“Then Solomon sat on the
throne of the Lord as king” (1 Chronicles 29:23).
“Then the house was
filled with a cloud, even the house of the Lord, so that the
priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for
the glory of the Lord filled the house of God” (2
Chronicles 5:13,14; ASV).
The words which we have read
throw us forward again to our New Testament: “Solomon sat
upon the throne of Jehovah as king.” Of course, that
can only be said in a typical, limited, sense. The throne
of David, the throne of the house of Israel, was indeed rightly
God’s throne, but comparatively only in a very limited
sense. What we come to concerning the Lord Jesus—again in
the Letter to the Ephesians, which has so largely interpreted
that part of the Old Testament for us—is that God
“raised Him from the
dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the
heavenlies, far above all rule, and authority, and
power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only
in this world, but also in that which is to come: and He put
all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be
head over all things to the church, which is His body, the
fulness of Him That filleth all in all” (Ephesians
1:20–23).
There we have the
non-comparative, the absolute, and that of which Solomon’s
throne was but a poor shadow. We can say that Jesus sat, in that
full sense, upon the throne of Jehovah as King.
The other fragment about the
glory of the Lord filling the house is seen in two ways in the
New Testament. Here again in Ephesians, after this vast
comprehensive survey of Christ and His Church in the heavenlies
according to the eternal counsels of God, the great summing up of
the Apostle is in these words:
“Now unto Him That
is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or
think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be
the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations
for ever and ever” (Ephesians 3:20,21; ASV).
“The glory of the Lord filled the house.”
We know that a spiritual
beginning of that very thing was made on the Day of
Pentecost. The Lord Jesus having been exalted to the right
hand of the Majesty in the heavens and having taken His seat on
the throne of Jehovah as King, on the Day of Pentecost the glory
filled the house. There we have some indication of the Lord’s
intention, both for His Son and for His people.
Now I want to bring all that
into a small compass of application. The all-governing
thing is Christ enthroned. Everything takes its rise and flows
out from that—Christ enthroned in the very throne of
Jehovah. He comes into the place of God Himself, and there
is no room for any other. Even the priests could not
minister, because there was no place for them. The glory of
the Lord filled the house. When the Lord has His
place, there is no place for any other, for He holds it
alone. When the Lord Jesus is really Lord, everything else
goes out. That is what we shall come to more fully
later. That is where we begin, and that is the secret of,
and the key to, everything else—Christ in His place, the
place of Divine assignment, the place for which God ever intended
Him. “That in all things He might have the pre-eminence”
(Colossians 1:18). You never have the secret of spiritual
fulness until Christ has the place which God has appointed for
Him, and there is no room for us or anything else.
That is simple, but it is the
sort of thing that lies beneath all our troubles, and in regard
to which there is a great deal of difficulty in making it actual,
even with the Lord’s own people. It is really all a
matter of the Lord having His place. When He does, then we
have the secret of the filling of the house of the Lord with the
glory of the Lord. We have the secret of fulness.
The Results of
Christ’s Enthronement
(a) Rest to the People
of God
Now, when you look at Solomon
and see him taking his place upon the throne of Jehovah as king,
and look to see what the issues, consequences and effects of that
were, you find several things quite simply indicated. One
is that Israel came into a time of wonderful rest. Solomon sat
upon the throne of Jehovah as king, and Israel had rest round
about on every side (1 Kings 4:24,25).
Of course (by way of
parenthesis) we are remembering that all this points very largely
to the future age, but Scripture always has a double aspect, the
dispensational and the spiritual. We have indicated what
happened on the day of Pentecost. But the Church, in an
outward, earthly way, did not have rest from the day of
Pentecost. It had anything but rest outwardly—but a
wonderful rest entered into the Church. You cannot fail to
see how things changed even for the Apostles, from that time, for
there was a wonderful assurance, a wonderful confidence, a
wonderful courage and boldness, and wonderful effectiveness in
witness, and all because they had come to rest, inward rest, born
of the knowledge that Christ was Lord. ‘Whatever
happens, Christ is Lord!’ is their message, their
note. ‘Whatever rulers and people do, Christ is
Lord! However things go, favourably or contrarily, Christ
is Lord!’ You see them moving through the Book of the
Acts on that basis, and they met not a little difficulty,
opposition and trial; but their message all the time was: ‘Christ
is Lord!’ And as they affirmed it, so it worked
out. The very things which were against them worked out to
prove it; not Satan, not man, not circumstances, not forces, but
Christ was Lord! And there was a deep, quiet assurance and
confidence and rest.
We know by numerous small
experiences, as well as in the great crises of controversy with
the will of God, that it is only when we yield to His absolute
Lordship, when our wills, our desires, our preferences, our likes
have been subjected and submitted to Him and we bow—not
rebelliously, not under compulsion, but gladly, willingly,
responsively—to His Lordship, then a wonderful rest comes
into our hearts; and there can be no glory until there is
rest. That is the word that governs this house.
