Now I entitled this lesson, God
With Us. And the reason I entitled it
that way is because this episode in 1 Kings chapter eight is during
Solomon's reign in Israel when he finished the temple of God,
you know, it was Solomon's commission to build the temple. You know,
David wanted to build the temple, Solomon's father, David. He wanted
to build the temple, but God didn't let David build the temple,
even though he did give David the details, the instructions
on how the temple was to be made. But he told David that he wasn't
gonna build the temple. He was a man of war, a man of
blood, remember? And David represents Christ as
the warrior king, Christ our warrior king who went to war
against sin and Satan and the world dying on the cross for
us and so David could not build the temple but he said God told
him that Solomon would be the one to build the temple and David
gave instructions to Solomon on how the temple was to be built
and when Solomon became king that was one of his major accomplishments
building the temple of God. And here in 1 Kings 8, the temple's
finished, and now they're going to bring the Ark of the Covenant
into the temple. But before we get there, let
me say this about this. It's after David's death, Solomon
was the king of Israel, and Solomon reigned about 40 years. And his
reign was both successful and prosperous, but it was also tragic. Solomon is one of those people
that you read about in the Bible, you wonder about him. He's an
enigma. I think about, it was kind of
like Samson. Samson was that way too. But
as you know, Solomon started out well. You remember, God told
him to pray for whatever he wanted, and he wisely prayed for wisdom. And God granted him wisdom, but
also granted him riches and power. And the kingdom of God, or the
kingdom of Israel, rather, which in essence was the kingdom of
God as far as Providence and God working his will through
that nation. But the kingdom of Solomon was
one of the most, one of the richest, powerful kingdoms that has ever
been. His fame was known throughout
the world and we're going to see next week. The Queen of Sheba
had heard about Solomon and she came down to question him and
see if his fame was warranted. And so Solomon had a very, very
peaceful, prosperous reign to begin with, but when he was old,
he made the mistake of giving in to his wives. Now I think
I've got in your lesson here that Solomon had like 700 wives,
300 concubines. Now, this was the mark of a powerful
king back then. It shouldn't have been. Now,
God did not, you know, I hear preachers all the time talking
about how, well, God, he allowed polygamy in those days. No, he
didn't. It was against the law. In fact,
back over in Deuteronomy, he said the king of Israel should
not act like the kings of the world. in multiplying wives and
all these, and multiplying war machines and things like that.
The king of Israel was to be one who led the people in trusting
the Lord and his power. And sometimes they did, sometimes
they didn't. David was said to be a faithful
king. Solomon, up until his old age,
and he gave in to his wives because many of them were idolatrous.
And he gave in to them, he even let them build, he even built
for them idols. And you know people argue all
the time, well what does that say about Solomon? Well it says
he was a sinner. We know that. I believe he was
a sinner saved by grace. The Lord used him in a great
way. He wrote the Song of Solomon
by inspiration of the Spirit. He wrote Ecclesiastes and he
wrote much of the Book of Proverbs. He completed a lot of building
projects in Israel, and the greatest is right here, this temple, the
temple of God. And that was the replacement
for the tabernacle. And so, when Solomon forsook
the Lord, now that's what it says. And what all that means
and how it ended up in Solomon's death, I don't know. A lot of
scholars say that it was at the end of his life before he died. that he actually wrote the Song
of Solomon. And that represents Solomon being
brought to repentance, and that could be. But if you wanna know
all the facts about Solomon and the details of his life and how
he lived and how he died, the only thing I can tell you is
just read the scripture and go from there. Christ used Solomon
as a type of him. Remember when he talked about
one greater than Solomon? We're gonna talk about that next
week. But after Solomon's death, you know, God told him because
he'd forsaken the Lord that he would take the country from him
and he would give it to others. And after Solomon's death, that's
when the kingdom of Israel was divided into the northern kingdom
with the 10 tribes and the southern kingdom, which was Judah. And
it stayed that way throughout. So that's what happened. But
here's the thing about it. Throughout this, this trouble
that was brought on by Solomon, God still kept the tribe of Judah
intact in the southern kingdom because, as you know, it was
through Judah that the Messiah was promised and would come.
