1 Kings 6

Discussion Questions

1. Why is it important that the Temple be beautiful?
2. How does the majesty, beauty and symbolism of the Temple enhance your view of God?
3. Pastor Jim said the holy of holies was blown open at the crucifixion of Christ.  What did he mean by this?
4. Jesus is the focus of this passage…although His name is never mentioned.  How can we as Christians say this?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel and we do have extra copies. If you would like one to follow along, raise your hand up real high. We’ll get somebody to drop one off at your row, your aisle. There’s also a QR code up on the screen where you can jump online there, and you’ll find the sermon notes and the sermon quotes. We’re in 1 Kings, this amazing Old Testament book, and we’ll be doing 1 and 2 Kings together, sometimes flying through some of the texts because some of it gets lengthy. But for today, we have 38 verses in Chapter 6, and so I intend to read them all for you. I was trying to think of a really clever title. Pastors work really hard all week long to come up with a good title for their sermon and it didn’t happen for me this week, so I just got “A Sacred Covenant and Some Construction.”

I hope you’re not really disappointed, but I’m excited to be able to go through this together. This is an amazing passage. Let me pray before we read 1 Kings Chapter 6. This is a prayer of John Wesley. It’s his covenant prayer: “Lord, I am no longer my own, but Yours. Put me to what You will, place me with whom You will. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be put to work for You or set aside for You, praised for You or criticized for You. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and fully surrender all things to Your glory and Your service. Now, O wonderful and holy God, creator, redeemer, and sustainer; you are mine and I am Yours. So be it. The covenant which I have made on Earth, let it also be made in Heaven.” Amen and amen.

To remind you a little bit of our timeline as we go along here, Solomon follows on the heels of his father David, who followed on the heels of Saul, who is the first king. It didn’t go so well there, God even told the people of Israel, “This whole king thing isn’t that great of an idea.” But they were like, “No, we want a king,” and so they got a king. David, it’s kind of mixed, but he’s the Great King David. He’s known as the Great King David. Solomon comes along and there’s a little bit of trouble and difficulty in the transition there but starts off pretty well. But we will all see, and we’ve been preparing you for this; we’re not trying to be spoilers, we’re just telling you the truth before we get there. We don’t want a whole lot of you just to be completely disappointed when we get to the end. But we have, from chapters one through 11 in 1 Kings, the story of Solomon. Forty percent of that material is taken up with the temple which he builds. We’re in that area of the storyline right now.

I just wanted to throw that up on the screen for you. I have a small little model there. You can go online and find tons of different models of the temple, and I encourage you to do that. They’re guessing at some things, of course, because it doesn’t exist any longer. The temple that Solomon builds will be literally dismantled by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar when they come in 586 and totally destroy Jerusalem and tear this temple down. It’s an amazing building, and we’re going to read about it today in Chapter 6, but it’s just that. It’s a building. We are people who want to know the God of the house, not just the house of God. Just as when we study the Word of God, we want to know the God of the Word, and so we study the Word of God. He has invited us to do that.

Let me take you inside with a short video clip. I know this is breaking some of Jim’s Official Rules to have a video clip in any of my sermons, but I saw this and I thought just take a look inside for a minute. This will run for about one minute. I think it’s silent but watch this. We’re just going to go through. This is a model from 1883, and then the Metropolitan Museum of Art had some people do a video rendition of that older model that was put together all the way back in 1883. Look at how ornate that is. Look at all the gold. There are the two cherubim, the large cherubim, their wings touch all the way to the sidewalls of the Holy of Holies. There’s the Ark of the Covenant with the two smaller cherubim over it.

When I read this, you having seen this, perhaps some of the details will resonate with you a little bit better. A lot of cities are known for a given building. Here in Nashville, we’re known for the Batman Building. Is that the one that everybody thinks of? Yeah. Jerusalem, at least in that day and time, is certainly known for this amazing temple. It wasn’t even the biggest temple on the planet, but again, the emphasis you’ll see throughout Scripture is not so much on the house of God but on the God of the house, and the Lord wanted to make sure that we kept all that in mind. The chapter breaks out like this: The chronological and the covenantal context. We’ll see that in verse 1 and then all the way to the end of the chapter, verses 37and 38. You see, this forms like bookends. It’s like you’re looking at one shelf and there’s the left bookend and the right bookend, like that. The temple exterior, we’ll read about in two through 10. We did not just see that – that was the interior.

