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Now let's take to our Bibles and read, shall we? And we shall turn to the First Book of Chronicles. The First Book of Chronicles. Oh, thank you so very much, sir. How kind of you. Mm. Would that everybody was so Christian as you are. First Book of Chronicles, then, chapter one and verse one. Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Yarid, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
And then the last chapter of that same book, one Chronicles chapter twenty nine. One Chronicles chapter twenty nine and the middle of verse uh twenty two. And they made Solomon the son of David king the second time, and anointed him unto the Lord to be prince, and Zadok to be the priest. Then Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord as king instead of David his father, and prospered, and all Israel obeyed him.
I think it can be said without too much injustice to anybody. That First Chronicles, frankly speaking, is not every Christian's favorite book. There are some obvious reasons for that, are there not? It's those names, you know. Those long lists of names, ten whole chapters of them at the beginning, and an almost equal number at the end of names, names. There are Christians indeed, but of course not you. But there have been known to be Christians that when in the course of their systematic reading of scripture they come to the book of Chronicles, they've been known to pass by those chapters and not read every name.
I won't tell you who those people are, but uh, they have been known to be such people, you see. Trouble is, to start with, most of the names are unpronounceable anyway, you'll see. And then, well, they don't mean anything, do they, to us? I mean, who knows about Arpaxad and Ludon? Who on earth were they anyway? And how can you be interested in what's, uh, only a sort of a funny name on a piece of paper, you'll see. Of course, I know if your grandmother had been mentioned or your great-grandfather had been mentioned in Chronicles, then of course you would have been interested, wouldn't you? And you'd have gone around telling all your friends and relations, do you know my great grandfather's name is in the book of Chronicles?
And they'd say, where? And what is Chronicles? Is that a newspaper or is that a racehorse, do you see? And you'll say, no, Chronicles in the Bible, do you see? And you would turn up the page and it would be underlined in red, wouldn't it? My great grandfather's name means something to you. The trouble is that these nearly, uh, nearly twenty chapters of names, and that's largely all they are, names on a bit of paper. Of course, once upon a time, those names represented real people, weren't they? Like us walking around on two legs, and uh, they were born, and they were somebody's lovely Johnny, and uh, then uh, somebody's beautiful Martha, you'll see, and uh, they grew up full of promise, and their parents thought there was none like them, and their lives were before them, and they lived their lives through as best they could, some with success and some with pain and disaster.
And then... time carried them away. And tonight... they're just names on a bit of paper. Melancholy thought, that isn't it? What about you? Of course, you're known to all your circle of friends, aren't you, and they rejoice in you. Your name is Gene or Habbakuk or whatever your name is, sir, you'll say, and and and that means a lot to your friends. But what about, um, five hundred years from now? What will you be then? You too be just a name on a bit of paper, meaningless even to your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren.
And when you start to think like that, then it raises big problems about history, doesn't it? What is this phenomenon about on our little planet Earth? Wave after wave of people being born every minute, and then being overtaken by the next wave and pushed off the stage into eternity. You know, when I was born and growing up, I thought at last the world had got the chap it wanted, and I will say I was going to, I was going to do such a lot of things, you'll say, great things I was going to do. The trouble was, just as I was getting ready to do them, another great wave of the new generation came on behind and pushed me off the stage, and they're the chaps that are going to do all the big things.
I point out to them there's another wave coming on behind them as well, you'll say. Yes. What would you say of the whole phenomenon that has been human history? Is the process going anywhere? Is there rhyme, the reason in it, pattern in it? Is there a future for it? Or is it an endless succession of waves of people coming onto the planet Earth, dying and becoming just a name on a bit of paper? And you know, if you put it brutally like that, it's true that many people have no answer to the problem, have they? Our atheist friends have no answer.
They put a brave face on it, don't they, our atheist and humanist friends. But their own very atheist science tells them that in the end, what is man? You can argue, if you like, as how the planet's going to come to an end, a heat death or a cold death, or whether the old sun is going to blow up and become a red giant so that Earth just, uh, uh, evaporates, and that's the end of that, uh. But science will tell you that one way or t'other, our Earth is doomed. As far as they know, one day the human race and all the names will end in the silence of a universal grave.
