SERIES: Enlightening Epitaphs of the Kings and Prophets
Solomon: “I Intend to Build a Temple for the Name of the Lord My God.”
Introduction: A week ago I was at a worship retreat where, as an ice breaker, everyone was asked, “If you had a choice of all human beings, dead or alive, with whom would you choose to spend an afternoon?” It was fascinating to hear the answers and the reasons for the answers. My immediate response was my grandfather, Edwin Samuel Roth, who died in his 90’s just after our son Eddie was born. He was absolutely one of the most fascinating people I have ever known. He was born 15 years after Abraham Lincoln was President and died two years after Neal Armstrong walked on the moon. Like many of us, he had difficulty coping with the change that occurred during his lifetime. To his dying day he believed the moon landing was a Hollywood trick. To spend an afternoon with him showing him the advances that have been made in medicine, computers, military weapons, and well-drilling (his field) since his death in 1971, would be more fun than I can imagine.
Now if someone were to ask me, “What building, present or past, would you like to visit,” I would be just as quick to answer–Solomon’s Temple. It was not a particularly large building, but it was probably the most costly building ever constructed on planet earth. The mythical king Croesus would have envied the gold found in Solomon’s masterpiece. The Temple was the center of Jewish worship for almost 400 years, and then after being destroyed it was rebuilt and remained the center of worship for another 600 years. One cannot really understand the sacrificial system that provided atonement for sin in the OT without understanding the Temple and its predecessor, the Tabernacle. I would love to see it in person.
Last Lord’s Day we began a new series of messages examining the epitaphs on various tombstones in the graveyard of the kings and prophets of Israel, beginning with Solomon. One of the key issues we are looking for in the OT books of Kings and Chronicles is how leaders set the standard for the people of God. Leaders have such a huge capacity for good or ill. This is true even today, despite the fact that we live in a day and time when leadership has taken some huge hits. Our political leaders have largely been a disappointment, religious leaders are falling like flies, and intellectual leadership is almost non-existent. The result is that a lot of people are searching for answers anywhere they can find them–in their own inner selves, in psychic mediums, in false religions, and in all kinds of radical movements. Yet I believe people really want to be led, and they will follow leaders who are authentic and who exhibit integrity.
The leader who gets the most press in 1 Kings is Solomon. The two events that define him more than any others, and therefore provide effective epitaphs for him, are (1) his request for wisdom and (2) his building of the Temple in Jerusalem. Last week we considered the first event, as Solomon said to the Lord: “Give Me a Discerning Heart.” Today I want us to look at the second, using once again a quotation from Solomon’s own lips: “I Intend to Build a Temple for the Name of the Lord My God.” This quotation comes directly from a letter he wrote to Hiram king of Tyre in 1 Kings 5:3-5. There is little doubt this was . . .
Solomon’s greatest achievement: A temple for the Lord
The Solomonic Temple was such a monumental building, both in cost and function, that I think it would be well for us this morning to try to grasp the scope of it by considering a number of factors that were involved in its completion. Let’s begin with the dream that preceded the reality.
The dream. The notion of building a temple was not Solomon’s originally. King David had it in his heart for a long time to build a permanent home for the Ark of the Covenant, a place where God could dwell among His people. In fact, long before Solomon was even born, David made a proposal to build a temple and revealed his motive for it:
After David was settled in his palace, he said to Nathan the prophet, “Here I am, living in a palace of cedar, while the ark of the covenant of the LORD is under a tent.” Nathan replied to David, “Whatever you have in mind, do it, for God is with you.”