The covenant at the center is fascinating, verses 11, 12 and 13. I’m going to focus most of my attention on that, and then we’ll read rather about the temple interior. All right. With all of that in mind, I’ll leave that outline up on the screen for you as I read Chapter 6 of 1 Kings. “It came about in the 480th year after the sons of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord.” It’s fascinating to me, the last thing that’s mentioned in Verse 1 is the thing that is going to be the subject of the whole chapter, but the first thing that’s mentioned in Verse 1 is the exodus. It tells us to be thinking about everything that’s about to follow, in light of and in view of the fact that this temple is all about this God. He is a God who rescues, redeems, delivers, and sets His people free, and he’s a covenant God.

It’s really powerful. The month of Ziv actually, if any of you know a little bit about the Jewish calendar, that’s actually a Phoenician month, not a Jewish month. I asked Alexa this morning to read me all of the Jewish months. I kept waiting for Ziv to come up and it didn’t come up. I then asked her to name me all the Phoenician months and she said, “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.” I don’t know why not, but it’s interesting that Solomon, remember he’s working with Hiram who’s a Phoenician. This Hiram guy is supplying the timber and he’s also supplying a lot of the stone, and so that’s the reference that’s here. “As for the house which King Solomon built for the Lord, its length was 60 cubits, it’s width, 20 cubits, it’s height, 30 cubits.” Some of your English translations may have gone ahead and translated or made the jump to feet from cubits. It’s about the distance between the elbow and the end of your hand. It’s about, generally speaking, people think of it as a foot-and-a-half, 18 inches.

If the house of the Lord is 60 cubits long, it’s 90 feet long. If it’s 20 cubits wide, it’s 30 feet wide. If its height is 30 cubits, then it’s 45 feet high. The porch in front of the nave of the house was 20 cubits in length, corresponding to the width of the house and its depth along the front of the house was 10 cubits, 10, of course, would be 15 feet. Also, for the house, he made windows with artistic frames. I love this and I love the way that God loves beauty. We can, of course, look throughout nature and see that the God that we worship loves beauty. I did a wedding yesterday, and I was standing on the top of a hill overlooking this beautiful valley down where the Harpeth river is. I thought that’s just one tiny dot of God’s beauty and they’re everywhere. They’re in the night sky. You can see that from just literally anywhere on the planet on many occasions each year. Anyway, there is just beauty everywhere. Our God loves beauty, no question about it.

“Against the wall of the house, he built stories encompassing the walls of the house around both the nave and the inner sanctuary. Thus, he made side chambers all around the inner sanctuary.” In some of your English translations, it might say “the Most Holy Place or the Holy of Holies” “The lowest story was five cubits wide, the middle was six cubits wide, the third was seven cubits wide. For on the outside, he made offsets in the wall of the house all around in order that the beams should not be inserted in the walls of the house. The house, while it was being built, was built of stone prepared at the quarry. There was neither hammer nor ax nor any iron tool heard in the house while it was being built.” I mean, imagine that, people. Reminds me of Habakkuk 2:20.

By the way, Habakkuk will be one of the minor prophets that we study in our lunchtime talks in this season of Lunchtime Talks on Wednesdays. I hope you’ll come out for that. In Habakkuk 2, it says, “The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be…”

Silent.

Yeah. A couple of you know. Silent. I don’t do that. I don’t myself do that well with silence. When I’m preparing sermons, I often have the music up really loud. I have to keep some part of my brain moving in one direction so the other part of my brain can be processing stuff, maybe you’re like that too. But every now and then, I do need some silence, maybe you do as well. There is this moment of holy silence that we all need from time to time, where not only the external noise in our life stops, but also the internal noise in our hearts, in our minds, and we simply get quiet before Him. “The doorway for the lowest side of the chamber was on the right side of the house, and they would go up by winding stairs to the middle story and from the middle to the third. He built the house and finished it. He covered the house with beams and planks of cedar.”