They have no hope, you know. It's not perhaps the worst thing you can say about unconverted men and women. It's one of the saddest. As Paul puts it in Ephesians chapter two, they are without God, they are without the Messiah, they are without the Creator at the beginning, they have no Messiah in the future to look forward to, and therefore they are without hope. And it's a marvelous thing if, having come to know God through his word, we have the answer to the question, haven't we? What are all these names about? You know, this book of First and Second Chronicles is the last book in the Hebrew Old Testament.
In our English Bibles, it is different, isn't it? It will say Malachi is the last book in our English Old Testament, but in the Hebrew Old Testament, to this very present day, the last book in the Old Testament is First and Second Chronicles, and that is fittingly so, because First and Second Chronicles are a summary of history, starting right from the beginning with Adam and going on almost to the end of the history that is covered in the Old Testament. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah go a little bit further, but not very much. So First and Second Chronicles are a summary of Old Testament history, and they stand at the end of the Hebrew canon.
And the interesting thing is that if you put your question to the writer of Chronicles, the historian of Chronicles, and you say, my good man, you record all these names and all these generations, do you perceive any pattern in history? Is there visible any purpose in history, any movement in history, any forward look, any hope in history? Is there some pattern in history that would give us hope for the future? And he will apprise with the most affirming, yes, of course there is a pattern, and there is a place where, if you look carefully enough, you will see evidence that God himself has a pattern for this world, and there is a future.
And if you have to s- ask him to specify what the pattern is, he will tell you that in these first chapters, these long lists of names. For having, uh, listed some of the names of the pre-flood people and then the post-flood people, very briefly, then he comes to what for him is the most significant thing, even in the early history of our planet, and that is the rise of this unique nation, Israel, out of the Gentiles. It was already a unique phenomenon in the days when First Chronicles was written, and it remains a unique phenomenon in history, doesn't it?
You will see, when you think about Israel in the nations, they were a latecomer to the nations, were. A lot of the others had been started a thousand or two years before Israel came on the scene. They were latecomers, but from the very first, they were unique. For this simple reason, that by the time Israel as a nation was born, the rest of the nations were groveling in the most absurd, idolatrous interpretations of the universe that you could wish to come across. And Israel stood, its very existence was for that purpose, God's divine protest against all idolatrous interpretations of the universe.
They were unique. You'll see, if you had asked the ancient world, uh, where do we people come from, and what is it that controls us? And what will control our future of ourselves and our planet? These ancients who held this idolatrous view of the universe would have said, why, of course, and they would have listed the gods. But when you examined the gods, most of them were simply deifications of the great impersonal forces of the universe. The storm god, the god of fertility, Dulce, the, uh, sun god and the moon god.
Their gods were not the true god. Their predecessors had banished the knowledge of the true god. They didn't like to retain the knowledge of the supreme transcendent Lord Creator. They got rid of him in their thinking or tried to, with the result they could see that they themselves didn't control the planet nor the forces that order it, and therefore they deified the forces of nature, and Israel were a protest against it. And of course, their protest remains, doesn't it, to this very present time. Also, if you ask your atheist friends, your humanist friends, what their interpretation of the universe is, and you'll say, come tell me, uh, what is responsible for bringing us human beings here, and what will be responsible for our end and destiny, whatever it is?
They won't reply all the gods, but they might as well. For what they will say is, well, man doesn't control it, of course not. The thing that controls us and our destiny are the great impersonal forces of nature. Energy, the weak atomic power, the strong atomic power, electromagnetism, gravity, and the processes, of course, of physiology and biology and what have you. These are the forces that control us, and the whole of them are mindless, of course, impersonal forces. And what hope is there in that, I wonder?
As we've already said, one of these days, those great impersonal forces, if it is they that are ultimately responsible for bringing our planet here and us on it, are going to destroy the planet anyway. We can see that, we've got enough sense of that. But we don't have to wait that long, do we? One of these days, a little virus will get into your system, sir, without being too lugubrious, and it won't have tuppence worth of sense in its head, and it will proceed to tear you to pieces. It will ruin your brain and your aesthetics and your purposes and your affections. It will tear you to shreds. And the horror of the situation is that you'll have the intelligence to see what this thing is doing, but you won't be able to stop it doing it.
And if that's all there is, then you may give up hope straight away. You are in a ghastly prison house of mindless forces that one day will crush you out of existence. Oh, thank God for the biblical revelation, and in particular for God's protest to the nations through the nation of Israel, brought out to witness once more that there is a living Lord, the one true God Creator, and man is made in his image. Man is vastly superior to the physical forces of the universe. It's good to tell the Russians that these days, you know, tell them straight, as you can, of course, if you do it nicely, and tell them that their old atheism was an insult to their intelligence, you'll say, can't you?
