GOD’S LOVE AND BLESSEDNESS FILLING EACH HEART
Andrew Martin
1 Kings 8: 39 (from “for thou”); 42 (to “arm”); 46 (“for … sinneth not”); 51
Romans 5: 3-5
These verses which we have read in Kings come in the course of a prayer. The background is that King Solomon had built a temple. There had never been a temple to God built before; it was an amazing structure really. Solomon dedicated it to God’s use. It is interesting to read these chapters. Solomon built everything, and then he assembled all the people of Israel, and he sacrificed hundreds of animals, so much so, that even the altar, which itself was huge, was not able to contain all the sacrifices. It was an extraordinary display of glory on earth. And it was all for the glory of God. I have often thought of this scene here. Just to think of it in its literality: the temple was built of great stones - it says “glistening stones” and “precious stones” (1 Chron 29: 2), “hewn stones”, 1 Kings 5: 17. It was a structure of divine design; there had not been a structure like it before. In front of it there was a porch which was huge - it went up over fifty metres in height; that was just the porch. Think of it with all these glistening stones. In front of the porch were two pillars of brass. I have often thought of Solomon standing there, with the Mediterranean sun reflecting off all this shining stonework and brass; the brass altar; everything would have been glowing. And he says to God, “Behold, the heavens, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain thee: how much less this house which I have built”, (1 Kings 8: 27), as much as to say that although this was of divine design, it was built by men, and he says, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the heavens, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain thee. How much less this house?”.
People would have stood and looked in wonder at that house. Solomon says that God does not dwell like this. Turn to the New Testament and find that Stephen says that “the Most High dwells not in places made with hands”, Acts 7: 48. Later on, you will find the apostle Paul in one of the great metropolises of Europe, Athens, which was dominated by a temple to a heathen goddess that required so many people to maintain it; and he says the same thing, “he, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is not served by men’s hands”, Acts 17: 24.
The question is then: What is God interested in, and where does He dwell? And Solomon touches that here; he speaks about God as the One who knows the hearts of all the children of men. In a sense, although it was a type - God had established it, the place where He would set His Name - yet what was important to God was the hearts of the children of men. What are the hearts of the children of men like? What led me to this was a hymn we sang this morning, which refers to what will be in eternity. I suppose that is the kind of experience we were having in the service. What was in my mind was the line which said,
Thy love and blessedness
Filling each heart. (Hymn 62)
Think of that - eternity, and God’s love and blessedness filling each heart. Who will there be? Well, if you think back, Abel will be there, and I have no doubt that Seth will be there, and there is a whole line that runs down in Genesis 5: Enoch, Noah - these men, they will be there; that will be like one family. You go on and you find that God acted and called out men. He called out Abraham; that is like another family: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob - they will be there. And what will they be occupied with? God’s love and blessedness filling each heart! You go on right through the Old Testament. I am sure Solomon will be there, though he failed so grievously. God looks upon the early committals of our hearts. And everyone who believes on the Lord Jesus will be there. And God’s love and blessedness will fill every heart. Does it fill your heart? You see, He knows. Solomon says, “thou, thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men”. I do not know your heart and you do not know mine. There have been times in my life when I have been very glad that nobody knows my heart, and the thought that God knows it did not give me any comfort at all. It does not worry me now, no, because I know that my heart is open before God, and all the things that were in my heart which would have condemned me have been taken away by the blood of Jesus. They have all been taken away. Somebody might say that most people live respectable lives, and a lot of people do, but this is about the heart.
