O Lord, help us at this time. Grant us grace to speak and to hear. For Thy Name’s sake. Amen.
Let us remind ourselves of the words which are governing our gathering together at this time, from the letter to the Ephesians: “the unsearchable riches of Christ.”
As we said yesterday morning, we are going to be occupied with some of the unsearchable riches of Christ. You know that in this letter Paul uses the word riches in relation to quite a number of things:
It is all the wealth of God, of all these kinds. We could never exhaust that, though we stayed here a very long time; but we will take just what the Lord enables.
This morning we take up again what was before us through our brother last evening—perhaps to present it in a little different way, not to improve upon it by any means. It seems that the Lord wants to underline this: the first of these connections, the riches of His grace. That is in Ephesians 1:7.
To help us in this occupation, we are going to take our position at the summit of Old Testament fullness. That summit was with Solomon.
I would like us to look at one or two fragments in 1 Chronicles, chapter 28.
And David assembled at Jerusalem all the princes of Israel, the princes of the tribes, and the captains of the companies that served the king by course, and the captains of thousands, and the captains of hundreds, and the rulers over all the substance and possessions of the king and of his sons, with the officers, and the mighty men, even all the mighty men of valour.
Then David the king stood up upon his feet, and said, Hear me, my brethren, and my people: as for me, it was in my heart to build an house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and for the footstool of our God; and I had made ready for the building.
But God said unto me, Thou shalt not build an house for My Name, because thou art a man of war, and hast shed blood.
Howbeit the Lord, the God of Israel, chose me out of all the house of my father to be king over Israel for ever; for He hath chosen Judah to be prince; and in the house of Judah, the house of my father; and among the sons of my father He took pleasure in me, to make me king over all Israel:
And of all my sons—for the Lord hath given me many sons—He hath chosen Solomon my son to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel.
And He said unto me, Solomon thy son, he shall build My house and My courts; for I have chosen him to be My son, and I will be his Father.
Then turn to 2 Chronicles 1:
And Solomon the son of David was strengthened in his kingdom, and the Lord his God was with him, and magnified him exceedingly.
We have said that the summit of Old Testament fullness and glory is Solomon. We shall find that Solomon will lead us to Christ, and then Solomon will be eclipsed by Him. “A greater than Solomon is here.”
Solomon, in wisdom, glory, heritage, and renown, represents the fullness of kingship and glory in the Old Testament.
Jesus Himself acknowledged the great place that Solomon held. Do you remember? He pointed to the flowers of the field and said:
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
Yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Solomon in all his glory. Even there, Jesus acknowledged this. On another occasion He spoke of the queen of the south, who came from a far country to hear Solomon concerning his wisdom. Yet He added:
Behold, a greater than Solomon is here.
We are to consider in what various respects Jesus is greater than Solomon. One thing we have been saying, and which is in our hearts concerning this time together, is the great need for a new apprehension of the Lord Jesus to adjust everything.
There are two or three preliminary matters before we proceed. First, God magnified Solomon. It says, “The Lord magnified him exceedingly.”
God, from eternity, has only one Person in view, and that Person was not Solomon or anyone else, but His Son. If the Lord so magnified Solomon, it was to bring His Son, the greater than Solomon, into view.
The greatest thing that God could do here on this earth was only to lead on to that which is much greater in the heavens. God had His Son in view—the One greater than Solomon—and that is why He did it.
With Solomon, none of those wonderful things that God said seemingly about him could ever possibly have been fulfilled in Solomon himself. They were quite beyond Solomon. God was reaching beyond this man in the things that He said about him and through him.
You have to take up your New Testament in order to discover that that was true. Solomon is not an end in himself. We must look through him to Another, and see that God, in His sovereignty, magnified and glorified Solomon only with Another in view.
Another thing we must remember in this preliminary consideration is that Solomon was not really himself. That sounds strange, but I mean this: Solomon was his father David.
