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And now a very good evening to you, and thank you once more for coming along to share with us the lovely things of God's holy work. And to prepare us for our study this evening, shall we read some verses from the first book of Chronicles and chapter twenty uh nine? First uh book of Chronicles chapter twenty nine beginning in verse 9. Then the people rejoiced because they offered willingly, because with a perfect heart they offered willingly to the Lord.
And David the king also rejoiced with great joy. Wherefore David blessed the Lord before all the congregation, and David said, Blessed be thou, O Lord, the God of Israel our father, forever and ever. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty. For all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine. Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come of thee, and thou rulest over all, and in thine hand is power and might.
And in thine hand it is to make great and to give strength unto all. Now therefore, our God, we thank thee and praise thy glorious name. But who am I, and what is my people that we should be able to offer so willingly after this thought? For all things come of thee and of thine own have we given thee. For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as all our fathers were. Our days on earth are as a shadow, and there is no abiding.
O Lord our God, all this store that we have prepared to build thee in house for thy holy name cometh of thine hand, and all is thine own. I know also, my God, that thou triest the heart and hast treasure in uprightness. As for me, in the uprightness of mine heart, I have willingly offered all these things. Now I have seen with joy thy people, which are present here to offer willingly unto thee. O Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, our fathers, keep this forever in the imagination of the thoughts of the hearts of thy people, and prepare their heart unto thee, and give unto Solomon, my son, a perfect heart to keep thy commandments, thy testimonies, and thy statutes, and to do all these things, and to build the palace for the which I have made provision.
David said to all the congregation, now bless the Lord your God. And all the congregation blessed the Lord, the God of their fathers, and bowed down their heads and worshiped the Lord and the king. And may God give us good understanding of his holy word. So now tonight we come to the last of our few and very brief studies of the first book of Chronicles. And you who have been able to be here on other nights know that what we have been doing is this, with the help of this ancient historian known as the Chronicler, we have been tracing the purpose of God from the time that he created Adam and put him in the Garden of Eden to all kinds of historical vicissitudes until the time when man, in the person of Solomon, sat upon the throne of the law.
And as we have considered that great sweep of history from Adam to Solomon, we thought we found in it a prototype of that deeper, that greater, that higher purpose of God that God had in mind before our little planet was created, that God had in his mind when he determined that he should have mankind share the very throne of the universe with him. The purpose God had in mind when he created Adam at the beginning, that he might be the first man, prototype of the second man, the Lord from glory, whom God purposed from before the eternal ages, that one day as man, glorious man, our blessed redeemer, our resurrected Lord, whom God purposed to one day be exalted above all the very heavens and sit literally on the throne of the Lord, the throne of the universe.
We confess to you who are visitors tonight, as we have been considering that purpose, our little hearts have bubbled over with enthusiasm and joy, because we found it written in Holy Scripture that there is, from one point of view, an even more spectacular aspect of the grace of God. For it is God's good pleasure that not only shall his son, our Lord Jesus Christ, sit upon the throne of the Lord, as he does even this very evening, but one day God redeemed, oh bless the name of the Lord, God redeemed shall be elevated to that glorious throne and sit with him down. Listen to the promise of the Lord Jesus given to those who overcome.
To him that overcometh will I give to sit with me on my throne, even as I also overcame and am sat down on my father's throne. So, as we read this ancient sweep of history, from Adam to Solomon, to the time when Solomon, in a limited sense, sat upon the throne that God had ordained in Jerusalem, we have found many a point here and there and elsewhere that became for us foreshadowings of God's greater purpose in redemption. On our last study on Thursday evening, we came to the center section of the first book of Chronicles and found it a spectacular story indeed.
That is a story how when David had come to the throne and founded Jerusalem City as the great heart of his country and then his empire, the Lord himself, can you believe it? The Lord himself came to Jerusalem. There, as the serried ranks of the Israelites turned out to watch it in awesome silence, and then in great bubbling over of joy and excitement. They saw the phalanx of the Levites in their white robes, carrying the Ark of the Lord upon their shoulders, and on that ark, as they truly believe, all invisible, yet set in stone, the transcendent Lord of the universe.
And David's heart beat so highly, and humbling himself, he danced before the ark to show to his citizens that it wasn't he that was important in Jerusalem. The wonderful thing was that the Lord who appointed him, the Lord had now come to set up his symbolic throne in Jerusalem with its contents of the law of God, making known to Israel that behind David, his servant, and David's little throne, there stood the very throne and laws of the Almighty Transcendent Lord. We may have thought, as we read that spectacular event, that this surely might have formed the climax, the absolute pinnacle of the book of First Chronicles.
How could you get any higher than that? A coming of the Lord. Well, King David, we discovered, he thought that was the high pinnacle. He couldn't imagine anything higher than that, and so he went armed with his suggestion to the prophet of the Lord. He said, Nathan, my boy, now I got a suggestion to make. I propose now that we've come so far, now's the time to build a permanent house for the Lord. Not that old tabernacle thing with its flimsy curtains, you'll say. A real solid house. For David felt that he'd reached the pinnacle, and now the time had come to settle down.
God thought otherwise. Glorious as was the coming of the Lord to Jerusalem. This was not the end that God had in mind, but only a means to an end. The time for settling down was not yet. David must carry on reigning for a while. There were still enemies around, not so many as there had been, but enemies there still were. David must raise still till he had put all enemies under his feet. Not until the last enemy was subdued would the time of perfect rest come.