When Noah came out of the ark the first thing he did was to offer to God a burnt-offering. God smelled that offering. On account of that offering, God said He would no more destroy the earth with water; He will not do that again, Gen 9: 11. But He had said, “for the thought of Man’s heart is evil from his youth”, chap 8: 21. “The thought of Man’s heart” - it is not what he says - it is his heart. You see, there is something in the heart of man naturally which is against God. That is why before we come to know the Lord Jesus we do not want to hear about God; we do not want to hear about the Lord: there is something in our hearts which is against God. And God says, “the thought of Man’s heart is evil from his youth”. As soon as a person is able to make responsible decisions he finds that sin is operating there: it is a root principle. And it operates in man’s heart. And Solomon says, “thou, thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men”: all the children of men. Think of God looking down upon all the children of men, seeing one after another, sin operating in the heart. That terrible principle has come in to defile and spoil God’s beautiful creation and God sees it. Nothing is hidden from Him; He knows all that goes on in my heart; He certainly knows what I do. He knows where I go, what I hear, what I see - He knows it all. Sometimes we are aware of that, are we not? It is the conscience. The conscience is a voice from God. Sometimes you might have thought, ‘Well, I hope nobody saw me then’ or ‘I hope nobody heard me then’, but there is One who did; and He knows it all. Is He going to condemn you?
Even though thy sins condemn thee,
Graver still thy sinful state;
He who knows it died to save thee
(Hymn 46).
He ‘died to save thee’. It is a wonderful thing that the gospel does not come with condemnation. It is preached to sinners in order that souls should be delivered from the power of sin, and delivered from their own sins, and the effects of their own sins. That is why the gospel goes out, and the gospel goes out widely. Men will try to silence the gospel; it is the conscience that does that.
We have a notice board outside our meeting room, and a man came to us and asked, ‘Would it be possible to put a dimmer light on that board?’. Brothers spoke about it, and one brother said, ‘That is the conscience’. The word of God is going to be announced and somebody is saying, ‘I do not want to see it’. That is the way the conscience works, is it not? You tell a man away from God that the word of God is going to be announced and he will say, ‘Just do not give me that; I do not want to hear that’. But it does get announced, and it goes out across the whole face of the earth. Men have tried to silence it, oh how they have tried to silence it. Through the centuries they have tried every means possible. Satan has tried every means at his disposal to silence the gospel. Five hundred years ago he was using violence in the Western world to silence the gospel. Ten miles away from where I live there is a monument in the road; it was put up there to commemorate the spot where a young man of nineteen years of age was caught reading the Bible, and because he insisted that it was God’s word and he must read it, that young man was burnt to death. That is what the enemy did; that is what Satan did to people. What happened was that as the testimony of those martyrs went out, the work went on. Solomon says, “they shall hear of thy great name, and of thy mighty hand, and of thy stretched-out arm”. The testimony could not be silenced. The gospel went on. On and on, the gospel message has gone out for nearly two thousand years. Men have done what they would, and Satan has done what he could. I think we are living today, in the Western world, in the scene of Satan’s greatest success in trying to silence the gospel but he will not do it.
Satan today is using materialism, trying to assure men that they can be here independent of God. Does any person think they can live here independent of God? Scripture speaks about Egypt; Egypt is the world as independent of God: that is what Egypt signifies. One of the prophets refers to Pharaoh, King of Egypt. Egypt depended on the River Nile and in one of the prophets, Pharaoh is quoted as saying, “My river is mine own, and I made it for myself”, Ezek 29: 3. What a ridiculous thing for a man to say, “My river is mine own, and I made it for myself”! That is the world as independent of God. And they say, ‘Everything is ours’, do they not? ‘The country is ours, it is our country, we can do what we like,’ and so on - it is not! They say, ‘It is my life, I can do what I like with it’ - it is not! Or ‘My body, I can decorate it how I like’ - it is not your body. No, you have been given these things but you must answer to God for them. We are custodians; we are stewards. God has provided things, but all belongs to Him: it does not belong to man. And the gospel will still go out. Men will not silence the gospel. Although Satan has been so successful in assuring men that they can be independent of God, they will never silence the gospel. But the problem is that if we listen to the gospel, listen to the word of God, it has to bring home one thing to us, which is very unpalatable, and Solomon goes on to say, “there is no man that sinneth not”. What a day it is, beloved, when any of us come to it, that I personally am a sinner, and I know that the day will come - and I cannot say how soon that day will come - but the day will come when I will have to face God. I am a sinner and I cannot face God in my sins, and yet, I will have to face Him somehow; “there is no man that sinneth not”, Solomon said.
