Angels are near me
They want to take me home
To silence my tears
That so often fall.
They want me to see You
Grieving beyond the veil
To make it known
You can feel my pain.
They whisper to tell me
But my grief is too deep
And I cannot hear
all the words they speak.
When a moment of light
Breaks deep in my heart
They tell me of tears You weep
while we are apart.
-
CATHRYNE
ALLEN
(Artist Unknown)
David’s
concluding psalm is titled “A Psalm for Solomon” which could be understood as
David’s wishes and hopes for his son but knowing of David’s prophetic streak
Psalm 72 presents Solomon as a type of Christ. Consider the following verses to
this end:
·
He shall judge thy
people with righteousness…(v 2)
·
He shall judge the
poor of the people and break in pieces the oppressor (v 4)
·
In his days shall the
righteous flourish and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth (v 7)
·
He shall have dominion
from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth (v 8)
·
Yea, all kings shall
fall down before him: all nations shall serve him (v 11)
·
His name shall endure
for ever…men shall be blessed in him and all nations shall call him blessed (v
17)
·
Blessed be the Lord
God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things (v 18)
I was
surprised when I read this psalm. I would have never made Solomon a type of
Christ. Whereas his father was a disappointment in the case of adultery and
murder, Solomon, in my mind, was worse because he abandoned the worship of the
God who gave him so much wealth and stature in the world. Solomon reigned over
Israel in extravagance and grandeur which lasted for 40 years. This is all it
took to destroy Israel's course forever.
David went
to his grave worshipping the God of Israel with full contrition, a broken heart
and a contrite spirit. Solomon, on the other hand turned his back on Jehovah by
turning his heart to idolatry. His foolishness exceeded all his wisdom. Whereas
he might have started as a type of Christ judging by the abovementioned
scriptures, he went against all that typified him in such a light and concluded
his life as a failure…..and this despite the warning.
Following the dedication of Solomon's temple, the Lord
appeared to Solomon for the second time and acknowledging the dedicatory
prayer, accepted the temple which Solomon dedicated to Him. At the same time,
however, he issued a grave and serious warning to the king of Israel. He warned
Solomon that if he and his children do not keep his commandments and if they go
and serve other gods and worship them, that He will cut off Israel out of the
land which He had given them, that He will destroy the temple which was built,
and 'Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people' (1 Kings
9:6,7). It’s beyond my understanding how he could ignore this warning.
It is interesting to me that the Lord appeared to Solomon
for the first time following Solomon's marriage alliance with Pharaoh, king of
Egypt. This alliance was the greatest act of Solomon's foolishness and the
beginning of his downfall. It was then, nevertheless, that the Lord was willing
to give him the gift of wisdom (1 Kings 3:5,9-13). I don’t know if Solomon came
to believe at this point that God gave him licence to do whatever he wanted
because he proceeded to marry many idolatrous women out of the covenant. That,
in itself, was problematic, but the many political alliances signalled that he
had more faith in them than in God who was willing to fight and win Israel's
battles.
One cannot but think that Solomon used his wisdom to judge other
people in righteousness but not himself…..it’s like he had no common sense. You
might say he was beginning to lose the plot.
God who knows all things from beginning to the end knew
that Solomon was heading in the direction he should not want to go. So why make
the promise of wisdom and wealth and honour if it was going to be all wasted in
the end? I suspect it was more of a punishment than a blessing for Solomon's
fall was proportionate to his greatness. Marrying foreign women who led him and
all Israel into idolatry aborted his ability to endure to the end and changed
the course of Israel's history. From that point on, the history of Israel was a
losing battle fought by prophets against the forces of disloyalty to God.
If we can see the foolishness of people of old but not our
own, we should not get too comfortable. President Spencer W. Kimball gave a
warning to modern Israel regarding idolatry:
“ As I study ancient scripture, I am more and more
convinced that there is significance in the fact that the commandment “Thou
shalt have no other gods before me” is the first of the Ten Commandments. Few
men have ever knowingly and deliberately chosen to reject God and his
blessings. Rather, we learn from the scriptures that because the exercise of
faith has always appeared to be more difficult than relying on things more
immediately at hand, carnal man has tended to transfer his trust in God to
material things.
