WE have in 1 Kings 1 and 2 passages which illustrate two cases. 1St, Fleeing to a place of refuge from judgment, and trusting the word of him who ruled in that day. 2nd, The resting in the fleeing merely, without confidence in the word. I refer to the cases of Adonijah and Joab, when Solomon came to the throne of David his father.
In 1 Kings 1 we read of Adonijah’s effort to obtain the kingdom in spite of the purpose of God, as David had sworn that Solomon should be king. But Solomon had been anointed by Zadok the priest (v. 39), and proclaimed king, as it was said, “Solomon sitteth on the throne of the kingdom,” (v. 46).
Adonijah’s attempt having failed, “He arose and went and caught hold of the horns of the altar.” Solomon was told this, and that he had also said these words (for even the “horns of the altar” were not to be a shelter for willful guilt-see Ex. 21:12-1412He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death. 13And if a man lie not in wait, but God deliver him into his hand; then I will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee. 14But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbor, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die. (Exodus 21:12‑14)), “Let King Solomon swear unto me to-day, that he will not slay his servant with the sword.” Adonijah trusted the word of the king, and was spared. [I only here note this case as an illustration, for afterward Adonijah died for another sin.]
Now the case of Joab was similar, in the fact of his having fled to the tabernacle of the Lord, and caught hold of the horns of the altar. Solomon sent then to have him driven forth from thence, and he would not come. “And he said, Nay; but I will die here” (2:30); there was in his case no appeal to or confidence in the word of the King. And so King Solomon commanded that he should be slain at the very place where he had laid hold of the horns of the altar.
To apply these cases to illustrate what we have had before us, we see one man, as the judgment of his ways was swiftly overtaking him, fleeing to the altar for safety; yet, when about to be brought down from thence, he appeals to the pledged word of the King, and, resting on it, he is spared.
In the other case (Joab’s) there was a defiant clinging to the altar, while no appeal to the King’s word was made, and he is taken in the place of safety (as he thought), and judgment falls on him.
Alas! how many will in this case (as illustrating the insecurity of the greatest privileges where there is no faith in Christ, or in the Word of God, found in the soul), find a parallel! The ruin of resting in anything short of direct, personal, confiding faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, in God Himself, will be seen when judgment takes its course, and the day of privileges of this kind, as of grace, has passed away.
But how sweet the assurance to every soul who rests in Him alone, who answers the feeblest faith which He Himself bestows, and has “fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us; which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the wail; whither the fore runner is for us entered, (even) Jesus, made an High Priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.”
( Concluded from p. 49.)