And that's perfectly true. You'll say, when you go home tonight and you want to read a book, you'll put the electric light on, won't you? Now tell me, is the electric light more important than your brain, or or your brain more important than the electric light? And they'll say, well, yeah, we're more important than the electric light. There's only a bit of electricity up there. We like it and need it, but we're more important than that. And I say, yes, and which is more important, my brain or the sun up in the sky? My brain is very tiny, isn't it? Remarkably so. Eh, and the sun is very big. But even I can see that my brain is more important than the sun. I know the sun is there. The sun doesn't know I'm here.
And with the help of the scientists, I know how the sun works. It doesn't know how I work. Poor thing, it's only a lot of gas and stuff. Yeah, self-evidently more important, aren't we? More significant than all the vast impersonal forces of the universe put together. A baby's, one baby's brain is more important than the whole lot of it. And the Bible has been saying it for centuries. Man is made not to be a slave of the impersonal powers. Man is made in the image of God. And though mankind has fallen, God has made a way of redemption, and man can be redeemed. And God is going on with his great purpose for man made in the image of God.
There is hope. And it was not the least significant thing in this unique nation, Israel, that they not only talked of a God, the Creator, the true God in whose image man is made, they, prophet after prophet, taught that one day God would send into our world his Messiah, Savior, and Redeemer of the world. Now here in this ancient book, Chronicles, the historian asks us to look at the pattern that developed. For even way back in those centuries, one wonderful thing happened, not only did God bring out the nation of Israel from the other nations and brought it into their promised land, but he raised up a man by the name of David, King David, anointed by the Lord, it says, who gave Israel victory and liberty from all their enemies, set them on the road to being a great empire, actually.
And when he died and his son Solomon came to the throne, Israel experienced a time of glory and peace and plenty and wonder, such as they had never experienced before. How magnificent it was. And the chronicler records it with a great glow in his heart, to see. They were magnificent days when Solomon ruled, there was peace, there was no adversary, war wasn't talked of, you'll see. And wealth. Why, in Solomon's day, if you po- saw a piece of silver in the street, you kicked it down the drain because it wasn't worth anything. Only gold was any good in those days.
Such was the wealth. And then the other nations around, they came and brought to Solomon their glory. He was such a wise king, was Solomon, that he attracted the wise men from the east, and as they came to learn his wisdom, you'll see, they brought their presents. The wealth was tremendous. And then there was this matter of wisdom, you know, you'll see. If you were at Solomon's, uh, table at at at dinner with His Majesty, it that was great fun, you'll see, because, you'll see, Solomon, halfway through the second course, would start saying, well, now, uh, have you considered the hyssop just recently, you know, the old herb stuff that comes out of the wall, you see? I do that well, well, I did have a bit in my garden, Your Majesty.
Uh, uh, uh, what were you thinking about? But have you considered this marvel, he says. I've just written a song about hyssop. You've written, you've done what? Yes, I've written about song about hyssops, you know, because when you examine the hyssop in all the wonder of its functioning, you know, it make you sing, wouldn't it, for the sheer marvel of creation. Haven't you never felt like Solomon? Examining a daisy or a flower or whatnot, or whatnot, and been absorbed with the sheer wonder of the creation around you, till you could have danced for joy and written a lyric about it. The wonder even in a little daisy or in a bit of flower that comes out of the wall. And that's how it was with Solomon, you know. He made you sit up and take notice of the wonder that was around you. And you'll say wonder and wonder of all was Solomon was allowed to build God himself a temple, and the transcendent Lord of creator, of creation deigned to come and presence himself in that temple.
You just imagine living around the corner from Almighty God and enjoying his creation with him, so to speak, at your elbow. They were days of heaven upon earth, you know. And one of the queens that came to hear his wisdom was the dear lady from, uh, Ethiopia, you know. And, uh, when she came, she brought great treasures to give to Solomon, and among them, says the historian, were almug trees. I don't know what almug trees are. I don't know how if you have them in here in Australia, but anyway, Solomon's officials thought they were the very best wood you could get for musical instruments, and they made musical instruments out of them. You should have heard the singing in Solomon's reign.
