Gooding, David: 9 - Standing as a Pillar

This is the second last of the studies of First and Second Kings that we have been engaged upon in these past weeks. Let me say at once how delighted we are to see you all, and we pray God's blessing on your attendance. Hitherto we have been studying the descriptions, the regulations for the building of the house of the Lord at Jerusalem. And we took our cue from Solomon, who at the dedication of the house, poured out his heart towards God, for he saw that the presence of God in this house of God at Jerusalem would be sufficient for the maintenance of the people, or if need be, for their, uh, repair. Whatever should happen to them. We have discovered, of course, in reading the history, that the people of God in those days failed to take advantage of the tremendous blessing that God had given them in not only building a house of God in Jerusalem, but coming himself, almighty though he is, and omnipresent, to dwell in that confined house. So tonight we have come to the fifth and final section of the plans for the house of the Lord, and perhaps we should begin by reading some verses from the appropriate chapter. This is the first book of Kings. And it is in chapter seven. Beginning to read in verse thirteen. And King Solomon sent and fetched Hiram out of Tyre. He was the son of a widow woman of the tribe of Naphtali, and his father was a man of Tyre, a worker in copper. And he was filled with wisdom and understanding and cunning to work all works in copper, and he came to King Solomon and wrought all his work. For he fashioned the two pillars of copper of eighteen cubits high apiece, and a line of twelve cubits compassed either of them about. And he made two capitals of molten copper to set upon the tops of the pillars. The height of the one capital was five cubits, and the height of the other capital was five cubits. There were nets of checker work and wreaths of chain work for the capitals which were upon the top of the pillars, seven for the one capital and seven for the other capital. And he made the pillars, and there were two rows round about upon one netbook to cover the capitals that were upon the top of the pillars, and so did he for the other capital. And the capitals that were upon the top of the pillars in the porch were of lily work, four cubits. And there were capitals above also upon the two pillars, close by the belly, which was beside the network. And the pomegranates were two hundred in rows round about upon the other capital. And he set up the pillars at the porch of the temple, and he set up the right pillar and called the name thereof Jakin, and he set up the left pillar and called the name thereof Boaz. And upon the top of the pillars was lily work. So was the work of the pillars finished. And he made the molten sea, ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and the height thereof was five cubits, and a line of thirty cubits compassed it round about. Under the brim of it, round about, there were knobs which did compass it, for ten cubits compassing the sea round about. And the knobs were in two rows, cast when it was cast. And it stood upon twelve oxen, three looking toward the south, towards the north, three looking towards the west, three looking towards the south, and the sea was set upon them above, and all their hinder parts were inward. God give us good understanding of his word. We have arrived, therefore, at the final set of plans and descriptions of the house of the Lord that Solomon built in Jerusalem. And we have come at length to the court that was around the temple building itself, and are to consider the furnishings of that court. The major fursin- furnishings were two groups. There were two large pillars with their capitals above, very imposing, very beautiful. Then there was another group, what is in our reading called the molten sea. It was what in the tabernacle was, uh, referred to as the laver. It was so large it was called a sea, and it was there filled with water, of course, for the cleansing of the priests. It was of an elaborate design. It stood on the backs of twelve oxen. And in addition to this great sea, there were ten subsidiary lavers on wooden frames, on wheels, so that they could be taken to any part of the court, and they were suitably decorated with panels with cherubim on them and such like things. People have been interested to note that in the furniture of the court, as here described, there is no mention of the altar with its shedding of blood. The reason for its absence is not given. But in the subsequent chapters, we read from time to time of the altar that Solomon made. There was therefore an altar. And later on in history, as we shall have to consider perhaps this evening, we read of an unhappy king who decided to remove the altar and substitute for it a, a, a, a style of altar that was recommended in Damascus of Arameer. The chappie was nothing if he wasn't, uh, favoring modernism. Our first major question is to ask whether the pillars and the great sea and lavas were decorated, of course, but was the decoration merely impressionistic? Or was it as well as that, symbolic? Perhaps you say, what is the difference between being impressionistic and being, uh, uh, uh, symbolic? Well, if I might take our dear lady Queen Elizabeth II. Sometimes it runs in my mind, though it's not often I have to look at her photograph, I must confess. Uh, she wears a kind