1 Kings 8:59

1 Kings THE KING ‘BLESSING’ HIS PEOPLE ‘THE MATTER OF A DAY IN ITS DAY’1 Kings 8:59 . I have ventured to diverge from my usual custom, and take this fragment of a text because, in the forcible language of the original, it carries some very important lessons. The margin of our Bible gives the literal reading of the Hebrew; the sense, but not the vigorous idiom, of which is conveyed in the paraphrase in our version. ‘At all times, as the matter shall require,’ is, literally, ‘the thing of a day in its day’; and that is the only limitation which this prayer of Solomon places upon the petition that God would maintain the cause of His servants and of His people Israel. The kingly suppliant got a glimpse of very great, though very familiar, truths, and at that hour of spiritual illumination, the very high-water mark of his relations to God-for I suppose he was never half as good a man afterwards-he gave utterance to the great thought that God’s mercies come to us day by day, according to the exigencies of the moment. Now, I think that in the words ‘the matter of a day in its day’ we may see both a principle in reference to God’s gifts and a precept in reference to our actions. Let us look at these two things. I. A principle in reference to God’s gifts. Of course, obviously-and I need not say more than a word about that- we find it so in regard to the outward blessings that are poured into our lives.

We are taught, if the translation of the New Testament is correct, to ask, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ and to let to-morrow alone. Life comes to us pulsation by pulsation, breath by breath, by reason of the continual operation, in the material world, of the present God’s present giving. He does not start us, at the beginning of our days, with a fund of physical vitality upon which we thereafter draw, but moment by moment He opens His hand, and lets life and breath and all things flow out to us moment by moment, for no creature would live for an instant except for the present working of a present God. If we only realised how the slow pulsation of the minutes is due to the touch of His finger on the pendulum, and how everything that we have, and the existence of us who have it, are results of the continuous welling out from the fountain of life, of ripple after ripple of the waters, everything would be more sacred, and more solemn, and fuller of God than, alas! it is. But the true region in which we may best find illustrations of this principle in reference to God’s gifts is the region of the spiritual and moral bestowments which He in His love pours upon us. He does not flood us with them: He filters them drop by drop, for great and good reasons. I only mention three various forms of this one great thought. God gives us gifts adapted to the moment. ‘The matter of a day,’ the thing fitted for the instant, comes.

1 Kings 8:59. Let these my words be nigh unto the Lord our God, day and night — Let a gracious return be made to every prayer that shall be made there, and that will be a constant answer to this prayer. That he maintain the cause if his servant and of his people — Of me their king, and consequently of all my successors, and of the whole kingdom. As the matters shall require — According to mine or their various necessities and exigences. What Solomon asks here, with regard to his prayer, is still granted in the intercession of Christ, of which his supplication was a type; that powerful, prevailing intercession, is before the Lord our God day and night. For our great Advocate attends continually to this very thing, and we may depend on him to maintain our cause, against the adversary that accuseth us day and night, ( Revelation 12:10 ,) and the common cause of his people Israel at all times, upon all occasions, as the matter shall require, so as to speak for us the word of the day in its day, as the original here reads it, from which we shall receive grace sufficient, suitable and seasonable in every time of need.

(59) And Solomon offered. —The idea that the king on this occasion, and on others, performed the priest’s ministerial office is manifestly improbable. At all times he who brought the sacrifice was said to “offer” it. (See, for example, Leviticus 2:1 ; Leviticus 3:2 ; Leviticus 3:7 , &c.) The priest accepted it in the name of the Lord, and poured the blood at the foot of the altar of sacrifice, or sprinkled it on the altar of incense. But still the absence of all mention of the priests, even as to the “hallowing” of the court for sacrifice, is characteristic of the tone of the whole narrative, in which the king alone is prominent.