It was tremendous, you see. An age of glory and magnificence, such as Israel had never known before. Huh, you say, didn't last, did- didn't last. Well, I know that didn't last. So does the chronic. He tells you himself it didn't last. You'll say, what is more, in the second book of Chronicles, he analyzes for you all the reasons why it didn't last, sensible man. You'll say, because if we're going to be realists for the future and we s- have any hope for there being an age of peace and glory to come, we shall have to be realists ourselves and face the reason why.
You can have any daydream you like of forming an age of peace and glory in the future, but unless certain basic things can be faced and dealt with, you haven't a hope of any age of peace and glory. Here is Chronicler, inspired historian that he is, analyzing you for you in the second book, why that age of peace and glory under Solomon went down the drain. You'll see. But then again, you'll see, it isn't just a gloomy book, is it? Because these ancient stories of God's ways with Israel, they were what you could call prototypes, weren't they?
What is a prototype? Well, when I was a boy, and you'll know how long that is ago, when I was a boy, if an airplane went over, we used to run out of school to see the thing. They were funny contraptions, they were. Generally biplanes made of brown paper and wood and a little spit and some elastic bands and string and things, you'll see. Uh, that's what they were. And uh, mostly they they came unstuck. But on the other hand, they did work some of the time, you'll see. And the reason they were able to fly at all is that they did embody, even at that crude level, some basic principles of aeronautics.
Now, if you watch the big jumbo jet go by thirty five thousand feet up, it looks a very different contraption from those first few biplanes. And yet, of course, there is a connection between the two, isn't there? For the same principles of aeronautics that were embodied in those prototype aeroplanes is now embodied at the vastly higher level of the jumbo jet. And that's how history has been. When God set his heart upon the redemption of our human race, he began at the humble level. He began, for instance, at one stage with Israel, and went through the basic principles of redemption from the time he redeemed them with the blood of a Passover lamb from Egypt and the tyranny of Egypt, until the time he brought them into the Promised Land, and then to the age of peace and glory under Solomon.
As you'll see, uh, that was only a prototype. Of course, it didn't last. It reached great heights. Did you notice how the historian described it in that last chapter of the First Book of Chronicles? He says that when they made, uh, Solomon, uh, king the second time, Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord, if you please. Has some going, that isn't it? And I suppose at that level it means he sat on the throne that God himself had set up or something. What an evocative phrase it is. Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord.
Wonderful as it was, it was only a prototype of something bigger. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I'm happy to remind you that if in some lowly sense Solomon of Israel sat on the throne of the Lord, since then vast things have happened. And there has come of the seed of David according to the flesh, this Jesus Christ, Messiah, Redeemer of the world. And the third day he rose again, and the fortieth day he ascended into heaven, and this man, Jesus, worked in a carpenter shop in Nazareth. This man, Jesus, literally at this very moment as we sit here, sits on the throne of the Lord.
Did you ever hear such a story? And it's true. Ain't bad going, is it, if you start with Adam? And now we've got this far along that the descendant of Adam, our blessed Lord Jesus, is at this very moment seated on the throne of the Lord. And the New Testament gospel is that, that not just that, but, uh, in some sense, all who trust him are seated with Christ in the heavenly places, and one day shall be bodily transported, and shall sit with him on his throne, even as at this moment he has overcome and sat down on his father's throne.
This is the message of history. This is the pattern of affairs, and you may check it along the road. You may take those Old Testament prophecies given through Israel's prophets, and you may check them and see how our blessed Lord Jesus in his life and death and resurrection matched the program that God gave through the ancient prophets. And you may like to observe, if you care, that to this day the nation of Israel is unique still, isn't it, among the nations. I have an elderly Jewish friend in Belfast. He was an Austrian to start with and only just managed to escape Hitler's gas chambers during the war, got out just before.
And he has often sat in lectures of mine in the university with the tears running down his face, and at dinner with me he would say, but you know, David, I don't know if there is a God. I don't know if there's a God. There is a God, he said. Where, where was God when Hitler was gassing six million of my fellow Jews? Gone on holiday or something, had he, says he. So he said, I don't know if I believe in God at all. And yet, he says, when I'm thinking like that, I suddenly see a man walking the other side of the road, and I say, ah, that's a Jew there. Tell me, David, he says, how is it that our nation have maintained their identity all these long centuries in spite of all that's happened to them?