of, well, now I don't know what the material is, velour or velvet or something. It looks a bit shiny, you see, but it's a beautiful royal blue. That's not typical of anything. It's not symbolic in the sense. It is impressionistic. Wow, isn't it? Oh, no, I won't, wouldn't wish to have anything, a a a a coat jacket like it, but it looks cool on her. When, however, at her coronation, she is handed a globe and a scepter, they are not just impressionistic. How nice they look. They are significant symbolically. The globe represents her empire. The scepter stands for her rule. We ask, therefore, whether the decoration of the pillars and the pillars themselves and the navas and the great sea, they were impressionistic, of course, but were they also symbolic? The easy answer to it is to start backwards and consider the lavas. They were filled with water for the cleansing of the priest. At that labor, the priests, at their induction, would have been bathed all over. Thereafter, whenever they approached their duties at the altar or, uh, inside, they were to rinse their hands and their feet. And we have the New Testament's authority for seeing in that water, uh, a, um, symbolic meaning. For our Lord himself used the same symbol, didn't he? At the last Supper, he rose, divested himself of his outer garment, wrapped a towel round his middle, poured water into a basin, and kneeling at the feet of his apostles, he washed their feet. And then explained what he'd done. He that has been bathed all over needs not save to rinse his feet, but is clean every bit of him. The famous verse in Hebrews chapter ten that bids us welcome into the holiest of all runs that, uh, we are to come boldly, do you see, enter into the holiest of all. Our hearts sprinkled, and that will mean with blood, for it is always so, never in scripture washed in blood, but rinsed in blood, sprinkled in blood, except it be garments that are sometimes said to be washed in blood, but not persons. And our bodies bathed all over in pure water. For Christ loved the church, gave himself for her, so we are told, that not content to have a bride, he is a perfectionist and wants his bride to look, uh, at the maximum, uh, beauty, to which he gives his devotion constantly in this present time, that she might be purified by the washing of water with the word, that she might be a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. I said more than enough to show, I think, that the water in the great sea in Solomon's temple court was symbolic and not just impressionistic. And if the laver and its water were symbolic, what about the two pillars? They were there, of course, uh, to be certainly impressionistic, to arrive at your front door. You probably have, I- I haven't noticed it, uh, you see, two big pillars at your front door, and they're there just to make the likes of me, uh, tremble at my knees a little bit when I enter in, you'll see, because of the, they must be important people that could have two pillars like that at the front door. Yes, but were they also symbolic? A first clue is the fact that they were named. One was called Yakin, meaning God will uphold, strengthen, and the other Boaz, in it is strength. And the verb that is used, Yakin, has presumably as its subject God himself. God is our refuge and strength, a very ready help in time of trouble. Majestic, therefore, and beautiful, of course, with the capitals. Very large, and all kinds of stonework, lilies, and so forth, pomegranates, and what have you, to be both beautiful and And attractive. attractive. It was the purpose of the pillars to uphold the capitals. Yes? Surely. So as they stood there with these delightful capitals, they were very attractive, weren't they? And seemed to convey promises from the very God whose pillars they were, of fruitfulness and blessing. In the verse that, God willing, if the Lord leaves us long enough to come to it next Thursday, when we have to turn to the New Testament, to the end verses of one Timothy chapter three, We shall hear Paul saying, I write these things that you might know how people ought to behave themselves in the house of God, in the church of the living God, pillar and ground of the truth. The church isn't the, isn't the truth. The church is there to uphold the truth. And what that has to do with us, we shall have to consider next. I'm going to take it, therefore, that the, uh, pillars and, uh, then the lavers were symbolic. The pillars were there to make their witness to the truth that behind all the beauty of flowers and the fruitfulness of fruit trees, there stood the one true God creator, Lord of heaven and earth. This was his house. That would be a very important truth to uphold, would it not? And surely we have a similar duty in this present, to stand, and having done all, to stand for the truth of the one true God Creator. I'm aware, of course, of the great basic theory of the evolution of religion. If everything else evolved, why didn't religion evolve? Otherwise it would, would it not? And according to the theory, you start off with animism, such as the Japanese still have in their sh- These are thought to be inhabited by spirits, where a nice green shady nook with a elegant tree and perhaps a ro- raised up, uh, piece of grass is thought to be a dwelling place of spirits. So you start off with animism. And then you develop polytheism. Many gods thought of in rather human terms. And then as men evolve further, they, uh, left polytheism and came to hentheism. Hentheism means one god per... per people, you see, per nation. I'm not sure what the Irish god was or is. I've quite forgotten what the English one is. John Bull, I think, but no, perhaps not. Mm-hmm. One God per nation. And from that you went on to monotheism. Only one God for the whole universe. And beyond that you come to, evolved into atheism. Mm-hmm. That isn't true, actually, of Israel's religion. As you'll see, reading three or four of the books, they started off with monotheism. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. But over the centuries, constantly seduced by other nations around them, they went off into the miseries of polytheism and deified the forces of nature. So they worshipped the sun god and the moon god and the storm god and the god of sex, and so forth and so on. Deifying the forces of nature and had constantly to be dragged back by the roots of their hair, by their prophets, back to the original monotheism that is everywhere throughout the Old Testament, the burden of the prophets. Not evolution. And how at the root of truth and beauty is the doctrine of the one true God creator. We used to tell the Russians this. Perhaps they knew it already. But in the bad old days, we pointed out in very gentlemanly fashion, um, how that atheists, um, deify the forces of nature. If you ask an atheist what was responsible for his existence, and what will eventually bring him to his end? He will tell you some gene or other, in other words, a chemical. And he will then tell you, if he's honest, that one day he'll find a gene in his body, or a bug of some kind, and he'll be able to see what it's going to do. It's going to ruin him, tear him to pieces. And eventually it will get hold of his rationality and tear it to pieces and make a nonsense of it, and when it's done it, it won't know it's done it. Man and man's intellect at the mercy of mindless, purposeless. I don't find it very attractive. Human dignity depends on their, uh, uh, man being a creature and a redeemed creature of the one true God creator. Don't be ashamed of it, will you? At Talk Shop tonight, courageous and valiant men and women will stand like pillars to uphold before the gaze of their fellow students the glorious fact of the one true God, creator of heaven and earth, and all the beauty and the power that's in it. And we must stand, must we not, like pillars, not just for the truth of the one true God creator. In Galatians chapter two and verse nine, Paul tells us that he went up to Jerusalem by revelation. They didn't summon him there. He went up to confer with the other apostles, so as to make sure they were not running at cross purposes, and in fact, they all agreed on the gospel. And he says that when he got there, when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, they who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision. Only they would that we should remember the poor, which very thing I was also zealous to do. Now that could sound a, a bit obscure and irrelevant in the hustle and bustle of life. But it comes back to this. Who gave us the scriptures. Who would you say? I remember years and years ago, and since I'm an old man, I can repeat my stories. There came a good gentleman to see me one Saturday afternoon. He said that he'd been advised by others on the staff, and he wanted to come and see what I, my opinion was. So, about what? Well, he was thinking of joining a very strict religious order. What did I think about it? So I did some thinking, and I, uh, said, well, I don't know really what to say because the church to which that order belongs curses me. No, no, he said, surely they don't. I said, yes, they do. For in those days it was Council of Trent that was the final authority. And it said, if anybody professes to be absolutely sure of salvation, let him be anathema. Do you see? Uh, that is not faith. It's what they call in Latin fiducia, o- overwe- weaning confidence, not true faith. Faith would never say it's absolutely sure of salvation. And I said, you see, old chap, I, I, I, I, I, I, I do believe I'm one of those. I, I believe that I'm absolutely sure of salvation. Oh yes, he said, but you, you shouldn't be like that. I said, why not? Well, he said, it all depends on our, our works in the end, doesn't it? I said, I didn't know it was. And did? Oh yes, he said, yes. I said, well, just let me read you something. To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of death. There you are, he says, that's what it is. Well, I said, have a minute, let me complete the sentence. And to him that works not, what about him? Oh, he's no good, he says, at all. Have a minute, I said. Uh, to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted unto him for righteousness. He says, I don't know what that means. I didn't know it was in the Bible. Well, I showed him the page. And uh, he's, oh, Paul, yes. Ah, yes, yes, yes, but he read, he wrote a lot of funny things, and, and, and, and, and you can't just sit there and read it and, and take it in and get saved like that. No, of course you can't. You'd have to take it to the church. It was the church that gave us the Bible. And it's absurd, logically absurd, to take the Bible, which the church gave us, in order to criticize the church. That view is very widespread in my experience. I said, you know, Paul tells us that when he went up to Jerusalem, those that were