How can a man be just before God? Job asked that, did he not? Job was full of all the good things he had done, and he was an extraordinary man - very kind, very generous, he was very upright - he was an amazing man really. And yet he said, “but how can man be just with God?”, Job 9: 2. Job was perfectly just before men, but how can a man be just before God? God is holy and we are unholy. Solomon says, “there is no man that sinneth not”. You know, that is no longer true. There is one blessed Man in whom is no sin. He did no sin; that very principle was not found in Him. He was perfect in every respect, living here, a life amongst men, surrounded by all the temptations and snares of men, submitting to none of them; going through in perfect grace and goodness. I just realise I have not mentioned His Name. There is not a soul here that does not know who I am speaking about - our Lord Jesus Christ, in all His spotless humanity, bringing the love of God into the lives of men, women, and children. Life, power and healing coming into souls’ lives where there was nothing but death and darkness and weakness, the effects of sin ravaging humanity. He came into that scene. The “kindness and love to man of our Saviour God appeared” (Titus 3: 4); it appeared in a glorious and blessed Man; men did not see the glory. What was shining out in Him was moral glory! Moral glory! The excellence that was seen in Jesus, was unaffected in any respect by sin, untainted by it; yet He passed through a world of sin, passed through a world of enmity, a world that was against God: He passed through it all. He was affected in His spirit; yes, He felt it all deeply. You think of all that weighed upon Him. He felt the effects of sin. When He came to the grave of Lazarus it says He wept, John 11: 35. That was not mourning for Lazarus; He knew He was going to raise him; He wept as He saw the final effects of sin upon man. “For the wages of sin is death”, Rom 6: 23. He wept as He saw man - God’s masterpiece in creation - and what he should have been before God, in the mind of God, and yet how low, how degraded man had become. Because of sin death has passed upon all. He wept as He saw it. That was the end of the line of things that men have pursued.
He was totally without sin here, always in contact with the Father, always in communion with Him. He says at one point, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me; but I knew that thou always hearest me”, John 11: 41, 42. He appealed to the Father, and He says that, “I knew that thou always hearest me”, as much as to say, ‘I did not have to say this for my comfort’ but He says, “on account of the crowd who stand around I have said it”. And, when the Lord speaks to the Father in the next chapter, there was a voice out of heaven, John 12: 28. The crowd heard the voice but they did not recognise it. Some said it had thundered. Others said that an angel had spoken to Him. This was the Father, expressing His approval of that blessed One who was here, glorifying God upon the earth. How precious to think of that, that He was here. There was one Man who did not sin, He sinned not, one blessed and glorious Man. He justified God in taking up man. You think of man as a sinful being and God as the God who created man. You may think that God had set His heart upon a being that had failed; that is what Satan would say. God had created man and man had failed, and comes short of the glory of God. Jesus justified God in creating man; He set out everything God had sought in man, and He glorified God here on the earth. What a life that was! Think of the lifetime of the Lord Jesus - day after day, every day filled out with service to His God and Father. It speaks of one of the days - “it came to pass on one of the days”, Luke 5: 17. He speaks Himself of “the days of the Son of man”, Luke 17: 22. You think of those days, one day after another - I suppose twelve thousand days the Lord Jesus was here upon the earth, twelve thousand days when the Father’s pleasure could rest complacently upon one Object on the earth in whom there was no sin at all. What days they were. But we know they had to come to an end: “the things concerning me have an end”, He says in Luke 22: 37. Those days were going to finish.
“There is no man that sinneth not”; He had come to save men from their sins: “thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins”, Matt 1: 21. Jesus - Jehovah, the Saviour. The One who was sinless, who was spotless, went to the cross at Golgotha - there He offered Himself to God as a sin-offering. For whose sake? For your sake, for mine. Yes, “He died for all” (2 Cor 5: 14) - every man, woman and child; the Lord Jesus was there on the cross for them. You can tell anyone that Jesus died for them. He was there upon the cross and in those three hours of darkness God expressed His terrible hatred and anger against sin, that dreadful principle that is afflicting mankind. God poured out His fierce anger against sin upon the head of the sinless One, and He bore it all. That judgment was exhausted. No one else could bear the judgment of God against sin, that root principle that had come in to spoil God’s creation. He felt God’s feelings about it. He knew what it meant to God - He had His own holy feelings; He knew what sin was. He bore the awful wrath of God against sin. That wrath has been exhausted so that no one else would ever have to bear what that was.