“Arise, O Jehovah God, into Thy resting-place, Thou, and the
ark of Thy strength” (2 Chronicles 6:41). ‘Enter into
Thy rest in the house.’ Until there is rest in the
house, there is no glory. They brought the ark in, and they
drew out the staves—the staves which always suggested
movement, progress, restless going on—and said: ‘This
is the end. We have come to the end of the journey.’
And the glory of the Lord filled the house.
It is all a picture of the rest
of faith, of which the Letter to the Hebrews speaks so much; and
that rest of faith comes from a real heart apprehension of Him as
in the throne, both as King and High Priest.
We must not stay too long with
each fragment. The first thing, then, resultant from
Solomon’s exaltation was rest unto the people of God.
(b) Enemies reduced to
Helplessness
The next thing—and a part
of the former—was that all the enemies who had been
asserting themselves for so long, and whom David had been
continuously fighting, were helpless. It seems that this
exaltation of Solomon set up a mighty, paralyzing awe over all
those enemies so that they were helpless, and that also has a
spiritual counterpart. The New Testament shows perfectly
well that the enemies were actively working, and doing all in
their power to assail and destroy, but what was the result?
Well, they were helpless in bringing this thing to a standstill,
and absolutely incapable of destroying the glory. They were
helpless in a very real sense. That is the story of the
Book of the Acts. There were plenty of enemies, and they
did not cease to exist, but how helpless they were against this
Name and this testimony, and against this Christ! What they
did not only turned upon themselves, but was made to serve the
Lord’s purpose, so in that double sense they were
helpless. When Christ really is in His place there may be
enemies and they may be active and seem to be doing a lot of
harm, and having much their own way; but when Christ is Lord His
sovereignty opposes them and renders them incapable of
accomplishing their purpose and carrying through their
designs. “...to them that love God all things work
together for good, even to them that are called according to His
purpose” (Romans 8:28; ASV), and the “all things”
cover very largely the enemy’s activities—they are
turned to good by the sovereign activity of the Lord and the
enemy is unable to triumph.
(c) Abundant Wealth for
the People of God
The next thing which resulted
from Solomon’s enthronement was the abundance of wealth for
God’s people. We have said in earlier chapters that
the wealth of Solomon given to him by God was great. “Jehovah
magnified Solomon exceedingly in the sight of all Israel, and
bestowed upon him such royal majesty as had not been on any king
before him in Israel” (1 Chronicles 29:25). We have said
that it was not for himself, and not to be spent on himself for
his own gratification. It was for Israel, and Israel came
into the good of Solomon’s wealth when he was enthroned.
We are told here in this
Ephesian letter, and its companion letter to the Colossians, that
God has filled the Lord Jesus; God has caused that in Him all
fulness should dwell. “It was the good pleasure of the
Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell” (Colossians
1:19). There is a favourite passage of ours in Philippians—“My
God shall supply every need of yours according to His riches
in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).
Well, He is filled full, and the wealth is for you. Israel
came into the good of God’s lavish hand upon Solomon, for
when Solomon was in his place Israel shared the good. Oh, I
am not just using language! I am not trying to be eloquent!
I believe it is of such practical moment that we know the riches
of Christ, and that the people of God everywhere should know how
full Christ is for them. How the people of God today need to be
saved from this awful tragedy of going about in starvation,
looking for spiritual food and finding none, and, by their
weakness, ineffectiveness and the lack of an impact of God
through them upon the world, showing that they have not enough
and to spare, are not a people with a competence! That is
how it is very largely today, and it should not be. It is
God’s thought that His people should be in the good of the
wealth that He has stored up in His Son for them. When Christ is
in His place we begin to know what we inherit in Him.
(d) The Enlargement of
the Kingdom
The next thing resulting from
Solomon’s being enthroned was the enlargement of the
kingdom. God had promised that, and you find that Solomon
began to expand, take in and build. His kingdom
increased. And we do not need to argue that out so far as
the New Testament is concerned. When the Lord Jesus was
enthroned, the enlargement of His kingdom commenced immediately
and it was that spiritual kingdom into which we have been translated,
the kingdom of the Son of God’s love.
Now my point is this. What
is the key to—what shall we call it?—the growth of the
Church, the expansion and enlargement of the work of God?
What is the key to increase, world increase, of that which is of
Christ? It is Christ being apprehended in His glory, in His
Lordship, in His enthronement in the throne of Jehovah. It
is along these lines: firstly that He is Lord and He is in His
place, and then, as the result, that we are a people who have
rest. If we go about with haggard faces and worried looks,
as people who carry an awful burden of sorrow and trouble and
bear it before the world, there will not be much increase, growth
or spiritual expansion. When we can carry with us the
testimony of a heart that has found rest on the ground that Jesus
is Lord, the world watches. Here is a Christian going through
deep trial. Things have all gone wrong for that life, for
they are hard and difficult, and no one has greater reason to
question the love, the power and the sovereignty of God.