And then would be the occasion for building the glorious temple of the Lord. David would not be allowed to do it. That task would be given to another, Solomon, the man of peace. And so First Chronicles goes on for two more sections, section four and then five, to tell this great story. What still had to be done? First of all, in putting down the enemy, and then when they were put down, to make preparation for the building of the glorious temple. And if you like to think in terms of climaxes in literary works, or in historical works either, and the great climax of the books of Chronicles comes in the first section of Second Chronicles, where Solomon builds the house of the Lord in all its magnificence out of the materials David had prepared, and God honored it, and the presence of the Lord and the glory of the Lord came and filled it until the priests themselves could scarce enter into the temple.
And if for a moment we allow our minds to wander, as minds will sometimes during a lecture like this, and, uh, provoked by the history, we begin to think of prototypes in the future. Of course, so it shall be, shall it not? One day the Lord shall come. Not on any old symbol like an ark, glorious though that may have been. Lo, he comes with clouds descending, once for ransom, sinners slain, and then all his foes shall bow before him. He shall institute a reign, says the Bible, of a thousand years, for he must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet.
And the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. It is not a little way interesting that the last great enemy mentioned in the first book of Chronicles, from its particular angle and vantage point and way of looking at history. The last enemy is neither the king of Ammon nor the sons of the giants, though they had to be mocked up. The last enemy is his satanic majesty, Satan himself. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't a coincidence, but when our Lord's glorious reign of a thousand years comes towards its end, then, says the last book of the New Testament, Satan shall be loosed out of the abyss.
He shall go out to deceive the nations once more and lead them in one gigantic and final assault on the camp of God. Fire shall come down from heaven and deal with them, and Satan himself be cast into the lake of fire. You'll say, but Mr. Preacher, your prophecy is getting astray. Surely the temple is going to be rebuilt in Jerusalem during the millennium, not after it. And you're perfectly correct, of course.
Surely the temple will be built in Jerusalem during our Lord's reign. That millennial reign of Christ will not be quite the unbroken paradise that some preachers make it out to be. Listen to our Lord's own description of it. To him that overcomes, he says, I grant you to share my throne with me, and you shall rule the nations with a rod of iron, as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken in pieces. The millennium for all its glories, and undoubted glories they shall be. Like all other ages of history, from the Garden of Eden down all the ages of God's ways and dispensations, glorious as the millennium will be, it shall be but a prototype, one more prototype of the eternal age to come.
So now tonight we have two whole sections to get through. I warn you it's going to be a long session. Okay. I'm sorry for you who are packed in here in the middle and can't get outside of physically, but there it is. We have to consider then section four of First Chronicles, and that begins, as we'll see, in chapter nineteen of the first book of Chronicles. That is the story how David put down the last enemies, so that the reign of peace might come and the nation have complete rest.
So that extends to the end of chapter twenty two. And then in chapter twenty three we are told David was old and full of days, and he made Solomon his king over Israel while he himself went into partial retirement and spent his last days preparing the material and pretend- preparing the people for the building of the great temple of glory in the age of peace. And that final fifth section of the book extends to the end of chapter twenty nine. So to begin with, let's look at se- section four and take our Bibles in our hands just for a moment, and mark how carefully the historian lays out his material to make the lessons as easy as he possibly can for us to follow and understand.
In chapter nineteen, first there comes, you'll see, the story of the battle with Ammon and how David conquered at last the troublesome king of Ammon, and the crown was taken off the head of the king of Ammon and placed upon David's head. And when they did it, it was a weight of a talent of gold, and there were precious stones in it, and it was set on David's head in that great day of triumph. The victory over King of Ammon, and goes down to chapter twenty verse three. And then in chapter twenty verse four to the end of that chapter, verse eight of chapter twenty, is the story of the mopping up of the sons of the giants.
Of course, long years before, David had dealt with Goliath, but giants aren't so easily disposed of. They have a way of breeding, do giants, and by this time there were sons of the giants all over the place, and David and many of his men joined in the elimination of the sons of the giants. So first the king of Ammon, and then the sons of the giants. And then the third story, once more, is a major story, and it fills chapter twenty one, you will see, and down to chapter twenty two verse one.
It's a story of another enemy, that great, hell, dark, powerful enemy. Rose up against David and God's people, and insinuated into David's heart and mind thoughts of pride, and led him to number the nations. By which deed, David almost bought the whole scheme of God to disaster. It's a very dramatic story, and how in the end Satan's deceit and strategies were overcome and turned to the greater praise of and glory of God. And after that is eh eh eh over, comes chapter twenty two verses two to the end of the chapter, and that is all about David's son.
For he assembled the officers, and he brought Da- this young Solomon out before them and said, you know, my son is a very young gentleman, but you see, I have it from God's own mouth that God is going to raise up my son Solomon, and he shall build me an house. And I tell you what more, gentlemen, of God has said about my son. Look at my son here now. God has said of my son that I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. You see a beautiful son of God standing before you. Rally round him, gentlemen. Help him in his great task, his glorious enterprise of building God's a house.
