't we, than Paul? God made no provision for his people. And you could raise the same question nearer at home, couldn't you? In my youth, how many times did it happen when people in their kindness and forbearance invited me to visit a place to preach, and I would be sitting around my host table in the evening, and he would say, did you know Moody? Well, of course I didn't know Moody. Ah. Did you know the great Alexander? No, of course not. How old do you think I am? Ah, young man. Ah, in my youth there were great men of God. Oh, what giants they were. And I would say, yes, yes, of course they were. Marvels. Not any creatures around like that, no? And I would say, yes, of course not, there aren't no. Politeness stopped me from saying, and why aren't there? What went wrong between those giants and my generation, in your generation? That would have been rude, wouldn't it, and unfeeling. Many of us older folks will say to ourselves, ah, we have known wonderful days in the past. They don't seem to come now, and why is that? God not have raised up the succession of the great spiritual giants that you talk of, who so helped you in your youth? And if he hasn't, why hasn't he? Thank God for the answer the historian points us to in this ancient record. It apparently was not God's intention to raise up a succession of David. God's provision for the maintenance of his people, for their development, for, if need be, their rescue when they got into trouble, was not the raising up of a succession of great men, but the building of the house of the Lord. What is its basic concept? We are used, are we not, to thinking of ourselves as Christians as, for instance, the bride of the Lamb. And when we think of that, we think of the lovely affection of our Lord Jesus towards us. We think of ourselves as sheep, very often wandering sheep, and then we think of our relationship to the lovely sovereign chief shepherd of the sheep. We think of ourselves as disciples, and then we think of our Lord Jesus as the teacher of those that are willing to learn. Well then, when we read in the New Testament that we form the house of God, hey, what is that concept? It helps me, it may help you, to remember where first we meet the concept in Holy Scripture. We'll remember, according to Genesis twenty eight that when Jacob first left home to find a job and to get a wife, he left home in some precipitation because he had cheated Esau of his blessing and bought his birthright at a scandalously low price. And Esau threatened to kill him, and with Esau breathing down his neck, Jacob ran from home. Walked and ran until he could walk and run no more. Sleep overtook him. He must have been sleepy for that night as he went to sleep, he used a stone for his pillow. And as he slept, he dreamt. He'd been thinking and scheming and scheming and thinking and planning his life and all the opportunities that might happen and how he could work his way to success. The sleep overtook him and he could think no more, and presently he saw. My goodness me, he said, and there was a ladder set up on earth, and the top of it reached toward heaven. Mark it, it wasn't let down from heaven with the bottom almost reaching earth. It was set up on earth, and the top almost reached to heaven. And God was standing. And pray, where was he standing? The Hebrew preposition is ambiguous. It could be at the top of the ladder or at the side of the ladder. Uh, Jacob's eventual comment decides the matter for us, doesn't it? When he woke up, he said, God is in this place, not God is in his heaven. Jacob had nominally believed that for a long while, and sometimes it was very convenient to have that concept of God way up in heaven, the further the better, particularly when you were scheming to cheat Esau. To his amazement this night, he saw a ladder on earth reaching towards heaven, God standing at the side of the ladder, and all the heavenly civil service, the mights, the dominions, the powers, the principalities, going out from the divine presence in their ordered array, flying to do the will and command of their creator as his executive, and returning their work down to repose before the divine majesty. When Jacob awoke that morning, he said, how awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God. There was no building in sight. There was no masonry. Now even the vision of the ladder had disappeared. But this, said Jacob, in all the wonder of his new discovery, here at my very elbow is Is God. God is in this place. And I, poor fool, poor blinded donkey, knew it not. This is the house of God. This is the very gate of heaven, he wasn't thinking particularly of the way into heaven. Jacob had got a lot of business to do, according to his reckoning of things, before he went home to heaven. Wasn't married yet. Goodness, he did hope that God wouldn't take him home to heaven before he got married. And then you'll say, there was all the