Alright,
yesterday I gave a longer than average blog post. So today I will compensate and hopefully
stick to the point. As I read the
passage for the building of the Temple I had a few quick thoughts.
Timing Is Everything
First, I
think Solomon does deserve some credit for building the Temple before he builds
his own palace. In this instance Solomon
honors God before himself and we should learn from that.
Everything in Time
Second, I
think we should look at how it was constructed.
It was made of stone so that it would last. The stone was overlaid with wood so that the
wood could be overlaid with gold. Gold
does not oxidize (rust). Gold does not
deteriorate over time. Clearly Solomon
is intending to build a temple for the Lord that would be permanent. It is a testimony to the belief that the God
of the Hebrew people will not fade away or pass away. He is no fleeting God; He deserves a house
that is permanent.
Of course,
we as Christians do not have a temple.
However, this same thought works well with us. If we take seriously that God has come to
dwell with us – within us, even! – then our bodies are His temple as the New
Testament asserts in several places. If
our bodies are His temple, then we should view our activities as things which
should promote the perpetuity of God.
When we sin, we discredit the Temple of God. I think this is an important perspective to
remember. Sin is not just going against
God’s ways; sin is evidence of our lack of faith in the permanence of God’s
temple. Sin is us trying to wrest God’s
temple out of His hands and making it to become a temple unto ourselves. In a word: sin is being a self-monger.
Of course,
this leads me back to Solomon. We know
Solomon falls in the end and worships the foreign gods of the Egyptians and the
Canaanites. He who built a “permanent”
temple for the Lord did not keep himself a permanent temple for God. This is why I think it is so important to see
the words that we have in 1 Kings 6:11-13.
Once more God tells Solomon: “If you keep my ways …” God is still trying to obtain Solomon’s
heart. God is still attempting to reach
Solomon as He was able to reach David, his father. Solomon may have built the Temple of the
Lord, but God is not convinced that Solomon’s heart is genuinely His.
Prioritizing Life
I think
that it is also important to hear those words with respect to the temple. God is telling Solomon quite clearly that the
buildings and traditions of mankind are nothing compared to keeping the Word of
God. Solomon can build the best building
ever, but that is not what God desires.
God desires true faith. God
desires that Solomon pursue God in humbleness and righteousness. It’s not that building the temple is bad; it
is that it is penultimate. {That’s a great word, by the way. No Christian should go through life any
longer than necessary without understanding the definition of penultimate. It
is so useful when talking about faith and works.}
This makes
me think of my experience with American Christianity. How much of what we do every day is
penultimate? Does God care how tall the
flowers are on the altar? Does God care
about whether the choir wears robes?
Does God care about what color the carpet is and whether we have
cinder-block walls? Or does God care
about how we follow His ways? Does our
building matter anywhere near as much as whether or not we are caring for the
orphans and widows in our midst? Does
our stuff matter anywhere near as much as whether or not we honor our father
and mother, love our neighbor, and love our Lord God with our whole being?
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