It was true that the scepter would not depart from Judah until
Shiloh, the Messiah, would come. So understand that even against
Solomon's sin, against all that he did wrong, God still kept
his promise and providentially brought his promise to fruition
all the way through, even after the divided kingdom. And you
know, later on, the northern kingdom was completely destroyed
and scattered. The southern kingdom, Judah lasted
up until the coming of Christ. And it was totally destroyed
and scattered in AD 70. But let's look at this. Look
at 1 Kings 8, look at verse one. It says, then Solomon assembled
the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the
chief of the fathers of the children of Israel under King Solomon
in Jerusalem, that they might bring up the ark of the covenant
of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion. The Ark
of the Covenant. You remember the tabernacle of
old? It was built mainly to house
the Ark of the Covenant. If you look back in Exodus chapter
25, this is where the Ark, the Ark of Moses, was being constructed. And it said in verse 21 of Exodus, Exodus 25 it speaks of the ark
this way it says God told him thou shalt put the mercy seat
above upon the ark you know that the mercy seat was that lid that
golden lid that that covered the the box and Inside that box
was the ten commandment the two tablets and And of course he
says in verse 21, thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon
the ark, and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that
I shall give thee, that's the two tablets. And it says in verse
22, now here it is, there I will meet with thee, and I will commune
with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims,
which are upon the ark, of the testimony of all things which
I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.
Now that's the Ark of the Covenant. Now we've talked about that.
The Ark of the Covenant, the mercy seat, that was all a picture
of the glorious person and finished work of Christ. And it represented
the presence of God with them in a symbolic, physical way but
to show them that without the shedding of blood, there's no
forgiveness of sins. And you remember the ceremony
of the Day of Atonement, how the high priest of Israel, that
one day of the year, how he would take the blood of a lamb from
off the brazen altar and bring it in a basin into the holiest
of all, the holy of holies. And he would sprinkle that blood
all over that place, especially on the mercy seat. And that represented
Christ, our high priest, Christ, our altar, Christ, our propitiation. That's what that is, that word
propitiation, which we see in the New Testament, which is a
translation, it's similar to mercy seat. Christ is our propitiation. Christ, his blood shed on the
cross. was the complete payment for
all the forgiveness of all of our sins. And what was represented
in that Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was,
where the mercy seat, is what some old Jewish scholars referred
to the Shekinah glory. You've heard that term, the Shekinah.
And that's what we're seeing here in 1 Kings 8. Look at verse
two. It says, And all the men of Israel
assembled themselves unto King Solomon at the Feast of the month
Ethanam, which is the seventh month. And all the elders of
Israel came, and the priests took up the ark. Verse 4 says,
They brought up the ark of the Lord, and the tabernacle of the
congregation, and all of the congregation and
all the holy vessels that were in the tabernacle, even those
did the priest and the Levites bring up. See, the temple's finished,
and they're bringing this ark into the Holy of Holies with
all the vessels that surrounded them in the holy place. And they
brought it up, verse five, it says, in verse five it says,
and King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel that were
assembled unto him, were with him before the ark, sacrificing
sheep and oxen that could not be told nor numbered for multitude. They couldn't even count how
many sheep and oxen they were sacrificing. And this is the
prominence of it. Again, without the shedding of
blood, no remission. This is all a picture. There's
no salvation or forgiveness or righteousness in the blood of
animals. There's no salvation, no forgiveness, no righteousness
in that physical ark of the covenant. It wasn't too long after this
when the Babylonian army destroyed this temple that the ark was
taken away and carried away and nobody knows where. Oh, there's
a lot of theories on it, but nobody knows where the ark was.
The temple that was a rebuilding of this temple in Christ's day,
they didn't even have an ark. I think some scholars say there
was, behind the curtain and the veil, they had a big rock. So
they didn't have the ark. So there's no salvation in this
physical ark. The salvation comes in Christ,
our ark. Christ, our mercy seat. Christ,
our lamb. And what this is, this was a
physical manifestation of the presence of God, God with them. Look down at verse six. It says, and the priest brought
the ark of the covenant of the Lord unto his place into the
oracle, the house of God. Oracle has to do, this is where
God reveals himself. You know, an oracle, you might
have read something, we were talking about that last week
with some people, not here, but the oracles of God, they talked
about how Israel had the oracles of God. Well, they had the word
of God, that's what an oracle is. Oracle is a communication
of wisdom. And what this is showing is it's
from this place through the Ark of the Covenant, through the
blood of animals, the mercy seat, that God spoke and revealed himself,
his wisdom, his power, his glory. And it said, the oracle of the
house to the most holy place, even under the wings of the cherubims.