Easy to remember that, isn't it? One enemy, King of Ammon, plus the sons of the giant. Another big enemy, his satanic majesty, and now the son of the king, who is in some sense a son of God. And before we're finished, the Holy Spirit will be pressing our hearts to ask us to which family we belong. Are you any chance a son of a giant? I think not, perhaps. Best to be sure, isn't it? Or are you a son of God, already engaged on God's great purpose and plan, what God has in mind to build for eternity?
So then, as briefly as we may, to the story of the putting down of the last enemy. And here comes the king of Ammon to the fore, and his story is it. The Ammonites had over many centuries been troublesome to Israel, but now at length the king of Ammon had died, and David, in his kindness, sent condolences to the son of the king of Ammon. And the condolences were meant sincerely. David wanted peace with the Ammonites. David, being a good king, had, of course, written out the book of Deuteronomy when he came to the throne, as all true kings of Judah were expected to do.
And in that book of Deuteronomy, he had heard God say, you shall not oppress the Ammonites, you should be kind to the Ammonites. And all around these years, David had tried to be kind to Ammonites in spite of their much provocation. And now the king of Ammon was dead, in genuine heart and feeling, David sent his servants as servants to convey his condolences to the king's son and assure him of his well wishes as he ascended to the throne. But the son of the king of Ammon, now come to the throne himself, rejected David's overtures of kindness, and rose up and shamed David's messengers, cut off their garments in the middle, and cut off half of their beards, so the men were thoroughly shamed and didn't come home and be seen in public.
Foolish man. You see, you couldn't be kind to Ammon. He wouldn't have it. In spite of the fact that David now stood at the head of a what was becoming a world empire and would have vied with the big empires had it gone on. In spite of the fact that David was offering him genuine political friendship, the man turned around and not only rejected that friendship, but openly mocked David and his men. And he did it once too often. David came with the armies of Israel and utterly destroyed them.
And they took the crown off the head of the king of Ammon, and they put it on David's head. Who were these Ammonites? I haven't time to discuss all the history related to them here this evening. Just allow me to point out the description that the Holy Spirit consistently gives of them in the Old Testament pages. Mocking, and mocking the people of God was apparently one of their major pastimes. In fact, it seems to be one of their major occupations. The way you meet them in scripture, you will find them mocking.
You remember the famous incident when Saul had just been elected king, don't you? And the king of Ammon came up to the men of Jabesh Gilead and said the king to the men of Jabesh Gilead, we'll make a, I'll make a covenant with you and let you off with your lives. Only the terms of my covenant are these. I will put your right eyes out, every single man jack of you. I'll put your right eyes out, and I'll lay it for a reproach on Israel. Look at the old duffers there with their eyes put out, can't fight an arrow if they tried, nor yet a javelin, nor yet a gun. Silly, stupid Israelites, one-eyed japs. Oh, how they guffawed down in Ammon.
They thought that was a brilliant stroke of mockery. And Saul, you may remember, took strong steps, mustered Israel against the king of Ammon and taught him a lesson. Centuries later, after the Jewish exile, when some of them had returned from Babylon, you will remember the story, you've read it many times in the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah was doing his level best, along with these few returned exiles, to build the walls of the city of Jerusalem. Now, there was a certain Tobiah the Ammonite, and we know from other sources he had great estates in Palestine and didn't like the idea that these Jews were returned, uh, to build in their land any more than the Palestinians do nowadays, of course.
So first they tried to get the great emperor to stop the building, and when they failed in getting the United Nations of that day to stop the building, you'll see, then they tried another trick. The master Tobiah the Ammonite came by one day with some of his chaps from the club, you'll see, and that they are looking at the wall. They said, what do these feeble Jews after all I need, said Tobiah in his best Oxford accent, look at their wall, you see, feeble people. Why, even if a fox went up and brushed his tail against it, the thing would collapse. Past masters at mocking. And now not merely mocking the idea that Saul was king, a helpless king, they wanted to say, but now mocking Nehemiah as he rebuilt the walls of the city.
For why was Master Nehemiah building the walls of the city? Not to establish a king there and then. He had no thought of rebelling against the Persians. He was rebuilding that city because Jerusalem was the city of David, the great king. Because he believed the prophecies in Holy Scripture that one day the Messiah would come. He had read it in Isaiah the prophecy. Oh, lift up your head, Zion. He had read Zechariah, likewise. Your king cometh to you, lowly sitting on the fold, the co- uh, the the the product of an ass. He believed it.
And if Jesus the Messiah was to come to Jerusalem, there'd have to be a Jerusalem to come to, wouldn't there? Nehemiah and company were building the wall in their faith of a coming king. Here was Tobiah, wealthy man he was, and quite a potentate in his little way, because he couldn't stop it, thinking to stop it by taking the making a ridicule of the whole thing. What do these feeble Jews? And the king that we're concerned with tonight shows himself hard with the same brush, doesn't he?
Even when David would be friendly, and not only rejects his friendship, but turns to make a mock of the whole thing. Of course, there was another side to his mockery. The Ammonites resented Israel's capture of the land and the spread of David's empire. In the time of the judge Jesse, you may remember, they had a long, wordy diplomatic exchange between the two foreign officers of those countries. The Ammonites said that the Israelites had come and stolen their land away.