“He also built the stories against the whole house, each five cubits high, and they were fastened to the house with timbers of cedar.” Now verses 11, 12 and 13 almost sound like an insert because the theme is so different. It’s not just some construction now of a structure. It’s not the outside of the temple, which is what we just read about in verses 2 through 10. Now, there’s these three verses and they’re about… It’s the Lord speaking. By the way, it’s the only time the Lord is recorded as speaking in Chapters 5, 6 or 7, so we should pay attention. It’s probably the heart of the matter when you get right down to it. The word of the Lord came to Solomon saying, “Concerning this house which you are building, if you will walk in my statutes, and execute my ordinances, and keep all my commandments by walking in them, then I will carry out my word with you, which I spoke to David, your father, and I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will not forsake my people, Israel.”

That’s so beautiful. Now he moves to describing the interior. Solomon built the house and finished it, verse 14, but now he’s going to talk a little bit about some of the interior. “He built the walls of the house on the inside with boards of cedar from the floor of the house to the ceiling. He overlaid the walls on the inside with wood, and he overlaid the floor of the house with boards of cypress. Remember the video you just watched as we read this. “He built 20 cubits on the rear part of the house with boards of cedar from the floor to the ceiling. He built them for it on the inside as an inner sanctuary. Even as the Most Holy Place in the house, that is the nave in front of the inner sanctuary, was 40 cubits long.” That’s 60 feet. That’s that great hall that the little drone, or whatever it was, was running into. It’s the longest part of the temple, and it’s leading up to the Holy of Holies.

“There was cedar on the house within carved in the shape of gourds, open flowers, all was cedar. There was no stone seen, then he prepared an inner sanctuary within the house in order to place there the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord.” We saw that, such a small box in the Holy of Holies, those giant towering cherubim and those two small cherubim on top of the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant. “The inner sanctuary was 20 cubits in length,” verse 20, “20 cubits in width, 20 cubits in height. He overlaid it with pure gold. He also overlaid the altar with cedar.” Some say, “Well, wait a minute. I thought the entire temple was 45 feet high. How could it be 20 feet high here?” Probably, a lot of scholars will say, this part of the Holy of Holies was elevated. There were steps to go up to the Holy of Holies. Quite possible, we don’t know, certainly not going to change the significance or importance, the stunning walk through that 60-foot hallway before you get to the Holy of Holies.

How we explain the 45 feet versus the 20 feet, that doesn’t matter to me. I mean, that’s not important. “There was cedar on the house within carved the shape of gourds, open flowers, and cedar. No stone was to be seen. He prepared an inner sanctuary within the house in order to place the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord there.” Verse 20, inner sanctuary, 20 cubits in length, 20 cubits in width, 20 cubits in height. “He overlaid it with pure gold. He also overlaid the altar with cedar. Solomon overlaid the inside of the house with pure gold. He drew chains of gold across the front of the inner sanctuary and he overlaid it with gold. He overlaid the whole house with gold until all the house was finished. Also, the whole altar, which was by the inner sanctuary, he overlaid with gold. Also, the inner sanctuary, he made two cherubim of olive wood, each 10 cubits high.” That’s 15 feet high. That was those really tall looking angelic figures that also looked like animals in a way.

Five cubits was the one wing of the cherub and five cubits on the other wing of the cherub. “From the end of one wing to the end of the other wing were 10 cubits.” That was for each one of the two giant cherubs, so a total of 20 cubits. The other cherub was 10 cubits. “Both the cherubim were of the same measure and the same form.” Cherubim is the plural of cherub. “The height of the one cherub was 10 cubits and so was the other cherub. He placed the cherubim in the midst of the inner house. The wings of the cherubim were spread out so that the wing of the one was touching the one wall, and the wing of the other was touching the other wall. So, their wings were touching each other in the center of the house.