How? They stand still, don't they? Unique among the nation. Yes, this is God's movement in history. This is the way to look for hope for the future. Already, according to that na- of that nation, uh, of the seed of David, according to the flesh, has come the greater of s- than Solomon. He already sits on the throne of the Lord. One day he shall come, and he shall reign, and eventually he shall set up the great eternity of glory. Yes, and as we think of that, therefore, it might be a thing, wouldn't it, to spend just a little time looking at some of the steps which were taken in the prototype to get from Adam to the point where a man sat on the throne of the Lord.
And looking at those steps, learn what lessons we can. First of all, then, according to Chronicles, was the fact of the rise of Israel from the nation. And then, swiftly, the historian moves to the rise of King David. There was an earlier king by the name of Saul. He rebelled against God, and therefore God turned the kingdom over to the, uh, David, son of Jesse. In the rest of the book of First Chronicles, the book is the account of the various stages of David's rise to power.
Would you care to look at it? Because that would help us from going to sleep, wouldn't it, anyway? Just let us look how the historian marks the several stages of, uh, David's rise to power. Chapter ten verse fourteen, the beginning of it. End of the sentence, God slew Saul and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse. And then all Israel, says chapter eleven, came to make him king. Now look on to chapter fourteen verse two: And David perceived that the Lord had established him king over Israel, for his kingdom was exalted on high for his people, Israel's sake.
So now he's not only king, but the kingdom is established. And feeling secure, he did what oriental monarchs had a habit of doing. He took more wives and begat more sons and daughters, and thus built up a pretty powerful royal house, Josie. Turn over the pages with me now to chapter uh eighteen and verse fourteen for the next great stage in David's rise to power. Eighteen fourteen: and David reigned over all Israel, and he executed judgment and justice unto all his people. And now there follows not a list of his wives and sons, but a list of the officers of state that were under him, Joab over the host, and so and so was the recorder, and such and such were priests, and somebody was a scribe, and so on and so forth.
The list of the rulers of state under David. And then turn over to chapter twenty three and verse one: Now David was old and full of days, and he made Solomon his son king over Israel. As we shall subsequently find, what happened was now David semi-retired, and he made Solomon co-regent with him. He made his son Solomon king in that sense. And it is in that background that chapter twenty nine finally says, in the verses we read, chapter twenty nine verse twenty two: and they made Solomon the son of David king the second time.
That is, now he was made king in his own right, and his father was old and presently died. The rise of David and the steps that David took on the way to establish this great age of peace and plenty in Israel. Oh, what a lovely story, isn't it? For the first thing David did, you know, when he came to the throne of all Israel, he had been king in Hebron over two tribes, but subsequently the other tribes came, the ten tribes, and uniting as one nation in a way they had not been united for years, they united around David, and David saw what he had to do to unify that nation.
You see, there never would have been peace unless there had been unity, would there? The trouble with our old world, isn't it? These names, they can sound beautiful, you know, FC Bar and, um, Rosemary and Maximilian and, uh, Pete. I sound nice, but sometimes the reality that the names represent, you know, can be, well, how would you put it to be polite? Can be, well, a little bit difficult. They don't always fit together, do they what, to make a decent picture. What they do most of the time, but sometimes, you know, even people with Christian names, hmm, they don't always get on very well.
And it has been known for Christian churches, instead of being, uh, this side, this one step within paradise, they'll become places of disharmony and strife. Remains to this present, doesn't it? One of the great problems if the politicians are trying to get world peace, the problem is not lack of food or lack of minerals. The problem is these names and what they represent. How do you get people to live together in unity and organize them together so that they make a sensible pattern of life? How would you do it? How would you do it for a whole world?
The task that is, isn't it? And at the level of the prototype, that was the first thing David set about doing when he became king of all twelve tribes. And what he did was this. He went to Jebus, the town that really belonged to Judah originally, but had long since been kept hold of by the Jebusites, the old Canaanites, so nobody in actual fact possessed it. He went with his army and with the armies of all Israel, they captured Jebus, and they turned it into the capital city of the whole nation. They hadn't had a capital city before worth talking of.
