1 Kings 1:28-39
David Appointing Solomon
The earlier part of this chapter must be taken into account in order to get
the right view of this incident. David’s eldest surviving son, Adonijah, had
claimed the succession, and gathered his partisans to a feast. Nathan,
alarmed at the prospect of such a successor, had arranged with Bathsheba
that she should go to David and ask his public confirmation of his promise
to her that Solomon should succeed him, and that then Nathan should seek an
audience while she was with the king, and, as independently, should prefer
the same request.
The plan was carried out, and here we see its results. The old king was
roused to a flash of his ancient vigour, confirmed his oath to Bathsheba,
and promptly cut the ground from under Adonijah’s feet by sending for the
three who had remained true to him—Nathan, Benaiah, and Zadok—and
despatching them without a moment’s delay to proclaim Solomon king, and then
to bring him up to the palace and enthrone him. The swift execution of these
decisive orders, and the burst of popular acclamation which welcomed
Solomon’s accession, shattered the nascent conspiracy, and its supporters
scattered in haste, to preserve their lives. The story may be best dealt
with, for our purpose, by taking this brief summary and trying to draw
lessons from it.
I. It points anew the truth that ‘whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he
also reap.’
As Absalom, so Adonijah, had been spoiled by David’s
over-indulgence (verse 6), and having never had his wishes checked, was now
letting his unbridled wishes hurry him into rebellion. Nor was that fault of
David’s the only one which brought about the miserable squabbles round his
deathbed, as to who should wear the crown which had not yet fallen from his
head. Eastern monarchies are familiar with struggles for the crown between
the sons of different mothers when their father dies. David had indulged in
a multitude of wives, and his last days were darkened by the resulting
intrigues of his sons. No doubt, too, Solomon was disliked by his brethren
as the child of Bathsheba, and the shame of David’s crime was an obstacle in
his younger son’s way. Thus, as ever, his evil deeds came home to roost, and
the poisonous seed which he had sown grew up and waved, a bitter harvest,
which he had to reap. Repentance and forgiveness did not neutralise the
natural consequences of his sin. Nor will they do so for us. God often
leaves them to be experienced, that the experience may make us hate the sins
the more.
II. The sad defection to Adonijah of such tried friends as Joab and Abiathar
has its lesson.
The reason for Joab’s treachery is plain. He had been
steadily drifting away from David for years. His fierce temper could not
brook the king’s displeasure on account of his murders of Abner and Amasa,
and his slaying of Absalom had made the breach irreparable. No doubt, David
had made him feel that he loved and trusted him no longer; and his old
comrade in many a fight, Benaiah, had stepped into the place which he had
once filled. Professional rivalry had darkened into bitter bate. Joab
commanded the native-born Israelites; Benaiah, the ‘Cherethites and
Pelethites,’ who are now generally regarded as foreign mercenaries. They
were David’s bodyguard, and were probably as heartily hated by Joab and the
other Israelite soldiers as they were trusted by David. So there were
reasons enough for Joab’s abetting an insurrection which would again make
him the foremost soldier. He wanted to be indispensable, and would prop the
throne as long as its occupant looked only to him as its defender. Besides,
he probably felt that he would have little chance of winning distinction in
a kingdom which was to be a peaceful one.
Abiathar’s motives are unexplained, but if we notice that he had been
obliged to acquiesce in the irregular arrangement of putting the
high-priest’s office into commission, we can understand that he bore no
goodwill to Zadok, his colleague, or to David for making the latter so. Self
was at the bottom of these two renegades’ action. The fair fellowship, which
had been made the closer because of dangers and privations faced together,
crumbled away before the disintegrating influences of petty personal
jealousies. When once self-regard gets in, it is like the trickle of water
in the cracks of a rock, which freezes in winter and splits the hardest
stone. No common action for a great cause is possible without the
suppression of sidelong looks towards private advantage. Joab and Abiathar
tarnished a life’s devotion and broke sacred bonds, because they thought of
themselves rather than of God’s will. Surely they must have had some pangs
as they sat at Adonijah’s feast, when they thought of the decrepit old king
lying in his chamber up on Zion, and remembered what he and they had come
through together.
III. We may note the pathetic picture of decaying old age which is seen in
David.
He was not very old in years, being about seventy, but he was a
worn-out man. His early hardships had told on him, and now he lay in the
inner chamber, the shadow of himself. His love for Bathsheba had died down,
as would appear both from her demeanour before him, and from her ignorance
of his intentions as to his successor. She was little or nothing to him now.
He seems to have been torpidly unaware of what was going on. The noise of
Adonijah’s revels had not disturbed his quiet. He had not even taken the
trouble to designate his successor, though ‘the eyes of all Israel were upon
him that he should tell who was to sit on his throne after him’ ( v. 20 ).
Such neglect was criminal in the circumstances, and brings out forcibly the
weary indifference which had crept over him. Contrast that picture with the
early days of swift energy and eager interest in all things. Is this
half-comatose old man the David who flashed like a meteor and struck swift
as a thunderbolt but a few years before? Yes, and a like collapse of power
befalls us all, if life is prolonged. Those who most need the lesson will be
least touched by it; but let not the young glory in their strength, for it
soon fades away; and let them give the vigour of their early days to God,
that, when the years come in which they shall say, ‘I have no pleasure in
them,’ they may be able, like David, to look back over a long life and say,
with him, that the Lord ‘hath redeemed my soul out of all adversity.’
IV. We note the flash of fire which blazed up in the dying embers of David’s
life.
The old lion could be roused yet, and could strike when roused. It
took much to shake him out of his torpor. Nathan’s plan of bringing the
double influence of Bathsheba and himself to bear was successful beyond what
he had hoped. All that they desired was a formal declaration of Solomon as
successor. They knew that the king’s name was still dear enough to all
Israel to ensure that his wish would settle the succession; and they would
have been content to have left the actual entrance of Solomon on office till
after David’s death, so sure were they that his word was still a spell. But
the old king, shaking off his languor, as a lion does the drops from his
mane, goes beyond their wishes, and strikes one decisive blow as with a
great paw, and no second is needed. Without a moment’s delay, he sends for
the trusty three, and bids them act on the instant. So down to Gihon goes
the procession, with the youthful prince seated on his father’s mule, in
token of his accession, the trusty bodyguard round him with Benaiah at their
head, and the great prophet Nathan, side by side with the high-priest Zadok,
representing the divine sanction of the solemn act.
It would take stronger men than the spoiled Adonijah and his revellers to
upset anything which that determined company resolved to do. The lad is
anointed with the holy oil which Zadok as high-priest had the right to bring
forth from the temporary sanctuary. That signified and effected the
communication from above of qualifications for the kingly office, and
indicated divine appointment. Then out blared the trumpets, and the glad
people shouted ‘God save the king!’ What thoughts filled the young heart of
Solomon as he stood silent there his vision in Gibeon may partly tell. But
the distant roar of acclaim reached Adonijah and his gang as they sat at
their too hasty banquet.
They had begun at the wrong end. The feast should have closed, not
inaugurated, the dash for the crown. They who feast when they should fight
are likely to end their mirth with sorrow. David’s one stroke was enough.
They were as sure as Nathan and Bathsheba had been that the declaration of
his wish would carry all Israel with it, and so they saw that the game was
up, and there was a rush for dear life. The empty banqueting-hall proclaimed
the collapse of a rebellion which had no brains to guide it, and no reason
to justify it. Let us learn that, though ‘the race is not always to the
swift,’ promptitude of action, when we are sure of God’s will, is usually a
condition of success. Life is too short, and the work to be done too
pressing and great, to allow of dawdling. ‘I made haste, and delayed not,
but made haste to keep Thy commandments.’ Let us learn, too, from Adonijah’s
fiasco, to see the end of a thing before we commit ourselves to it, and to
have the work done first before we think of the feast.
