DAVID’S EARLY AND FINAL EXERCISES
1 Chronicles 28: I, 2, 9, 10
I was thinking of the early exercises on the part of David as we have them in Psalm 32, and his closing exercises as we have them in the passage read in 1 Chronicles. We do not know, of course, exactly at what point in his history Psalm 32 was written; it may have been after one of the serious failures that marked his history, but at any rate the experience is one of an elementary character, that is, it is the experience of the blessedness of forgiveness consequent upon acknowledging one’s sin to God and that consequent upon God’s disciplinary ways to bring it to pass. It is to be noted that David, while beginning the Psalm by declaring, as Romans 4 says, the blessedness of the man whose lawlessnesses have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered, how blessed the man is to whom the Lord does not reckon sin, then tells us, as is customary with the Psalms, on what lines he reached that point. He tells us that he was keeping silence for a time and, while he was doing so, God’s hand was heavy upon him. Apparently he was suffering some kind of illness, his bones waxed old, there was his groaning all the day long, the hand of God was heavy upon him and his moisture was turned into the drought of summer, and he says “Selah”. It is striking how many times in this short Psalm he says “Selah”, as though he would have us pause and weigh over what he has said as he moves from one point to another.
The first point was that there was sin between his soul and God and he was not confessing it, he was keeping silence when he should have been speaking, and God would have us have everything out with Him. I do not know what the histories are of those to whom I am speaking, or the present condition of soul. The passage read in 1 Chronicles 28 tells us that David said to his son Solomon that “Jehovah searches all hearts, and discerns all the imaginations of the thoughts”. God is constantly looking at the hearts and imaginations and thoughts of His children, desiring not only that we should be perfectly at home in His presence, but free then to take up the exercises that David seeks to encourage the people to take up in the passage read in Chronicles. But first of all things must be right with God. He has no pleasure in anything less than sonship actually known and enjoyed, the dignity of it and the liberty of it in our relations with God; He has nothing less than that in mind, and, if that is to be known, there must be openness with Him in regard of everything in our responsible paths here.
So David records for our instruction (for it is called instruction) that when he was keeping silence his bones waxed old and God’s hand was heavy upon him. If there is someone keeping silence when God is looking for you to speak, take note of what David says. He felt the reality of God’s hand upon him, and then he says, “I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity I covered not; I said, I will confess my transgressions unto Jehovah”. Then he says, “Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin”. How immediate, and what liberation of spirit David proved as he took this way that God desired him to take it as we have in the epistle of John, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness”, 1 John 1: 9. Again he says “Selah”. This experience with God gives him confidence to put his trust in God in every matter that arises. His experience of having to do with God, and proving how real and blessed His forgiveness is, encourages him to prove God even in the ordinary circumstances and exercises of life. “For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee at a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they will not reach him”. It is important that we should follow up our elementary relations with God, and the grace that we prove in connection with our failures in the responsible path, by proving God continually in the circumstances of life. They may be individual circumstances, they may be business tests, they may be family trials, there may, of course, be assembly exercises, but whatever they are, our first experience of divine grace would encourage us to go on and prove Him at a time when He may be found. Even in the floods, he says, “they will not reach him”. “Thou art”, he says, “a hiding place for me; thou preservest me from trouble; thou dost encompass me with songs of deliverance”. And again “Selah”, David is very anxious that we should fully weigh and ponder all that he is saying in this Psalm and go along with him, as it were, from stage to stage.
Then he gets this word from Jehovah, “I will instruct thee and teach thee the way in which thou shalt go”. How important that is! I speak especially to those who are younger, because this is a Psalm for young ones, whether in actual years or in spiritual history, first proving the reality of God’s forgiveness on the basis of confession, full, simple, honest confession, then proving Him as One who may be found when trouble arises of one kind or another, and then getting this precious promise, “I will instruct thee and teach thee the way in which thou shalt go; I will counsel thee with mine eye upon thee”. The Lord would give us the sense that He is personally interested in each one of us in the exercises in which we need help, the way in which we should go. He says, “I will instruct thee and teach thee”. We are to be encouraged to seek the Lord continually in practical matters so that we may be preserved. This is a terrible world to go through, and yet it is possible to be preserved in it. Wisdom says, “I walk in the path of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of judgment”, Prov 8: 20. That is, as we follow the principle of righteousness He helps us to see how to apply that to particular difficulties that arise, so that we are led in the midst of the paths of judgment. That suggests to me the idea of gradually threading our way through life as pursuing the great principle of what is right in the sight of God and proving how ready the Lord is to enable us to apply that principle to the particular matters that arise.
Now there is this appeal not to be obstinate. “Be ye not as a horse, as a mule, which have no understanding: whose trappings must be bit and bridle, for restraint”. It is a poor thing for a saint if he always has to have his way hedged up to keep him right. It shows that we are like a horse or mule if we are always having to be regulated by external circumstances to keep us right. God may hedge our way up because it is a day of limitations. As we get near the end we are conscious of that, that God is bringing in limitations of one kind or another and reduction of one kind and another. It is because He has formation according to Christ in view with each one of us, but this is not like the bit and bridle of the horse or mule.
