Solomon’s throne was rowdy

“The king also made a great ivory throne and overlaid it with the finest gold. The throne had six steps, and at the back of the throne was a calf’s head, and on each side of the seat were armrests and two lions standing beside the armrests, while twelve lions stood there, one on each end of a step on the six steps. The like of it was never made in any kingdom.” 1 Kings 10:18-20

David sat upon a throne, but Solomon made his own. He designed it. We need not have any doubt that each aspect of its design was brimming full of meaning to Solomon its maker. Its very peculiarness assures us that the brilliant king was behind it. I have no idea what it all means, but it communicates one idea quite clearly: regality. It is a kingly throne, and that means magnificence.

I say again that Solomon designed this throne. He was the sort of man who wanted to have his hand in everything. He was the artist as well as the authority. And this creation of his had no competitors. It was unique among all kingdoms. It glorified the king who sat upon it as its make declared his otherness.

This throne is very much like God’s, for God too is the Maker of his own throne. Where God sits enthroned in heaven was created by him (Paul went there and said it was so unique that we can’t even talk about it here). God made that place (out of nothing and nowhere). The earth, his splendid footstool, is also his creation. God fashions his own throne and fills it with meaning. In fact, the only meaning that creation itself has at all is that God dwells in it.

Watch the Throne

"Now when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the LORD, she came to test him with hard questions.” 1 Kings 10:1

It is well known that Sheba was drawn to Israel by the stories of Solomon’s exquisite wisdom. His fame spread far and wide to all lands and peoples (1 Kings 4:34). But the careful reader will notice the additional information provided by this verse, namely, that Solomon’s fame was kept in connection with another name, the name of the LORD.

Everything God did in Israel was done to magnify his name. They were his people, in his land, worshipping at his temple, through his priesthood. They were animated by his word and marked by his statutes. Their greatest champions were his warriors and, blessed gift to his people and to the whole world, their great kings were his kings. Solomon’s fame was God’s fame.

Is it any wonder then that he surpassed all the wisdom of all the wise men of all the earth? Is it any surprise that the prosperity of his reign was unprecedented, and that the flower of youthful vigor and manful endeavor and highest thought were his? God’s king is unique, because he’s God’s king.

I need not press the implications for those living under the glorious and sure reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is even now seated comfortably upon his cosmic throne. Our King is the great King, and his fame is spreading far and wide through all lands and peoples. Go to him willingly like Sheba, lest you be dragged before him against your will on the Last Day!

Sabbath for a G

“Out of the mouth of babes and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.” Psalm 8:2

The late Tupac Shakur famously asked, “Is there a heaven for a G? A place where criminals and drugs dealers meet?” Sadly (or, happily) there is not. There is a heaven for criminals and drugs dealers and liars and fornicators and the proud and self-righteous who flee to Jesus Christ for safety! But there’s no heaven for gangsters as gangsters.

There is, however, a Sabbath for a G. David says so in the beloved eighth Psalm. God uses the Infant to still the enemy. What does he mean by still? Well, the Hebrew word that David used is shabbat, Sabbath. God makes his enemies take a Sabbath. When Israel refused to observe the land Sabbaths, God cast them out “until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths” (2 Chronicles 36:21). God will have his Sabbath, his people with have their Sabbath, his creation will have its Sabbath, and those who fight against him will have no choice.

How is Sabbath a punishment? Well, our present Sabbath, the Lord’s Day, is an unthinkable punishment to unbelievers. Having to wake up, get dressed, and sit through a church gathering where God is praised and the word is preached and idols are demolished and Christ is exalted and nice, spiritual people ask them how they’re doing is insufferable to them. If that is the type, hell is the antitype. As I understand it, the damned will be able to see into heaven (Luke 16:23). If so, God will make his rejectors sit through church for eternity, from the hot seats. And that’s the only heaven for a G.

Repent of your worthless sin and go to Jesus, whose arms are open wide to gangsters and Pharisees alike, and rule the new universe with us for an eternal Sabbath. Now that’s gangster.

Of dwellings and Dweller

“The LORD has said that he would dwell in thick darkness.” 1 Kings 8:12

The words are Solomon’s. The occasion is the dedication of the temple. Their meaning is great. There is Biblical Theology in these words.

God dwells in secret. Chapter and verse? Ok: “your Father who is in secret” (Matthew 6:6). Lewis has it, “He walks everywhere incognito.” Sin has hidden God from us. The devil may prowl about like a roaring lion, but the living God rules from a hidden place.

But these words mean something to Solomon because God has just disclosed himself in the temple. It was his dwelling; he was manifested there. And he is seen there, in all the imagery of the building itself and the Temple worship. The dwelling, and what happens there, teach us about the Dweller.

Solomon’s temple is long gone, but God’s temple continues. We are the temple of God. The church is his dwelling. The beauties and gifts of the living stones, and the breathtaking union of the whole, and the great work taking place within, and without, are the disclosure of God. The day has dawned, the Morning has begun. In the common tongue, get yo self a church.