You remember the cherubims on top of the lid. It says in verse
seven, for the cherubim spread forth their two wings over the
place of the Ark. And the cherubims covered the
ark and the staves thereof above. And when they got it in there,
it says, verse eight, they drew out the staves, that the ends
of the staves were seen out in the holy place before the oracle,
and they were not seen without. And there they are until this
day. And there was nothing in the ark save the two tables of
stone. That's the law. The law representing
God's holiness, God's justice. Christ made under the law, made
of a woman, made under the law, Christ as the end of the law.
God's law has to be satisfied or there's no mercy. There's
no grace. There's no salvation without
the law's justice being fully satisfied. That's what people
don't know today. That's what they miss today in
today's false gospel. They wanna talk about love, and
they wanna talk about mercy, and they wanna talk about grace,
but it's to the neglect or the denial of God's justice. But
that's what this is all about. And this is the assurance of
God being with us. This is the assurance of God's
presence right here. How do I know that God is with
us? That's what we're talking about
now. There is no temple now, there's no tabernacle, there's
no mercy seat as far as physical things. We're here met together
in this building. I'm gonna talk about the church
in our 11 o'clock. This building is not the church,
you're the church. God's people is the church. So
when we meet together in corporate worship, and that's what we're
doing, how do we know that God is with us, you see? Well, how
did they know that God was with them? Well, look on, all right?
He says, he says, there was nothing in the ark, save the two tables
of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, when the Lord made
a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out
of the land of Egypt, verse 10. And it came to pass when the
priests were come out of the holy place, now here it is, that
the cloud filled the house of the Lord. There's a cloud. so that the priest could not
stand to minister because of the cloud. There was an effulgent
glory, light you may say, in this cloud that was so bright
that the priest couldn't stand there and look at it. And it
says here, for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of
the Lord. Now this cloud, it's the same
cloud that followed them out of Egypt. that was a pillar of
fire by night and cloud during the day. It marked the presence
of God in his protection, in his guidance with the children
of Israel. It marked the glory of God, it
followed them. We'll see other places in the
scripture where this, I think I've got several listed, where
this cloud came down. One of them is at the Mount of
Transfiguration. And what that represents is the
Shekinah glory of God. Now, what is this Shekinah thing?
Well, Shekinah is a Hebrew word, or a word derived from Hebrew,
that means to inhabit, to settle, to dwell. And it represents God's
dwelling place on earth. Well, look over at, let's see,
it's 1 Kings, I think it's chapter, Verse 27, 1 Kings 8, 27. Later
on, after all this happened, Solomon prayed to the Lord, he
worshiped the Lord, he dedicated the temple, and he asked this
question. Verse 27, but will God indeed
dwell on the earth? And he says, behold, the heaven
and heavens of heavens cannot contain thee. There's no physical
structure, building, that contains the very awesome essence of the
presence of God. You can't, Brother Mahon, you
say, you can't put God in a box. You can't build him a house and
all of that. He said, how much less this house
that I have built, Solomon said. This house cannot contain God.
But yet we see the presence of God coming down in this cloud
to fill that temple. And that's an amazing thing.
Well, what are we talking about here? What we're talking about
is not a physical containment of the awesome glory and essence
of God, which cannot be contained. God is omnipresent. He's everywhere. You know, both Stephen and Paul
made that statement. When Stephen stood in Jerusalem,
he told him, he said, God cannot be, you can't put boundaries
around God. You look at this temple, he said,
that cannot contain God. Paul, when he was on Mars Hill
in Acts chapter 17, he said, don't think that God is such
that can be contained in houses and in icons and things like
that. Because God is everywhere. God
is the essence of all things in the sense that he's omnipresent.
