Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1232
“For You did separate them from among all the people of the earth, to be Your inheritance” 1 Kings 8:53.
ISRAEL was a type of the Church of God. The Apostle, in the Epistle to the Romans, clearly shows that Abraham was the father, not of the circumcision only, but of all those who walk in the steps of the faith of Abraham, and that the promise that he should be heir of the world was not to Abraham or his seed through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith. The covenanted inheritance was not to be given according to descent through the flesh, else would the inheritance have fallen to Ishmael, but the peculiar blessings which God promised to Abraham are the heritage of those who are born after the Spirit, according to the promise, even as Isaac was. Abraham, himself, believed, and his faith was counted to him for righteousness, and all those who possess faith are the true children of “the father of the faithful.”
We may, therefore, without any violence, apply what is said of ancient Israel to the present people of God. The promises which were made to the great Patriarch had an eye to us, “as it is written, I have made you a father of many nations,” and, “the promise is sure to all the seed, not to that only which is of the Law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham” (Rom. 4:16, 17). “The children of the promise are counted for the seed” (Rom. 9:8), and of them the children of the flesh, namely, the Jews, are but a type. We shall not err, then, in applying this prayer of Solomon to the people of God at the present time.
It is worthy of remark concerning this prayer that it is as full and comprehensive as if it were meant to be the summary of all future prayers offered in the temple. One is struck, moreover, with the fact that the language is far from new and is full of quotations from the Pentateuch, some of which are almost word for word, while the sense of the whole may be found in those memorable passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy in which the Lord threatened His people that if they were untrue to Him, He would visit them with heavy chastisements. And, in which He also added that if they turned to Him with sincere repentance and confessed their iniquities, He would smile upon them again and deliver them.
Solomon was certainly able to have found words of his own, for the royal preacher was wise and sought out acceptable words. Yet he preferred the words of the Holy Spirit to his own. In prayer there is a peculiar sweetness in being able to bring before God not only His own meaning, but His own Words! “Remember the Word unto Your servant upon which You have caused me to hope.” No language has such a mystic charm and solemn power about it as that employed by the Holy Spirit. “How sweet are Your Words unto my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” When we spread the very Words of the Lord before Him, our mind is conscious of great power in asking—and much assurance of receiving.
The expressions by which the Spirit teaches us are very comely when we return them to Him in supplication. By the illumination of the Spirit of God much more is to be seen in Solomon’s prayer than may be apparent upon the surface. The chief point to which I shall call your attention at this time will be its concluding plea which he repeats in various forms, saying, “For they are Your people and Your inheritance, which You brought forth out of Egypt, from the midst of the furnace of iron.” And again in the words of the text, “For You did separate them from among all the people of the earth, to be Your inheritance, as You spoke by the hand of Moses, Your servant, when You brought our fathers out of
Egypt.”
The Lord’s choice of Israel, His past mercies towards the elect people and His peculiar relationship to them above all other nations—these were the pleas which the suppliant son of David laid before the Covenant God. Three things, then, this morning. The first is the fact, “You have separated them from among all people.” The second is the design, “to be Your inheritance.” And the third is the plea, which is fitly based thereon. We shall try to work out the plea in reference to the various petitions of Solomon’s prayer, for they comprehend most, if not all, of the trials of the godly.
I. First, here is THE FACT. “You did separate them from among all the people of the earth.” The historical Books of Scripture show that this was emphatically true of Abraham and his descendants. Balaam spoke the truth when he said, “Lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.” Israel never prospered when it forgot its separateness, for the promise was, “Israel then shall dwell in safety alone.” When they followed the customs of their neighbors, they had bitter cause for lamentation. But all things went well when they remembered how the Lord had said, “You shall be holy unto Me, for I, the Lord, am holy; and have severed you from other people that you should be Mine.”