Nathan and Bathsheba and David all believed that God had willed Solomon’s
succeeding to the throne. No doubt, the reason for their belief was the
divine word to David through Nathan ( 2 Samuel vii. 12 ), which designated a
son not yet born as his successor, and therefore excluded Adonijah as well
as Absalom. But, while they believed this, they did not therefore let
Adonijah work his will, and leave God to carry out His purposes. Their
belief animated their action. They knew what God willed, and therefore they
worked strenuously to effect that will. We may bewilder our brains with
speculations about the relation between God’s sovereignty and man’s freedom,
but, when it comes to practical work, we have to put out the best and most
that is in us to prevent God’s will from being thwarted by rebellious men,
and to ensure its being carried into effect through our efforts, ‘for we are
God’s fellow-workers.’
1 KINGS 3:5-15:
A Young Man's Wise Choice of Wisdom
The new king was apparently some nineteen or twenty years old on his
accession. He stepped at once out of seclusion and idleness to bear the
whole weight of the kingdom. The glories of David’s reign, his brother
Adonijah’s pretensions to the crown, the smouldering hostility of Saul’s old
partisans, made his position difficult and his throne unsteady. No doubt,
‘the weight of too much dignity’ pressed on the youth, and this dream found
a point of origin in his waking thoughts. God does not thus reveal Himself
to men who seek Him not; and the offer in the vision is but the repetition
of what Solomon felt in many a waking moment of meditation that God was
saying to him, and the choice he makes in it is the choice that he had
already made. He who seeks wisdom first is already wise.
I. Note the wide possibilities opened by the divine offer.
Our narrative
brings that gracious offer into connection with Solomon’s lavish sacrifice
before the Tabernacle at Gibeon. ‘God loveth a cheerful giver’ and because
these thousand burnt offerings meant devotion and thankfulness, therefore He
who lets no man be the poorer for what he gives to Him, and is honoured
most, not by our givings to, but by our takings from Him, comes in the quiet
night, and puts the key of all His treasures into the young king’s hands. In
a very real sense this divine voice is but the putting into words of the
fact as to every young life. The all but boundless possibilities before
every young man and woman give solemnity to their position, which they too
often do not recognise till youth is past. The future lies blank before
them, ready to receive what they choose to write on its page. Once written,
it is indelible. They are still free from the limitations of habit and
associations. They have still the capacity and the opportunity of choice.
There are limits, of course, but still it is scarcely exaggeration to say
that a man may become almost anything he likes, if he strongly wills it when
young, and sticks to his resolve. When the liquid iron flows from the blast
furnace, it may be run into any mould; but it soon cools and hardens, and
obstinately keeps its shape, in spite of hammers.
If young men and women could but see the possibilities of their youth, and
the issues that hang on early choice, as clearly as they will see them some
day, there would be fewer wasted mornings of life and fewer gloomy sunsets.
But the misery is that so many do not choose at all, but just let things
slide, and allow themselves to be moulded by whatever influence happens to
be strongest. For one man who goes wrong by deliberate choice, with open
eyes, there are twenty who simply drift. Unfortunately, there is more evil
than good in the world; and if a lad takes his colour from his surroundings,
the chances are terribly against his coming to anything high, noble, or
pure. This world is no place for a man who cannot say ‘No.’ If we are like
the weeds in a stream, and let it decide which way we shall point, we shall
be sure to point downwards. It would do much to secure the choice of the
Good, if there were a clear recognition by all young persons of the fact
that they have the choice to make, and are really making it unconsciously.
If they could be brought, like Solomon, to put their ruling wish into plain
words, many who are not ashamed to yield to unworthy desires would be
ashamed to speak them out baldly. Let each ask himself, ‘Suppose that I had
to say out what I want most, dare I avow before my own conscience, to say
nothing of God, what it is?
Looked at from a somewhat different point of view, God’s offer to Solomon
presupposes God’s knowledge and approval of his wishes. He does not give
blank cheques to those whom He cannot trust to fill them up rightly. When
James and John tried to commit Jesus to a blind promise ‘that Thou shouldest
do for us whatsoever we shall ask of Thee,’ their answer was a question as
to what they wished. ‘Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give
thee the desires of thine heart.’ God loves us too well to let us have carte
blanche unless our wills run parallel with His. He is a foolish and cruel
father who promises compliance with all his child’s unknown wishes. Not such
is our Father’s loving discipline. It is to those who ‘abide in Christ,’ and
have Him abiding in them, moulding their longings and prayers, that the
great promise is sealed: ‘Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done
unto you.’
II. Note next the wise choice of wisdom.
‘Had not Solomon been wise before, he had
not known the worth of wisdom. The dunghill cocks of this world cannot know
the price of this pearl; those that have it know that all other excellencies
are but trash and rubbish unto it.’ Solomon’s prayer shows the temper with
which he entered on his reign. There is no exultation; his serious and
clear-eyed spirit sees in rule a heavy task. He contrasts his inexperienced
rawness with the ‘truth and righteousness’ and veteran maturity of his great
predecessor, and trembles to think that he, a mere lad, sits on David’s
throne. But he pleads with God that He has made him king, and implies that
therefore God is bound to fit him for his office. That is the boldness
permitted to faith,—to remind God of His own past acts, which pledge Him to
give what He has put us into circumstances to need. With beautiful humility,
Solomon dwells on his youth and inexperience, and on the vastness of the
charge laid on him. All these considerations are the motives for his choice
of a gift, and also pleas with God to grant his request.
He asks for the practical wisdom needed for ruling in these old days, when
the king was judge as well as ruler and captain. Was this the highest gift
that he could have asked or received? Surely the deep longings of his father
for communion with God were yet better. No doubt the ‘wisdom’ of the Book of
Proverbs is religion and morality as well as true thinking, but the
‘understanding heart to judge Thy people’ which Solomon asked and received
is narrower and more secular in its meaning. There is no sign in his
biography that he ever had the deep inward devotion of his father. After the
poet-psalmist came the prosaic and keen-sighted shrewd man of affairs. The
one breathed his ardent soul into psalms, which feed devotion to-day; the
other crystallised his discernment in ‘three thousand proverbs,’ and, though
his ‘songs were one thousand and five’ they touched a lower range, both of
poetry and religious feeling, than his father’s, as may be expressed by
calling them ‘songs,’ not ‘psalms.’
But though the request is not the highest, it may well be taken as a pattern
by the young. Note the view of his position from which it rises. To Solomon
dignity meant duty; and his crown was not a toy, but a task. The
responsibilities, not the enjoyments, of his station were uppermost in his
mind. That is the only right view to take. Youth is meant to be
enthusiastic, and to feed its aspirations on noble ideals, and if, instead
of that, it does as too many do, especially in countries where wealth
abounds, namely, regards life as a garden of delights, or sometimes as a sty
where young men may wallow in ‘pleasures,’ then farewell to all hopes of
high achievements or of an honourable career. Youthful ideals will fade fast
enough; but alas for the life which had none to begin with! Note the sense
of insufficiency for his task. Youth is prone to be over-confident, and to
think that it can do better than its fathers, who were as confident in their
time. There is a false humility which flattens the spirit and keeps from
plain duty; and there is a true lowliness which feels that the task must be
attempted, though the heart may shrink, and which impels to prayer for
fitness not its own. He who tells God his consciousness of impotence, and
asks Him to supply His strength to its weakness and His wisdom to its
inexperience, will never shirk work because it is too great, nor ever fail
to find power according to his need.
III. Note God’s answer.
Solomon gets his wish, and much which he had not
asked besides. The divine answer is in two parts. First, the reasons for the
large gift; and second, the details of the gift. His not wishing material
good was the very reason why he obtained it. That is not always so; for
often enough a man whose whole nature is sharpened to one point, in the
intensity of his desire to make money, will succeed. But what then? He will
be none the better, but the poorer, for his wealth. But this is always
true,—that the people who do not make worldly good their first object are
the people who can be most safely trusted with it, and who get most
enjoyment out of it. Whether in the precise form of the gift to Solomon or
not, outward good does attend a life which sets duty before pleasure, and
desires most to be able to do it. All earthly good is exalted by being put
second, and degraded as well as corrupted by being put first. The water
lapped up in the palm, as the soldier marches, is sweeter than the abundant
draughts swilled down by self-indulgence. ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God,
. . . and all these things shall be added unto you.’
Note the largeness of the gift. When God is pleased with a man’s prayers, He
gives more than was asked, and so teaches us to be ashamed of the smallness
of our expectations, and widens our desires by His overlapping bestowments.