And Jethro read them a lesson in Old Testament history, and he said, Your Majesty, it's not so whatsoever. When under Moses we came up the east side of Jordan, God told us don't touch the Edomites, don't touch the Moabites, don't touch the Ammonites, nor did we touch them. What we had to do was to come out and meet Sihon, the king of the Amorites, who came out with us in force, and we beat him and took over his territory. We didn't take your territory, you Ammonites. But the Ammonites were always claiming that Israel had taken some of their territory, and were always got greedy eyes on Israel's territory as well.
Jeremiah the prophet, God asks, does he not? Has Israel no heirs? Um, if he has, why does Ammon dwell in his inheritance? What's Ammon doing coming over and filching half off each? Ha. And there is that comical story, isn't there, in Nehemiah once more, when Nehemiah had to go on state business back to the Persian capital, and when he returned to Jerusalem and came to the temple, he said, hello, hello, hello, what's this? As he opened the door of one of the chambers in the temple, there was a, there was a big divan there and a few chairs of the very best style, of course, and who's the reason, where does it come from? And if you please, here in skunks, in the chamber of the temple, of all places on earth, was Master Tobias with his feet up on the sofa in the very temple of the Lord taken over.
Well, of course, he was related to one of the high priests, and you know how it is. Well, you don't, of course, but when you're married to people like that, you know, and they make a mock of you for being so narrow-minded, you have to show them you're not all that narrow-minded, don't you? And, and this high priest had prepared for Tobiah the Ammonite, if you please, a chamber in the house of the Lord. That was what lay behind his mockery, his resentment of Israel's inheritance, his resentment of the messianic rights of Israel's king. And David put an end to his mockery.
He and his commanders came with the armies of Israel, and Ammon was forever destroyed, and the king put, king's crown put on David's head. What are those ancient stories to do with us in large in nineteen hundred and ninety two? Oh, my friends, beware of the mockers. They are a more insidious enemy than perhaps you might imagine. For the great Apostle Peter reminds us in his second epistle in chapter three, that in the last days shall come mockers in their mockery.
Say, where is the sign of this coming? We've heard it for generations, this supposed Jesus Christ is coming again. What folly, what superstition. And they mock it sometimes. Some of them mock it with all the wit and sophistication of learned men, and others mock it in the drunken stupor of the dissolute. All my young Christian friends, you won't mind my talking like a cagey old uncle, will you?
Do beware of the mocker. There are people brought up in Christian homes. They wouldn't say they're outright atheists nor humanists, but they've known the gospel. They've sat in church and heard God's Holy Scripture, and today among their friends they find their pastime mocking the things of God, pouring scorn on the people of God and on their doctrines. If you don't like Christianity, I'd advise you not to mock it. Therefore mocking the idea of our Lord's second coming, pray consider. This is Earth's only hope.
You may join your humanist friend if you like, and your atheist friends, and as we considered the other night, they have no hope. No hope. All they can offer you in the end is the prospect that some millions of years from now, the mindless forces that, according to them, created our universe without any purpose or plan, and they did it without knowing it, those same mindless forces will destroy our universe and the human race with it, and then won't know they've done it. Mock that if you will. For that's a denial of the ultimate value of rationality, to say that in the end mindless thought is made up, and mindless thought, thought will destroy us.
So don't you mock, Paul, pray don't mock, the very biblical hope and purpose of the coming of Messiah. It's not only full of hope for us who believe it now, but one day the question is going to be settled with us. In the last days there shall come mockers walking in mockery, saying, where is the sign of his coming? God doesn't count time like we count time, says Peter. A day with him is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day. But the day of the Lord shall come, and that will be the end of much.
God in his long suffering puts up with it a long while, doesn't he? The Christian writer Jude reminds us that one day he's coming to take vengeance on all those hard things that ungodly sinners have spoken against. And let us who are true believers be careful, lest at any time we got tinged with cynicism about prophetic matters either. Surely there's room for disagreement. We're not to hunt people as heretics if they have a slightly different idea of things prophetic from what we have. Nor may we let the discussions and the disagreements create cynicism in our hearts, for the Lord is coming.
Oh, my brothers and sisters, what guiding star have we to aim at if we abandon the glorious thing that the Lord Jesus is coming again? Oh, you shall see him, and the crowns of the world and its many diadems shall be placed upon the Redeemer's brow, worthy compensation for other thorn marks than the crown of thorns inscribed. With the king of Ammon dealt with by the coming of the armies of the people of God.
Then was the time for mopping up of giants. And the list is, uh, uh, here. We need spend very little time on that. The historian himself only spends a few verses on it. There's going to be a spectacular, spectacular couple of giants at the end of this age, according to Holy Scripture. The one is called the beast, none too flattering a description, and the other one, the false prophet. Energized by his satanic majesty himself. They shall not appear beasts.
They shall be the most sophisticated computer-led programmed things that ever walked Earth. With devilishly sophisticated dissections of mankind. Going so far as to be able to make fire come down from heaven, if you please. The kind of thing that Elijah did to demonstrate who was the true God. Such will be the powers, the devilish powers of their deception. They persuade people that, after all, there's no God out there. And the only God worth worshipping now is the deification of mankind in the person of the supreme human ruler.
And you'll say, what's that got to do with us anyway? So hear the word of John the Apostle. My beloved, he says, you heard that Antichrist comes? Yeah? Ah. Well, even now, says he, there are many Antichrists whereby we know it is the last hour, and they come with polished sophistication. Oh yes, I tell you, they believe in the Christ. But you might think them as orthodox as could be, until you probe their theories, and you find out they don't, while they believe in the Christ, the Christ to them is the great world spirit.
