1 CHRONICLES 10 AND 11 (FROM CAC'S NOTES)

^[p. 250] 1 CHRONICLES 10 AND 11 (FROM CAC’S NOTES)

1 Chronicles 10: 1 - 14; 1 Chronicles 11: 1 - 3

David is introduced as the prince in chapter 5 (verse 2), the service of song in chapter 6 and in chapter 9 the levitical trust to see that every detail is ready for service. All is so rich in typical meaning, all speaking of Christ.

The history in this book begins by showing us the end of the unfaithful man. We have not his history here but his end in death. God was pleased to test man after the flesh for forty centuries, particularly in Israel, so that his character might be known by experience. Christ does not get His place with any of us until we learn what the flesh is and that the end of it is in death. The Philistines did not actually kill Saul; he fell on his sword, but it is said in this chapter that Jehovah slew him and transferred the kingdom to David, the son of Jesse.

The valiant men of Jabesh-Gilead would show, in burying Saul and his sons, that it is right to respect the position in which God has set a man, even if he has failed in it. David always did so. The simple fact here is that Saul was dead and buried. It is what we have to come to as regards ourselves. Paul’s account of it is that God removed him (Acts 13: 22). The men of Jabesh-Gilead represent persons who own the act of God in a reverential manner. They identified themselves with what God had done; they regarded it as a matter of personal exercise. This would be something like taking up the exercise of baptism. God puts this great institution at the very gate of christian profession. It often takes a lifetime to learn all that is bound up in it. Christ is the great lesson book for us now.

^[p. 251] It is not simply that the unfaithful man is dead, but that he is dead in the death of the faithful Man. We are baptized unto Christ; we are put into relation to Him by baptism, but it is also to His death. I suppose that no one was ever baptized to Christ until after He had died. He died for me that He might be my life. So all Israel assembled to David in Hebron and said, “We are thy bone and thy flesh”. It is a complete change over from Saul to David. When Man said it in the garden it was Christ typically owning the assembly as of Himself, but in 1 Chronicles 11 it is the saints who are taking that ground. They are transferred in mind and affection into kindred with Christ or, even more than that, into corporate identification with Him. Our bodies are members of Christ. 1 Corinthians 10 is the apprehension of being one bread. It never says we are one cup. We could not be that because it is the blessing to which we respond in blessing it. It is possible for us to come to the moral reality that we are His bone and His flesh.

We find that there had been discernment of David’s leadership in times past. There is always, I believe, a preparatory work in individuals before we are brought to Christ assembly-wise. There is the thought of Him as Prince, leading and feeding the people; everything centres in Him. God’s great thoughts as to Him come before the heart.

David’s making a covenant in Hebron is like the Lord committing Himself to His own in resurrection; they anoint David as King in Hebron. He was to have absolute control; it is like saying, ‘Lord’, to Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are outside the domain of flesh and sin and death altogether when we anoint Him. It is an experience to be known after the Supper. Then we should get the services ordered under the same Lord.