“He also overlaid the cherubim with gold. Then he carved all the walls of the house roundabout with carved engravings of cherubim, palm trees, open flowers. Inner and outer sanctuaries, he overlaid the floor of the house with gold.” You saw that inner and outer sanctuaries. “For the entrance of the inner sanctuary, he made doors of olive wood, lentils, the five-sided doorposts. He made two doors of olive wood. He carved on them carvings of cherubim, palm trees, open flowers, overlaid them with gold, and he spread the gold on the cherubim and on the palm trees.” All of this symbolizing the fertility, the fecundity even, if you will, of the flourishing life when one is living in the presence, dwelling in the presence of God, or better, when God is dwelling in the presence of His people. With His presence comes blessing, so the two doors were carved of wood, palm trees.

Verse 33, “So also, he made for the entrance of the nave, four-sided door posts of olive wood and two doors of cypress wood. The two leaves of the one door turned on pivots and the two leaves of the other door turned on pivots. He carved on it cherubim, palm trees, open flowers, and he overlaid them with gold evenly applied on the engraved work. He built the inner court with three rows of cut stone and a row of cedar beams.” Here, we wrap up in Verse 37 and 38. “In the fourth year, the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid in the month of Ziv, and in the 11th year, in the month of Bul, [which is the eighth month again a Phoenician month] the house was finished throughout all its parts according to all its plans, so he was seven years in building it.” In Chapter 7, the attention will be drawn to Solomon’s own palace, and then he’ll go back to some description of some of the furnishings. We’ll study all of that, of course, next week.

What do we learn here? It’s a stunning facility. I mean, I really was impressed by that video. As I said, you can go online and see some other ones as well, but we have here a sacred covenant and some construction. That’s exactly what we have here, but it reminds us that the King of Redemption History rescues, redeems and saves His people, and I think that sets the context for the entire project. You must keep that in mind. Its planning, its beginning, its building, and the meaning, the significance behind the entire temple experience, it’s really all about God. Just as we might say when we study one of the four gospels, and I’m about to teach through Mark with our Timeless Truth daily podcast, we’re going to go through Mark, verse by verse, and it’s all about Jesus. It’s just that simple. This temple, which is going to go away in 400 years or so, this temple is going to just be gone and it’ll be leveled. They’ll rebuild another one. I think it’s in 516 BC when they return from captivity.

Herod will come along sometime in and around 20 BC. He’ll extend the boundaries, the borders of the temple, and then do some additions and remodeling to the second temple, and it will be amazing. It’ll be awesome. But in 70 AD, that entire temple will be dismantled and destroyed when the Romans come along in the end of the Roman-Jewish war, which was 66 to 70. What this reminds me of, right off the bat, is that this whole thing is not about a building. It’s about the God of the House. What kind of god is the God of the House? It’s a great question. I think it’s a question people ask themselves all the time. Whenever they’re considering any kind of religious belief system, whenever something happens in the world, like what happened over the last couple of days, we are all driven to our knees. Some of us shaking our heads, some of just weeping profusely at the evil and the violence, the senseless nature of it. Why does it have to be that way?

Why can’t people get along? Why can’t they live near each other? Yet, we, ourselves entertain smaller versions of that same kind of hatred, lesser violent versions of that same kind of hatred. When we refuse to forgive, when we refuse to be gracious to somebody who has a different viewpoint than ours, when we refuse to love and to extend love and grace to somebody who doesn’t think like us, doesn’t look like us, doesn’t even live like us, nor we think they ought to. We somehow or another want to think of them as the repugnant other instead of seeing ourselves as ambassadors for Christ, the greater than Solomon, the king greater than Solomon, the one who is greater than the temple, the one who’s greater than Jonah, the one who is greater than every prophet, priest, and king that ever lived. Jesus came to earth as the King of Redemption History to rescue, redeem and save sinners like me and like you. We need to be more like Him.