And if you ask them straight, is Jesus the Christ? And they are for once honest. They'll tell you, no, Jesus lent himself to the Christ in his day, but Jesus himself isn't the Christ. The Christ is the great world spirit. Oh yes, the Christ is coming, they'll tell you. All the holy books say that. But of course, when he comes and uses the man of the day, the man he uses won't be Jesus Christ. I've had such people on my doorstep. I suspect large, large is so disinfected of all heresy that you don't meet them. But you might meet one around the corner one of these days.
Young man, young, young Christian woman. Could you do battle for the sons of the giants? Would you know what to say? You know what's wrong with the New Age movement. You know what's wrong with liberal Christianity. Their doctrines, in the end, are virtual sons of the giants. They are deceptions, like Antichrists, that come from the dire. Inso- Oh, if we're going to be men and women of God that can stand even in our own gen- generation and guard our own faith and guard the faith of the children that are coming up behind us, we need to know our word of God, do we not?
We need to know our sword and its capabilities and how to use it. And fight the battles of the law and contend earnestly for the faith. For life is no picnic. And it takes men and women of courage and skill to deal with the antichrists. So thank God the Antichrist himself and his prophet will be dealt with by the armies of Christ, but he comes with his people to put down his enemies. Then, dramatically enough, the Chronicle leads us on to the great final enemy.
Satan himself. And at the first, what he moved David to do seems almost an innocent thing. He moved him to number the people of God. Say, why shouldn't David number the people of God anyway? Wasn't that a sensible thing to do? He was shepherd of the people of God. Did he not need to know how many sheep he had? Was it not pastoral concern that led David to number the people of God? What was wrong with it? Well, Joab could see what was wrong with it.
And Joab, you will already know from your reading of history, was not given to overmuch godliness, not Joab wasn't. But even Joab could see the folly of what David insisted on doing, and because he saw it folly, in the end he didn't complete the task. Why will my lord the king know the number of the people? The lord make them so many as he will. Why must you know the exact number? And why? Why, it was Satan that moved him. When we know that, we haven't far to seek the motive. Satan opposed God's plans this time, not outside coming like a fiery red dragon, bringing hobgoblins and giants to bear upon David.
His satanic majesty did a much more fearful thing. It penetrated the man's heart and mind and provoked in him that fatal pride, which is the mark of Satan himself. Man shall sit upon the throne of the Lord. That has been our theme song, hasn't it? Let's ask ourselves straight away the questions that this mistake raises. All the mistakes in this book have raised some fundamental questions. Man shall sit upon the throne of the Lord, by whose authority? That was section one.
Man shall sit upon the throne of the Lord, by whose power? That was section two. Man shall sit upon the throne of the Lord, according to whose plan? That was section three. And here we come to section four. Man shall sit upon the throne of the Lord, for whose glory? Ah. So seeking and pride may seem a very small sin in the eyes of modern man. It is the very canker that would put God off his throne.
It takes the great plans of God, and instead of their goal being God and his satisfaction, it turns it by a subtle and almost imperceptible turn of the wheel, and even the great plans of God come to appear to me as if they are there for my self-gratification. And that is a, that is, I say, is an imperceptible thing sometimes, isn't it? Because we are to enjoy the things of the Lord. And my dear sister, my brother, if you can sit there and contemplate the destiny God proposes for you, destiny of unspeakable and indescribable glory, reign with Christ upon the very throne of the Lord.
How could you sit there like some monolithic stone and not find your heart overjoyed? I'm going to reign with Christ. Don't you say it in your bathroom every morning when you're shaving that funny looking figure that appears in the shaving mirror? Don't, don't you say it to yourself, never mind my arthritis and my, my rheumatism and all my problems. Yeah, this day, for whatever it brings, is one more day that's bringing me nearer. I'm going to reign with Christ. How could we not enjoy it? Be careful, my brother, my sister, lest the joy that God gives us turn by an imperceptible turn of the wheel driven by Satan's own hands, to the point where I think that God exists, and all his purposes, to give me satisfaction, for my self-gratification.
For us who live in this modern world, not so disciplined as our Victorian ancestors were, for us who live in a modern hedonistic world, the danger of being infected by that attitude is considerable. The world today outside is much kinder than the Victorians, isn't it? But hedonistic to its eyeballs. Does it feel good? Does it minister to my enjoyment? Does it make me feel happy? Then that's it. You asked me to come to the Lord's Supper and take bread and wine with which to remember him.
Oh, that's lugubrious, isn't it? I don't get much out of that. Besides, it's too early for Sunday morning. I like lying in bed on a Sunday morning. I believe in religion, you know, that makes you feel happy. You do? You mean God and his great salvation and his great eternal purposes have as their prime goal making you feel good. So if God's commands don't make you feel good, you don't do them. How do you expect to go to heaven like that, may I ask you bluntly?
You sit on the throne of the Lord, and the whole universe is geared to making you feel good. And if God should ask you to do something that you think is unpleasant, you don't do it. Well, friends, there could never be. Was, so some theologians tell us, the prime sin of Satan, that being the cherub that coward, he exalted himself and said, I will be as God, and to take my little self and make myself the goal. That is an attack upon the very throne of God and the purpose of creation.