Now they had a capital city. And it was a very wise move on David's part, wasn't it? Because he, he didn't choose a city right in the heart of Judah. He chose a city right on the fringe between Benjamin and Judah and the others, so that everybody, whatever tribe they belong to, should feel that Jerusalem was their city, and the man that came from Naphtali felt Jerusalem was his city, as well as the chap that came from Judah. They felt it was their city too, you'll see. And Jerusalem became the heartthrob of all the tribes. Oh, you think what Jerusalem meant to the ancient Israelites. You can gauge that by reading the Psalms, can't you, that the pilgrims used to sing when they went up to Jerusalem, and when they first caught sight of the city and entered its gates, oh Jerusalem, our feet stand within your walls, oh Jerusalem.
And to this present nineteen ninety two, Jerusalem stands, doesn't it? Center to world politics at the moment. Center to Judaism wherever they live around the world. A city destined to see great things internationally yet, isn't it? Because it became the very city where our Lord was crucified, to which he will return, of course. The literal earthly Jerusalem. But more than that, when Earth's little history is done and the great eternal city comes out of the new heavens toward the new earth, its name shall be not New Sydney, as you're aware, but New Jerusalem.
Ah, the city of the redeemed, the center of our unity. Listen to Paul. The Jerusalem which is above is free, who is the mother of us all. The city that unites all believers. You all say, Abraham looked for that city built on the foundations whose builder and maker is God, yes. Build on the great foundation of justification by faith. The Jerusalem which is above.
The mother of us all. Ah. And the secret of its interest to the ancient Israelites, they called it the city of David. Yes. Even the ten tribes, when they came to David, they said, look here, sir, you know, even when Saul was king, it was you that God chose to lead us. You led us out to battle. You brought us home victorious. You were our leader, and we came to see that God had made you king, and now we want to make you king. And the secret of their unity was each man's heart loyalty to David.
That's going to be the secret of the unity of the universe, you know. In the name of Jesus shall every knee bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He it is that fought the great battle of Calvary. He it is that will hold the vast company of the redeemed in eternal union, and do it not by law and regulation, but by the personal devotion of every redeemed person to him.
Hmm. Let me ask you, what do you make of that? Is that fairy step, fairy story stuff? Well, I should have to come and probe your heart, shouldn't I? Ask your heart, is it true? What is it, my good Christian friend, that keeps you in the Christian pathway? Ah, you say, ah, when all is said and done, I love the Lord Jesus.
That that will find you one of these days amongst the multi uncounted, uncountable millions of the redeemed in that eternal city, the city of a great king. Ah, what next did he do? What was the next big move? Well, we read of that, of course, in chapters uh fifteen and sixteen. He had, first of all, he founded the great city Jerusalem. Then he brought the ark up to Jerusalem. Well, the first time he did it, he made a mistake.
We'll pass by that for the moment and come to the second occasion when he did it properly. He brought the ark up, not the tabernacle thing. Things were in great disorder in those days. So he didn't bring up the tabernacle to Jerusalem, but he did bring up the ark to Jerusalem. And we have to ponder that for a moment, don't we? What it means, what it meant. So we must go back into history to ask what it would have meant to David and to the crowd that's lined the road towards Jerusalem and lined the city streets for this, to them, tremendous spectacle. For you see, to the devout Israelites, it wasn't just a golden box with cherubim on the top that was now coming to Jerusalem.
Israel fervently believed that on that box, that wooden box overlaid with gold, between the wings of the outstretched cherubim was the divine presence, the Lord of heaven and earth, sat enthroned on the cherubim on that ark. That's what they believed anyway, even if you don't, they believed it. So that when they saw the ark coming, it was the Lord was coming to Jerusalem. Hence the exceeding fervor of King David, as he humbled himself in his devotions before that ark.
It was the Lord coming. The transcendent Lord, now coming to Jerusalem, enthroned invisibly upon the ark of his covenant, coming to Jerusalem to be installed in the city. You'd have loved to have been there, wouldn't you? Oh, my brother, my brother, my sister, one day, not in prototype nor in mere symbol, we shall see him. Oh, what wonder that will be. Oh, I shall see him descending the sky, coming for you, for me.
To see him one day coming in his glory, his feet to stand on the Mount of Olives. This is our hope. This same Jesus, said the angels, that you have assen- you have seen ascend into heaven, shall so come in like manner as you have seen him go. We shall see him, shall we? Oh, we shall see him. Jesus is coming. Sing that glad word. Coming of the Lord. You see that, you say that's only halfway through First Chronicles.
