The next three chapters we'll
look at in 1 Kings 5, 6, and 7 are all concerned the building
of the temple. And as you can imagine, this
temple is typical of the church of God. It's not just a building. It's
where God meets with his people in the Old Testament. It's where
he said, I'll commune with you there. He didn't say, I'll commune
with you down by the river while you're fishing. He may well do
that. But he communes with his people in Christ. In the mercy
seat is Christ, and that's the temple. So the temple pictures
that. It pictures Christ in every way,
which is God with us. God communing with us, God teaching
us, God revealing himself to us, God saving us, God with us. It's Christ, Emmanuel. So we
see that in every aspect of this temple. It's a beautiful picture
of how God saves sinners In this chapter a covenant is made by
Solomon with Hiram the king of Tyre And together they rallied
their resources. We saw how that one gave something
to one of them and one gave another Haram provided materials and
Solomon provided provision for the men that were working and
And God provided the wisdom That kind of sounds like us doesn't
it but of course God provides all of it God provides all of
it. Whatever you get from here. It
came from him Whatever I get it came from him He gives us
wisdom Honor his son. That's what the temple did it
honored Christ in every aspect. I Pray that that's what this
one does God's house God's house So They the men men from both
Countries were to process timber from Lebanon and stone for for
the main structure of the building King David had been of a mind
to build this temple But the Lord said no if you want
to Read something particular later tonight, or maybe later
this week this week 2nd Samuel chapter 7 is where David said
that he was gonna build God a house. And the Lord spoke to David through
his prophet and said, no, I'm gonna build you a house. And
we saw that weeks, months ago in 2 Samuel chapter seven. And
the Lord said, it's good that you were inspired to do this, but
you're not gonna build me a house, your son is. But I am gonna build
you a house And so God promised in that chapter that Solomon
would be allowed to build God's house on this earth God spoke
to David this way. Let me let me read it to you.
Well. I'll tell you what turn over there We won't read the
whole chapter of course, but let's look at a couple of a couple
of verses in 2nd Samuel chapter 7, please I want you to see the
language here 2nd Samuel 7 12 When thy days be fulfilled and
thou shalt sleep with thy fathers I will set up thy seed after
thee which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish
his kingdom He shall build a house for my name and I will establish
the throne of his kingdom Forever I want you to notice particularly
how verse 13 is worded a house for my name That is the same
wording as in our text in first Kings chapter 5 verse 5 and Behold
our purpose to build a house unto the name of the Lord As
the Lord spake unto David my father saying thy son whom I
will set and upon thy throne in thy room, he shall build a
house unto my name." Three times it's mentioned here because that's
what God said to David. A house unto my name. For the
name of God, it says in one place, and unto the name of God, it
doesn't mean it's gonna have a sign with God's name on it
out front. That's not what it's talking
about. You know that, and I just say that to be obvious. and say
what it does mean. Think about what this does mean.
It's a house that is for the purpose of declaring who God
is. That's what it means. A house
unto thy name, your attributes, your character, who you are,
is gonna be proclaimed by this house, in this house, and by
it. That's what it means, unto thy
name. And the temple did that. Oh, it declared the name of the
Lord. The brazen altar showed forth the holiness of God. There's
no approaching God without death, without payment, without reconciliation. There is access to God for a
sinner, but there must be a death acceptable to reconcile God for
the sins of the people, his people. It also showed that it pleased
God to bruise his son. our place to atone for our sins
the golden candlestick showed that God gives sinners light
and Christ is that light. He's the light of the world The
blood on the mercy seat shows the atoning power of the blood
of Christ It's satisfied with that blow the blood of his sacrifice
and And I'm not mentioning everything about the temple right now. We'll
see a lot about it as we go through the next three chapters, but
you see how that in picturing Christ crucified, it is a house
unto God's name. It's a house that declares his
character, his attributes, his glory, his virtue. Holiness, mercy, righteousness,
and love are set forth. His mercy and love are set forth. The table of showbread, the golden
censer, all of it set forth who God is in the person of his son
and what he accomplished for sinners at Calvary. Now God told
David before and Solomon knew that this was not a house for
God in the sense that you and I dwell in earthly houses. That
was made clear to David. We see how Solomon understood
that in first Kings chapter 8 flip over there if you would a few
pages to first Kings chapter 8 verse 26 8 26 And now O God of Israel Let thy word, I pray thee, be
verified, which thou spakest unto thy servant David, my father.
But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Anybody who knows
God, and God said, build me a house, is gonna have this question in
their mind. How can God live in a house? And listen to what he said. Will
God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the heaven and heaven
of heavens cannot contain thee. How much less this house that
I've built. How do I build God a house? And
yet he did. He built it according to God's
specifications. Yet have thou respect unto the
prayer of thy servant and to his supplication, O Lord, my
God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer which thy servant
prayeth before thee today, that thine eyes may be opened toward
this house night and day. Look upon us, Lord. Watch over
us, keep us, keep us here, even toward the place of which thou
hast said, my name shall be there. There it is again, my name shall
be there, that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy servant
shall make toward this place Harkened out to the supplication
of that servant and of that people Israel when they shall pray toward
this place And here thou in heaven that
dwelling place and when thou hearest what a beautiful word
When now here don't don't look to this place and see you know
how Many wonderful works we're doing for you people are actually
gonna say that before God someday according to our Savior When
you look upon us, Lord, when you look this way, forgive. Forgive, because the very best
we do will be sin, unless you see us in Christ Jesus, your
son. This house was not for God to
live in. It was a house to his name, for
his glory. Where does God actually live?