I remember once traveling on a train and got into conversation with a young gentleman on the other seat. It was just after the war, and he shared his sandwiches with me, and I shared my cup of tea with him, and we got talking, and in the course of talking, I happened to mention the matter of sin. Oh, said he, sin. Oh, he said, ah, sin. That doesn't mean anything to me, sin, I mean, of course not. As if that does. Well, no, no, it means significant concept, he said. I knew that so. I said, my, my, my good friend, I said, do you think you were clever enough ever to make a motor car? Well, he thought he might be. Hmm. I said, if when you made your motor car and got inside it, five times as you sat behind the wheel, it went where you wanted it to go, and five times, whichever way you twisted the old steering wheel, it took no notice of you and went where it wanted to go itself.
What would you do with it? I'd scrap the thing. I said, I'd rather thought you would. I said, now, but now come, if nine times out of ten it went where you wanted it to go, and just once out of ten it went where it wanted to go itself and took no notice of him. What would you do with it then? So he said, I'd scrap that too. If I made a motor car, I would want it to go one hundred percent where I wanted it to go, if I made it. If I could scrap it. I said, I thought so. I said, old chap, you want to be careful that God doesn't put you on the scrap heap of eternity likewise. For here, the purpose of creation in Christ and through Christ and unto Christ were all things.
That is creation's goal, not me, but him. And to see the inexplicable mystery of God's graciousness. So when I rebelled and went my own silly little weak simple way, but rebelled nonetheless against the whole purpose of Almighty God in making creation, then in God's mysterious mercy, I, the rebel, was dead, and he for whom the whole universe was made died in the place of me, the rebel. And how after that can I make my joy the criterion?
How after that can I do anything but say, Lord, your will be done. Drag me through earth, hell or heaven where you will, but Lord, your will. Be done. David failed the test. We'll say, incidentally, Mr. Preacher, that shows that your typology is all broken down. Oh, really? Yes, you say, we've been thinking that through as you've been talking. My typology? Yes, you were suggesting that, uh, you know, the Lord was going to come like the Lord came to Jerusalem, and then he's got to reign until the last enemies are put down.
And you sort of hinted that the last enemy at the end of the millennium to be put down is Satan himself. But now your typology is all broken down, you see, because at the end of this period, David failed, and our Lord certainly won't fail. Ah. Well, you've got a point. If I had said it was typology, yes, so surely it's broken down. I didn't say it was typology. I said that these events, in some of their aspects, are prototypes. And to borrow the analogy of an earlier lecture, if you can cast your mind back, sir, you who are eighty or even seventy, to those funny airplanes that used to buzz over our chimney pots.
They were generally biplanes, weren't they? Mm-hmm. Funny little things that went pop, pop, pop. They were, incidentally, always breaking down. Made of rubber bands, wood, paper, and spit, they were. Sure thing. They were forever breaking down, but they weren't types of the great jumbo jet. They weren't. They were prototypes of the jumbo jets. Because while in many respects they were vastly different from, from jumbo jets, yet in them there were certain basic principles of aerodynamics expressed, and that's why they flew at all. Now in scripture, if you take a thing like the tabernacle, that is a type designed by God from first to last to get across certain spiritual truths.
Types don't break down, but prototypes break down. Of course, I maybe said it's their job to, but I don't quite mean that. Adam was a prototype of Christ, and Adam failed. And David was a prototype of Christ, and David failed. But the blessed reality, our Lord himself, never fails and never will. Always God. I was hungry, uh, stomach was hungry with forty days fasting. And the devil came and said, look, see all these kingdoms of the world? I'll give them to you if you fall down and worship me, for they're given to me, and I give them to whomsoever I will.
Mark you, young man, if you make yourself awkward, I can give you a cross. Then our blessed Lord replied, yes, I'm the father's son, you know, and everything ought to be coming to me. Give me that. No, it didn't. Son of the father though he was, he learned obedience by the things that he suffered and said, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only. Shall thou smile. Not on the spiritual valor of a King David does God's eternal purpose depend.
One has been found greater, and on our blessed Lord it depends, who met the foe and could say as he went out to Calvary, the Prince of this world come, and he had nothing in me. Blessed Son of God, he has overcome the world and offers us to share his victory. Now I see something more. David learned his fault and was disciplined by a pestilential plague coming upon the people. But when the angel with his drawn sword came and stood over Jerusalem, then said, God, it's enough, lay your hand.
David's sin of pride had threatened to destroy the very heart of Israel, and Jerusalem city, with all its wonder and potential for the future in time and the future in eternity, stood to be destroyed under the plague of God for the evil of pride. God, in his mercy, had the angel withhold a moment. David seeing the angel, oh, that was a marvelous man in the end, wasn't he? So it was his fault. With bare head, walk out in front of the people and out in front of the elders, and lifting up his heart to God, he said, oh God, it's I that has sinned, not these people.
Take me and execute me, if only you'll spare the people. That was wonderful, wasn't it? I tell you something more wonderful than he who was the Son of the Most High, and we the rebels, eaten through with a worm of pride and self-seeking, upon whom the judgment so- sword of God should have fallen, and he triumphant over the temptations of the devil, went out, lonely man, to Gethsemane, and Jehovah lifted up his sword.