David was feeling guilt, probably legitimate guilt, over the fact that he was living in a luxurious palace while the Lord’s house was essentially a temporary tent. However, the same night the word of the Lord came to the prophet Nathan informing him that David was not to build the temple because he had shed much blood and fought many wars. God offered instead to give David a son who would be a man of peace and rest. In fact, his name would mean peace, Shalom or Solomon. He would be the one to build a house for God. (1 Chr 22:8-10)
The Purpose. David speaks of the purpose for a temple in 1 Chronicles chapter 29, where he commissions Solomon to build it: “Then King David said to the whole assembly: ‘My son Solomon, the one whom God has chosen, is young and inexperienced. The task is great, because this palatial structure is not for man but for the Lord God.’” The temple was not a man-centered project (in fact, only the priests could even enter the main building) but a God-centered one. Its primary purpose was to reveal the awesomeness and majesty of God, and to serve as a place to confess sin, offer sacrifice, and receive atonement. Even the architecture of the building drew everyone’s attention to the attributes of God. The gold and precious stones spoke of His majesty and splendor. The Holy of Holies spoke of His holiness. The Ark of the Covenant spoke of His mercy. The altar spoke of God’s atonement for man’s sin. The whole temple spoke of His sovereignty. Its purpose was to be a house for God.
It is important for us to realize that not every house of worship is built for God; in fact, I would venture to suggest that most church buildings today are constructed almost exclusively for people. The issues that drive most architects are comfort, utility, ease of access, safety, recreation, and fellowship (the horizontal aspect). The latest fads in churches are food courts and indoor playgrounds. Now please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not necessarily criticizing these developments. In fact, I tend to feel it is a mistake when church buildings are patterned after the architecture of the Temple. Everything changed dramatically with the death of Christ. I will return to this topic later.
The plans. Again, we have to go back to King David for the plans, for it says back in verse 11 of chapter 28, “Then David gave his son Solomon the plans for the portico of the temple, its buildings, its storerooms, its upper parts, its inner rooms and the place of atonement. He gave him the plans of all that the Spirit had put in his mind ….” The same passage goes on to describe in detail the construction and the furnishings of the temple. Then in verse 19 we read, “All this,”David said, “I have in writing from the hand of the Lord upon me, and he gave me understanding in all the details of the plan.”
In other words, the plans were revealed by God Himself, and therefore any critique of the temple must be directed at its divine Architect. Clearly God is not fundamentally opposed to beauty or even luxury. (I have often thought it would be nice if God would provide plans for our church buildings today. We could not only save substantially on architectural fees, but we could also avoid all the disagreements that go with trying to decide the issues ourselves. Pews or chairs? Just check with God. But God has left such decisions up to us).
The financing. The building project David was launching had a pretty serious price tag. Most estimates I’ve read of the cost of the Solomonic Temple in today’s dollars are in the multiple billions. Probably no other building in the history of mankind had more gold in it than this one. Talk about a fund-raising effort!
David’s stewardship plan was pretty simple and extremely effective. First, he gave generously from the government coffers. In those days there was no separation of church and state, so taxes were readily used to fund the temple. Then David made a lavish commitment from his own personal wealth to the tune of 110 tons of gold and 260 tons of silver. Third, the leaders declared their own commitment and sacrifice, and they actually out-gave David as a group (190 tons of gold, 375 tons of silver, 675 tons of bronze, 3,750 tons of iron (which was much more rare and therefore more valuable than it is today), plus an unspecified number of precious stones. And finally, the common people followed joyfully and willingly. It was an amazing display of generous giving.
The preparations. The fifth chapter of 1 Kings is devoted to the preparations for the building of the temple, i.e., the collection of materials and human resources. Solomon ordered the wood from Lebanon, known for its great cedars. Hiram King of Tyre agreed to provide logs, move them to the Mediterranean, float them down to Israel, all in exchange for food for his royal household. The logging was actually done by conscripted laborers from Israel–30,000 of them. They rotated, with 10,000 working in Lebanon for a month at a time, while 20,000 spent two months at home, but still working on the Temple project.
Solomon also had 80,000 stone cutters who cut the large blocks for the foundation of the temple. I have seen with my own eyes the quality of work they did. Twenty feet below the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, in a tunnel only unearthed in the past 20 years, one can see some of the original foundation stones of Solomon’s temple. Nearly 3,000 years later these stones the size of a pickup truck still fit together perfectly, without any mortar to hold them together.
The construction. In chapter 6 of 1 Kings we learn that Solomon started the building in his fourth year, 966 B.C.1 We are also told the size of the main part of the temple, about 90 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 45 feet high. We’re not talking huge here, friends. The main building of the Temple would easily fit into our Activity Center, except that it would stick out through the roof a little.