First, He gives the wisdom asked. Dependence on God, rising from the sense
of our own ignorance, has a wonderful power of bringing illumination, even
as to small matters of practical duty. Solomon asked it, to guide him in his
judicial decisions; and the first case to which it was applied, when
received, was a miserable quarrel between two disreputable women. A devout
heart, purged from self-conceit, is often gifted with a piercing wisdom
before which the crafty shrewdness of the world is abashed. We cannot be
‘wise as serpents’ unless we are ‘harmless as doves.’ The world may think
such ‘wisdom’ folly, but she will be ‘justified of her children.’ Is the
saying of James’s Epistle a reminiscence of Solomon’s dream, ‘If any of you
lack wisdom, let him ask of God, . . . and it shall be given him’?
Then follows the grant of the unasked goods,—riches, honour, and length of
days. Surely we hear an echo of these promises in that magnificent
description of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs: ‘Length of days is in her
right hand; in her left hand are riches and honour’ These and similar gifts
may or may not follow our choice of divine wisdom as our truest good If we
have really chosen it, we shall regard them as make-weights, to be
thankfully received and rightly used, but not as indispensable. If we pursue
wisdom for the sake of getting these, we shall lose both it and them. If we
have set our desires most earnestly on the most worthy things, which are
God’s love and a character hallowed by His grace, we shall be rich indeed,
whether what the world calls wealth be ours or no; and our days will be long
enough if in them we have been prepared for the fuller wisdom and undying
life of heaven.
Solomon realised his youthful aspirations. The only way to be sure of
getting what we wish, is to wish what God desires to give,—even Himself,—and
to ask it of Him. Solomon, like many a young man, outgrew his early ‘dream.’
Was he happier or wiser when he was a worn-out voluptuary, smiling with
cynical scorn at his young self, or when, with generous enthusiasm, he felt
the solemnity of life and the awfulness of duty, and asked God to help his
insufficiency? Was not the dream truer and more real than the waking hours
of profligacy and unreal ‘enjoyment’?
1 Kings 4:25-34
The Great Gain of Godliness
The glories of Solomon’s reign kindle the writer of this Book of Kings to
patriotic enthusiasm, all the more touching if, as is probable, he wrote
during Israel’s exile. The fair vision of the past would make the sad
present still sadder. But it is not patriotism only which guides his pen; he
recognises that Solomon’s glory was the result of Solomon’s religion, and by
portraying it he would teach the eternal truth that godliness hath ‘promise
of the life that now is’ as well as ‘of that which is to come.’ The passage
brings out three characteristics of Solomon’s reign and character: the peace
enjoyed by Israel during his time, his wealth, and his wisdom.
I. That beautiful phrase for a time of secure enjoyment of modest, material
good in a simple state of agricultural society, ‘dwelt safely, every man
under his vine and under his fig tree’ occurs frequently in the Old
Testament, and breathes the very essence of a calm life of rural felicity
and restful enjoyment of wholesome joys. How different from the feverish
ideal predominant in our great cities to-day! Which is the nobler and the
more likely to yield abiding content and to be the ally of high and serious
thought—this antique picture of leisurely, unambitious lives, or the
scramble for wealth which destroys repose, and is so busy getting that it
has no time either rightly to enjoy, or nobly to expend, its wealth? Those
who have their country’s truest prosperity at heart may well sigh for the
return of the vanished ideal of Solomon’s days; and those who would make the
most of themselves must in some measure seek to conform their own lives to
it.
But another view may be taken of this picture of national prosperity.
Remember the time at which it was painted,—a time when the prosperity of a
nation was thought to consist in conquest, and when the arts of peace were
despised. How far beyond his era was the king who set his highest glory in
securing for his people tranquil lives on their fertile homesteads, and
condemned the vulgar glory of the conqueror! How far beyond his era was the
writer who felt that the fairest page in his book was not that which told of
battles and triumphs, but that which portrayed a peaceful reign, when swords
were turned into ploughshares! The world has not yet learned that the
highest function of government is to promote individual prosperity. The
vulgar, wicked notion of ‘glory’ bewitches the nations still. A Europe,
armed to the teeth and staggering under the weight of its weapons, has need
to go to school to this old Hebrew ideal. ‘They didn’t know everything down
in Judee,’ but they knew that peace has nobler victories than war has. The
people who see nothing in the world’s history but natural evolution have a
hard nut to crack in accounting for the singular fact that the Jew somehow
or other had got hold of a truth to which the most advanced nations to-day
have scarcely grown up.
II. The wealth of Solomon is illustrated by his large equipment of chariots
and horsemen.
The older habits of the nation had not favoured the use of
either, and their employment by Solomon was a sign of growing luxury, which
had the seeds of evil in it. But the novelty was characteristic of the
change coming over Israel in his day, and of its closer intercourse with
other nations. The number of forty thousand for the stalls of the horses is
an evident clerical error, which is corrected in the parallel passage in 2
Chronicles 9:25 to the more probable number of four thousand. A
well-organised staff looked after provisioning the cavalry and chariot
horses wherever they were quartered. This one instance of Solomon’s
resources should be connected with the other details of these. The intention
of all is, not only to magnify his wealth, but to bring out the fulfilment
of the promise made to him as part of the reward of his prayer for wisdom,
that he should have the inferior good which he had not asked, ‘both riches
and honour.’
The principle which the writer of this book would confirm and exemplify is,
that to the man who seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness all
these things shall be added. Now the whole order of supernatural providences
in the Old Testament was directed to making material prosperity depend on
obedience to God. And we cannot assert that the New Testament order has the
same purpose in view. ‘Prosperity was the blessing of the Old Testament;
adversity is the blessing of the New.’ But even in Old Testament times
outward prosperity did not always follow godliness, and the problem which
has tortured all generations had already been raised, as the Book of Job and
Psalm lxxiii show.
Undoubtedly, religion does contribute to prosperity. The natural tendency of
the course of life which Christianity enjoins is to lead to moderate, modest
success in a worldly point of view. Not many millionaires owe their millions
to the practice of Christian virtues, but many a man owes his elevation from
poverty to modest competence to the character and habits which his religion
has stamped on him. People who get converted in the slums soon get out of
the slums.
But, whether Christianity helps a man to worldly success or not, it helps
him to get all the good out of the world that the world can give. It may, or
may not, give dainties, but it will make brown bread sweet. It may, or may
not, give wealth, but it will make the ‘little that a righteous man hath
better than the riches of many wicked.’ They who know no higher good than
earth can yield know not the highest good of earth; they who put worldly
prosperity and treasure second find them far more precious and sweet than
when they ranked them as first.
III. But the crown of Solomon’s gifts was his wisdom.
And his elevation of
intellectual and moral endowments above material good is as remarkable as
his similar elevation of peace above warlike fame, and suggests the same
questions as to the source of ideas so far ahead of what was then the
world’s point of view. Observe that Solomon’s ‘wisdom’ in all its
departments is traced to God its giver. Observe, too, that expression
‘largeness of heart,’ by which is meant, not width of quick sympathy or
generosity, but what we should call comprehensive intellect. The ‘heart’ is
the centre of the personal being, from which thoughts as well as affections
flow, and the phrase here points to thoughts rather than to affections.
Solomon, then, was a many-sided student, and his ‘genius’ showed itself in
very various forms. He lived before the days of specialists. The region of
knowledge was so limited that a man could be master in many departments.
Nowadays the mass has become so unmanageable that, to know one subject
thoroughly, we have to be ignorant of many, like the scholar who had given
his life to the study of the Greek noun, and, dying, lamented that he had
not confined himself to the dative case! Practical wisdom, which had its
field In doing justice between his subjects; shrewd observation of life,
with wit to discern resemblances and to put wisdom into homely, short
sayings; poetic sensibility and the gift of melodious speech; and, added to
these manifold endowments, interest in, and rudimentary knowledge of,
natural history and botany, make the points specified as Solomon’s wisdom.
‘A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome,’—
the first and greatest of the few students or philosophers who have sat on
thrones.