Where does he abide? You know how the scriptures speak
about that? You could say he lives in heaven,
that'd be hard to argue with, but you know what the scriptures
say about this? Listen to Colossians 2.8. Beware
lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after
the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not
after Christ. If anybody's gonna teach you
something wrong, what's wrong with it is it's not after Christ. That's what's wrong with it.
In him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead in a body And
you're complete in him which is the head of all principality
and power God dwells in his son a Body that has prepared for
me all the Godhead all the fullness of the Godhead in a body And listen Christ dwells in his
people God the Father, he said, I dwell in my Son, all of my
fullness is in my Son. And listen, John 17, 22, in the
glory which thou gavest me, I have given them that they may be one,
even as we are one, I in them, and thou in me, that they may
be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that thou
hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved me. I in them, Christ in us, God
in Christ, that's what we just saw elsewhere in Scripture is
confirmed here and We his church are spoken
of this way in Ephesians 2 19 listen to this Now therefore
you are no more strangers and foreigners But fellow citizens
with the Saints and of the household of God and The household is the people in
it house In scripture when it's talking about somebody's house.
It's not talking about the building they live in talking about them
and Listen the household of God. We are the household of God and
are built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets
Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone of Whom all
the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple. That's what we're looking at
the temple Christ and his church Or the household of God a Holy temple in the Lord in
whom you also are builded together for an habitation of God through
the Spirit That's a beautiful picture, not a difficult one
to understand. Turn with me, please, though,
to 2 Chronicles 2 in verse 4. Let's talk about this a little
bit more. I want you to notice something about this account
of the same event. 2 Chronicles 2.4, you'll recognize
what's going on. It's the same as our text. 2nd
Chronicles 2 4 Behold I build and house to the name of the
Lord my God to dedicate it to him and to burn before him sweet
incense and for the continual showbread and for the burnt offerings
Monday Morning and evening on the Sabbaths and on the new moons
and on the solemn feasts of the Lord our God This is an ordinance
forever to Israel In other words, we're gonna worship Him there.
We're gonna worship Him in the burnt offerings that He's ordained,
that's Christ. We're gonna worship Him in the
showbread that He told us to have right there in that place
all the time, continually refreshed, why? Because that's Christ. We're
gonna worship Him before Him to burn sweet incense, why? Because that's the intercession
of Christ. We can't worship without that.
We've got to come to God in his name, for his sake, or we don't
come. We're just having a social event
without that. That's why it's there. So all
of these things, that's the house. Look at verse five. And the house
which I build is great, for great is our God above all gods. But
who is able to build him in house, seeing the heaven and heaven
of heavens cannot contain him? Who am I then that I should build
him a house, save only? It's not a house like we have
a house, but it's for this purpose, to burn sacrifice before him,
to worship him by the precious blood of his son, to come before
him in Christ's name, for Christ said, trusting Christ, believing
on Christ, offering Christ as our only offering before God,
as our only righteousness before God. That's what we do when we
come before God. This is the same sense in which
we call this the Lord's house. We do call this the Lord's house,
not because of the structure of it. This is where we worship
him. Remember the things he mentioned
over here, to dedicate it unto him and to worship him in the
sweet incense and the sacrifice and all those things? So we do
just not with physical sacrifices because Christ fulfilled those
Not with physical incense because he is our intercessor But that's what we do this is
where we worship it still has to do with the offering of sacrifice
to God though Of course it does it has to do with Christ crucified
The only sacrifice that God can and will accept for our sins
is But the sacrifice we plead now, it's not the burnt offering
of animals, but the lamb of God who shed his own precious blood
for our sins. We celebrate and commemorate
him in the Lord's table. We confess him in baptism. We preach him, we sing of him
in thanksgiving and praise. We glory in him alone. We fellowship
together in him. Courage one another in him. The Lord's house is a glorious
place. He said it's great. And that
doesn't mean we're to build high cathedrals with gold and jewels. Not about that. How could we
ever build a house worthy of God? But we are committed by
his grace to it. We want it to be not something
that's ashamed to his name, The Lord's house is a glorious
place because the Lord is there. Where two or three are gathered
in my name, there I am. That was holy ground around that
burning bush, not because it was some ancient site of some
religious ritualistic event that took place. Somebody saw, you
know, something weird there. It was holy ground because Christ
was there. Christ spoke. but pictured by the construction
and the purpose of this temple is the Lord's glory in saving
sinners. It was built of the cedars, which
were well known to be the strongest and truest lumber to build from,
other types of wood from Lebanon. The lumber there was well known.