But still, we sin - “there is no man that sinneth not”, Solomon said. I read a remark about a week or so ago which rather drew me up. Mr Coates was the most gracious man you could imagine, and even he said, ‘The man who says he has not sinned for a week is just a self-deceived hypocrite’ (The Paths of Life, vol 19 p24): there is no man that sinneth not. What is sin? Every time I exercise my own will that is sin. The Lord Jesus did not exercise His own will. As a Man He had a will but He did not exercise His own will. He was always subject to the will of His God and Father. It comes so naturally to us to exercise our own will, does it not? ‘Oh, I think I will just do this’. Did the Father tell you to do it? Every time I exercise my will I find myself in that situation. As Solomon says, “there is no man that sinneth not”. We should not sin. And the apostle John tells us that: “I write to you in order that ye may not sin”, 1 John 2: 1. How can we not sin? How can we be free of sin? First of all, how can we be free of sins? First, let us face the fact that we are sinners. We turn to the Lord Jesus in our need, because we know that if we are sinners God will not overlook the fact that we have sinned. For the one who acknowledges before God that he is a sinner, and puts his faith in the work of the Lord Jesus, in that shed blood of His, God accepts that. See, the Lord Jesus having borne the judgment against sin - went into death, He laid down His life and then His precious blood was shed; His blood was shed there upon the cross. That blood is a great testimony to the life laid down - God accepted it. God accepted that life, that offering, and the sinner who puts his faith in God, in the Lord Jesus and in His shed blood, will know what it is to go without the judgment of sin and go without that judgment forever.
It is a blessed thing to be free of your sins. Maybe yours have troubled you. I am sure we have all known what it is to be troubled by our sins. I trust that we have all known what it is to come to the Lord Jesus. That upright life, the good life, will not save you from your sins. No, we come to the Lord Jesus; we find that in Him He is the only answer. Somewhere in the Midlands there is a gravestone in a cemetery on which are the following words:
Here lay the earthly remains of John Berridge
Late Vicar of Everton and an itinerant servant
then after a few more details it says:
I was born in sin February 1716
Remained ignorant of my fallen state till 1730
Lived proudly on works for
faith and salvation till 1754
Admitted to Everton vicarage 1753
Fled to Jesus alone for refuge 1756
Fell asleep in Christ January 22nd 1793
You see, there was a man who lived an upright life, who assumed to teach others about the gospel, but what he had to come to was that he had to flee to Jesus for refuge. There is no salvation without coming to the Lord Jesus; there is no forgiveness without coming to Him in repentance; there is nothing for the soul outside of Him: nothing outside of Him.
And then you find that the whole world’s system is set against you. Men do not want to hear the gospel; they do not want the testimony of a believer. They will accept a believer if he comes down to their level. They may ask why you do not come with them to such-and-such a place, why do you not join in with this, why do you not do that. The believer has been redeemed from all that. Solomon goes on, “they are thy people, and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest forth out of Egypt”: we belong to God. It is difficult when your friends and colleagues put pressure on you, because believers are actually attractive people, and they would like them to fit into their system. How do you meet it? You know the best way of meeting it is to say, ‘I belong to the Lord Jesus and I cannot do that’. Just as simple as that: ‘I belong to the Lord Jesus and I cannot go there’. No one can deny that you belong to the Lord Jesus. The effect of it is that you have been redeemed, typically, out of the land of Egypt. You do not have your part there and the world becomes a wilderness to you. The attractions of the world may pull at you - the children of Israel felt the constant pull of Egypt all through the wilderness - but once you realise that the Lord Jesus has died, He has been cast out of this world - they would not have Him - then you realise if the world that would not have Him then there is no place for you it. “Broughtest forth out of Egypt, from the midst of the furnace of iron”; you see that characterises the world - it is set against its God. Solomon bring out these things.