But the main thing to notice is that in Solomon we see exemplified the
normal relation between religion and intellectual power and learning. Judge,
artist, scientist, and all other thinkers and students, draw their power
from God, and should use it for Him. And, on the other hand, Solomon’s
example is a rebuke to those narrow-minded Christians who look askance at
men of learning, letters, or science, as well as to those still more
narrow-minded men of intellectual ability who think that science and
religion must be sworn foes. If our religion is what it should be, it will
widen our understanding all round.
‘Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell.’
1 Kings 5:1-12
Great Preparations for a Great Work
The building of the Temple was begun in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign (
1 Kings 6:1). The preparations for so great a work must have taken much
time, so that the arrangement with Hiram recorded in this passage was
probably made very early in the reign. That probability is strengthened if
we suppose, as we must do, that the embassy from Hiram mentioned in verse I
was sent to congratulate Solomon on his accession. If so, the latter’s
proposal to get timber and stones from the Lebanon would be made at the very
commencement of the reign. Three years would not be more than enough to get
the material ready and transported. Great designs need long preparation. Raw
haste wastes time; deliberation is as needful before beginning as rapid
action is when we have begun.
I. 1 Kings 5:3-5 set forth very forcibly the motives which impelled the young
king to the work, and may suggest to us the motives which should urge us to
diligence in building a better temple than he reared.
He begins by reference
to his father’s foiled wish, and to the reason why David could not build the
house. Not only was it inappropriate that a warlike king should build it,
but it was impossible that, whilst his thoughts were occupied and his
resources taxed by war, he should devote himself to such a work. In Assyria
and Egypt the great warrior kings are the great temple-builders, but a
divine decorum forbade it to be so in Israel.
Solomon next thankfully describes his own happier circumstances. Observe his
designation of Jehovah in verse 4 as ‘my God,’ and compare with verse 3 ,
where He is called David’s God. The son had inherited the divine protection
and the father’s sense of personal relation to Jehovah. That is a better
legacy than a throne. Well had it been for Solomon if he had held by the
faith of his first days of royalty! Such a sense of a personal bond of love
protecting on the one hand, and love trusting and obeying on the other, is
the spring of all true service of God, whether it is busied in
temple-building or in anything else.
We note also the grateful recognition of benefits received, and the tracing
of peace and outward prosperity to God’s care. There was not a cloud in the
sky. The horizon was clear all round, and it was ‘the Lord my God,’ who had
made this ease for Solomon. We are often more ready to recognise God’s hand
in sorrows than in joys. When He smites, we try to say ‘It is the Lord!’ Do
we try to say it when all things are smooth and bright?
The effect of blessings should be thankfulness, and the proof of
thankfulness is service. So Solomon did not take prosperity as an inducement
to selfish luxurious repose, but heard in it God’s call to a great task. If
all the rich men and all the leisurely women who call themselves Christians
would do likewise, there would be plenty of workers and of resources for
Christ’s service, which now sorely lacks both. How many of such ‘lay up
treasure for themselves, and are not rich toward God’! How many fritter away
their leisure in vanities, having time for any amusement or folly, but none
for Christian service!
The man whom Jesus called ‘Thou fool!’ not the wise king, is the pattern for
a sad number of professing Christians. ‘Thou hast much goods laid up for
many years.’ What then? ‘I purpose to build an house for the name of the
Lord’? By no means. ‘I will build greater barns, and that will give me
something to do, and then I will take mine ease.’
We note, too, that Solomon was impelled to his great work by the knowledge
that God had appointed him to do it. The divine word concerning himself,
spoken to his father, sounded in his ears, and gave him no rest till he had
set about obeying it ( v. 5 ). The motives of the great temple-builders of
old, as they themselves expound them in hieroglyphics and cuneiform, were
largely ostentation and the wish to outdo predecessors; but Solomon was
moved by thankfulness and by obedience to his father’s will, and still more,
to God’s destination of him. If we would look at our positions and blessings
as he looked at his in the fair dawning of his reign, we should find
abundant indications of God’s will regarding our work.
Solomon uses a remarkable expression as to the purpose of the Temple. It is
to be ‘an house for the name of the Lord.’ That is not the same as ‘for the
Lord.’ Pagan temples might be intended by their builders for the actual
residence of the god, but Solomon knew that the heaven of heavens could not
contain Him, much less this house which he was about to build. We are fairly
entitled, then, to lay stress on that phrase, ‘the Name.’ It means the whole
self-revelation of God, or, rather, the character of God as made known by
that self-revelation.
The Temple was, then, to be the place in which the God who fills earth and
heaven was to manifest Himself, and where His servants were to behold and
reverence Him as manifested. The Shechinah was the symbol, and in one aspect
was a part, of that self-revelation. However, in common speech the Temple
was spoken of as the house of Jehovah. The same thought which is expressed
in Solomon’s fuller phrase underlay the expression,— He dwelt ‘not in
temples made with hands’ but His name was set there, and the structure was
reared, not so much for Him as that worshippers might there meet Him.
II. The rest of the passage deals with Solomon’s request to Hiram, and the
preparation of the material for the Temple. Solomon’s first care was to
secure timber and stone.
His own dominions can never have been well wooded,
and there are many indications that the great central knot of mountainous
land, which included the greater part of his kingdom, was comparatively
treeless. He therefore proposed to Hiram to supply timber from the great
woods on Lebanon, which have now nearly died out, and offered liberal
payment.
The parallel account in 2 Chronicles makes Solomon offer specified
quantities of provisions for Hiram’s workmen, and makes Hiram accept the
terms. Verse 11 of this chapter says that the provisions named there were
for the Tyrian king’s ‘household.’ This may possibly mean the workmen, who
would be regarded as Hiram’s slaves, but, more probably, ‘household’ means
‘court,’ and Solomon had not only to feed the army of workmen, but to supply
as much again for the great establishment which Hiram kept up. The little
slip of seacoast, with the mountain rising sharply behind, which made
Hiram’s kingdom, could not grow enough for his people’s wants. His country
was ‘nourished’ by Palestine, long centuries after this time ( Acts 12:20
), and the same was the case in Solomon’s period. In verse 11 , the quantity
of oil is impossibly small as compared with that of wheat. 2 Chronicles
reads ‘twenty thousand’ instead of ‘twenty,’ and the Septuagint inserts
‘thousand’ in verse 11 , which is probably correct.
With all his Oriental politeness and probably real wish to oblige a powerful
neighbour, Hiram was too true a Phoenician not to drive a good bargain. He
was king of ‘a nation of shopkeepers,’ and was quite worthy of the position.
‘Nothing for nothing’ seems to have been his motto, even with friends. He
would love Solomon, and send him flowery congratulations, and talk as if all
he had was his ally’s, but when it came to settling terms he knew what his
cedars were worth, and meant to have their value.
There are a good many people who get mixed up with religious work, and talk
as if it were very near their hearts, who have as sharp an eye to their own
advantage as he had. The man who serves God because he gets paid for it,
does not serve Him. The Temple may be built of the timber and stones that he
has supplied, but he sold them, and did not give them, therefore he has no
part in the building.
How different the uncalculating lavishness of Solomon! He knows no better
use for treasures than to expend them on God’s service, and ‘all for love,
and nothing for reward.’ That Is the true temper for Christian work. He to
whom Christ has given Himself should give himself to Christ; and he who has
given himself should and will keep back nothing, nor seek for cheap ways of
serving the Lord, He who gives all, be it two mites, or a fishing-boat and
some torn nets, or great wealth like that which Solomon found in his
father’s treasuries and devoted to building the Temple, gives much; and he
who gives less than he can gives little.
Solomon’s work was, after all, outward work, and fitter for that early age
than the imitation of it would be now. The days for building temples and
cathedrals are past. The universal religion hallows not Gerizim nor
Jerusalem, but every place where souls seek God The spiritual religion asks
for no shrines reared by men’s hands; for Jesus Christ is the true Temple,
where God’s name is set, and where men may behold the manifested Jehovah,
and meet with Him. But we have work to do for Christ, and a temple to build
in our own souls, and a stone or two to lay in the great Temple which is
being built up through the ages. Well for us if we use our resources and our
leisure, for such ends with the same promptitude, thankful surrender, and
sense of fulfilling God’s purpose, as animated the young king of Israel!
1 Kings 6:7
Building in Silence
The Temple was built in silence. It ‘rose like an exhalation.’