I love the way that the theologian, Fleming Rutledge, puts it in her book Means of Grace, which there’s really just a collection of her sermons. She says, “The story of the Bible is the story of God coming to the rescue.” Okay, let’s go home. That’s good. I mean, seriously, you can just call it right there. That’s what He does and that’s what verse 1 reminds us. Keep all of what you’re about to read in mind because this is what He does. Even though He did it 480 years ago, your memory is pretty short when it comes to your concept of who God is. When you’re in the middle of suffering and when you’re in the middle of tension, when you’re in the middle of fear and you’re trembling, and the stormy sea is buffeting your boat or you’re facing a giant of immense proportions, and you know haven’t got a chance yourself alone against that giant, who will you turn to?

Let’s turn to the King of Redemption History, the one we read about in Verse 1, the one who restates His covenant in verses 11, 12 and 13, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Number two, the King of Redemption History is a who, not a what. Now, we’re filled with messages about have-it-your-way-gods in the world in which we live. It’s kind of a designer option. I may have shared this before, but I remember going into the Walmart Supercenter down in Coral Springs once, and I happened to meet the manager of the entire store. I said, “Hey, just out of curiosity, how many choices do I have as I walk through the front door just in terms of brands and items? How many choices can I make in this Land of Oz that is called Walmart Supercenter?”

He said it was something like 180,000. That’s a lot of choices. We are taught silently, subtly, we’re taught all the time that you can have it your way. You get to be the one to decide. Instead of that, the Bible says, “No, no, no. I’m not my own. I was bought with a price.” You are not your own. You belong to the one who made you. See, that’s one of the clues. You’ve got to connect these dots. You have chronic longing, don’t you? You do, yes. You’re chronically dissatisfied, you achieve a lot of things and then discover, “Man, that really wasn’t quite as satisfying as I thought it would be.” You acquire a lot of things. Some of us have acquired a lot of things. I acquired a pumpkin pie this morning. It was awesome. It’s Pastor Appreciation Month. It was awesome, but it’s not going to be the ultimate fulfillment for me.

It’s going to be very temporal and it’s going to be sweet, but it’s not going to be the ultimate fulfillment for me. The God of the Bible, the King of Redemption History is a who, not a what. The who that He is speaks and acts, A-C-T-S. He acts in human history. He delivers his people 480 years ago, people of Solomon’s time. Keep that in mind, who He is and what He has done because He’s a who and not a what. The God we are talking about at the Village Chapel is not the battery the universe runs on. It’s true. There is some energy everywhere. It’s pretty amazing. Motion is energy. That’s what it is. Light is energy. We don’t even know, even in our modern day, we can’t really define what light is. We just know it has an impact and effect. By it, we see everything else. The Lord is a who, and it’s by Him that we see all of life and everything else, including our salvation. Really important for us to remember that the God who made us, the King of Redemption History, is a who.

Third, the King of Redemption History calls us to walk in His ways and keep His commandments. That is so clearly stated in Verse 12. Would you look at it with me just one more time? Verse 12. I like the different words that he uses here to say the same thing. Statutes, ordinances, commandments. “Walk in them, execute my ordinances, keep all my… Walk in…” There’s something for us to do with something that He has offered to us, that He’s actually summoned us to. How do you respond? This is a great question for us to ask ourselves. The King of Redemption History calls us to walk in His ways, not just to memorize. I love the apostle. I love when we do creeds like these, these summaries, but don’t just memorize that. Believe that, and believe, for us, in our language if you want to pick it apart, means to live in accordance with. Do you believe in God Almighty, God the Father, maker of heaven and earth? Is that who you’re praying to or are you just sending out positive thoughts?

I’m a positive thinker. I’m the dog with his head out the window guy. I’m totally that way. Somebody sent me a little birthday present of a dog. What’s that dog called? The Weimaraner’s got all the flappy loose skin and all that sort. He’s got his head out the window. The wind is just blowing, and his lips are like five inches long or whatever. It’s like, “Yeah, okay. That’s cool,” but it’s not just positive thinking here. It’s the God who made everything that we pray to. We cry to Him, and we say, “Help us in this time when the world is unraveling before us, when we’re afraid, when we can’t figure it out, when we can’t muster the love one more time for that person. Lord, dwell among us. Lord, live through us. Lord, love through us, because we’ve run out of our own resources, and we need you to come and rescue us.”

