MINUS DAVID PLUS SOLOMON

That a flight is comfortable and safe does not make it the right flight for every passenger.  You can miss your destination on a good flight going a different way. God sometimes sets up leaders as a pattern for others to follow, but not for everyone therefore to follow them without discretion (Matthew 23:1-3).  Even when such leaders might be followers of Christ, everybody cannot follow them everywhere without some follower missing their specific destiny destination.

Paul enjoined us to follow him “as” (or to the extent that) he followed Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1).  Even then, as credible a pattern to be copied as he was, he admitted that the invitation to follow or copy him could not be indiscriminate.  Some following was going to be advised by the unique call on the particular follower’s life.  He wished, for example, that everyone would remain unmarried “just as I am” but quickly added an exception clause: “…But…” (1 Corinthians 7:7-8).  In other words, even though he was a father, and even though he was speaking for God, everybody could not copy him in that aspect of his personal consecration.  If that had been in my age, the anointed tyrant might have conscripted the congregation into ‘prophetic celibacy’; or it might have been the congregation themselves bent on announcing their loyalty to the Master by the mass imposition of his private consecrations.

God said to David, “You cannot build me a house, because your hands have shed blood.”  The same God promptly turned to the son of the same man and said, “You have been chosen to do what your father was expressly forbidden from doing” (1 Kings 8:18-19).  If Solomon had been in my day, that temple might never have been built, he being ‘very loyal’ to a father’s private consecrations.

That God forbids one great man from doing something does not always mean that He forbids every other person from the same path.  Even when the forbidden leader might be a revered father, and the follower a respectful son, a leader’s private consecrations do not constitute a divine institution for his sons.  That God sends one man on a mission to Mars does not mean that He is sending all his sons to Mars.  No matter how mighty a man might be, no one’s personal life is Bible enough to dictate every other person’s life.  When doctrines get woven out of a leader’s personal convictions or consecrations, they become a chain of bondage to sincere followers.

Within the clear latitude of the Scriptures, what God allows or forbids in the life of someone, even a Great Moses, is no Torah for every follower.  Solomons can build temples that their fathers were forbidden from building, and Davids should be discerning to not restrict sons with restrictions peculiar to them, divine though the restrictions might have been.

There are reproachful barren lands today where great temples might have stood had some naïve son not stupidly insisted, “God ‘expressly’ forbade my father from building Him a house, so I will not.”  There are wastelands of agony today that mock us where there might have been unapproachable shekinahs of melodies, because some blinded father was not discerning enough to tell between his private yesterdays and the boundless tomorrows of his sons.  In the merciful equations of God, minus David may not be interpreted to mean minus Solomon.  The Temple shall be built.  May Daddy Davids admit their limits and open the treasure house. The Temple shall be built.  Amen.