‘No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, Like some tall palm the mystic
fabric sprung.’
Perhaps it was merely for convenience of transport and to save time that the
stones were dressed in the quarries, but more probably the silence was due
to an instinct of reverence. We may fairly use it as suggesting two
thoughts.
I. How God’s house is mostly built in silence.
‘The Kingdom of God cometh not with
observation.’
(1) In reference to its advance in the world.
Destructive work is noisy, constructive
work is silent. God was in ‘the still small voice,’ not in the wind or the
earthquake or the fire. Christ’s own career, how silent it was! Drums are
loud and empty. The spread of the kingdom was unnoticed by the world’s great
ones—Caesars, philosophers, patricians, and it silently grew underground.
Hence may flow—
(a) An encouragement to those whose work is inconspicuous.
(b) A lesson not to mistake noise and notoriety for spiritual progress.
(c) Guidance as to our expectations of the advance of Christ’s kingdom. It
will transform society by slow, often unnoticed, degrees, by radical change
of individuals’ habits. The elevation of humanity will be slow, like the
imperceptible rise of the Norwegian coast. Sudden changes are short-lived
changes. ‘Lightly come, lightly go.’ What matures slowly will last long.
(2) In reference to its growth in our souls.
Silence is needed for that. There must be much still communion and quiet
reflection. The advance in the Christian life is variously likened to a
battle, since there are antagonists and struggle is needed to overcome; and
to vegetable or corporeal growth, which the mysterious indwelling life works
without effort and almost without consciousness, but it is also likened to
the erection of a building, in which there is continuity, and each
successive course of masonry is the foundation for that above it. That work
of building is work that must be done in silence. If we are to grow in the
grace and knowledge of Jesus, we must silently drink in the sunshine and
dew, and so prosperously pass from blade to ear, and thence to full corn in
the ear.
Surely nothing is more needed in these days of noisy advertisement, and
measurement of the importance of things by the noise that they can make,
than this lesson of the place of silence in Christian progress, both for
individuals and for the Christian Church as a whole.
II. How God’s house is built of prepared stones.
That is true, in one view of the matter, in regard to the Church on earth,
for there must be the individual act of repentance and faith before a soul
is fit to be built into the fabric of the Church.
There is providential training of men for their tasks before these are given
to them.
But the highest application of the symbol which we venture to find in our
text is to the relation between the earthly and the heavenly life.
This world is the quarry where the stones are dressed for the Temple in the
heavens.
( a ) Life is the chipping and hewing. The unnecessary pieces are struck off
with heavy mallet and sharp chisel. Pain and sorrow are thus explained, if
not wholly, yet sufficiently to bring about submission and trust.
( b ) The Builder has His plan clearly before Him, and works accurately to
realise it. He perfectly knows what He means to build, and every stroke of
the dressing-tool is accurately directed. There are no mistakes made in His
quarrying.
( c ) We may be sure that the prepared stones will be brought to the Temple
site and built into it. There lie gigantic half-hewn pillars in abandoned
quarries in Syria and Egypt. But no one will ever say of the divine
Temple-Builder: He began to build and was not able to finish. It remains a
problem how the old builders managed to transport these huge stones from the
quarries to the site, but we may be sure that the Architect of the ‘house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’ knows how to bring every stone
that has been prepared here, to the place prepared for it, and for which it
has been prepared. We may repose on the Apostle’s assurance that ‘He that
has begun a good work in you will perform it,’ or rather on the more sure
word of Jesus Himself, ‘He that overcometh, I will make him a pillar in the
temple of My God.’
1 Kings 8:54-63
The King "Blessing" His People
The great ceremonial of dedicating the Temple was threefold. The first stage
was setting the ark in its place, which was the essence of the whole thing.
God’s presence was the true dedication, and that was manifested by the
bright cloud that filled the sanctuary as soon as the ark was placed there.
The second stage was the lofty and spiritual prayer, saturated with the
language and tone of Deuteronomy, and breathing the purest conceptions of
the character and nature of God, and all aglow with trust in Him. Then
followed, thirdly, this ‘Blessing of the Congregation.’ The prayer had been
uttered by the kneeling king. Now he stands up, and, with ringing tones that
reach to the outskirts of the crowd, he gathers the spirit of his prayer
into two petitions, preceded by praise for national blessings, and followed
by exhortation to national obedience. A huge sacrifice of unexampled
magnitude closes the whole.
I. Note the thankful retrospect of the nation’s past (1 Ki 8:56).
Solomon ‘blessed the congregation’ when, in their name, he lifted up his
voice to bless the Lord, prayed that God would incline their hearts to keep
His law, and would maintain their cause, and exhorted them to keep their
hearts perfect with Him. We bless each other when we ask God to bless, and
when we draw each other nearer Him. Standing there in the new Temple, with a
united nation gathered before him, the cloud filling the house, and peace
resting on all his land to its farthest border, the king looks back on the
long road from Sinai and the desert, and sums up the whole history in one
sentence. The end has vindicated the methods. There had been many a dark
time when enemies had oppressed, and many a hard-fought field had been
stained with Israel’s blood; but all had tended to this calm hour, when
Israel’s multitudes were gathered in worship, and their unguarded homes were
safe. There had been many heroes in the long line.
‘Time would fail’ him ‘to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah; of David
and Samuel . . . who . . . turned to flight armies of aliens.’ One name
alone is worthy to be named,—the name of the true Deliverer and Monarch. It
is the Lord who ‘hath given rest unto His people.’ We look on the past most
wisely when we see in it all the working of one mighty Hand, and pass beyond
the great names of history or the dear names which have made the light of
our homes, to the ever-living God, who works through changing instruments;
and ‘the help that is done on earth, He doeth it Himself.’ We read the past
most truly when we see in all its vicissitudes God’s unchanging
faithfulness, and recognise that the foes and sorrows which often pressed
sore upon us were no breach of His faithful promises, but either His loving
chastisement for our faithlessness, or His loving discipline meant to
perfect our characters. We read the past best from the vantage-ground of the
Temple. From its height we understand the lie of the land. Communion with
God explains much which is else inexplicable. Solomon’s judgment of Israel’s
checkered history will be our judgment of our own when we stand in the
higher courts of the heavenly home, and look from that height upon all the
way by which the Lord our God hath led us. In the meantime, it is often a
trial for faith to repeat these words; but the blessing that comes from
believing them true is worth the effort to stifle our tears in order to say
them.
II. Note the prayer for obedient hearts (1 Kings 8:57, 58).
The proper
subject-matter of this petition is ‘that He may incline our hearts to walk
in His ways,’ and God’s presence is invoked as a means thereto. The deepest
desire of a truly religious soul is for the felt nearness of God. That goes
before all other blessings, and contains them all. Nothing is so needful or
so sweet as that The presence of God is the absence of evil, the evil both
of pain and of sin, as surely as the rising sun is the routing of night’s
black hosts. ‘The best of all is, God is with us.’ The prayer again looks
back to the past, and asks that the ancient experiences may be renewed. The
generations of those who trust in God are knit together, and the wonders of
old time are capable of repetition to-day. Faith can say with deeper meaning
than the Preacher, ‘That which hath been is that which shall be.’ However
varying may be the forms, the fact of a divine presence and help according
to need is invariable, and they that have gone before have not exhausted the
fountain, which will fill the vessel of the latest comer as it did that of
the first. How beautifully the abiding God and the fleeting series of ‘our
fathers’ is contrasted! A moment of triumph, when some work, like that of
building the Temple, which has for ages been looked forward to, and into
which the sacrifices and aspirations of a long line of dead toilers are
built, brings strongly before all thoughtful men the continuity of a nation
or a Church, and the transiency of its individual members. It should suggest
the abiding God yet more strongly than it does the passing fathers. The
mercy remains the same, while the receivers change. The sunshine and the
tree are the same, though the leaves which glisten and grow in the light
have but one summer to live.
