1 CHRONICLES 22 (NOTES OF A READING)
1 CHRONICLES 22 (NOTES OF A READING)
CAC This, it is clear, is a chapter in preparation for the new order.
Ques Why do you speak of it as a new order?
CAC Because it stands in contrast to the old order in connection with the tabernacle, everything having broken down in connection with the old order. God began afresh on the principle of the sovereignty of His mercy, and the house was to be built in connection with that principle.
Rem So the house and the altar are put in the first verse.
CAC Yes, the fact that David had been accepted and his offering answered by fire showed he was accepted according to the new order and that the house was to stand in that connection.
Ques There are only four instances in Scripture where God answered by fire, I believe, showing, would you say, that the offering was according to His own thought and desire?
CAC Yes, God found pleasure in it. So that from this moment the whole book is a preparatory instruction in view of the house being fully set up — so it is most important for us.
Ques “Elohim” is added here. What is the import of that?
CAC I suppose it is God known as in relation to men. Elohim by itself would speak of His creatorial power; but Jehovah Elohim is what He is in relations with men, a very precious thing to think of. He loves to be in relationship to men, to have men near Him, and to have them in His own house on His own terms.
All that follows in this book is preparatory, and we must go through this course of education if we are to be near to God in His house and serve Him. This book was written for those who had returned from the captivity, so that it specially applies to us, for God had saints of the present period specially in view. It was intended for instruction for us if we have known what it is to come back from captivity. It is all based upon His own sovereign mercy, and what power is going to overturn that? So we have the selection of Ornan the Jebusite, whose ancestors should have been killed in Joshua’s time, and David gets all “the strangers” — it is all sovereign mercy. It is prophetic that God is going to give the gentiles a great place in His house. If that does not give us joy, I do not know what will! It should be imbedded in our souls that we have to do with God in sovereign mercy alone. We never had any promises or covenants, yet are given a place in His house. And the material is suitable, for if God is working on the line of sovereign mercy He must have suitable material; there is no limit to this preparation. Well, that is the way that God prepares for His house. It is not the finished product here, it is the material. Most of us are in the very early stages, not finished material.
But the thing is there in its completeness in the mind of God, and it is a complete thing in the mind of faith. There may be nothing to see, but faith is entitled to see the full thought of God. The saints are taken up sovereignly in order that they may be eventually a finished product to make up the house worthily. As far as I see, the wrought stones are the saints viewed from the standpoint of the divine calling. The Lord said, “Thou art Peter” (Matthew 16:18). He was a stone in the calling of God.
Rem And you see how developed he was in the epistles.
CAC So that the saints can be viewed in that light — “Ye also are built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22). That looks at the saints as wrought stones brought into their place. We need this view. The calling of God had nothing to do with any behaviour on our part; God called us because He chose us. God has prepared the works beforehand in the light of Christ; you could not add anything. I do not know that I am authorised to do anything that Christ did not do.
I think it is very beautiful to see the Lord as the antitype of David preparing the material in the days of His flesh and after His resurrection. The eleven were all divine material, and hundreds of other saints.
Rem And the strangers “from every nation of those under heaven” (Acts 2: 5).
CAC And it extends out to the gentiles in chapter 11.
Rem “And I have other sheep which are not of this fold; those also I must bring” (John 10: 16).
CAC God’s thought from the outset was to bring in the gentiles. Whether it was iron or brass or cedar wood, it all represents the kind of material suitable for the house.
Ques What do the workmen represent?
CAC The workmen represent those whom God has fitted to carry on this work. The apostles were all skilled men for the work of the house. It is all opened out in the succeeding chapters and developed in great detail, the order of the Levites and so on.
Ques Why is only the burnt-offering mentioned?
CAC I suppose that all is looked at from the divine side; it is not a question of the sin-offering or the trespass-offering.
Rem There is remarkable detail given, even the nails of the gates are mentioned — the minuteness of it! I suppose Barnabas was a nail, opening the doors for Paul to come in.
CAC It suggests the idea of things being firmly held together, which is an important thing.
If we think of Christ in His David character providing all the material — it is without limit, He provides everything. All these things represent what the saints are brought to know of God through Christ; there is no other material. Look at the impressions the apostles got from the Lord Jesus, which they never forgot, and which entered into their service in the assembly. So that to ponder the gospels would form us very much for the house. We should get impressions of God through the Lord Jesus suitable to form a constituent part of God’s house.
Rem It is the house more on the side of God being served here.