apostles before him didn't add anything to him. Oh, they did, he said. Yeah, oh, they must have done. No, I said, look, yeah, oh boy, read it. Uh, uh, they didn't add anything to me. I said, you see, w- w- what are you telling me? Suppose I were living in the time of Paul in the Arabian desert, and I saw Paul, and I said, oh, I think that's Paul. And I went up and said, are you sir, the Christian Apostle Paul? Yes. Ah. Well, would you mind telling me how I can be justified? And Paul told me by word of mouth what he here writes. Should I be able to believe it there and then and be justified and saved? Or do I have to take it to the church and get the church to pronounce upon it whether Paul was, got it right or not? Oh, he said you'd have to take it to the church. I'm afraid after that we didn't get very far, you see, because, uh, he insisted you have to take it to the church, and Paul says they added nothing to me. And sheer ABC tells us what the facts are. The epistle to the Corinthians is not written by the church to the Corinthians. Carries the author's name on it, written by Paul to the church. That is an exceedingly important piece. Stands for our true freedom, of course, in Christ. We need to be pillars, aware of the situation. And when it comes to how a man is justified before God, Acts fifteen gives us an example of some pillars at work. For you see, certain men came down from Judea and taught the brothers, saying, unless you are circumcised after the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. And when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and questioning with them, the brethren appointed that Paul and Barnabas and certain other of them should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question. To get a statement, of course, from all the apostles that they all agreed. And do you see, uh, um, when they got there, there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed, saying, it is needful to circumcise the converts and to charge them to keep the law of Moses. And when there had been much questioning, Peter got up amongst them and said quite plainly, now therefore, why tempt you God, that you should put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? And then, if I might put it into modern English, he said, it is our belief and conviction that it is by the grace of the Lord that we shall be saved, we Jews as well as those Gentiles. Even we Jews are saved solely by the grace of the Lord, let alone Gentiles. How we do need, do we not, to be pillars, aware of the things that are seriously disputed, that relate to our common salvation, and then by God to stand firm. But always remembering that the true gospel brings forth flowers to be attractive and fruit satisfy our thirst. It is to take a true doctrine and to advocate it in such a cantankerous fashion as to make it very decidedly unattractive to those that pillars, therefore. And I shall have to trouble you now by going back a little bit to Ahaz. We're told by Isaiah the prophet that he did his best for King Ahaz of Jerusalem. To sum up the then current history, the King of Israel joined forces with the King of Damascus, Arameah, to attack Jerusalem. And of course, the, uh, Israel being ten tribes, were a big, big bully to the lesser uh two tribes of Judea. And so Ahaz was panic struck. And Isaiah pleaded with the man to stand his ground and not to do anything. But Ahaz wouldn't listen. Faced with these enemies, king of Aramea, Damascus, Israel, who could swamp little Jerusalem, so they thought. Ahaz got in touch with the Assyrian emperor. Reminds me of the story of the two mice, you know. There was a big mouse and a small mouse. And the big mouse, like mouses do, they, uh, uh, uh, cut up rough with the small mouse. Not knowing what to do, the small mouse pleaded with the cat to come and deal with the enemy, which the cat did. But having done so, still felt hungry and swallowed the small mouse as well. It was absurd to call on the Assyrians to help. And Isaiah warned of what would happen if he summoned the Assyrians. You see, when the new that Damascus and Samaria, the two kings, were going to attack Judah, and it was told to the house of David, says Isaiah chapter seven and verse two. His heart was moved, and the heart of his people as the trees of the forest are moved with the wind. Yes, it looked dark and difficult, but you notice how I fully words it when the news came through, and it was told to the house of David. Behind the throne of David stood Almighty God. God had appointed him. If now the king in Jerusalem had to call on the utterly unconverted Gentiles to maintain him, well, that made a nonsense of his claim that the throne was appointed by Almighty God, did it not? Ahaz wouldn't listen. And went off to Damascus. He took the trouble to cut off the gold from the pillars and, uh, the walls and goodness knows where else around the temple of the Lord, and gave it as a gift, not to say bribe, to the then king of Assyria, who promised to help him. Foolish man. Why don't you ask of God for a sign, said Isaiah? If your faith is that small, why not ask him for a sign and deliberate guidance? Not A- not Ahaz, no. Man of no faith whatsoever. Isaiah talked to him about the virgin birth eventually. Meant nothing to him. So off he went to Damascus, you see. He had enough money left, to get a decent hotel, I suppose, and he went to Damascus, you see, and uh, oh, he