“Therefore, in all ages when men have fallen under the
power of Satan and lost the faith, they have put in its place a hope in the
“arm of flesh” and in “gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood and
stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know (Daniel 5:23) – that is, in idols.
This I find to be a dominant theme in the Old Testament. Whatever thing a man
sets his heart and his trust in most is his god; and if his god doesn’t also
happen to be the true and living God of Israel; that man is labouring in
idolatry.” (“The False Gods We Worship”,
p 4)
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
One day when You return for Your glorious reign
In Millenial splendour
Your power to display;
I
will kneel and confess Your greatness;
I
will join the heavenly throng in song,
And
I will sorrow for the lost
For
whom You suffered for so long.
- Cathryne Allen
I have written about King
David extensively over the years but it seems I am not finished yet. I watched
an AI generated film about him yesterday and it was done so well that I don’t
know who I cried about more, the David who rose to the throne or the David who
fell from it.
The fact remains that
David’s accomplishments are astounding. His name comes from the ancient Hebrew
root word dod which translates to a beloved person, love, a friend….pronounced
Dah-veed in modern Hebrew. As a youth, he was said to be a man after the
Lord’s “own heart” and as a man, he spoke by the Spirit and had many
revelations (1 Samuel 13:14).
In his rising to the
throne he conquered his enemies by his supplication to God for help and
protection ‘not fearing what man can do to him’ (see Psalm 55:11). He was
fearless in his dedication to his people by his awe inspiring way he believed
in the cause in Israel when he, a mere
shepherd boy, slew Goliath, considering him of no regard, a mere ‘uncircumcised
Philistine, who dared to defy the armies of the living God’ to whom he stated
without fear: “I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the
armies of Israel whom thou hast defied…...and I will smite thee and take thine
head from thee….that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel” (1 Samuel
17:26,45,46). All the earth, indeed…..
The zeal with which he
lived his early years is absolutely mind blowing. What tears at my heart the
most are the psalms he wrote as a reflection of his incomparable love for the
God of Israel. His faith gave him a
prophetic voice to testify of Christ who would one day sit on his throne. Apostle
Peter testified of this fact in Acts 2:22-36. Psalms worthy of notice to this
end are:
·
Psalm 16 (thou wilt not leave my soul in
hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption);
·
Psalm 22, which closely matches details of
the Crucifixion, including “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (v 1); “they pierced my hands and my feet” (v 16); “They
part my garments….and cast lots” (v 18);
·
Psalm 110, which Jesus and the apostles
use as messianic, including “The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right
hand” (v 1); the prophecy of Christ as “a priest for ever after the order of
Melchizedek” (v 4);
·
Psalm 41, often connected with betrayal: “mine
own familiar friend…hath lifted up his heel against me” (v 9), which Jesus
quoted at the Last Supper (John 13:18);
·
Psalm 69, linked to the suffering of
Christ: “in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (v 21);
·
Psalm 118, used repeatedly in the New
Testament about Christ: “The stone which the builders refused is become the
head stone of the corner” (v 22) and “blessed be he that cometh in the name of
the Lord” (v 26).
David did three things for temporal Israel that typify what Christ will do for spiritual Israel:
Firstly, following Saul's death, Israel's
kingdom was divided in two for seven years. The tribe of Judah accepted David
as their king and the rest of the tribes of Israel were ruled by Ishbosheth,
one of the sons of Saul, whom Abner, Saul's commanding general set up as the
new king (2 Sam 2:8-9).
Despite being anointed as Israel's king, by Samuel, the prophet,
David refrained from taking action against Ishbosheth in honour of the covenant
he made with Jonathan not to retaliate against Saul's family when he came to
power. Following Ishbosheth's murder David showed great wisdom and judgment by
executing the two men responsible (see (2 Samuel 3). This brought him into
favour with the tribes under Ishbosheth and ultimately united all twelve tribes
into one nation under the ultimate leadership of God.
Secondly, David succeeded in winning the whole extent of the
promised land for the covenant people. For the first time the chosen people of
the Lord controlled the whole land promised to Abraham's posterity nearly a
thousand years earlier.