Holiness is what we’re talking about, isn’t it? J.I. Packer says, “Holiness is always the saved sinner’s response of gratitude for grace received. A holy person’s motivating aim, passion, desire, longing, aspiration, goal, and drive is to please God, both by what one does and by what one avoids doing.” Now, you look up there, some of you’re going, “Oh, so it is dos and don’ts.” No, it’s motivated by one’s desire to please God. Now that you become a believer, a follower of Jesus, He’s given you a new heart. Your affections are redirected. Your affections aren’t all about you anymore. They’re about God and delighting your heavenly Father and Jesus, your Lord and Savior, and allowing the Holy Spirit to move in your heart in such a way that your affections are redirected, your priorities are reordered, all for the glory and the delight of God, not just to follow some rules then start feeling self-righteous about yourself.

No. If you’re doing that, you’re thinking it’s all about the building. This is about God and delighting the heart of God. As I’ve grown in my own faith, it’s started to dawn on me that the opportunity to cause my Lord to smile, to see the light. When you delight somebody, and you see their eyes: “Oh.” To have that kind of relationship with God our father, to see as you pray, as you give, as you serve to see His face: “Oh, yeah. That’s my son. Oh, yeah. That’s my daughter. Oh, yeah. That’s my people right there.” No matter what house we’re meeting in, no matter if it’s gold or just sprayed on whatever that is up there, and I’m not sure what it is. I remember when we had to fix some of it and somebody said, “Well, are we supposed to go out and get some gold leaf and do all that?”

I was like, “No, just get some spray paint about that color. That’ll do it.” It’s not about the materials there, it’s about the God we’re worshiping. I think that’s four. Finally, the King of Redemption History delights to dwell among His people and He will never forsake us, verse 13. Again, I want to focus on verses 11, 12 and 13 because this is what God says in chapter 5, 6 and 7. Therefore, it deserves our attention. The quote from Spurgeon I used, I think it was last week, it’s worth repeating. “The temple was a symbol, and Jesus is the substance; it was but the shadow of which He is the reality… The Redeemer is greater than the temple, because He’s a more abiding evidence of divine favor. God forever dwells in Christ Jesus,” the person, Christ Jesus, “and this is the eternal sign of his favor to His people.” Jesus is the sign, the cross is the sign of His favor to you. The price for your sins paid in full once for all.

When you repent, you already know His response. That’s why for us, we talk about it all the time here, repentance is a joyful thing to do because I know my father’s going to go, “Oh, of course.” I know that’s what He’s going to do for you as well. Even though you’ve done that same thing a thousand million times, and even though some of you are still flirting with it even today, if the Holy Spirit speaks to you today, you have one more opportunity to turn. Repentance is a twofold turn. Turn away from your sin and selfishness, turn away from that and turn toward God, turn toward Jesus, believing, trusting, hoping in the King of Redemption History. He is so much greater than the temple, the first temple, the second temple, the third temple, and any other building that’s ever been made. Jesus, the ultimate temple.

I love the way the Apostle Paul talked about this in 1 Corinthians 3:16. I love verses that are 3:16, John 3:16. I love this one too. 1 Corinthians 3: 16, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the spirit of God dwells in you?” Have you become a Christian? Have you trusted Christ as your savior? Then the Holy Spirit baptizes you into the body of Christ. You are in union with Christ. He is living in you, that’s true, but perhaps the greater, even more wonderful, opportunity for you to start thinking about is that you are in Him. Because when He’s in you, you’ll realize that just to a limited level because you’re the container part of that statement. But when you realize that your life is in Him, oh my goodness, it’s limitless. Limitless glory, limitless joy, unquenchable hope, even in great suffering. Even in great dark times, there you are in Him.

I love the way Peter talked about this as well. He said, “You also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Remember last week, we talked about Matthew 12 and Luke 11, where Jesus said He’s actually greater than the temple. Now you got to understand the first century, when Jesus starts making claims like that – greater than the temple! And then He also said “greater than Solomon,” whom they would’ve revered. The temple was really huge. And He even said He was Lord of the Sabbath. I mean, He is taking all of the things that they have put up first in their religious scheme, and Jesus is saying, “I’m greater than all of those things.” What a bodacious claim if it weren’t true. What a megalomaniac He would be if it weren’t true.