The Temple had two main rooms, a Most Holy Place that was a 30-foot cube (apparently with an attic over it) and the Holy Place that was 60 feet by 30 feet by 45 feet high. The inside of the temple was cedar, carved with gourds, palm trees, and open flowers, but then the cedar was all overlaid with pure gold. The floors and ceilings were also covered with gold. In addition to the main building, there was a portico, or porch at the front that extended another 15 feet, plus a structure around the building that provided three floors of side rooms. There were also courts outside that allowed the common people to gather, though they could not enter the main building.
The furnishings. Most of the seventh chapter is devoted to the furnishings. The chief craftsman was Huram of Tyre, a master craftsman in bronze. We don’t have time to consider the details that are given to us, but we can look at the results. It says in 1 Kings 7:40ff:
So Huram finished all the work he had undertaken for King Solomon in the temple of the LORD: the two pillars; the two bowl-shaped capitals on top of the pillars; the two sets of network decorating the two bowl-shaped capitals on top of the pillars; the four hundred pomegranates for the two sets of network (two rows of pomegranates for each network, decorating the bowl-shaped capitals on top of the pillars); the ten stands with their ten basins; the Sea and the twelve bulls under it; the pots, shovels and sprinkling bowls. All these objects that Huram made for King Solomon for the temple of the LORD were of burnished bronze.
(Then in verse 48 we read about additional furnishings made of gold.)
Solomon also made all the furnishings that were in the Lord’s temple: the golden altar; the golden table on which was the bread of the Presence; the lampstands of pure gold (five on the right and five on the left, in front of the inner sanctuary); the gold floral work and lamps and tongs; the pure gold basins, wick trimmers, sprinkling bowls, dishes and censers; and the gold sockets for the doors of the innermost room, the Most Holy Place, and also for the doors of the main hall of the temple.
By the way, it has been argued convincingly that in ancient Jewish tradition the open flowers, palm trees and pomegranates in the temple were taken to be reminiscent of the Garden of Eden. In addition, the entrances to both the Temple and the Garden were on the East. The Temple was viewed as a place where God would dwell with His people, just as He dwelt with Adam and Eve before the Fall.
In chapter 8 we learn of the move of the Ark of the Covenant to the Temple.
The ark. As you perhaps recall, the Ark had been constructed by Moses. It was the most sacred object in Israel, representing the very presence of the Lord, and there were tight restrictions as to how it should be handled and where it should reside. Originally the Ark contained the stone tablets on which God had written the Ten Commandments, samples of the manna that God provided from heaven, and Aaron’s rod that budded at the time of Korah’s rebellion, but according to 1 Kings 8:9, nothing was in it now except the two stone tablets.
In a dramatic ceremony the Ark was moved from the Tabernacle to the Temple. It was placed in the Holy of Holies, or the Most Holy Place, beneath the wings of the golden cherubim. When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the glory of the Lord filled the temple in the form of a cloud so that the priests could not even do their work (1 King 8:10-11). There are a lot of myths in the movie,“Raiders of the Lost Ark,” but clearly there was something unique about that little box.
The dedication of the temple
1 Kings 8 contains the longest prayer in the Bible–it is Solomon’s Prayer at the Dedication of the Temple. This magnificent prayer contains both adoration and supplication, and it is followed by unprecedented celebration.
Adoration. Listen to these words spoken by the king as he stood before the altar of the Lord in front of the whole assembly of Israel, with his hands spread toward the heavens (1 Kings 8:23-27):
O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth below–you who keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue wholeheartedly in your way. You have kept your promise to your servant David my father; with your mouth you have promised and with your hand you have fulfilled it—as it is today.
(Verse 27) But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!
Solomon recognized that while this Temple was a building for God, it could not contain God. While it was a place where His presence would be uniquely experienced, God was far too great to be limited to one place, as the pagan gods were. Solomon first and foremost desired to express adoration for this great God!
Supplication. Solomon moves quickly from adoring God to laying requests before Him, but they are not the typical requests we so often offer up for health or healing, for employment or traveling mercies. They are spiritual requests, especially for forgiveness. Listen, beginning in verse 28:
Yet give attention to your servant’s prayer and his plea for mercy, O LORD my God. Hear the cry and the prayer that your servant is praying in your presence this day. May your eyes be open toward this temple night and day, this place of which you said, ‘My Name shall be there,’ so that you will hear the prayer your servant prays toward this place. Hear the supplication of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.
