CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.—
1 Kings 8:61. Let your heart be perfect with the LORD, שָׁלֵם עִם יְהֹוָה; uprightly with Jehovah (Luther); submissive (Dr. Wette); in friendship with God (Gesenius); undividedly given to the Lord (Keil and Lange). 1 Kings 8:62-64. The sacrificial act of consecration—These were the first offerings laid upon the sacred altar. The priests’ court was not sufficiently extensive for such numerous sacrifices; therefore the king did “hallow the middle of the court” temporarily for sacrificial purposes. The immense number of sacrifices offered supplied for the prolonged “feast” which succeeded, lasting fourteen days, and to which assembled great multitudes, from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of Egypt.
HOMILETICS OF 1 Kings 8:54-61
THE ELEVATING AND SATISFYING POWER OF TRUE DEVOTION
I. It fills the soul with grateful emotion (1 Kings 8:54-55). As Solomon rose from his knees, after his earnest and prolonged pleading with God, his heart was so full of Divine and heavenly influence that it overflowed in earnest and emphatic expressions of gratitude and joy—“He stood and blessed all the congregation with a load voice.” And so it is. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength—shall gain an increase of moral vigour and sympathy. The suppliant may enter the presence-chamber of the Invisible and Eternal God with trembling and fear; but he retires braced up in courage, and clothed with supernatural power, prepared for conflict and hopeful of victory: he comes, stricken down with a gloomy sense of personal unworthiness and defilement, and retires modestly elated with a sense of pardon, transfigured with the radiance of a moral transformation, the very countenance glistening with the chrism of a heavenly benediction. There is no emotion so tender, so profound, so full of nameless pathos and tranquillising joy like that which flows into the heart in its quiet moments of communion with God; or which, like sunshine after storm, visits the soul after it has passed through a season of earnest and successful wrestling with God. The man whose life is spent in devotion, though bound to earth by the dearest human ties, holds high fellowship with the world above. In him earth and heaven are united—both are understood by him in their true significance, and held in proper balance and esteem. He is like a tall, gigantic mountain whose broad base is fixed in the rocks far down beneath our feet, but whose top, springing into the lofty expanse above, reposes under the pure covering of radiant snow and sunlight. He is lifted above the pleasures of this world, and finds consolation and strength in the darkest day of adversity. The apostle was “in prison more frequent,” but in his dungeon he found the presence of Jesus, and could pray and sing praises unto God. “I thought of Jesus,” said the holy John Rutherford, when imprisoned for the Gospel’s sake, “until every stone in the walls of my cell shone like a ruby.”
II. It presents the most exalted and satisfying views of the faithfulness of God (1 Kings 8:56).
1. As to a specific Divine promise. “The Lord hath given rest unto His people Israel, according to all that He promised.” Solomon blessed God, not for wealth, grandeur, power, or victory, all of which had been so conspicuously bestowed on Israel, but for rest. Without this blessing all the others would be unavailing. Many weary years wheeled round, and many sharp trials were endured before the promised rest was given; but it came at last. And it will come to us. Oh! how often does the veteran wilderness-traveller, wearied with toil, and battered with conflict, turn his dim, weatherworn eyes towards the shadowy outlines of the Canaan he approaches, and sigh for the rest that remains for the people of God!
2. As to every Divine promise. “There hath not failed one word of all His good promise” (Deuteronomy 12:10; Joshua 21:45; Joshua 23:14). How marked is the contrast between man, the promise-breaker, and God, the promise-keeper! Every Divine promise is based on His unchangeable faithfulness, and backed by His Omnipotence. Not only the nature of God, but every act of His providential and redemptive government, is a guarantee of His incorruptible and unfailing fidelity. Whatever is opposed to the Divine will must inevitably fall: whatever God has promised will be inevitably fulfilled. The united and fiercest opposition of earth and hell cannot hinder the final and complete accomplishment of the Divine Word.
III. It realizes the nearness of God in the ordinary walk of life (1 Kings 8:57-58).
1. The nearness of God with His people is a fact of past experience. “As He was with our fathers.” He was with Abraham when he was called by His mysterious voice to leave the idolatrous associations of his early life, and migrate to an unknown country and become the father of a countless heritage. He was with Jacob when he fled from the fury of an incensed brother. He appeared to him at Bethel, assured the distracted traveller of future guidance and prosperity, and renewed to him the promise which had been made to Abraham. He was with Israel in Egypt, preserved them amid the threatenings and cruelties of their relentless taskmasters, delivered them from their oppressors, defended them amid the perils and trials of the wilderness, and guided them in safety to the promised rest. God is with His church to-day; and in this fact is the assurance of her final victory and everlasting blessedness.