Solomon was the fullness of his father David. You can never speak of Solomon without seeing David. It was not so much Solomon as the significance of the person of David that is present in contemplating Solomon.
When you turn to the New Testament, Solomon is only referred to perhaps half a dozen times, almost in a mechanical way. But in the New Testament you will find David referred to very positively more than thirty times.
The father eclipses the son. The son is the fullness of the father.
You open your New Testament with the first book, the Gospel by Matthew, and before you have read many words you are upon David. David comes into that place of priority right at the beginning of the New Testament.
You go through the New Testament and, as I have said, more than thirty times you find yourself with David. Right at the last book, Revelation 22, David comes in again. This man has a very large place.
There is one clause in Isaiah 55, repeated in the New Testament, which defines the picture: “the sure mercies of David.” Oh, to be able to plumb the depth of that! But even this morning we shall see a little of that sure mercy.
All that obtained to Solomon was related to the sure mercies of David. That brings us to the substance of the great mystery: the unsearchable riches of Christ are everywhere and always the riches of His grace.
Having seen the great eminence of glory, wealth, and wisdom to which God brought Solomon, we have to look to see where it all began. Where did it begin?
There is a very dark background to this. Just follow me. In Solomon’s life there is a dark background.
We have said that Solomon was the fullness of his father David. Solomon was the son of David’s old age. He was not David’s oldest son; God had given David many sons. Solomon was the son of David’s old age, and it was an old-age sonship overshadowed by tragedy—by a great mistake.
Solomon was related to the dark clouds in David’s life. We know the story: the story of David’s sin with Bathsheba and her husband Uriah.
David, relaxing when kings ought to have gone out to battle, remained at home. From the housetop he saw that beautiful woman bathing, and coveted her. His passion grew, and he sent for her.
You remember the rest of the story: how he planned to get her husband Uriah placed in the forefront of the battle, and then caused the other fighters to retire and leave him alone to the enemy. Which they did.
Then Nathan the prophet went to David with a message from God. He told him a parable about something that happened in the city, and painted it in such vivid colours that David rose in anger. Then Nathan drove home the accusation:
Thou art the man.
Nathan brought home the judgment of God. Yet, in the midst of it all, came this word:
Thou shalt not die.
Think of the depth of David’s penitence in those terrible confessions—his heartbrokenness. Listen to his words:
I acknowledged my sin unto Thee,
And mine iniquity have I not hid.
I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord.
Psalm 38:18:
For I will declare mine iniquity;
I will be sorry for my sin.
Then there is the whole of Psalm 51, one of the most terrible documents in existence. Look at its heading: “A Psalm of David; when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness:
According unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
Wash me throughly from mine iniquity,
And cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my transgressions:
And my sin is ever before me.
Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned,
And done this evil in Thy sight.
And later:
Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, Thou God of my salvation.
Here we are, brought face to face with a broken-hearted man standing before God’s tribunal, pleading for mercy under the full condemnation of a stricken conscience.
David’s sin put him beyond the pale of all the Levitical sacrifices. Read the sacrifices in Leviticus: they do not cover this; they make no provision for this.
Even the cities of refuge would not take in David, because the manslayer who found refuge there was a man who had caused someone to die inadvertently, without premeditation, by accident. Provision was made for him. But the man who had premeditated murder was outside of it. No refuge was provided for him.
Therefore, in Psalm 51 David says:
For Thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it:
Thou delightest not in burnt offering.
“I am beyond all the sacrifices. I am beyond every provision because of premeditation.” Oh, how far this man has gone! Great was his culpability, and under the burden of conscience he cries out like this.
What are you going to do with that? What are you going to do with a man like that? What are you going to do? You should write him outside the pale of all God’s dealings. What answer have we got to this? How can this man escape? How can glory be the end of that?
There is an answer—grace. Grace beyond the human.
David is the greatest Old Testament example of pardon. Surely you remember that. That is why he is brought into view so much. Oh, David gathers into himself the meaning of divine grace—what grace can do in relation to a situation like that.