O Christ, it fell on thee. So the whole purpose of God was saved. But the way opened up for it to be completed. And I'll tell you another wonderful thing in this book, so full of wonders. When it was over, David said to the local farmer who owned the ground, there was a threshing floor there, he said, my man, I want to buy this from you. This is going to be the altar of the Lord, and this the temple of the Lord for their part. And so it became. There on that spot, Solomon eventually erected the temple.
There the priests and the Levites sang their lovely melodies in praise of God and of God's mercies. There the people joined in with their loud, throated hallelujahs and amens. And the praise of this little planet rose up from the scene where David had volunteered to take the people's punishment instead of them. Ah, so will the millennial temple echo to the praise of the blessed Lord. But I'll tell you more. Would you know the glory and the wonder and the charm of the eternal praises that rise in the presence of God? They shall be built not on some lit- with some literal building in that eternal paradise, but they shall be built, shall those eternal praises of God, on what happened on that hill just outside Jerusalem.
And earth, darkest hour, saddest hour in all this planet's history. Oh, dark spot, Calvary outside Jerusalem. Yet from that darkest spot shall rise forever the most glorious praise that you'll ever hear for all eternity. And we have just a few moments to consider the final section, and it will not take us long, because its lesson is self-evident. David was now old, and like a lot of people known to me, and some more I've met recently, he decided that the time had come for him to retire.
Not, uh, completely retire, you see now yet, of course not, but for semi-retire. You know, running the business of the kingdom and looking after the accounts and the civil servants, there's some people to look after they are, and looking after them, uh, the organization of the produce and fighting the battles and things. Well, they were interesting when he was a young man, you'll say, and he was on the up and up in his career, and the empire was expanding. There was enough to keep any ambitious man occupied, you'll see, most of the hours of the day. But then, you know, when you've been doing that for forty-odd odd years, it gets a bit samey, doesn't it? And the salary seems to mean such all that much.
And sometimes when people retire, they begin to think, well, what's it all about anyway? And so David was looking around for a job that he could do when he retired, you'll say now, what did you do when you retired? But David didn't have to look around long, because he'd long had it in his heart. Oh, come the day when he could give the crown over to Solomon, what our crown, a few jewels on the top. Um, uh, he'd like to do something that would last when he was gone, you'll see. Well, what would you do then?
Well, anyway, he retired, half retired, and Solomon was made king of Urthine, that is co-regent, to get on with the practical stuff of, um, running the country, while David gave himself in his last years for doing what his heart always wanted to do, to prepare for the building of a temple of God. It was destined to last for many centuries, of course. But more than that, oh, here we come again. It was a prototype of bigger temples to be. A prototype of the great eternity.
You'll say, there's your, your, there's you've gone astray again, Mr. Preacher. Mm, don't you remember that the great eternal city, the New Jerusalem, is not said to be a temple? In fact, it says there isn't any temple therein. Yes, I know that. It means there's no inner shrine in it. And it's not called a temple, it's called a tabernacle. And there are reasons for that, but its basic purpose is the same, isn't it? So David spent his last year preparing the materials, the gold and the silver, ah, and nails and things like that, which is very practical. And, uh, then he organized the people, you'll see, so I wouldn't, who would eat to have the temple built, and when it was then inaugurated and you wanted the Levites to sing, they all sang Hildy piggledy, like a lot of elephants are roaring.
You'll say I were no good at all. And someone would have to know whose job it was to keep the incense, and another chap whose job it was to, uh, guard the gates, and uh, uh, so they all had to be organized and trained, you'll say. Of course, that was a lovely occupation for retirement, I tell you. Getting the raw material and shaping the raw material and the stones out of the quarries, and ah, I kept him busy from breakfast till he went to bed, you'll see, and he got them all trained for the day that should dawn when the age of rest came, and Solomon should build the temple out of the prefabricated material, and the presence of God would come, and the glory of the unseen God would express itself through his word, uh, to his people, and the magnificence of God should be made known through them, and coming back like the swelling sounds of a great orchestra, would be this personality and that and the other, now not struggling against each other, but in perfect harmony, all with their different graces, coming back to the eternal glory of God.
Oh, what a vision! When it was all ready, he stood with the people, full of joy. There could be no greater joy on. And looking at the king over his people, he said, God, I do, I have to admit it, my heart is full of joy. But as I see my people, I, I, I see them joyful, God, he said. Oh, what a magnificent thing in this sorry old world to see God's people joyful. And pray tell me, what bigger joy could there be on earth than preparing for the joys of eternity. My brother, my sister, it is a passing world, isn't it?
What would you do if you were free to do it and you didn't have to everybody, Mr. Preacher, but if you must know, I tell you, I'm trying to prepare something for the great eternal tabernacle of God. I hear you say, I don't feel I can bring many jewels, but I can collect a few old nails. Never mind, it all contributes. Yeah. What a joy it is.
When that tabernacle comes down from heaven, the new Jerusalem prepared as a bride for her husband. We're told it has foundations, such as Abram looked for, the great facts and experience of justification by faith. It has gates, and on the gates are the names of the sons of Jacob, given them in life. As their mothers took the birth of the children to God and prayed about their birth, and prayed about the affairs of family life in tents living with Jacob, and that wasn't always fun living with Jacob in tents, I may tell you, you'll say. But there are these dear women in the competitive world of family life of those days.