You might ask how you are going to get through. Let us turn to Romans, shall we? There was Paul whose life was more difficult than any of ours. He says, “we also boast in tribulations”. What does that mean? It does not mean that he went around telling people about them; Paul did not do that. It means he rejoiced through them; he rejoiced in tribulations. The apostle Paul did not spare himself - his travels, his journeys - he made light of them. And they are not enlarged on in the scriptures. You think of when he came to Europe - he went to Philippi. There was a riot there and he was cast into prison. He was beaten and afterwards they dismissed him; they told him to go away. The next day he went to Thessalonica, preached there for three weeks and again, the whole city was in turmoil. They turned him out. He went next to Berea, and then down to Athens, over three hundred miles. He preached to them in Athens, that wonderful dissertation on man’s place before God and the place that God has given to the Lord Jesus. And it says having left Athens he went to Corinth, fifty miles over the mountains - he does not mention these journeys; that is not the point. Paul’s life was devoted to the work of God, and he suffered. He suffered those beatings; he was stoned. He was in Lystra and they stoned him, threw him out of the city and left him for dead, Acts 14: 19 You think of the sufferings that that man endured. He said that he counted it all for nothing. And finally, he was put into prison and spent two years there without a proper trial. Two years in prison, chained up, and what did he say? He was brought out into a court eventually, a court of great pomp and splendour, and there was this poor prisoner standing in chains. And what does he say? To the king he says, “I would to God, both in little and in much, that not only thou, but all who have heard me this day should become such as I also am”, Acts 26: 29. Then he added, “except these bonds”, as if that was just an afterthought. He was saying, ‘I just wish you had what I have’. Agrippa had all the pomp and ceremony there; he had men making way for him - even the governor would have recognised that Agrippa had a higher place in the hierarchy than he had. And this poor prisoner says, ‘I just wish you had what I have!’. That man came into that court in great pomp and splendour and I think he went out in great embarrassment because he recognised that there was one there who was morally superior to him, and he was rejoicing in tribulations.
We boast in tribulations - that is what it meant. He was rejoicing in them, because “tribulation works endurance; and endurance, experience”. He proved God in them, proved what God could be sustaining him. That is the endurance - proving what God is. Then “experience, hope”. What a hope he had before him. “And hope does not make ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit”. There you are - “in our hearts”. God is “the knower of all the hearts of all” the children of men, Acts 1: 24. And our hearts, which were once evil continually from our youth, now have the love of God shed abroad in them by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. “For of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks”, Matt 12: 34. Is that not the evidence? You speak about the love of God, you speak about God and His love.
Think of the wonder of the gift of the Holy Spirit. I spoke earlier about how we are to be maintained, and how can we go through life without sinning: here we have the power. It is not in Romans 5 that it is presented in this way - it is in chapter 8. You read through chapter 7 and see how you want to do what is right all the time but you find you keep doing what is wrong. How can you get out of this? How can you get delivered from this? At the end of chapter 7 the apostle’s eyes are lifted up and he says in verse 25, “I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord”. His eyes were lifted up to another Man. It is a Man in the glory, a Man in heaven. And you get that object before you. The Holy Spirit would connect you to the Man who is above. And He would seek to keep your gaze upon Him. He then goes on to say it is, “in order that the righteous requirement of the law should be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to flesh”, (chap 8: 4); there is another principle upon which we can walk - we have God’s Holy Spirit given to us. He is a divine Person - He is more than just a power - He is a Person. And He is given, attaching our hearts to Christ above, and giving us the power to walk here apart from all that is around us, apart from the principles that govern men; walk down here with the love of God shed abroad in our hearts. That is what God is looking for. It is a foretaste of what will happen: God’s love and blessedness will fill every heart. The Holy Spirit now has been given to us; He sheds abroad in our hearts the love of God. May we experience this in a greater way, for His Name’s sake.
Strood
10th February 2019