The glory of His grace is a phrase that means something. Can there be anything greater—a greater demonstration of grace—than that the Lord pardoned David, and represented him in a typical way in Solomon and the later temple?
Can there be greater grace than that represented by Solomon? Oh yes: a greater than Solomon is here.
The Son of God came into the inky darkness and blackness of the sin of the whole race—not of one man—and bore the judgment of death upon the whole race.
Look again at the background on Calvary. Take another look, and listen. Listen to that bitter, heartbroken cry:
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
That cry embraces all time, eternity, and all men. David may have tasted something of the offence of one man; but when you look at that cross and hear that cry, you touch the deepest depth of human tragedy.
That is the length to which the grace of God has gone: God-forsakenness. If you have ever tasted a deep, deep darkness within the compass of human capacity, you know that in that darkness it seems as though eternity has begun.
At the moment when Jesus cried, He touched the eternity of man’s destiny—in or outside of God. That cry, with that word forsaken, is the measure of human depravity.
You have yet to feel the tremendous impact of the cross in this sense: if Jesus had not gone into death for us, we should have been God-forsaken, away from the face of God, in outer darkness, separated from Him forever.
Thank God for the cross of the Lord Jesus and what He has done there for us.
Have you ever tasted the slightest drop of that? Oh yes, it is possible even in the Christian life, in spiritual life. I confess that there have been times when I wondered whether the Lord had gone out of my universe. Do You really exist? Had You forgotten me? Is the Lord there?
Though the Lord is there, thank God, and I pray, I cannot touch Him. That little experience is not God-forsakenness—thank God it never is, for He said, “I never will forsake thee”—but it is a little consciousness of the remoteness of the Lord from us.
Oh, it is the most awful thing to go for a little while without the realization of the Lord. Job said:
Behold, I go forward, but He is not there;
And backward, but I cannot perceive Him:
On the left hand, where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him:
He hideth Himself on the right hand, that I cannot see Him.
I do not want you to have that experience if you have not had it. But some of you may know a day, a few days, or more: “Oh, where is the Lord? Where is the Lord?”
It may be that the Lord lets something like that bring us into the fellowship of His sufferings and make us understand how great the thing is that He has done for us.
The Lord does not believe in theories and doctrines. The Lord is very practical. Experience is true. He will teach us in that heavy school of experience. A greater than Solomon, or David, is here.
The person who does not believe in the total depravity of human nature has not yet gone through the cross of the Lord Jesus.
On the one side, there is the deepest point of human tragedy: man’s fall. But there is grace. What a word this is!
Grace goes beyond all the depth of human failure. What word is there to explain it? We shall go round that word for all time and all eternity.
No word can fully express the meaning of grace. Grace is more than pity. It is more than tenderness. It is more than a multitude of tender mercies. It is greater than love; it is more than innocent love.
This is holy love—holy love in spontaneous going out, in Jesus Christ, to the unholy and the unlovely.
It is the mighty exercise of God to redeem the unholy and the unlovely into the beauty of God.
The grace of God is holy love moving to redeem you and me, and the likes of you and me. It is God’s unmerited, undeserved going out for the children of men, that He might bring them into the glory and brightness of His own life.
Was not Paul right in speaking of the unsearchable riches? Paul knew what he was talking about. As we were reminded last night, there was a background for this man.
I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
There he was before the Lord. The Lord was showing him His grace and mercy. What ground had Paul? What claim? His hands were stained with the blood of God’s children, and yet he became a child of God and an apostle.
Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given.
If you cannot comprehend it, may the Lord register it.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, You wish us to know Your grace. O Lord, lift us with that word; save us with that word; glorify Yourself in us by that word.
If all the other words are forgotten, may this remain: the grace of God is the greatest thing in this universe.
Such as we are, we commit ourselves to Thee. O give us grace unto glory. Amen.