But Solomon desires that God may be with him and his people for one specific
purpose. Is it to bring outward prosperity, or to extend their territory, or
to give them victory? As in his choice in his dream, so now, he asks, not
for these things, but for an inward influence on heart and will. What he
wants most for himself and them is moral conformity to God’s will. All must
be right if that be right. The prayer implies that, without God’s help, the
heart will wander from the paths of duty. The weakness of human nature, and
the consequent necessity for God’s grace in order to obedience, were as
deeply felt by the devout men of the Old Testament as by Apostles. They are
felt by every man who has honestly tried to measure the sweep and inwardness
of God’s law, and to realise it in life. We need go but a very short way on
the road to discover that temptations to diverge lie so thick on either
side, and that our feet grow weary so soon, that we shall make but little
progress without help from above.
The synonyms for the law are worthy of notice. Why are there so many of
these in the Old Testament? For the same reason that there are so many for
‘money’ in English,—because those who made the language thought so much
about the thing, and delighted in it so much. As ‘commandments,’ it was
solemnly imposed by rightful authority, and obedience was obligatory. The
word rendered ‘statutes’ means something engraved, or written, and recalls
the tables inscribed by God’s finger. ‘Judgments’ are the divine decisions
or sentences as to what is right, and therefore the infallible clue to the
else bewildering labyrinth. To obey these commandments, to read that solemn
writing, and to accept these decisions as our guides, is man’s perfection
and blessedness; and for that God’s felt presence is indispensable.
III. Note the prayer for God’s defence (1 Kings 8:59, 60).
The proper
subject-matter of this petition is that God would maintain the cause of king
and nation; and it is preceded by a petition that, to that end, the
preceding prayer may be answered, and is followed by the desire that thereby
the knowledge of God may fill the earth. The prayer for outward blessings
comes after the prayer for inward heart-obedience. Is not that the right
order? Our prayers need to be prayed for, and a true desire is not contented
with one utterance. To ask that what we have asked may be given is no vain
repetition, nor a sign of weak faith, or undue anxiety. How bold the figure
in asking that the prayer may lie before God day and night, like some
suppliant at the foot of His throne!
Note the grand aim of God’s help of Israel,—the universal diffusion of His
name among all the peoples of the earth. Solomon understood the divine
vocation of Israel, and had risen above desiring blessings only for his own
or his subjects’ sake. Later ages fell from that elevation of feeling, and
hugged their special privileges without a thought of the obligations which
they involved. God’s choice of Israel was not meant for the exclusion of the
Gentiles, but as the means of transmitting the knowledge of God to them. The
one nation was chosen that God’s grace might fructify through it to all. The
fire was gathered into a hearth, that the whole house might be warmed. But
selfishness marred the divine plan, and Israel became a nonconductor, and
the privileges selfishly kept became corrupt; as the miser’s corn stored in
his barns in famine breeds weevils. Christians need no more solemn lesson of
what comes from selfishly hoarding spiritual blessings than the fate of
Israel. God hath shined into our hearts, that we may give to others who sit
in the dark the light which we possess; and if we fail to do so, the light
will darken within us.
IV. The blessing ends with one brief, all-comprehensive charge to the
people, which seems based, by its ‘therefore,’ on the preceding thought of
Jehovah as the only God.
The only attitude corresponding to His sole and
supreme Majesty is the entire devotion of heart, which leads to
thoroughgoing obedience to His commandments. The word rendered ‘perfect’
literally means ‘entire’ or ‘sound,’ and here expresses the complete
devotion of the whole nature. Solomon meant that it should be complete, in
contradistinction to any sidelong glances to idolatry. The principle
underlying that ‘therefore’ is that, God being what He is, our only God and
refuge, the only adequate hope and object of our nature, we should give our
whole selves to Him. We, too, are tempted to bring Him divided hearts, and
to carry some of our love and trust as offerings at other shrines. But if
there be ‘one God, and none other but He,’ then to serve Him with all our
heart and strength and mind is the dictate of common sense, and the only
service which He can accept, or which can bring to our else distracted
natures peace and satisfaction. His voice to us is, ‘My son, give Me thy
whole heart.’ Our answer to Him should ever be that prayer, ‘Lord, . . .
unite my heart to fear Thy name.’ A divided heart is misery. Partial trust
is distrust. ‘Love me all in all, or not at all,’ is the requirement of all
deep, human love; and shall God ask less than men and women ask from and
give to one another?
1 Kings 8:59 The Matter of a Day in Its
Day
I have ventured to diverge from my usual custom, and take this fragment of a
text because, in the forcible language of the original, it carries some very
important lessons. The margin of our Bible gives the literal reading of the
Hebrew; the sense, but not the vigorous idiom, of which is conveyed in the
paraphrase in our version. ‘At all times, as the matter shall require,’ is,
literally, ‘the thing of a day in its day’; and that is the only limitation
which this prayer of Solomon places upon the petition that God would
maintain the cause of His servants and of His people Israel. The kingly
suppliant got a glimpse of very great, though very familiar, truths, and at
that hour of spiritual illumination, the very high-water mark of his
relations to God—for I suppose he was never half as good a man afterwards—he
gave utterance to the great thought that God’s mercies come to us day by
day, according to the exigencies of the moment.
Now, I think that in the words ‘the matter of a day in its day’ we may see
both a principle in reference to God’s gifts and a precept in reference to
our actions. Let us look at these two things.
I. A principle in reference to God’s gifts.
Of course, obviously—and I need not say more than a word about that— we find
it so in regard to the outward blessings that are poured into our lives. We
are taught, if the translation of the New Testament is correct, to ask,
‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ and to let to-morrow alone. Life comes
to us pulsation by pulsation, breath by breath, by reason of the continual
operation, in the material world, of the present God’s present giving. He
does not start us, at the beginning of our days, with a fund of physical
vitality upon which we thereafter draw, but moment by moment He opens His
hand, and lets life and breath and all things flow out to us moment by
moment, for no creature would live for an instant except for the present
working of a present God. If we only realised how the slow pulsation of the
minutes is due to the touch of His finger on the pendulum, and how
everything that we have, and the existence of us who have it, are results of
the continuous welling out from the fountain of life, of ripple after ripple
of the waters, everything would be more sacred, and more solemn, and fuller
of God than, alas! it is.
But the true region in which we may best find illustrations of this
principle in reference to God’s gifts is the region of the spiritual and
moral bestowments which He in His love pours upon us. He does not flood us
with them: He filters them drop by drop, for great and good reasons. I only
mention three various forms of this one great thought.
God gives us gifts adapted to the moment. ‘The matter of a day,’ the thing
fitted for the instant, comes. In deepest reality, all is one gift, for in
truth what God gives to us is Himself; or, if you like to put it so, His
grace. That little word ‘grace’ is like a small window that opens out on to
a great landscape, for it gathers up into one encyclopaediacal expression
the whole infinite variety of beneficences and bestowments which come
showering down upon us. That one gift is, as the Apostle puts it in one of
his eloquent epithets, ‘the manifold grace of God,’ which word in the
original is even more rich and picturesque, because it means the
‘many-variegated’ grace—like some rich piece of embroidery glowing with all
manner of dyes and gold. So the one gift comes to us manifold, rich in its
adaptation to, and its exquisite fitness for, the needs of the moment. The
Rabbis had a tradition that the manna in the wilderness tasted to every man
just what each man needed or wished most. It Is as though in some imperial
city on a day of rejoicing, one found a fountain in the market-place pouring
out, according to the wish of the people, various costly wines and
refreshing drinks, God’s gift comes to us with like variety—the ‘matter of a
day in its day.’
God never gives us the wrong medicine. In whatever variety of circumstances
we stand, that one infinitely simple and yet infinitely complex gift
contains what we specially want at the moment. Am I struggling? He extends a
hand to steady me. Am I fighting? He is my ‘sword and shield, my buckler,
and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.’ Am I anxious? He comes
into my heart, and brings with Him a great peace, and all waves cease to
toss and smooth themselves into a level plain. Am I glad? He comes to
heighten the gladness by some touch of holier joy. Am I perplexed in mind?
If I look to Him, ‘His coming shall be as the morning,’ and illumination
will be granted. Am I treading a lonely path? There is One by my side who
will neither change, nor fail, nor die. Whatever any man needs, at the
moment that he needs it, that one great Gift will supply ‘the matter of a
day in its day.’