Long-forgotten gold

“The floor of the house he overlaid with gold” 1 Kings 6:30

Not just the floor, but the walls too. If you walked into Solomon’s Temple, you would find yourself in another dimension. I’m afraid our modern world and its modern wonders would not diminish our surprised awe. In fact, I think they would increase it. The plasticized and cheaply materialized age that we live in is quite distinct from the old craftsmanship of Hiram and the little golden world that Solomon’s Temple was.

Gold is found throughout the Bible. There was gold was in Eden. It was acquired by the people in Egypt, and it built the utensils and the Ark. Gold was everywhere inside the Temple at Jerusalem, and gold paves the streets of that heavenly city to come.

Gold is unique among the precious metals. They are all of a silver hue, but gold is rich, colorful, and unique. It’s warm. It images God’s glory, even as the golden beams that light our world. Gold is our faith, tested and precious. We are not much to look at; the temples of our bodies are decaying. But inside, our hearts are golden with God’s grace and his glory.

We’ve seen this world’s gold. We’ve even seen and tasted something of God’s glory in it. But very soon we’ll experience it. As one of Narnia’s own prophets has said,

“I have heard of those little scratches in the crust that you Top-dwellers call mines. But that’s where you get dead gold, dead silver, dead gems. Down in Bism we have them alive and growing. There I’ll pick you bunches of rubies that you can eat and squeeze you a cup full of diamond-juice. You won’t care much about fingering the cold, dead treasures of your shallow mines after you have tasted the live ones of Bism.”

Lord hasten the day when all turns to living gold.

I’m telling dad

“Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping.” Psalm 6:8

“I’m telling dad.” Words to strike fear into the soul of son and sibling alike. When mom says it, it means reckoning; when brother or sister says it, it means terror. We offer treats and favors. “ANYTHING! Just don’t tell dad.”

The words terrify because dad has authority. Dad is judge. And when he finds out, he’s not going to like it. Now, every good father deals gently with his wayward children. But the illustration helps us here, because like brother or sister, the workers of evil cannot help but recognize the Authority. They should not like this weeping to God business.

The Israelites told him in Egypt. The people in exile cried to him. The saints lifted their voices, and he answered with power from on high. When the sound of God’s weeping little ones ascends the skies, devils beware. When we cry, we are dangerous for you to be around. He’s going to hear it, and he’s not going to like it.

Our weepings have a way of finding God’s courts. His ears are tuned to detect them at great distance; he welcomes them from afar. Let us never despair, as long as we make our despairings at the feet of our Father. He will drive those who trouble us far away.

They were happy

“They ate and drank and were happy.” 1 Kings 4:20

These were the golden days of Israel. But, you don’t know what you have till it’s gone. Solomon ended his days with a sigh, reflecting, I think, upon these times: “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.” (Ecclesiastes 2:24).

Happiness. The ever elusive, the barely tasted. Our first parents had it; sin ruined everything. “Instead of being holy and happy, they became sinful and miserable.” But in Christ all is changed. Does God want his holy people to be happy? Absolutely. What kind of monster do you think he is?

The happiness God desires for us is of course real happiness. It’s spiritual happiness now, and, hard-won happiness that lasts forever. But it is happiness. “God,” says the Ph.C. (Philosopher of Cliché), “wants us to be joyful, but not happy.” Their course study included rejoice in the Lord always, but be happy in the Lord always they have not heard of.

After all, “joy and happiness are not the same thing.” How could they be? Well, mostly because they are. Interestingly, the Greek word behind Paul’s command to rejoice means to be in a state of happiness (BDAG, for those playing along at home). I’m afraid so. Let’s leave our cute and meaningless distinctions once and for all and delight ourselves in our amazing God.

Cage stage of another sort

He also went down and struck down a lion in a pit on a day when snow had fallen. 2 Samuel 23:20

Benaiah didn’t attain to the three mighty men of David, but he did attain to a unique renown of his own. His great deeds were of a strange sort. First he killed two ariels. “What are those?” says the Millenial (and the rest of us). Some modern translations render it the sons of Ariel, a supposed man of Moab. Others believe ariel means hero. According to Jewish tradition, they are a kind of angelic being. Whatever the case, old Ben began his career with a great victory against mysterious opponents.

His next is also strange. David’s other mighties struck down so many hundreds of men (a strange creature in his own right). But Benaiah continues his peculiar martial campaign with his next opponent, a lion. Lions have been beaten by God’s servants before, but his battle is different. Samson slew the beast in the vineyards and David among the pastures of his flocks. Benaiah went into the cage with it. The venue of the battle adds great glory to the victory.