But there is a place where God reveals his greatest glory. And that's the Shekinah. That's
what this cloud in the temple represented through the Ark of
the Covenant. Here is the greatest manifestation
and revelation of the glory of God. and it's found in that mercy
seat. It's found in the Ark of the
Covenant. This is God revealing himself in every attribute of
his nature, which cannot be contained and confined, but can be revealed. That's what the Shekinah is,
it's the revelation of God. This is God with us as he reveals
himself as both a just God and a Savior. That's what this is
about. Now, will God dwell on earth
with us? You know, when I was reading
this and studying for it, the first thing that I thought of
was John 1, 14. Remember, it says, the word,
now that's Christ, was made flesh and dwelt among us. And that
word dwelt, as you know, is literally the word tabernacle. You wanna
know where God dwells on earth among us? He dwelt in the person
and work of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ's name is
Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us. And that's what all this represents.
This was a picture and a prophecy of the coming Messiah, who would
in himself, in the glory of his person, who is he? He's Jesus,
who shall save his people from their sins, and he's Emmanuel,
God with us. And it's represented in the glory
of his finished work. Christ, the Bible says that Christ
is the one in whom dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily,
He's the one in whose face, his person and work, the glory of
God is revealed. He's the brightness, this is
Hebrews 1.3, listen to this. Christ is the brightness of God's
glory and the express image of his person and upholding all
things by the word of his power when he had by himself purged
our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.
That's who Christ is. And that's what this is all about.
And I think about Isaiah chapter 45, that phrase, a just God and
a savior. You know, God reveals his glory
all over the place. The Bible says the heavens declare
the glory of God. You can think about physical
nature and the stars, the sun, the moon, the earth, the human
body. I mean, there's all kinds of
ways that we can view physical things to see the wisdom of God,
the power of God, the glory of God, but all of those things
are limited. None of those things in and of
themselves reveal everything there is to know about God. But
there's one place, or we might say one person, where we can
see, and don't, now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that we'll
be able to articulate every last attribute of God. I mean, some
people have tried to do that and done a pretty good job of
it, you know, in books called The Attributes of God. But the
only place, the only person that we can see every last attribute
of God, honored, revealed, and magnified, working consistently
together, is in Emmanuel, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what
he is. We can see how God can be both
a righteous judge as well as a merciful father. That's the
question of questions. How can God justify sinners like
us? Now just mere love, though as
great and as glorious as God's love is, but mere love on its
own cannot do that. God cannot say, well now I love
you and I'm just going to forget all your problems and all your
sins and all the debt. No. God is a loving God. but he must be a just God too.
He's merciful, he's gracious, all of those things that we love
to talk about, but not at the expense of his justice and his
holiness and his righteousness and his truth. When God, listen,
if God judges a sinner to be justified, he's judging according
to truth. And what is that truth? It's
the personal work of Christ. It's his righteousness imputed
to us. And that's a reality. That's
a statement of fact. God has imputed our sins to Christ,
who died for those sins, brought pardon and forgiveness, redemption,
and he's imputed Christ's righteousness to us. And in that way, he can
be both that righteous judge, be true to himself, honor his
law and his rightness, and still a loving, gracious, and merciful
father. And that's the Shekinah. Right
there. And that's how we know that God
dwells with us as a body of believers. We look to Christ as the author
and finisher of our faith. We plead his blood and his righteousness
to the praise of the glory of God's grace. When we preach and
when we listen to the gospel, we're not denying or ignoring
or casting off on any one of God's attributes. Now when a
man or a woman stands up and preaches a lie, a false gospel,
saying God loves everybody, Christ died for everybody, the rest
is up to you, they're denying God's justice. That's not the
Shekinah glory. They're denying Christ. That is an idol that they're
preaching. But here we see the glory of
God, the smoke, the cloud, fill in the temple, and we see the
glory of God. And it's, I've got in your left,
it's as if we see God dwelling, not as being confined or contained
within a physical building, but in the revelation, in the fullness
of His glory in the person and work of Christ. That's the Shekinah,
glory of God, it dwells in Christ. And God dwells with us. as we
see his glory and attest to it and preach it and rest in it
as we look to Christ the author and the finisher of our faith.
Okay.