God gives punctually. Many of us may have sometimes sent Christmas presents
to India or Australia some weeks before. Some will arrive in time and some
will be too late. God’s gifts never reach us before the day, and they never
come after the day. ‘The Lord shall help her, and that right early,’ said
the grand psalm. What the Psalmist was thinking about was, I suppose, that
miraculous intervention when the army of Sennacherib was smitten in a night.
Timid and faithless souls in Jerusalem, as they looked over the walls and
saw the encircling lines of the fierce foes drawing closer and closer round
the doomed city, must have said, ‘Our Lord delayeth His coming,’ and could
not stand the test of their faith and patience, involved in God’s apparent
indifference to the need of His people. To-morrow the assault is to be
delivered. To-night
‘The Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed’;
and the would-be assailants, when that to-morrow dawned, were lying stiff
and stark in their tents. God’s help comes, not too soon, lest we should not
know the blessedness of trusting in the dark; and not too late, lest we
should know the misery of trusting in vain.
Peter is lying in prison. Herod intends, after the Passover, to bring him
out to the people. The scaffolding is ready. The first watch of the night
passes, and the second. If once it is fairly light, escape is impossible.
But in the grey dawn the angel touches the sleeper. He wakes while his
guards sleep. There is no need for hurry. He who has God for his Deliverer
has no occasion to ‘go out with haste.’ So, with strange and majestic
leisureliness, the escaping prisoner is bid to put on his shoes and gird
himself. No doubt, he cast many a scrutinising glance at the four sleeping
legionaries whom a heedless movement might have wakened. When all is ready,
he is led forth through all the wards, each being a separate peril, and all
made safe to him. The first gate opens, and the second gate opens, and the
iron gate that leads into the city opens, and quietly he and the angel go
down the street. It is light enough for him to see his way to the house
where the brethren are assembled. He gets safe behind Mary’s door before it
is light enough for the gaolers to discover his absence, and for the
pursuers to be started in their search. The Lord did help him, and that
right early—‘ the matter of a day in its day.’
We shall find, if we leave our times in His hand, that the old simple faith
has still a talismanic power to quiet us. His time is best, so be patient,
and be trustful in your patience.
Again, God gives gifts enough, and not more than enough. He serves out our
rations for spirit as for body, as they do on shipboard, where the sailors
have to take their pots and plates to the galley every day and for each
meal, and get enough to help them over the moment’s hunger. The manna fell
morning by morning. ‘He that gathered much had nothing over, he that
gathered little had no lack.’ So all the variety of our changeful
conditions, besides its purpose of disciplining ourselves and of making
character, has also the purpose of affording a theatre for the display, if I
may use such cold language—or rather let me say affording an opportunity for
the bestowment—of the infinitely varied, exquisitely adapted, punctual, and
sufficient grace of God.
II. But now, secondly, a word about the text as containing a precept for our
action.
Let me put what I have to say in three plain sentences.
First, take short views of the future. Of course, we have to look ahead, and
in reference to many things to take prudent forecasts, but how many of us
there are who weaken ourselves and spoil to-day by being ‘over-exquisite to
cast the fashion of uncertain evils’! It is a great piece of practical
philosophy, and I am sure that it has much to do with our getting the best
out of the present moment, that we should either take very short or very
long views of the future. Either
‘Let the unknown to-morrow
Bring with it what it may,’
or look beyond the last of the days into the unseen light of an unsetting
sun. If I must anticipate, let me anticipate the ultimate, the changeless,
the certain; and let me not condemn my faculty of picturing that which is to
come, to look along the low ranges of earthly life, and torture myself by
imagining all the possibilities of evil of which my condition admits, as
being turned into certainties to-morrow. Take ‘the matter of a day in its
day.’ ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ Let us make the minute
what it ought to be, then God will make the whole what it ought to be.
Again I say, let us fill each day with discharged duties. If you and I do
not do the matter of the day in its day, the chances are that no to-morrow
will afford an opportunity of doing it. So there will come upon us all, if
we are unfaithful to this portioning out of tasks to times, that burden of
an irrevocable past, and of the omitted duties that will stand reproving and
condemning before us, whensoever we turn our eyes to them. ‘It might have
been, and it is not’; does a sadder speech than that fall from human lips?
Brethren, the day, though it is short, is elastic; and no one knows how much
of discharged service and accomplished work and fulfilled responsibilities
can be crammed into its hours, until he has earnestly tried to fill each
moment with the task which belongs to the moment. ‘The sluggard will not
plough by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest and have
nothing.’ If our day is not filled full of work, some to-morrow will be
filled full, in retrospect, of thorns and stings. Life is short; ‘the night
cometh when no man can work.’ ‘I must work the works of Him that sent me
while it is day.’
Lastly, I would say, keep open a continual communion with God, that day by
day you may get what day by day you need. There are hosts of people who call
themselves, and, in some kind of surface way, are, Christian people, who
seem to think that they get all that they need of the grace of God in a
lump, at the beginning of their Christian career, and who are living upon
past communications and the memory of these, and are forgetting that they
can no more live and be nourished upon past gifts of God’s grace than upon
the dinner that they ate this day last year. We must hang continually upon
Him, if we are continually to receive from His hand. No past blessing will
avail for present use.
Dear friends, the purpose of this principle, which I have been trying to
illustrate in God’s way of dealing with us, is that we shall be content to
be continually dependent, and consciously as well as continually dependent,
upon Him. In the measure in which we keep our hearts open for the perpetual
influx of His grace, in that measure shall we be ready for each day as it
comes; for its trials and its joys, for its possibilities and its duties.
This, too, must be remembered—that the days bolted together make months; and
the months, years; and the years, life; and that life as a whole is ‘a day’;
and that there is a ‘matter’ of that day which can only be done in its day.
Oh that none of us may be the subjects of that sad wail from a Saviour’s
heart and a Saviour’s lips, which lamented, ‘If thou hadst known, at least,
in this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace; but now’—the night has
come, and the darkness of the night, and—‘they are hid from thine eyes!’
1 Kings 9:1-9 Promises and Threatenings
The successful end of a great work is often the beginning of a great
reaction. When the tension is slackened, the whole nature of the worker is
relaxed, and the temptation to slothful self-indulgence is strong. God knows
our frame, and mercifully times His manifestations to the moments of special
need. So, when Solomon had finished his great task, ‘the Lord appeared the
second time, as He had appeared at Gibeon.’ There had been no manifest token
of approval during all the years of building the Temple, for none was
needed; but now there was danger that the finished work might be followed by
languor and indifference, and therefore once more God spoke words of
stimulus, both promises and warnings.
A solemn alternative is set before the king, both parts of which are fitted
to rouse his energy and inspire him to faithful obedience. The same
alternatives are presented to each of us. In 1 Kings 9:3-5 God promises blessed
results from clinging to Him and keeping His statutes; in 1 Kings 9:6-9 He
mercifully threatens the tragic issues of departure. In applying these to
ourselves we must remember that outward prosperity was attached to a devout
life more closely in Israel than it is now. But, though the form of the
blessings dependent on doing God’s will alters, the reality remains
unaltered.
I. The promises to Solomon are preceded by the assurance that his prayer had
been heard.
The answer corresponds very beautifully to the petitions. God
has ‘put His name’ in the Temple, as the descent of the Glory to rest
between the cherubim visibly showed, and thus has fulfilled Solomon’s
petition; but the answer surpasses the prayer in that the presence of ‘the
Name’ is promised ‘for ever.’ Similarly, in Psalm cxxxii. , the answer to
the petition ‘Arise into Thy rest’ transcends the petition which it answers,
and adds the same promise of perpetuity, ‘This is My rest for ever .’ Again,
Solomon had prayed, ‘that Thine eyes may be open towards this house,’ and
God answers with the expanded promise that not His eyes only, but His heart
shall be there perpetually. He is ‘able to do exceeding abundantly above all
that we ask or think,’ and He delights to surprise us with over-answers to
our prayers. We cannot widen our desires so far but that His gifts will
stretch beyond them on every side.
But the promise of perpetual dwelling in the Temple is conditional, as
appears in the latter part of God’s answer, though no condition is stated at
first. The promises to Solomon individually are all contingent. The
all-important ‘if’ at the beginning of verse 4 governs the whole. The divine
eulogium on David, which introduces these promises, suggests how mercifully
God regards the imperfect lives of His servants. That merciful
interpretation of conduct is removed by a whole universe from palliation of
sin. It affords no ground for our thinking little of our inconsistencies.