But if it’s true, it changes everything for all of us. Again, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got a building or a tent on the parking lot or were gathering under a tree. We are His people. As Paul and Peter have just told us here, we’re actually a part of His temple now. We belong to Him and He belongs to us. Jesus, the King of Redemption History, greater than Solomon, greater than the temple, greater than any prophet, priest, or king. He’s greater in majesty. He’s greater in beauty. He’s greater in power. He’s greater in purity. He’s greater in His ability to rescue, redeem, and save. Let’s walk in that freedom of being in Christ. Let’s draw nearer and nearer, just like that drone was going in through the temple like that, going closer and closer to the Holy of Holies, which by the way, Solomon and most of the children of Israel never got to do that.

Why? Because only the priests could go in the holy place, and only once a year could the high priest, on the Day of Atonement, go into the Holy of Holies, the Most Holy Place. Only once a year and had to have a rope tied to their foot. They were nervous about dying in the presence of God, and they wanted everyone else to be able to pull the other priests, be able to pull the body out from the Holy of Holies if they died in the presence of God. This is amazing when you think about it. Here’s Jesus, and upon His death on the cross, what we’re told in the Gospels is that the curtain, and it wasn’t mentioned in the 1 Kings, Chapter 6, it is mentioned in 2 Chronicles, Chapter 3. In that description of the temple, there’s also this curtain, this veil. When He dies on the cross, the curtain in the temple is literally torn in two, and it’s interesting the detail they give us, “from the top to the bottom.”

Why is that? Well, because a human being is not tall enough to reach the top. Human beings, if they were going to tear it, they would have to tear it from the bottom like this. Instead, it’s God ripping that curtain because Jesus died and paid the price for your sins and my sins. He’s blowing open the doorway to the Holy of Holies to His presence because He wants to live among His people. Jesus, one of his names, Emmanuel. What does it mean? God with us. See, this is a beautiful thing about the way the Old Testament and the New Testament connect together.

All right, just two short little quotes here and we’ll close. “It can be God-honoring to desire a building that is a physical reminder of His existence and greatness, yet God is more concerned with building His people as a covenant-keeping community known by its lifestyle of doing what is just and right… that shares with and cares for all, especially its weaker and less powerful members. People are drawn to God by the beautiful lifestyle of his people, not by the buildings they erect.”

I think Olley is right there. That doesn’t mean God doesn’t love beautiful things to honor. I think He was pleased. He spent much time speaking to and communing with his people in the tabernacle, in the temple as well. It’s not that He doesn’t want a building. Please, we’ll not do any of the, “Let’s connect the dots. If they had gold, then we need to…” When you all come in next week, hopefully there’ll be enough money in the offering that we can just layer this place with gold. We’re not going to do that. It’s not about the building, it’s not about the house of God. It’s about the God of the House.

I’ll close with a Eugene Peterson quote. “Worship is the strategy by which we interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to the presence, the dwelling place, the God who dwells with his people, with the presence of God.” Pray with me: Lord, thank You. Without You taking the initiative, none of this would be possible. Our coming here to this building to study Your word, to see and gather with Your people, to sing Your praises, Lord, we could do this on the parking lot. We could and have done it on the parking lot, Lord. We’re grateful for the building. We’re grateful for the beauty that’s represented here and how it points to You, the author, the source, the fountain of all beauty, of all that’s good, of all that’s true, of all that’s beautiful.

We worship You. We see our lives belonging to You, and we want to know You, Lord, to have that kind of intimacy with You, God, that causes our souls to flourish no matter what kind of building we’re in, no matter where we happen to live, no matter what country we happen to be in. Oh, God, draw Your people to yourself. Draw us near as we turn to You, Lord. I pray, Holy Spirit, that You will fill us with an overwhelming sense of your grace and mercy at work in our lives. May we be lavished with the freedom of Your grace at work in our lives. Through Jesus and in His name, for His sake, we pray. Amen and amen.