It's mentioned many times in scripture to be the strongest
and truest. And hewn stone, costly stone,
Notice the word foundation in verse seven in our text. It was
to build the foundation of the building. And remember what our
Lord said. Remember, they're building this
out of strong, strong wood and stone, the foundation of it. Remember what our Lord said in
Matthew 16, 18. I say also unto thee, thou art
Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church. The gates
of hell shall not prevail against it That's what's pictured in
the strong foundation of this place There was peace while the
temple was built verses 4 and 12 the Lord gave Solomon peace
all around him and So the temple was built and in the sense that
God is yet building his church He adds to his church daily such
as should be saved and there's peace in God's Church There's
a prevailing peace. As long as we're human, there's
going to be disturbances of that peace. But, and we know that
too well. I was going to tell you a little
bit of history of the various churches I've been in, but I'm
not going to do that tonight. Let's just suffice it to say
that human beings are susceptible I always come back to just that
we're stupid. I don't know any other way to
say it. I just don't know. Because how idiotic is it to
take something so precious and be so foul as to ruin it out
of pride? And that's all of us. That's every last one of us. The difference between a false
church and a true, and I've been in four churches long term in
my life, and one of them was a false church, and three of
them were true churches. And the difference between the
false and the true, though there were ugly displays of human nature
in all of them, The difference is that in God's
church, there's a real family. It's just not deniable. There's
a true core, a group within the group that everybody knows about
that's in that group that truly do forgive one another, that
truly are long-suffering with one another. If we weren't, we
wouldn't be a group. That's just the grace of God.
Able by God's grace to put aside differences for the sake and
glory of Christ in his gospel his people his worship Petty
things are seen by God's grace to be paid And that which is most precious
Is seen by God's grace to be precious When that peace which passeth
all understanding dwells in your heart You will be a peacemaker. You will not want to disturb
that. Blessed of God and jealous for his glory. And did you notice,
I'm gonna try to be brief tonight, but I'm not promising. Yeah,
I'm gonna be brief tonight. Did you notice what we didn't
see at all in this chapter? And it's amazing. Think of the
undertaking of this. In the math that we kind of read
over there, it means that there were 100,000 workers involved
in the building of this temple, just the ones that were mentioned. 100,000 workers. And you know
what was conspicuously absent in all of this? They had to take
materials from one country to another. Think of the logistics
of that if you have any idea what's required for that kind
of thing. But what's conspicuously absent here is not a single problem
as mentioned, not one problem, not a hitch. There were no late
deliveries, no shortages, no damaged goods mentioned here,
no fights or disputes among the workers, a huge project involving
100,000 men, intense planning and shipments, coordination and
craftsmanship, mathematical detail specialists with overlapping
projects to finish. And if any of you have
ever been involved in building anything, the simplest, smallest
thing, you know what an ordeal it is. And I don't know whether all
of these typical problems that occur are just not mentioned. God so supernaturally blessed
the process of building his house That it just went off without
a hitch. I don't know Either way this sets forth the way God
does things When he builds anything We in Christ Jesus have no problems
I We just have blessings that we
like and blessings we don't like because we're too dumb to like
them. It's just the truth. In this flesh, we're so wretched
that we make problems for ourselves, but God even turns those around
for our good. God insists upon peace and unity
in his house. Even so much as to say this,
listen to Matthew 5.23. Therefore, if you bring your
gift to the altar and there remember us that thy brother hath fought
against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar and go
thy way. First be reconciled to thy brother
and then come and offer thy gift. Don't come before me until there's
peace. Don't even worship me until there's
reconciliation. Doesn't say If there's reconciliation
that needs to happen don't come worship That's not what it says. It says fix it and come worship In closing let me call your attention
to another account again of this in second Chronicles chapter
This is Solomon's message to Hiram just like in our text,
but notice the wording now look at 2nd Chronicles chapter 2 this
time And I just want to close with this verse 2nd Chronicles
2 8 Send me also cedar trees, fir
trees, and algum trees out of Lebanon, for I know that thy
servants can skill to cut timber in Lebanon. You remember that
part in 1 Kings? He said the Sidonians, nobody
can, there's no carpenters like them. It's funny how the Lord
blesses different people with different things. My servants
shall be with thy servants, we'll help you. We'll get this done
together. Nine, even to prepare me timber
in abundance for the house which I'm about to build shall be wonderful
great. Wonderful great. What God has
done here is wonderful great. It's a house for his name. That's
exactly what it is. and household for his name. It's
a place where we come to God by Jesus Christ, our sacrifice
and our only righteousness. And Christ's church is built
on himself, the chief cornerstone and is unshakable. You tell me another place in
this world like this, where God has promised to meet and to bless. God's people, I say it's unshakable,
because God's people, by God's grace and his design and his
doing, his causing it, will worship him and praise him somehow, someway,
somewhere. For his victorious, finished
work of salvation, his precious sin-atoning blood, his sovereign
mercy and grace. And my prayer is, may we do so
right here as long as we live. as long as we live. This is not
just a building. This is God's house. In all the ways that we've talked
about, it's God's house. Where in the world else would
we go? Let's pray.