Solomon then expands upon the need for mercy by going through a whole litany of potential spiritual failures and natural disasters, asking God in each case to hear from heaven and act on behalf of His people. Among the failures and disasters he mentions are these:
When a man wrongs his neighbor …
When your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against you …
When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because your people have sinned against you …
When famine or plague comes to the land …
When your people go to war against their enemies …
When they sin against you … and they end up captives near or far … (1 Kings 8:31-51).
In each case Solomon begs God to hear when the people turn back to Him and confess their sins. He knows that repentance and a change of heart are prerequisites to God’s healing and restoration. But once they have repented, Solomon is not hesitant to ask for God’s forgiveness.
Nor is Solomon’s prayer selfish, focused only on Israel and its welfare. He was also aware that God had a great love for the nations. Listen to verses 41-43:
As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name–for men will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm–when he comes and prays toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name.
Celebration. Solomon puts his money where his mouth is in the dedication ceremony. He offers 22,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep and goats as burnt offerings to the Lord. The celebration lasts for 14 full days. Then the people go home, “joyful and glad in heart” for all the good things the Lord had done for them.
The Lord’s response
He accepts the Temple and consecrates it. God appears to Solomon in 1 Kings 9:3 and says, “I have heard the prayer and plea you have made before me; I have consecrated this temple, which you have built, by putting my Name there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there.” Any notion that this Temple was a mistake, a waste of money that could have been better spent on the poor, goes out the window with God’s acceptance of it as a place where He chooses to dwell.
He offers conditional promises to His people. A conditional promise is one of the “if … then” variety. If you will do this, I will do that. Listen to God speak, and I read this from 2 Chronicles 7 (it’s talking about the same event as 1 Kings 9, but the wording is a little more familiar to us):
“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:13-14)
I struggle with how applicable this well-known promise is to us today. It was clearly directed to Israel as a promise to heal their land when they repented. But I tend to feel there is a principle here that applies across the centuries and across geographical boundaries. Whenever God’s people are suffering because of sin, if they will humble themselves and pray and repent, God will hear from heaven and forgive them. That may not always be demonstrated in physical deliverance, but it is at least a promise of spiritual deliverance.
Finally, this morning I would like for us to consider . . .
What happened to the temple?
It was destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar came against Judah three times. In 606 B.C. he took a number of hostages, including four young Jewish men: Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Obednego. He came back in 598, seizing thousands of additional captives and carrying off all the articles from the temple, both large and small. And he came back a final time in 586, burning the temple, breaking down the wall of Jerusalem, and destroying everything of value. This was Israel’s 911–not just the destruction of a couple of landmarks but of their entire city.
It was rebuilt and expanded, before it was destroyed again by the Roman emperor Titus. You can read about the rebuilding of the Temple in the book of Ezra and in the prophet Haggai. I probably should put “rebuilt” in quotation marks, for the poverty-stricken exiles who returned from the Babylonian captivity to rebuild the Temple in 516 B.C., could do little more than build a log-cabin replica on the original foundation. In fact, in the second chapter of Haggai we learn that the rebuilt temple “looked like nothing” to those who saw the temple in its former glory. But God told them not to fear, that His Spirit remained with them. In fact, God promised, “I will fill this house with glory.” Not only that, “‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the Lord Almighty.” (Haggai 2:9)
Wow, does He really mean it? Greater than the glory of Solomon’s temple? Clearly this prophecy of a greater glory refers to something other than gold and silver, for there was little of that in the post-exilic temple; I believe it is speaking of the glory that accrued to the rebuilt temple because Jesus walked and taught there. If the Temple symbolized the dwelling of God with His people, then the glory of Solomon’s Temple was far exceeded when the Glorious One, Jesus Christ, came and “tabernacled” or “set up His temple” among us (John 1:14).