They brought the whole matter of their marriage and their birth of children to God and prayed about it, and when God gave them children, they recorded their experience of God in the bringing up of the children, and then they recorded it in the names they gave the boys. And those names, recording those experiences, are going to stand on the very gates of the city, where the government of the city will be carried out, for the elders will sit in the gates. Oh, what a lovely thing, my dear sisters, you bring up your children for God. You don't have to be retired, see, to do this work. You can bring up the children, not just that they may attain a wonderful, marvelous, successful career.
God give them that if he pleased, but to try to build, bring those children up. So that one day their names too shine, and the experience you've had of God in bringing up a family shall be so built into the city of God that you shall be able, in a practical sense, to reign with Christ, with bigger responsibilities than you ever had before. You see, in the end, that is the purpose of architecture, isn't it? And bringing up children and counting out the money in the old counting house, and making shoes, fishing for fish.
You can't get to heaven without fish, can you? Or Kellogg's cold bites. You, you have to eat to keep alive, and you can't trust the Savior if you don't keep alive. You can't read his word if you're shivering with coals. So the whole of life, that is geared not just to being clothed and our stomachs being fed, the whole of life is ultimately geared for preparing for that greatness. And the angel that pointed it out to John as they went around it said, John, did you see, did you see those, those jewels, John, on the, on the wall? Wow, some cities, I don't know many cities around here that have jewels on the wall, but this one did.
All bejeweled it was, sparkling in the glory of God that filled it, and affecting the light of God's presence in a thousand and one ways and in a variety of colors. Ooh, it was magnificent, those jewels on the wall. Metaphys, of course. For other kinds of jewels. What kind of jewels, and who put them there? Listen. No other foundation can any man lay, says Paul, than that is laid at Jesus Christ. I, as a master builder, have laid the foundation. But if any man build thereon, let him be careful how he builds.
For if any man build gold, silver, precious stones, his work shall abide. If anyone build wood, hay, and stubble, his work shall be burned up. It is so magnificent, I fear you'll take it as a fairy story. It's true. My dear brother, my sister, you could contribute a jewel or two to adorn the walls of the holy city and temple to come. Oh, what a marvelous thing it will be, you know, to be walking around the gates of heaven.
You're walking around the walls one day and showing me round, you see. You suddenly stop beside a certain jewel, and you say, goody, look at that. See that jewel there? Ha. Yeah, what about that, sir? A very nice jewel, that is. Look how it reflects the glory of God. That's amazing, isn't it? Well, what about it then? I put that jewel there. Oh, my brother, your heavenly breast and chest will swell a bit then, won't it? Thanks be to God. Ah, he put that jewel there. Well, I didn't do it really, but you know, uh, in God's mercy, I led that person to Christ. And my dear brother, who was the elder, he, oh, we had to spend a lot of time polishing that jewel.
We did it, there were some rough corners on it, well, did it not? And we got our hands cut a bit dealing with it, but in the end it got polished. By the grace of God, I put that jewel there. Oh, how shall we contain the sheer joy of it in that coming day when he shall make up his jewel? And as David came, and the preparations were complete, and he called the nation together, and he prayed that lovely prayer. Oh God, all this material that, uh, we have amassed, and we give it to you, all the joy we've had, the fun we've had, the joy in our hearts as we give it to you because we're allowed to give it.
But Lord, in the end, of course, it's yours anyway, isn't it? Of your own, have we given? There man shall sit upon the throne of the Lord. At whose expense? And the greatest warrior here tonight who has spent every ounce of his or her body, mind, and soul in the work of the Lord will turn round and tell you, but it's only his anyway. He gave it me, and I give it back to him.
The wonder of God is that he gives me the credit for doing it. We are but strangers, says David. Poor boy. Well, he was a bit more than semi-retired now, you know. He was getting a bit, a little unstable on his feet. We are but strangers before you, as our fathers were, and life goes by so fleetingly, does it not? Oh God, what a marvelous thing, in seventy years of life, to be allowed to come to this, that we've been able to contribute something at your expense to this great, great.
My brother, my sister, if the Lord doesn't come soon, you and I must go as David went. And in the times when we come to go, this shall be our overwhelming joy. Pilgrims on earth though we were, at God's expense, at the cost of the precious blood of Christ, by the energies of the Holy Spirit. Marvelous to say we've been allowed to prepare a material for the great eternity of God. And if any man's work abides, he shall receive a reward.
Pardon the incoherence of my exposition of this wonderful book, but these are some of its themes, and in so much as they are the word of God, we can hear the Lord saying to us, these are no fables, these are the true sayings of God. Shall we pray? And now, Lord, we thank thee for thy holy word. We bless thee not only for thy direct promises, we thank thee for buttressing our faith by taking the trouble in centuries past, so to order history that thy purposes gleam through and become prototypes, and persuade us that this is no fairy story, but these are the true sayings of God.
Here we have the blueprint, but in Christ the great reality. And tonight, as we have studied thy word, we lift up our hearts to thee and praise thee for thy magnificent redemption and thy grace and thy love that go beyond our understanding. Help us so to profit from our thy word that our faith shall be strengthened, our mind clearly focused upon thy promises, and by thy grace, confident in thy electing mercy that has stationed us each one in our separate stations in life, we may serve him to the very full and to life's journey's end.
All for Jesus, all for Jesus, all my life and all my past, until we see him and our eyes behold the city shining with its gold and with thy glory. So receive our thanksgiving through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