2. The nearness of God is matter of personal consciousness. “That He may incline our hearts unto Him.” The heart is the sphere in which God manifests His presence—mind revealing itself to mind, will to will, heart to heart. When the soul is full of love to God, it the more readily recognizes His presence in every event of life. “If we have loving, waiting, Christ-desiring spirits, everything in this world—the common meal, the events of every day, the most veritable trifles of our earthly relationships—will all have hooks and barbs, as it were, which will draw after them thoughts of Him. There is nothing so small but that to it there may be attached some filament which will bring after it the whole majesty and grace of Christ and His love.” Man is never so sweetly conscious of the nearness of God as when he is bowed at His footstool in humble and sincere devotion. He only forsakes those who have forsaken Him (Psalms 9:11).
3. The nearness of God is the great inspiration to a life of obedience. “To walk in all His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments.” The temptations to turn aside from rectitude are many and powerful, but for Divine aid we should be powerless to resist. When, says one, the believer is as nigh to God as a creature can be, the sound of the devil’s feet is heard behind him; but, blessed be God! He is near to His people as the devil can be, and if the devil touch Job’s flesh and Job’s bone too, God is in Job’s heart, and that is nigher. The end of Divine blessing is to bring the heart near to Him, and to give grace to walk in His way with uprightness and perseverance.
IV. It teaches how temporal blessings are to be subordinated and made contributory to the more glorious end of spreading the knowledge of the only true God (1 Kings 8:59-60). Jehovah blessed Israel with a marvellous history, with deliverances, successes, and affluence which reached their climax of grandeur and power in the age of Solomon, but He did it all for His name’s sake; and to fit the nation for its great mission in making known His salvation to all people (1 Kings 8:60). Every temporal blessing has its moral significance, and increases the responsibility of the recipient. Wealth, intellectual genius, spiritual influence, that is not used for God will only intensify the sorrows and sufferings of the unfaithful possessor. Like most garments, like most carpets, everything has a right side and a wrong side. You can take any joy, and by turning it round find troubles on the other side; or you may take the greatest trouble, and by turning it round find joys on the other side. The gloomiest mountain never casts a shadow on both sides at once, nor does the greatest of life’s calamities. By aiming at the glory of God in all things, sorrows will be turned into joy, reverses into success.
V. It stimulates the soul after a higher standard of moral perfection (1 Kings 8:61). The best and greatest wish which a king can form for his people, a father for his children, a pastor for his flock, is—May your heart be righteous—i.e., whole and undivided before the Lord our God. He who elects to side with Him must do so wholly and entirely: all “halting between two opinions” is an abomination to him: the lukewarm he will spue out of his mouth. Be thou on the Lord’s side, and he will be with thee (Lange). The great end of prayer is to encourage a holier life; and it is a mighty agency in promoting that end. We must find happiness in our every-day life and in the performance of our ordinary duties, or we shall miss it altogether. The greatest happiness is the outgrowth of the highest moral perfection, and the spring of both is found in a spirit of profound devotion.
LESSONS:—
1. The soul touches the lowest depth of humiliation and reaches its most exalted blessedness in communion with God.
2. The brightest visions of God’s character and the most practical lessons for the conduct of life are obtained in the best moods of devotion.
3. Prayer is one of the most potent agencies in promoting a holier life.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