The world watches, and what do they see and hear? ‘Save,
Lord, we perish!’? or: ‘It is all right! The Lord
is on the throne, and things are not as they appear. We are
coming out, and we are coming out triumphantly. This is not
the end!’ A quiet, restful assurance through stress
and strain, trial, adversity and contradiction is how the kingdom
increases. The rest of faith is a mighty power of testimony
unto increase. When others know that we have, not only
enough to get on with, but plenty: that we are not all the time
having to go down to Egypt—the world—to find something
to make up what is lacking in our Christianity, but we have
enough: that we have not only as much as the world has, but a
very great deal more: that we are completely independent of this
world for our satisfaction and have a new source of complete
satisfaction: then there is a testimony that counts. I am
afraid that so many of us have given the other impression—that
to be a Christian is almost to lose everything, and we give that
impression not only by our looks and ways and influence, but by
what we do. We hunger after this and that and the other: we
must have this, and we must have that, because the Lord has not
filled everything. But when He is really in His place there
is that moving into His wealth which will result in others wanting
to know the secret.
The Way to
Christ’s Enthronement
I must gather up and close, and
for the final word I come to this. How is all this really
made possible and brought into experience? We want this
rest, we want this wealth, we want this spiritual fulness, we
want the enemy to be rendered incapable of finally achieving his
end, and we want the enlargement of what is the Lord’s on
this earth, but how is it to be? We say—and it is the
inclusive truth—it is when Christ is Lord and He is on the
Throne. Yes, but how is He to get there? This is not
something official and objective—that God has chosen Jesus
Christ and put Him on the Throne, and that is the sovereign,
official act of God. This is something spiritual, and has
an immediate application and meaning inside of us. This
enthronement of Christ has to have an inward meaning, and that
cannot be until other inward things are dealt with; so that the
realization of Christ’s enthronement, with all that it means
for us of victory, of rest, of wealth, and of expansion, or
enlargement, rests upon the altar, the Cross. We have tried
to see how great that Cross is, but here you can see its
greatness inasmuch as the practical results of the exaltation of
Christ depend upon it. What I mean is this: Christ cannot
be Lord, with all the beneficent results thereof, until all other
lordships are subdued under Him, and by that I mean the lordships
within the kingdom of our own hearts. You can work that
out, and see that is what is being applied in every letter of the
New Testament. What is brought into view is the rightful place of
Jesus as Lord; and then the Apostle gets down to this business
and says, for example to the Corinthians: ‘You are spoiling
your testimony. You are not knowing spiritual wealth, and
you know nothing about real rest. Everything is limited and
marred because you are not a crucified people and your natural
life is in the way of Jesus Christ. He cannot be Lord
because you, in the strength of your natural life, are lord, and
that has to come to the Cross, you Corinthians.’
‘You Galatians, you are allowing an Old Testament, typical
régime to come in again and dominate you; the law has returned
and you have got on to another basis altogether. You have
put Christ, Who has fulfilled all the law, out of His place, and
you have fallen from grace and gone back to the law.’
Galatians 2:20, in its immediate sense, must be an actuality:
“I have been crucified with Christ.” You notice
the connection. The immediate context is with regard to the
law, the reign of the law. Paul is saying how he was under
the law, how the law had dominion over him, how it brought him
under bondage and limited his whole life. Then he says: ‘I
got out of it by being crucified with Christ, and it is no longer
I that live, but Christ. The law was in the way; I was in
the way in the sense of this legalism in my life.’ Any
Christian who is bound by legalism is an obstruction to the Lord
Jesus, and will limit the expression of His power.
You find the same note in
principle in every letter. Something of the old natural life is
in the way, and it is limiting, spoiling, and causing everything
to come into a state of contradiction; and whatever it is it must
all come to the Cross.
You and I, in all that we are by
nature, have to come under the power of that Cross. The
Cross has to get us out of the way in order that Christ may fill
all things. That is the meaning here. I see that the altar,
the great altar, was set up by Solomon, and a mighty,
all-inclusive sacrifice to God’s satisfaction was offered in
type, and then the king had his place and all these blessed
results followed.
Dear friends, we are in the way,
we are our own plague and our own limitation. It is this
natural life that is the real bane—but there is a mighty
Cross. It is still possible for us to say: “I have
been crucified with Christ.” It is still possible to enter
into the meaning of that and to know that fundamental breaking of
self-life, self-strength, self-centredness, that real breaking of
the very backbone of our natural life—even our religious
natural life, our devoted natural life, or whatever it is that is
the natural life—so that its strength is gone and there is
room for the King and for Him to fill all things. In the
practical outworking, we know, by a very little spiritual
history, that not until that spiritual life, at some point or
other, is dealt with, brought down and broken can we enter upon a
life of spiritual rest, spiritual growth and spiritual
wealth. The Cross governs it, for it is the Cross that
leads to the Throne—from the altar to the Throne, and from
the Throne to the glories of Christ.
May the Lord Himself apply
the word and speak through it, and may the result be that He gets
His full place, His unquestioned place, and we come into all the
blessings of Christ in His place.