“Is not the Lord your God with You?”—1 Chronicles 22:18.
While we were reading this chapter, you must all have been struck with the melting of one man’s life into another. Here is David most anxious about the building of the temple at Jerusalem; he is not permitted to erect it himself, and therefore he sets to work with diligent care to gather together the gold and the silver, the brass and the iron, the timber and the stone, that would be required. He also instructed the workmen who would be needed, so that, when he was gone, and his son Solomon had ascended the throne, the temple might be built. Did David live in vain? Can it be truly said that he failed in the grandest project of his life? Assuredly not; he did all that he was permitted to do, and by making those elaborate preparations, he was really the means of the building of the temple.
Let every man and every woman among us judge of our life, not merely from that little narrow piece of it which we ourselves live, for that is but a span; but let us judge it by its connection with other lives that may come after our own. If we cannot do all we wish, let us do all we can, in the hope that someone who shall succeed us may complete the project that is so dear to our heart. That is a blessed prayer which Moses wrote in the 90th Psalm, “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.” We shall be quite satisfied to do the work, and scarcely see the glory, if we may but know that, in another generation, the work that we shall have dons shall produce glory to God which shall be seen among the sons of men. No, Elijah, thou must not do all the Lord’s work; but thy mantle must fall upon Elisha, and with it shall come a double portion of thy spirit, and he shall work twice as many miracles as ever thou didst, and shall do greater things for the Lord God of Israel. I do not think it ought ever to be any question of ours what people will do after we are dead and gone. The God who did very well without us before we were born, will do very well without us after we are dead. It is enough for us to do to-day’s work in the day; let somebody else do to-morrow’s work if we are not spared to do it. To-day, do that which cometh to thy hand, and be not dreaming of the future. Put down that telescope; you have nothing to do with peering into the next hundred years. The important matter is, not what you spy with your eye, but what you do with your hand. Do it, and do it at once, with all your might, believing that God will find somebody else to go on with the next piece of the work when you have finished your portion.
There is also another delightful thought here, and that is, the continuity of the divine blessing. God was with David in the gathering together of the great stores of treasure for the building of the temple; but then God was also with Solomon. Oh, what a mercy it is that God did not give all his grace to other people before we came into the world! The God of grace did not empty the whole horn of grace upon the head of Whitefield or Wesley; he did not pour out all the blessings of his Spirit upon Romaine and John Newton, so as to leave nothing for us. No; and to the end of time he will be the same God as he was yesterday, and as he is to-day. There is no break in the Lord’s blessing; he has not ceased to be gracious, his arm is not shortened that he cannot save, nor is his ear heavy that he cannot hear. God buries his workmen, but his work goes on; and he, the Great Worker, wearies not of it, nor shall he ever fail or be discouraged. All his everlasting purposes shall be accomplished, and Christ shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied. Wherefore, let us be of good heart, if we have been apt to look upon the future with fear. The Lord Jesus still lives, and he will take care that his Church shall live and work on until he himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God.
This text seems to me, dear friends, to have a very immediate bearing upon ourselves. David is talking to Solomon and the princes of Israel about the building of a temple; we are not building a material temple, but we are building a spiritual temple. We do not believe in gorgeous architecture, nor in the expenditure of needless gold and silver upon the house wherein we meet to worship God, for we still hear our Lord and Master say, “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” We sing with Cowper,—
“Jesus, where’er thy people meet,
There they behold thy mercy-seat:
Where’er they seek thee, thou art found,
And every place is hallow’d ground.”
We believe that God is as much present beneath the blue sky, and out there in the street, as he is in any kind of building that we can erect for Him. It is very singular that, as soon as ever the temple was built, true religion began to decline; the day when Solomon opened it was the culmination of the glory of true godliness in Israel, and from that hour it began to darken down into an awful night. Yet it was proper that there should be a temple which, in its magnificence, should call for the respect of men towards God, being typical of that far greater temple, not made with hands, even the glorious person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
We, however, are engaged in the building of a temple, in a spiritual sense. God has sent his servants into the world, to gather together for his beautiful house, stones hewn out of the quarry of nature, to be shaped, polished, and prepared for building into the temple of his grace. The Church is the living temple of God, “exceeding magnifical.” It is a wondrous idea that men’s hearts and souls can be blended together, and built up into a spiritual temple wherein God will dwell. This temple is to be builded of stones taken from the quarry of nature, and, God being with us, you and I are to go forth, and to hew out and shape and prepare the stones for the building of this house of the Lord which shall endure for over.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
