1 CHRONICLES 21 AND 22 (NOTES OF A READING)

1 CHRONICLES 21 AND 22 (NOTES OF A READING)

1 Chronicles 21: 18 - 30; 1 Chronicles 22: 1 - 5

CAC It would be helpful to consider David and Ornan together as presenting to us great instruction in relation to the present service of God.

Ques What is represented, would you say, by Ornan?

CAC Well, I think we see the sovereign work of God in Ornan in its completeness without any complications incurred by his own experiences, for he is an unknown man.

Rem He was a Jebusite.

CAC I think the whole principle on which the house of God stands is brought out by Ornan, that is, the sovereign mercy of God. David judged his self-importance as sin and we know well we have to come to that point, and as soon as he reaches that point he has a seer — Gad is particularly called David’s seer (verse 9).

I doubt whether we come to the truth of the house without this. It is reached by the sovereign mercy of God, and we might all come into the thoughts of Christ by sovereign mercy. It is a point that brings us to all the thoughts of God at one stroke, is it not? So Ornan says, “I give it all”. But David has to go through experience that brings him to it experimentally. He learns that everything he prided himself in is sin. And then we get the seer — capacity to see things as God sees them. Gad — what a lot of spiritual endowment we have which we have never utilised! It is a great thing when we appropriate to ourselves the power of seeing as God sees. He is called “David’s seer”. We recognise that anything that gave us self-importance is judged. It is a great turning-point in the soul’s history when we begin to think of others. David, instead of numbering the people in a vainglorious way, now calls them sheep and is ready to suffer for them; that is the only spirit that is of any good in the house.

The seer comes in when the conscience has been touched. David came to it: “I have sinned greatly”. The seer gave him light as to the mind of God so as to understand this wonderful new place and position in which the blessed God is to be served. Have we the seer for this? We get insight into the way in which God would be served, it is a new principle with which we want to be well acquainted.

Ques David seems to add the altar, not the house?

CAC David identified the altar with the house; if you have the altar you have the house in principle; one simple divine element involves all the rest. It is wonderful! So Jacob had the same, but he saw the house of God in it. Though there is nothing to see yet, we can have the whole truth about the house in our soul.

Ques Does it not suggest the greatness and value of the death of Christ in all this?

CAC Well, surely.

When we have judged ourselves we get ability to see how God is approached and to think of others and see value in them and so be prepared to suffer for them. David had a deep sense of the divine value of this way of approach to God as we see in the six hundred shekels. Do we value the wonderful way of approach to God that has been opened up to us? Ornan valued the exercises of David but we are not told how he arrived at this.

Ques How do we reconcile sovereignty and it reaching us experimentally?

CAC We have to take account of both. In sovereign mercy we have redemption; we have been transferred from Adam to Christ in new creation, all on the ground of God’s sovereign mercy. We have to take account of saints in that way. I am poor, I have few shekels, but we take account of the saints as “in Christ Jesus”. You find the two lines coalesce. The experimental line is always humiliating; you never had an experience with God in your life that was not humiliating, while sovereign mercy brings you into things at a stroke. Ornan saw all that David saw. Ornan hides himself when he sees the angel, he disappears. He gets ability to contribute to the divine way. It was a great contribution, “the oxen for the burnt-offering, and the threshing-sledges for wood, and the wheat for the oblation”, and he says, “I give it all”. David had come to the divine measure of the thing, six hundred shekels of gold, and the weight of it is given. It represents a saint breaking bread, one who has come to the sense of a divine way of approach to God. He values the new movement throwing the old dispensation entirely into the shade. It was the most important moment in the history of Israel; God was giving light as to a new approach to Him all on the footing of sovereign mercy. Ornan shows you the gentile distinguished; it is really the mystery.

Ques Is not this a beautiful coupling brought together?

CAC I think that is interesting. It is new. That is what gives such exuberance to the morning meeting, because we are brought into it purely in mercy. So the threshing-floor of Ornan represents the great principle of sovereign mercy.

Rem Solomon mentions mount Moriah (2 Chronicles 3: 1).

CAC This principle is carried through into the full thought of God, so that however much we come into the light and blessing of sonship we come into it having the light of sovereign mercy; it is carried through. So we not only get sovereign mercy in Romans, but we get it in Ephesians.

Rem Moriah means ‘visions of Jah’.

CAC Yes. This chapter is an illustration typically of a soul learning the truth of Romans and Galatians, getting free from the old system and coming into the liberty of the new position. It is as if God would say, ‘Well, there is nothing here of you, everything here is of Me’. We never touch real liberty until we reach that, that everything that we stand in is of God. There is a pure product. I think we come here to do a bit of beating out so as to get rid of the chaff and get the pure wheat. The Jew is not great enough to fill God’s house, you must have the gentile to fill God’s house.

Ques How are we to understand the action of Ornan’s four sons?

CAC It is suggestive that they have come to the same point morally as David had; they went out of sight in the presence of the destroying angel. But they come into sight again; the oxen are given.

Rem It says David was afraid (verse 30). It is good to fear.

CAC We ought to be afraid of the old system of things — afraid to enquire at Gibeon, knowing what it is to be in the acceptance of the burnt-offering in the threshing-floor. And there is no linking on with the old system; it is discarded and David will not go back to it. We do not want a system that recognises man in the flesh, and the whole system of the religious world does. David represents the believer entirely delivered from the old system, and he is afraid of it. Solomon answers more to Hebron; the old system is brought spiritually into the light of the new in the sonship of Christ. We have to do at the present time with a system entirely new, all of God, and it all centres in Christ and in the burnt-offering; it has nothing to do with man after the flesh. We can hardly understand what a new thing it was for God to set up an altar of burnt-offering in the floor of Ornan.

Ques Why is it “burnt-offerings and peace-offerings” (verse 26)?

CAC I think it shows how completely David has come over to the divine side. He has finished with the old and he sees a new system all of God and all subsisting in the value of the burnt-offering. We realise our spiritual unity when we come together, a brother says what is making you supremely happy, what is welling up in your own heart. He had no right after the old system, but there is no restriction whatever in the house; there is no silent brother in the house.

Rem That is a difficult question.

CAC I do not think so, because everyone is so happy.

Rem Every one says “Glory” (Psalm 29: 9).

CAC There is not time for many but in the principle of it every brother’s heart is ready. The principle of the house is liberty. All this is on the way to sonship which we get in the next chapter.