What w- what happened after that then? What happened after that? Well, to be brief, the rest of the story is that the last enemies were destroyed. Yes. There was the old king of Adam, A- Ammon. He had made himself a nuisance over many centuries and made himself a desperate nuisance at this stage. And it was a complicated warfare, but at last Ammon was conquered, and they took the crown off the head of the king of Adam, and they put it on David's head. Lovely, isn't it, Wato? And then there were the giants, that lot of hobgoblins or foul fiends that went around about the place, you'll see, those great muscular giants, brood of giants.
And David and his men, say the chapters, finished off and mopped up and eventually destroyed the very last giants. Yeah. The greatest enemy of the Lord. Well, at this stage, when God's purpose was almost completed, Satan rose up, and he moved David to commit such a sin as nearly ruined the whole thing. And of David to number the people. And even Joab, who was not renowned for his godliness, said, but your majesty, why, why, why, why would you want to number the, the people for?
Why do you want to know the number? And we can see the answer, can't we? David had fallen victim to the devil's own sin. The sin of pride. Then Jerusalem and the whole scheme stood in doubt and danger. The angel of the Lord came with his sword of judgment, inflicting pestilence, and stood over Jerusalem. When David saw the destroying angel in deep repentance, he went out into the open and said, Lord, it's I that have sinned, not these sheep.
Then slay me instead of the sheep. And the great plague was stayed, and Satan's attempt at the very last to ruin it all came to nothing. Our blessed Lord at Calvary, he who had never yielded to pride, yet went forth, didn't he? To meet the judgment of God on our behalf. The shepherd giving himself for the sheep. The Bible tells us that at the end of the millennium, Satan shall have his last fling.
Thou shall be put down, and then the very last enemy of all shall be destroyed. For the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Good story, this, isn't it? And what about that then? What, what, what followed after that? Well, David started to retire because his eye was on the future. He had reigned till now at last all enemies were put down, but what he had in mind was, above all things else, the building in Jerusalem of the great temple of God. He himself was not allowed to build it.
He would have to wait for the reign of his son Solomon, the reign of absolute peace and plenty and glory. Then it should be built. David, in his last years, wanted to be free in his time to concentrate on what lay at his heart as the most significant thing to do. So he made his son Solomon regent, was a co-regent to look after the practical affairs of the kingdom, while David gave himself, uh, to the, to preparing the material for the temple and getting ready all the organization of the tribes and the people, so that when the temple was built, they, each man and woman, would be in place to take their place.
Handlestick makers, bread makers, laundry women, trompetiers, you'll see priests, Levites, whoever they were, whatever their gift. But as each one went about his daily business around the great temple, the very glory of God might manifest itself to them and through them, and a whole return through their many different gifts to the glorious worship of God, so that it should be like some vast orchestra, each instrument with its own ability and note, whatever its task, being filled with the glory of God and coming back in one glorious harmony to the divine pleasure.
That was David's idea. And he spent his last years getting the the material and preparing it so that when the day dawned and the great age began, the temple could be erected. Hm. I put a question to you. If you were retired and, uh, didn't have to work anymore, you know, to buy the old jam and the cornflakes, what would you think was the most rewarding thing to do in life? If you said to yourself, like King David, well, you know, give me another seventy five years and I shan't be here.
So I can afford to let the younger generation, uh, earn the cornflakes and this, that, and the other. I'd like to give myself to something that's really worthwhile. What would you do? You say, you know, I've always wanted to retire so I could go yachting. Oh yes, that's good, yes. Must be very pleasant. Anything else you'd like to do? Something that would last. Well, here's a something. To prepare material, when the great day of eternity dawns, can be used in the construction and the erection of the eternal tabernacle of God.
That's the goal of history, isn't it? That is what will give significance to the multi-million names, and not only names, but the personalities behind them. That is what is going to give significance and pattern and meaning to them. Life is but a preparation for that great event. Ours the privilege to see, first of all, that by God's grace we are prepared and refined and our gift developed to take part in that great heavenly orchestra of the redeemed.
Ours is a supreme privilege, each in his or her different way, to go out and get material, or to work on material that others have got, and fashion and refine and help and assist in the saving and polishing and developing of human personalities, that they take their place in the great eternal tabernacle of God. Hm. Kind of an interesting story, that in Con- First Chronicles, isn't it?
And if that's what it's about, wonder really what Second Chronicles is about. But then, that on another occasion. Thank you for your patient listening, and may God bless his word.