Thirdly, David established Zion or Jerusalem as the spiritual and
political center of Israel. Under David's reign Israel reached its golden age.
Never before had Israel achieved such heights of power nor did they ever again.
(Old Testament Student Manual, Book 1 p 291)
David was anointed to sit on the throne of Israel and to establish the royal family line that would produce the King of Kings who would one day sit ‘on the throne of his father David’ (Luke 1:32-33). My question is this: was David chosen to be an example of the good King who was to come or was he chosen to show that no king can be as good as the King that was to come????? The answer is obvious, no king can be as good as the King that is yet to come because that King would never and will NEVER fall. I often think our present day governments will with their weakness and corruption accentuate the blessing that the King of Kings will be when He comes to govern the world.
“Even so, come Lord Jesus” (Revelation
22:20).
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
Did Your heart break
As on the cross You hung
Knowing many lambs will go astray?
Did You know they will reject
Your blood and all You had to pay?
And still You hoped
And still You sorrowed
Over Your godly fears
For all they’ll have to suffer
To pay the ransom for
Your sacred tears.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
“Our
God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before him, and
it shall be very tempestuous round about him. He shall call to the heavens from
above, and to the earth, that he may judge his people. Gather my saints
together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”
(Psalms 50:3-5)
Psalm
50 reads more like a revelatory instruction to Jehovah’s saints than a song of
praise. It accentuates thanksgiving and praise of God above the animal
sacrifices of the day. Psalm 51 goes further to explain that the sacrifice God
wants from us is that of a ‘broken and contrite heart’ (vs 15-17).
Psalm
51 was written by King David following that fateful visit of Nathan the prophet
who exposed David’s sin with Bath-Sheeba. It is one of the most heart wrenching
story of the Old Testament. After giving David a touching story of a poor man’s
lamb being taken away by a rich man to sacrifice for a single meal of a
traveller, David was outraged and claimed that the rich man needs to be put to
death but Nathan simply replied ‘thou art the man’ and outlined the seriousness
of what David had done despite all the blessings he had received at God’s hand (see
2 Samuel 12:1-14). It humbled David to the dust.
The
word (Hebrew root dkh) translated as “contrite” means “to crush”,
therefore, “a broken or contrite heart or spirit is one that is crushed,
smashed, broken to pieces…The symbolism of our smashing or breaking or crushing
our hard, wilful heart into pieces and offering the result to God is significant,
because a smashed heart no longer exists in a recognizable or retrievable form….It
is at this point that the Lord can replace our now broken, offered heart with a
new one” (see Ezekiel 36:26). (Dana M. Pike, “3 Nephi 9:19-20: The Offering of
a Broken Heart” in Third Nephi: An Incomparable Scripture)
I
think David understood this principle well when he pleaded with God: “Hide thy
face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean
heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:9,10)
When
the Saviour comes to judge His people, He will require the spirit of repentance
from us. Placing our sins on the altar of sacrifice is the ultimate we can give
and if our hearts are pure and sincere, forgiveness will be HIS to give and He
will be glorified for the salvation of our souls.
Before
the birth of Christ, animal sacrifice was required in expectation of His
sacrifice. The sacrifice of Christ fulfilled this requirement and in itself
denotes a broken and contrite heart offered in the Garden through His submission
and humility and upon the cross through His willingness of extreme suffering. How little is asked of us
in comparison to the greatest sacrifice of all!
I gave you my all:
My heart, my body, my soul.
I paved the way
And conquered death.
Come and take my hand;
Eat and do not hunger,
Drink and do not thirst.
I am in your midst;
I am the only,
I am the last,
And I am the first.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
You assure me
As your potter hands keep moulding me
Of who I will one day be,
But I see the kiln burning
And the heat of it is frightening me.
The exacting fire of faith
Is asking too much of me
I tremble at the grand design of life
And all that it wants from me.
I want to be spared,
I want to believe In Your faith in me,
But I am so weak in this doom of humanity
I want to escape the fires awaiting
me.
You tell me You endured
The hell fires of suffering;
As the clay in me begins to burn and
I am sacrificed as Your holy offering.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