David’s crime was sternly rebuked and sorely punished, but still his life,
in its main drift and outline, could be presented as a pattern, as being
marked by integrity of heart and uprightness. The moon shines like a disc of
silver, though its surface is pitted with extinct volcanoes.
We may note, too, the pregnant description in outline of the elements of a
devout life, as here enjoined on Solomon. The first requisite is to walk
before God; that is, to nourish a continual consciousness of His presence,
and to regulate all actions and thoughts under the thrilling and purifying
sense of being ‘ever in the great Taskmaster’s eye.’ Only we are not to
think of Him as only a Taskmaster, but as a loving Friend and Helper. A
child is happy in its little work or play when it knows that its father is
looking on with sympathy. The sense of God’s eye being on us should ‘make a
sunshine in a shady place,’ should lighten labour and sweeten care. It is at
the root of practical obedience, as its place in this sequence shows; for
there follow it, in verse 4, ‘integrity of heart and uprightness,’ on which
again follow obedience to all God’s commandments.
First must come the clear recognition of God’s relation to us. That
recognition will influence our relation to Him, bending hearts to love and
wills to submit, and the whole inward being to cleave to Him. Thence, and
only thence, will issue in the life the streams of practical obedience. It
is vain to seek to produce righteous deeds unless our hearts are right, and
it is as vain to labour at making our hearts right unless thoughts of what
God is to us have purified them. Morality is rooted in religion. On the
other hand, no knowledge of the truth about God is worth anything unless it
touches the hidden man of the heart, and then passes outward to mould
conduct. ‘Faith without works is dead.’ Correct theology and glowing
emotions lack their consummation if they do not impel to holy and
God-pleasing living.
The reward promised in verse 5 is for Solomon alone. His throne is to be
‘established for ever.’ The duration intended by that expression is
therefore not absolutely unlimited, but equivalent to ‘during thy lifetime.’
Solomon could only affect himself by his obedience. The continuance of the
kingdom after him depended on his successors. His possession of the throne
during his life was the beginning of the fulfilment of the promise to David
referred to in verse 5, but it was only the beginning, and, like all God’s
promises, it was contingent on obedience. We receive no outward kingdom if
we are servants of God; but, in deepest truth, the righteous man is a king,
‘lord of himself, though not of lands.’ All creatures serve the soul that
serves God, and all Christ’s brethren share in His royalty.
II. The second part of this divine utterance is addressed to the whole
nation, as is marked by the ‘ye’ there compared with the ‘thou’ in verse 4,
and it lays down for succeeding generations the conditions on which the new
Temple, that stood glittering in the bright Eastern sunshine, should retain
its pristine beauty. While the address to Solomon incited to obedience by
painting its blessed consequences, that to the nation reaches the same end
by the opposite path of darkly portraying the ruin that would be caused by
departure from God. God draws by holding out a hand full of good things, and
He no less lovingly drives by stretching out a hand armed with lightnings.
A plain declaration of the evils that dog disobedience is as loving as a
bright vision of the good that attends on submission. The sternest
threatenings of Scripture are spoken that they may never need to be
executed. There is no more foolish misconception of Christianity than that
which calls it harsh because it reveals that ‘the wages of sin is death.’
Note that the threatenings come second, not first. God’s heart is averse to
smite. To lavish blessing is His delight, and judgment is ‘His work, His
strange work,’ forced on Him by sin.
The special sin against which Israel was warned was that to which it was
specially prone and tempted by its circumstances. When all the nations
‘worshipped stocks and stones,’ it was hard to ‘keep thy faith so pure’ as
to have no share in the universal bewitchment. So the whole history of the
people is one of lapses into idolatry and of chastisements leading to
temporary amendment, until the long, sharp lesson of the Captivity
eradicated the disposition to be as the nations around. No doubt, idolatry
in its crudest forms is outgrown now in Western lands, but sense still
craves material embodiment of the unseen, and still feels the pressure of
the material and palpable. Hence the earthward direction of so many lives.
Asthmatical patients often breathe more easily in the slums of a city than
in pure mountain air, and sense-bound men find difficulty in respiration on
the heights of a religion which minimises the appeal to sense.
The penalty attached to departure from God was the loss of the land. Israel
kept it on a tenure like that of some of our English nobility, who hold
their estates on condition of doing some service to the sovereign. Of
course, that connection between serving God and national prosperity involved
continual supernatural intervention, and cannot be applied entirely to
national prosperity now; but it still remains true that moral and religious
corruption saps the foundations of a people’s well-being, and, when carried
far enough, destroys a people’s existence. The solemn threat of becoming ‘a
proverb and a byword’ among all peoples is quoted, apparently from
Deuteronomy 28:37 , and has been only too terribly fulfilled for weary
centuries.
The promise in verse 3, that God’s eyes and heart should be perpetually on
the Temple, has now the condition attached that Israel should cleave to the
Lord. Otherwise it will be cast out of His sight, and be a mark for scorn
and wonder. The vivid representation of a dialogue between passers-by is
quoted from Deuteronomy 29:24-26, where it is spoken in reference to the
nation. It carries the solemn thought that God’s name is made known among
the heathen by the punishment of His unfaithful people, not less really, and
sometimes more strikingly, than by the blessings bestowed on the obedient.
If we will not magnify Him by joyous service, by rewarding which, with good
He can magnify Himself, He will magnify Himself on us by retribution, the
more severe as our blessings have been the greater. The lightning-scathed
tree, standing white in the forest, witnesses to the power of the flash, as
its leafy sisters in their green beauty proclaim the energy of the sunshine.
Israel has, perhaps, been a more convincing witness for God, in its homeless
centuries, than ever it was when at rest in the good land. ‘If God spared
not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee.’
1 Kings 10:1-13 A Royal Seeker After
Wisdom
We feel the breath of a new era in the accounts of Solomon’s reign. One most
striking peculiarity is the friendly intercourse with the nations around.
The horizon has widened, and, instead of wars with Philistines and Ammon, we
have alliances with Egypt, Tyre, and, in the present passage, with Sheba, a
district of Southern Arabia. The expansion was fruitful of both good and
evil. It brought new ideas and much wealth; but it brought, too, luxury and
idolatry. Still Israel was meant to be ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles,’
and in this picturesque story of the wisdom-seeking queen, we have the true
relation of Israel to the nations in its purest form. The details of the
narrative. Interesting as they are, need not occupy us long.
The queen had heard the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, by
which seems to be meant his reputation of being gifted with deep knowledge
of the divine character as revealed to him. The questions which occupy
earnest souls in all lands and ages were stirring in the heart of this
woman-chief. The only way, in these old days, to learn the wisdom of the
wise, was to go to them. So the streets of Jerusalem saw the strange sight
of the long train which had come toiling up from Arabia, laden with its
characteristic produce, gold and spices and precious stones, in the
enumeration of which is reflected the wonder of the beholders at the
unaccustomed procession. But better than all her wealth was the eager
woman’s thirst for truth. Surely it is a very unworthy and unlikely
explanation of her ‘hard questions’ and purpose to suppose that she came
only for a duel of wit,—to pose Solomon with half-playful riddles. The
journey was too toilsome, the gifts too large, the accent of conviction in
her subsequent words too grave, for that. She was a seeker after truth, and
probably after God, and had known the torture of the eternal questions which
rise in the mind, and, once having risen, leave no rest till they are
answered.
So she came, though half incredulous, hoping to find some solution to what
‘was in her heart,’ and as thirsty for the answer as her country’s sands for
water. Only they who have known the pain of carrying such questions, like a
fire in their bones, can know the joy which she felt when she found one to
whom she could speak them. It is something of a drop to pass from Solomon’s
wisdom to the list of the splendours of his household, and the effect which
these produced on the queen; but the whole account of Solomon’s reign is
marked by the same naive blending of wisdom and material wealth. In those
days, outward prosperity was the sign of divine favour. But even in those
days they knew that wisdom was ‘better than rubies.’ The two elements were
both at their height in Solomon’s reign, and the lower of them finally got
uppermost, and wrecked him. Plain livi