The rebuilt Temple of the Exile was expanded and refurbished in a major way by King Herod. You may recall that Jesus once challenged the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” Jesus, of course, was speaking figuratively of His own death and resurrection, but clearly the temple was then in the middle of a major renovation, work that continued for several decades after Christ. It was once again a magnificent structure, actually larger than the Solomonic version but minus most of the gold.
Tragically, Herod’s temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, just six years after it was completed, as the Roman Emperor Titus came and leveled Jerusalem, either killing its inhabitants or taking them captive. This time the exile of the Jews from their Promised Land was not for 70 years but for nearly 19 centuries. Israel did not exist again as a nation from A.D. 70 until A.D. 1948. And even today a mosque sits on (or near) the foundation of Solomon’s temple. Is that something that should trouble us? Does God want the Temple of Solomon to be rebuilt on Mt. Moriah in Jerusalem? Second Thessalonians 2:4 would indicate that some portion of it will be, for the Anti-Christ will desecrate God’s temple at the time of the Great Tribulation. The prophet Ezekiel also talks about a Millennial Temple, but there is no indication it will be built before the Return of Christ.
We have seen that the Temple was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and destroyed again by the Romans. Humanly speaking those were tragedies, but God was working His perfect plan through it all.
It was replaced by the temple of the Holy Spirit–the Body of Christ and the body of the true believer. Let me mention several reasons why I believe this. First, there is no evidence of a focus on buildings in the New Testament; in fact, there is not a single statement in the NT encouraging Christians to erect buildings. Yes, the early disciples worshiped at the temple, and Paul regularly went to the Jewish synagogues in whatever city he visited, but the reason is because that is where the religious people could be found. If Jews were to be confronted with their need for Messiah Jesus, the best place to find them was in the temple and in synagogues. But early Christian worship after the time of Christ took place primarily in homes.
Second, there are two very important passages in 1 Corinthians that identify the Temple of the Holy Spirit–and neither is talking about a building. We recently completed an extensive study of 1 Corinthians, so my comments here will be brief, but in 1 Cor. 3:16 the Apostle Paul asks this question: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.”
From the context and grammar it is clear that Paul is talking about the local assembly of believers here as a temple. Later on, in Ephesians he elaborates on this concept of the church as a temple, calling us . . .
… members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Eph 2:19-22)2
But it is not only the gathering of believers that is viewed as a temple in the NT. In 1 Cor. 6, just three chapters after his previous reference, Paul makes a nearly identical statement about the individual believer: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your body.” Here it is clear that Paul is talking about the believer’s body, rather than the church, as a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Since I believe the Temple of Solomon has, in the providence of God, been replaced by both our corporate and individual temples, I see no reason for us to copy Solomon’s temple in our church architecture today. I believe we have great freedom to build our gathering places for worship in a way that meets our individual needs. Yet at the same time there are lessons we can learn from the temple that apply to both our corporate and individual bodies.
One is sacredness. God really does dwell with us and within us, and He desires to fill us with His glory; therefore, we must not treat our gatherings or our bodies with disrespect or irreverence or neglect.
Another is holiness. Almighty God hates sin; He cannot stand to have sin in His presence; therefore, we must not tolerate sinful attitudes and sinful actions, either in our churches or in our private lives.
And a third is forgiveness. Just as God provided for the atonement for Israel’s sins through blood sacrifice in Solomon’s Temple, so today He provides for final forgiveness of our sins through the shed blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.
I want to close by challenging us to allow God to employ His enormous architectural skill to fashion our corporate fellowship and our individual bodies into a temple far more glorious than the one Solomon built, one destined to last for eternity.
DATE: April 14, 2002
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Solomon’s temple
Ark of the Covenant
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1. In chapter 6 of 1 Kings we read, “In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites had come out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the Lord.” Solomon began his reign in 970 B.C., so the fourth year is 966 B.C. From this verse we can date the Exodus at 1446 B.C. Liberal Bible scholars question this early date of the Exodus, arguing instead for a date around 1285. Since the archaeological data is ambiguous, I believe we are safest to stick with the data of Scripture.
2. Peter joins Paul in using the same imagery of the church. He says, “As you come to him, the living Stone (Jesus) … you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood.” (1 Peter 2:4,5)