CAC I think it is service Godward that is in view; and how acceptable to God if we can bring in impressions of Himself that we have received through the Lord Jesus. His mediatorial service has not ceased; He is still ready to give us these impressions now, and continually. Then we get the great fact that the house can only be built as the thought of sonship is entertained.
Rem When Peter said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), the Lord recognised at once the material for the house.
CAC That exactly fits in with what we are saying. The house could not be built without the Son, and the thought in Solomon is not introduced in a mature way; you do not get that until the second book of Chronicles. I refer, of course, to the apprehension that the saints have of Him; it is fully matured in Him, but not with them in apprehension. It sets forth that we do not come at once to the mature thought of Christ as Son. In the gospels we get two things, the thought of David collecting the material and also the thought of sonship, both here and there as set forth in Christ.
Rem This is where Paul’s ministry comes in.
CAC You have not the mature thought of Christ in sonship till Christ was in glory. It was left to Paul, and with him you get the thought in maturity; it is not a “young and tender” thought.
Rem So we do not get it until the return from the captivity.
CAC Satan would connect His sonship with His deity. Scripture always connects Christ’s sonship with His humanity and so brings us into it. None of us has the slightest apprehension of sonship till we see it in Christ. The apostles on the mount were told “THIS IS MY BELOVED SON” (Matthew 17: 5). They learnt sonship first in Christ, and we all have to learn it first in Him. And at the end of that chapter He speaks of “sons” — “Then are the sons free” (verse 26). You go, the Lord says, to the sea for a fish and give them something “for me and thee” (verse 27), that is, He puts Himself along with Peter in sonship — it is beautiful! I do not think that we apprehend sonship until we see it in Christ, and hear Him say, “For me and thee”. With most of us the thought of sonship is very immature; it is undeveloped, so we are just typically where Solomon is in this chapter, though we do not need to remain there. We all have, I suppose, some thought of it. Martha had some thought of it, “I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, who should come into the world”(John 11: 27), but very little.
Ques But we need not be discouraged?
CAC The Scriptures always comfort us; they expose us, but they never depress us. If I have only begun, well, what a great thing that is. I have not come to stand, or kneel alongside the man in John 9; he has reached the mature thought, it seems to me. So it is reached in suitable material; it is what I know of God that constitutes me such. “The greatest and precious promises, that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1: 4). As we take in the promises and live on them we become so.
Rem “Conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8: 29).
CAC That is the mature thought, not the “young and tender” thought. One of the first thoughts that I had when converted was, ‘Man’s thoughts never rise above service and God’s thoughts never go below sonship’, and I put it into my first preaching.
Rem “We have contemplated his glory, a glory as of an only-begotten with a father” (John 1: 14). Is that the mature idea?
CAC I thought so, because John is writing as having come to the maturity of it all. He writes his gospel, “That ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20: 31). The whole gospel is written to bring us to a mature thought of the Son of God. It is a turning-point in the soul when it comes to look at Christ in relation to God. With the young convert it is different; he is full and rightly so of what the Saviour has done for him. But Christ stands in relation to God in the most blessed relationship of affection. If the house is built upon that, what kind of a place it would be! God’s house is made up of people who have all come under the influence of sonship as set forth in Christ, and that determines our relationship with God though He has a distinction attaching to Himself, a glory about Him that will never be shared; but the position and relationship we share. We see what saints have lost for many centuries through not apprehending the sonship of the Lord in manhood.
It is very touching that David has prepared all this in His affliction. I think that it was a suggestion that all the provision for the house is the result of the sufferings of Christ. You cannot detach any part of it from the sufferings of Christ. In Hebrews you get, “For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make perfect the leader of their salvation through sufferings” (Hebrews 2: 10). It is through His afflictions that everything is brought in. It is like Psalm 22, where you get the afflictions of Christ in a most profound way, and yet you get the results, “In the midst of the congregation will I praise thee”. It is the house.
Rem “Thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel”: He said that on the cross.
CAC It was in His heart that the praises of God should be in the hearts and on the lips of His people, it is really the house.
Ques At the end of the chapter all the princes are commanded to help; who are they?
CAC They are those who are able to come into this blessed work and further it. It suggests ability in the saints really to help on the work in the house of God.
Rem And it says God is with them.
CAC Yes, what we find in the end of this book, and it is a very great chapter, is that all the people are brought into it with Solomon in that way, to offer willingly; and it results in one of the greatest ascriptions of praise to God found in the Old Testament. So we are all brought into it.