1 Kings 8:54-61. Solomon’s final address to the people contains—
1. A psalm of praise (1 Kings 8:56).
2. A wish for a blessing (1 Kings 8:57-60).
3. A warning (1 Kings 8:61).
1 Kings 8:56. “The Lord hath given rest unto His people.” Compared with 1 Chronicles 23:25. The rest of the people of God. I. In the mysterious polity of the people of Israel, spiritual and temporal blessings were so closely allied that the same language might naturally be employed to signify either. When with the conviction of special divine superintendence was combined the pure and lofty moral nature of the Divine Governor, as revealed in the law issued by Moses, it is inconceivable but that the higher class of Israelitish minds, the holy and meditative class, must often have felt that the mass of ordinances which surrounded them were truly meant as types of some more profound spiritual realities; and that their whole national history was intended to image forth a moral history, wider in its purpose and extent, and more adequate to the power and dignity of a God whom they well knew to be the God of the whole earth as well as of the territory of Israel, yea, even a God whom “the heaven of heavens could not contain.” In the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews it is shown that the rest which the Israelites enjoyed in the land of promise, no less than the rest of the Sabbath-day, was symbolical of the repose of the persevering Christian. II. It is not unwarrantable to conjecture that when the patriot cried—“The Lord hath given rest unto His people Israel,” he was not more the patriot of Israel than of mankind; or at least, that the Spirit of God spoke through his lips with a higher purpose, to be explained and developed by the events of subsequent ages. The God of Israel, in permitting His ark to be deposited in a permanent abode, seemed to guarantee the eternal glory of the city of David. And it seemed at length that the Lord was about to give His people the proof of His peculiar favour, which they might naturally have expected, by actually exalting them to the highest temporal position among the nations of the earth, and making the divine glory on the mercy seat the centre from which the deputed authority of God was to radiate to the circumference of the world. It was the destiny of Israel, after a brief period of prosperity, to separate into rival dynasties, to run through a course of much iniquity, to despise constant, reiterated warnings, and at length to merge into utter ruin, undestroyed, indeed, but preserved only as a monument of God’s abiding vengeance. But mark the unsearchable depths of the purposes of Providence! These national misfortunes brought in universal blessedness. Israel fell to prepare the salvation of mankind; and the rest which the Lord denied His people was denied only that an everlasting rest might be secured to His spiritual people for ever! III. This rest which the Lord God of Israel bestows on His spiritual Israel is no unattainable blessing even on this side of the grave. It is the mark of a poor spirit to be satisfied with small things. With the temporal dispensations of God, whatever they be, a Christian is bound to be content; but for the man who is not a Christian, that discontent should be his portion is the prayer of mercy itself! Such discontent is the voice of the Spirit of God, for whom his nature was originally formed, calling upon him to perceive and acknowledge that he has no abiding city here, and that in seeking after the things that belong to his peace, he must turn to the Prince of Peace. What some dreamer imagined as to the structure of the earth we live on, is a truth as regards our own internal nature. “We are, indeed, a fragment struck from the great source of light and heat, from the sun of eternal righteousness; and if the force that wilfully separates us from our origin would but cease to operate, we should return to our native birth-place, even the bosom of our Father; we should fly to the centre of all good, and there abide in blessedness for ever. To effect this union is the great object of our religion: Christ the Mediator is the link that binds us to the centre of everlasting happiness. IV.
1. Rest and peace must fall upon a Christian spirit, first from its devotion to Christ Himself, and its devoted imitation of His pure and perfect example. The life of a Christian is the imitation of Christ. And, among all the imitable attributes of Christ, none is more beautiful than His perfect peace. Blessed Lord! Thou dost indeed give us this peace when Thou givest Thyself as our example! To be thy disciples and copyists is to be at peace with everything but sin.
2. This influence of the character of Christ becoming the great examplar of their actions is not the only cause which works peace and rest in the hearts of his followers. The very singleness of the object of His hope has a power to elevate the Christian above the petty concerns of daily life. The true peace of mind is that which resolves all into a single principle. God is one: let our affections but partake of the unity of that object, and we shall have reached the pathway of real and imperishable rest.
3. The same question might be argued from the very nature of the Christian affections, affections whose very exercise is peace and happiness. In the very exercise of faith and hope and love, there are the materials of peace, even apart from the subject of these feelings. The mere position of a mind believing, trusting, and loving is one of real happiness and rest.
4. In such a state as ours, unless the eternal world in some manner becomes the guarantee of this, we are the slaves of every accident, without any hope for the future, any consolation for misfortune, any substantial or permanent motive for conduct, any reward for endurance, any guide for life. The earthly and the heavenly elements must combine, or we are powerless. To have the great object of our thoughts placed beyond the chances of human life is to place ourselves beyond them! Our hope “entereth into that within the veil.” The Christian lays hold of a chain which is bound to the throne of God; he links himself to the eternal certainties of nature; the immutable attributes of the God of the universe are pledged for his security. As the certainty of the end is greater than that of the means, and as the dead world that surrounds us exists, doubtless, with a main view to the Christian people of God—the less perfect being ever subordinate to the more perfect—so we may say that the finest laws of nature and man, the very foundations of the world that now is, are less firm and durable than the purpose of God to make His faithful people happy! (Condensed from Archer Butler.)
“There hath not failed one word of all His good promise.” The Divine purpose fulfilled.
1. God hath formed a purpose of mercy toward mankind.
2. The fulfilment of this purpose of mercy is committed to the Lord Jesus—accomplished by His own atonement for sin, and by the communication of the Holy Spirit.
3. The Divine purpose of mercy, under the administration of the Lord Jesus, shall be perfectly and triumphantly accomplished.
1 Kings 8:57. The presence of God.
1. Necessary.
2. Promised.
3. Actually experienced.
4. Continued on obedience.
5. The source of all help and happiness.
1 Kings 8:58. All keeping of the commandments, all mere morality, without submission of the heart to God, is worthless; a mere shell without the kernel.