saw an altar there that they had up in Damascus. Cool, it was beautiful, it was modern, you know. To be honest, that thing they had in, from Solomon's day, that was old fashioned, you see, it really was. And uh, so he drew out the thing on a postcard, uh, dimensions and things of this new altar he saw in Damascus, and sent it to the high priest and said, get me an altar made just like this one before I come back. Well, he must have stayed on holiday quite a while, do you see? Uh, because by the time he got back, the high priest had made him an altar exactly like it. So we'll have this one, the newly built altar, for all the main sacrifices and everything else, said, uh, Ahaz. I will keep the old, old altar, uh, as to inquire by. You say it's pity that the Assyrians made him do it. They didn't. The Assyrians weren't like that. You could worship who you liked within reason. They wouldn't force you to do anything, except politically. Why did he do it then? Now, forgive my strong language. The curse of always having to modernize the gospel. Yes. To make it attractive. To modern day intellectuals, or non-intellectuals more generally. Instead of seeing it as a God-given trust, this is the truth of God. Let me put it into modern decent English, but let me keep the facts of the glorious gospel and not change them. Remember being shown a pulpit it had on it, preachers are asked not to mention hell, the congregation doesn't like it. Isa warned the men what Assyria would do. What would it do? It would come sweeping in like a tide And and destroy. destroy the kingdom of Israel. And take them all off to Assyria. And fill their places with people collected from Assyria. That was the way Assyrians had of controlling populations, mass deportation. I can imagine Isaiah telling Ahaz, don't tell, don't tell me you weren't warned. Ha ha. There will be worse. In the days of Hezekiah, Sennacherib had been campaigning down the south from Jerusalem, and he had taken a city called Lachish. And if you want to know what kind of gentlemen Assyrians were, we'll get you to the British Museum in London to see the bas relief depiction hung upon original the Assyrians' palace walls of the attack on Lachish and the unmentionable cruelties of the Syrians. From Lachish, and then the next place that the emperor went to. He sent a deputation, army generals, and one governor of a province, whose name was the Rab Shache. That was his office. He was a governor of a province, and sent them to Jerusalem to demand that Hezekiah give up and come out to them and own defeat. You don't let that Hezekiah chap deceive you, said the Rabshakee, saying your God will deliver you. God? We've taken scores of gods, like boys stealing bird's nests out of nests. Come on, we're not going to do you any harm. Come out! We'll give you each two horses. That would be some temptation, wouldn't it? Two jaguars or something like that, do you see? You'll never be so wealthy as you have been, uh, as you will be in all your life. Come out. And Hezekiah, who at first compromised, got strength by God's grace to resist him. And with the help of Isaiah, stood like a pillar for the doctrine of the true and the reality of the true God of Israel. Lord of heaven and earth. We shall have to think more of it next time. But it is an important thing, isn't it? To say. The Lord God of heaven and earth. Listen to the shouts from the other side. Thus says the great king of Assyria. The great king. Give up your faith in God and come out. You'll never be so happy as you will be then. Took a lot of faith in tiny Jerusalem to stand and witness to the true God of heaven. Just when the Assyrians thought they were to going to win, God visited them with a disaster. They went all home. The Rabshaki shouted over his shoulder, don't you think you won and coming back. He never came back. And the emperor himself was assassinated subsequently, some years later, by his two sons. But it is a gripping story, isn't it? And as we listen to the history, and we listen to this great emperor, thus says the king of Syria, the great king. Don't let that god deceive you. We hear rumblings that this world will hear again at the end of this age. From the voice of someone who will sit in the temple of God, showing himself to be God, and demand divine honors, and that people give up this childish notion that there's a God in heaven. I don't know what your prophetic views are, but we move towards that end. It's good to get a little practice in, isn't it? Uh, oh, you know, I'm having to practice standing on one leg, you know, to get my brain thinking right, and it's okay, even if it hurts, you see, uh, and uh, so I shall cure myself. It's not too bad to take a practice at standing on two legs as a pillar in the house of the Lord. Shall we pray? Our Father, we thank thee for these stirring s- histories. We feel for thy servant Hezekiah, with human blood running through his veins, knowing the fears that we all of us know. But we thank thee for thy support of him and thy vindication of faith, and we ask thy grace that we in our day and generation may stand boldly for thee. Help us to value thy revealed doctrine and stand for it. Help us, Lord, to convey it in good modern English, but the old truth of the gospel that never changes. So bless us now as we thank thee for our session together and for the refreshments we are about to enjoy. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.