To face the wild animal, he had to go down into the pit. The Good Shepherd makes his lambs lie down in green pastures, and sometimes he makes them go down into pits of despair to slay lions. The heavens seem frozen against us, God seems cut off. There we are pressed, tight-quartered with a snarly roomie. And there God is with us incognito to strike down the dread foe.

The Puritan Samuel Rutherford wrote, “When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord’s choicest wines.” A lovely and strengthening thought! Well, allow me to wield it like this. If God is sending you down, down, down into the pit of despair, look for the lion and smite his ruin. That’s probably why you’re there.

All the mysterious, intangible, non-human, strange enemies of God must find their end at the strange warfare of God’s suffering servants. We’re not scared of the dark. They are. It was dark and heaven was frozen when the Valiant Man laid their lord waste in the pit.

Lighten Up

For you are my lamp, O LORD, and my God lightens my darkness. 2 Samuel 22:29

Darkness isn’t dark to God, for even darkness is bright as day to him. In fact, he dwells in unapproachable light which seems like darkness to the dull eyes of man. His dazzling glory cloaks itself. It blinds wicked men and wraps them about in darkness of night. But he is quite the opposite to believers, and David knew it.

Notice how personal the King of Israel, how sensible and experiential his theology: my darkness. To David, God was not indiscriminate light; he was particular light to brighten the darkness about his own two feet. God was safety to David’s danger (v 28), power to David’s weakness (v 30), and protection to David’s vulnerability (v 31). He set the light of God upon whatever darkness engulfed him.

Whatever our darkness is—ignorance, doubt, suffering, sorrow, temptation, yes, even sin and guilt—God alone can light up the night. He is the Father to the fatherless, the Friend to the broken, the Savior to the lost, and the Light to those who dwell in darkness. Whatever shadow I face today, the Lord God shall be my light. How about you?

Puritan Man Bad

This week I posted a meme about Puritans and slavery on social media. That sort of thing tends to ruffle the scruffles. I’m in print on the grim topic here, here, and here, but I wanted to offer a word or two to those who have not had the pleasure (or pain).

Puritan Man Good

I began studying this issue over a decade ago. I was reading Puritans and being blown away by what they wrote about God. But I was haunted by troubling uncertainties. Did these guys own black slaves? Lots of people just assume that they were racist slave owners. It was honestly too much for me; I was going to stop reading altogether any man who could, in good conscience, own my future wife and children because of the skin God gave them. But over the years I’ve been pleased to discover the integrity and holiness that, on the whole, existed among these men.

Let me speak for myself by quoting myself.

Let’s begin with a bit of historical orientation. When we talk about John Owen, we’re talking about the Puritans. That terrible word stirs up many a thought in the foul bosoms of men. But who were these slave-holding, witch-burning pilgrims anyway?

The Puritans had neither pilgrim ships nor slave-holding itches, and, needless to say, they burned no witches. The Puritans lived in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The infamous intolerance of the so-called “New England Puritans,” (upon whose account this group of men is often maligned) was “an embarrassment to [Owen] and his English colleagues.” Amid never-ending chants of puritan man bad we have been pleased to find, not only their prince standing firmly against such oppressions, but their father as well, in the absolutest terms. For that towering progenitor, William Perkins, was what we would now call an abolitionist.

Wrong century, wrong continent

The Puritans were a particular set of Englishmen of the late-16th and 17th centuries. Church historians agree.

Puritanism I define as that movement in sixteenth- and seventeenth- century England which sought further reformation and renewal in the Church of England than the Elizabethan settlement allowed.

— J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1990), 35.

Much ink has been spilt over the meaning of the term [Puritan], but, to cut a long story short, I shall use the word to denote that tendency to push for a more thoroughly Reformed theology and ecclesiology within sections of the Anglican Church between the early 1530s and 1662, the date of the most important Act of Uniformity. The definition is far from perfect; but it is probably as good as it gets...”

— Carl R. Trueman, “PURITANISM AS ECUMENICAL THEOLOGY.” Nederlands ArchiefVoor Kerkgeschiedenis / Dutch Review of Church History, vol. 81, no. 3, 2001, pp. 326–336. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24011335.

Although Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was a Puritan in theology and piety and is sometimes regarded as the last of the Puritans, he was not a Puritan in the strict historical sense. This book therefore does not include chapters on Edwards’s theology, however fascinating they would have been.

— Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 4.

So what about Jonathan Edwards anyway? I still read my brother, not-Puritan Jonathan Edwards with great profit, but also with a grain of salt. Call me the weaker brother. And don’t cite Abraham to me. That there is a large difference—a difference of life and death, in fact—between lawful slavery and kidnap-based slavery is evident from Moses: “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:16). If we must cite the deep magic, let us cite it correctly. Was it lawful and proper for an Israelite—let’s call him Jonathan Edwards—to buy a kidnapped person for a slave? If he wanted to be canceled, Mosaic style, then sure.

I’ll mainly stick to the real Puritans for now. Those dudes were bad after another fashion.