Now when we come to the end of David’s history he is full of concern for a “house of rest for the ark of the covenant of Jehovah and for the footstool of our God”. It is striking in these chapters at the end of 1 Chronicles that, not only is David himself greatly concerned about it, but he is concerned that his son Solomon, who was still young, should be equally exercised about it, and he is concerned to bring in all the brethren. He says, “Who is willing to offer to Jehovah this day?” He calls upon all the saints to take up this great matter of contributing to the provision of the “house of rest for the ark of the covenant of Jehovah and for the footstool of our God”.
He says, “Hear me, my brethren and my people!” “My people” is a kingly expression, but, before he brings in the kingly expression, he brings in a brotherly expression. If the people had a king, it must be one from among their brethren, Deut 17: 15. David is stressing the brotherly side of things. He first of all addresses them affectionately as “my brethren” so as to gain their ear sympathetically for the matter that is so much before him. The ark of the covenant of Jehovah is, of course, Christ as devoted to bring to pass all God’s will in regard of His people, and mighty to effectuate it all. The ark was God’s power and glory; it refers especially to power. When the ark went into Jordan, power was evident there. It is not so much love in evidence there, though love is to be seen in all the movements of Christ in manhood, but power. There is power in Christ, a divine Person in manhood, to bring to pass and establish for ever every thought that God has committed Himself to in relation to His people.
Now in what kind of conditions would the Lord, as thus typified by the ark, find rest? It is a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, and we are to provide the conditions. If the Lord has the whole scope of God’s will so much at heart that He has gone the way He has gone to make it effective, what kind of conditions could He rest in? Surely conditions in which the saints are marked by love on the one hand, but also by the liberty and dignity of sonship, because nothing less than that is in the mind of God. He chose us before the foundation of the world, we are never to lose sight of that, “having marked us out beforehand for adoption through Jesus Christ to himself”. If we are to take up the exercise of providing conditions of rest for the ark, it is imperative that we should really reach in power and reality the glory of sonship. Let us all seek God in relation to it, let us seek the help of the Spirit in relation to it, that the truth of sonship, the dignity of sonship, the liberty of sonship, should be known by us very much more. David was concerned as to it. The closing exercises of his life are that there should be this house of rest for the ark of the covenant of Jehovah and for the footstool of our God. Not only had he prepared diligently for it, but he is concerned to get Solomon and all the princes and finally all the people united in this great objective to secure amongst themselves conditions in which the ark of the covenant can rest. So I urge it that it is for all of us not to rest with anything less than the full realisation of sonship in all that it means, dignity, liberty, intelligence, the affections proper to the relationship, and sympathy with God in His thoughts. All these things enter into sonship. The time is short, and God would have His people brought into it. It is for us to be constantly seeking God in regard of it, so that there should be no falling short in the actual realisation of God’s desires concerning His people.
David also says, “and for the footstool of our God”. The footstool completes the idea of rest. A person sits down and is given a footstool, and that completes the idea of rest, so that David is stressing the idea of rest, rest for Christ, rest for God, and we ourselves are to provide the conditions. The more we enter into the holiest the more we get the sense that God is at rest there, that He has Jesus in His presence and the assurance of securing in Him every thought His heart has desired. In the holiest we get an impression that God has reached a point of infinite rest and He wants us to come into accord with it and to be concerned that conditions in keeping with it should be brought in amongst us. So there is to be this house of rest for the ark of the covenant of Jehovah but “for the footstool of our God”. The footstool is a place of worship too. It says in the Psalms, “Let us worship at his footstool”, Ps 132: 7; Ps 99: 5. David at the close of his history has this one consuming, commanding exercise before him and he is desirous of bringing all the brethren into line with this, so that conditions amongst the saints should be such as would afford rest for Christ and rest for God. But now as he proceeds he comes to verse 9 and says, “Thou, Solomon my son”. He is speaking to one who was young and tender. Do not let the young brethren think they are too young to be considering on these lines. “Know the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind; for Jehovah searches all hearts, and discerns all the imaginations of the thoughts”. He is encouraging Solomon to have to do with God continually, not to be afraid of the searching. A woman spent a short time in the presence of the Lord and she went to others and said, “Come, see a man who told me all things I had ever done”. She was not afraid of the searching, she was attracted by it and she says, “Come”, meaning that she was going back to have to do with the Lord and inviting them to do the same. So we are not to be afraid of the searchings, because they have in mind that we should be free practically, in the Spirit, of all that is displeasing to God, as having learned to judge it as God has judged it, and that we should come into accord with God in regard of His thoughts of Christ and learn to appreciate Him as He appreciates Him. Thus we should be in liberty and brought into consistency with the blessed God Himself. And so he says, “If thou seek him, he will be found of thee”. As the Lord says, “Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you”, Luke 11: 9. So David says, “He will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cut thee off for ever”. That is his language to Solomon. And finally he says, “Consider now, that Jehovah has chosen thee to build a house for the sanctuary; be strong and do it”.
I call attention first to the fundamental exercises that David describes for us in Psalm 32, and then these final exercises that he was carrying just at the end of his life. May the Lord encourage us to move on these lines, for His Name’s sake.
LONDON
1st October 1957
From Words of Grace and Comfort
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