1 Kings 8:59-60. The words which rise out of the depths of the heart to God reach Him and abide with Him. He forgets them not (Revelation 8:3-4). That the Lord is God, and none other, seems nowhere more conspicuous than in the choosing and leading of the people Israel, in which He has revealed Himself in His might and glory, in His holiness and justice, His faithfulness and mercy (Psalms 145:3-12). No better proof of the existence of a one living God than the history of Israel.—Lange.
1 Kings 8:61 (compared with Exodus 15:11). Holiness the supreme end of life.
1. We need the revelation of God’s holiness in order to sustain us in the presence of the tremendous forces of the external universe, and in the presence of what sometimes seems to be the chaotic confusion of this world’s affairs. To me it is not the benevolence of God which seems to be supremely necessary for the solace and the peace of the heart, but His justice. I want to know that the law of righteousness, to which my conscience does homage, will sooner or later be openly and completely vindicated; that even now we are not under the government of mere chance or of brute force, but of a living holiness; that there is not only a judgment seat before which, in some remote and uncertain day, all men will have to give an account of the deeds done in the body, but that now a righteous God rules the world, and suffers no irreparable injustice to be inflicted on any man; that however intolerable the actual condition of human affairs may seem to me, He who has power to prevent every accident, every mistake, every folly, every crime; He who could strike the liar dumb before he utters the slander which will break the heart of the innocent; He who could unmask before it is consummated the villainy which will ruin the peace and honour of a fair and virtuous home; He who could strike down with mortal disease the reckless statesman who hurries a nation into an unnecessary and iniquitous war; I want to know that He the Almighty and Omniscient Ruler of all men is not careless of what happens on earth, that He has no selfish purpose to accomplish, that He is not wilful, that He is not capricious, but absolutely and perfectly just; that He has a hatred and scorn as much more intense than mine for every sin as His nature is greater than my own. Knowing this—and I know it—I can look back upon the sorrowful ages of human history, I can look round upon the wild confusions of my own time, I can look forward to the dark and stormy future which, apart from Him, promises no sure relief from the vast and terrible evils which seem to be the inheritance of our race, and my heart is at rest. From the vision of God’s holiness I receive a peace which the world cannot give, and which the world cannot take away.
2. Nor is it only peace of heart which God’s holiness inspires. The Divine holiness is a strong support to all our endeavours to attain moral and spiritual perfection. Whatever mystery may rest upon the Divine government, and however unable we may be to interpret the issues that are to come out of the movements of that providence over which God presides, we can be in no doubt concerning God’s ultimate purpose in relation to ourselves. Apart from any spiritual relation, we have an absolute certainty that wherever there is the capacity for holiness, holiness must be the great end of existence. We are capable of a perfection which transcends, though it includes moral virtue, and this perfection is holiness. Since we are capable of it, it is, and it must be, the supreme end for which we ought to live. We miss the glory which is within our reach if we do not attain to it. God’s holiness makes it certain that He regards our holiness as the very crown of our nature, apart from which the idea which He desires to have illustrated in every man is unfulfilled.
3. God has no ultimate use for a man who is not holy, and such a man does not become what he was meant to be. Being holy Himself, it must be, and it is, His great concern that we should attain to moral and spiritual perfection. God’s supreme concern in relation to you and me is, not that we should be happy to-day or to-morrow, and all our life through: His supreme concern is that we should regard sin with intense and unutterable abhorrence, and that we should regard goodness with a deep and passionate affection. And God will not shrink from inflicting any pain, however sharp, or any suffering, however protracted, upon any of us, that may be necessary in order to fulfil His great design. IV. This was His supreme purpose in sending the Lord Jesus Christ into the world. Christ came to save us from our sins, not merely to release us from the penalty of our sins, much less to assure us that we may remain sinful and yet not miss the glory and the blessedness for which God made us. The grace that Christ reveals does not for a moment suggest that God regards our sin with that pity and compassion with which it is the tendency of our modern religious lives to regard all sin; but that He abhors sin so much, that He Himself stooped to the most terrible sufferings, to shame and to death, in order to deliver us from sin. The holiness of God lies at the very root of the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is just because God is so holy that He set His heart upon redeeming us from the power of sin. Until we know that God is glorious in holiness, as well as infinite in mercy, and find in His very holiness that on which we shall build our trust, and that out of which our joy shall spring, we know very little of the fulness of life, and the depth of peace, and the perfection of blessedness possible to as through Jesus Christ our Lord.—(Condensed from R. W. Dale in C. W. P).