business success he wanted to do. Wasn't thinking of going into heaven just yet. So it wasn't the gate of heaven as the entrance in that appealed to him. He was thinking in terms of an ancient city where the gate is not only the entry and the exit, but the place where the elders sit to govern the city. This is the gate of heaven. Here is centered the very government of heaven. And with the quick wit of an entrepreneur, Jacob said, well, if that is true, if God is at my very elbow making me these wonderful promises of his maintenance and blessing, then I cash in on it this very moment. God, he said, if you'll fulfill your promises and the contracts you're now offering me, bring me out and bring me in safely, then indeed you shall be my God. This is the house of God. And now already we begin to perceive, can we not, the answer to the question. What was God's provision for the maintenance of Israel after the death of David down the centuries? It wasn't a succession of brilliant men like David necessarily, though God be thanked for every brilliant man and woman that God has given. God's provision was the formation in Jerusalem of the very house of God. To settle in Jerusalem, the center of God's earthly government. With the very presence of the divine Lord. And all his executives. God thought the provision was adequate. What think you, my brother? My sister? Pause with me again and stand with Solomon's side to consider the indescribable wonder of this thing. The house that Solomon was to build was to be exceedingly magnificent as to its architectural design and appurtenances. As Solomon stood before the nation and before the house, it dawned on him yet again the ineffable majesty and wonder of this thing. And will God in very deed, said he, dwell on the earth? Why, the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain him. How much less this house that I have built. You'll see, my brothers, my sisters, Solomon was no primitive pagan, imagining in his superstitious little mind that you could bottle up the Almighty God in a box in Jerusalem. Solomon understood as well as you and we, I do today, the glory of the transcendence of God. The heaven of the heavens cannot contain him, said Solomon. Surely there come times when the wonder of it fills our hearts, does it not? I am a backyard astronomer. When, from time to time, if ever I get a clear sky in Northern Ireland, which is very rarely, I turn my glass watch, the galaxies, and I think of the Andromeda Nebula with its two hundred and fifty billion suns, all amongst multi-millions of galaxies. And I say with Solomon, how can it be true? The heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, transcendent Lord and creator of the vast universe, and above it, beyond it. To be true, that God would dwell on earth. And Solomon wasn't forgetting or thinking that somehow God's transcendence had come undone, for in his prayer he says, Lord, if your people have sinned and they're scattered, if only they look towards this house, then here thou in thy heaven. God was still in his heaven, no less transcendent than he ever was. And yet, and yet Solomon could not deny the evidence of his own two eyes. For as the priests had taken that ark, thrown symbolically at the living God, and placed it in the holiest of all, in the house of God, then the very glory of God had descended upon that house, so that the priests themselves were unable to stand. All the wonder of it all. You say that's a fairy story, isn't it? No, indeed not. And I can tell you something more wonderful. There came a day when... there was born in Bethlehem of Judea, there lived and walked the streets of ancient Palestine, an even more magnificent house of God. For the Word was made flesh, says John. The one through whom and for whom all things were made was made flesh, and he tabernacled among us. Says John, we beheld his glory as though John had been some Levite who dared to lift the curtains of the tabernacle and gaze inside. We beheld his glory, and we actually handled him and touched him and felt him. Oh, the wonder of it, as it dawned on us that this was the transcendent God of the universe become incarnate. You shall see greater things than these, said our Lord to Nathaniel, who was inclined to dismiss Jesus at first as a crank and an imposter from Galilee, not worth listening to. You shall one day see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. And so we shall. Oh, what a sight it shall be. Oh, I shall see him descend from the sky. Jesus Christ, our Lord. Child sisters, we're met to do business with the transcendent Lord who presents himself in our midst. I'll grant that as the hours proceed, we may be moved to turn to him, to look to him, from wherever we have got to, to see again the vision of his presence, find restoration and encouragement, new strength, new energy, new directions, and new spiritual ambitions for his namesake.