April 23, 2017 - Solomon Builds God a Temple

TONY & MICHELLE PAWLAK


MEMORY VERSE

Unless the Lord builds the house,
    those who build it labor in vain.
Psalm127:1a

As the Memory Verse says, God must be the one in charge if anything is to succeed.  So many times in our lives we try to do the things we want to and hope that God helps us when, instead, we should be seeking His will and allowing Him to work through us.  King David himself had to learn this lesson.

Remember from a few weeks ago we spoke of King David

bringing the Ark of the Covenant into the Tabernacle in Jerusalem after it had been returned by the Philistines.  He was so full of joy that he could worship God properly and in his capitol city that he danced when the Ark arrived and while he escorted it to the Tabernacle.

One day, after David had finished building his own fancy

house, he looked out at the Tabernacle and thought that God deserved better than a tent.  He went to the prophet Nathan and told him how he wished to build God a Temple. Nathan thought it was a wonderful idea and that God would surely be pleased.

Unfortunately, Nathan didn't consult with God before he told David to go ahead and build the Temple.  It's not that God was unhappy that David wanted to do it, it's just that God had other plans.  David had been a man of war and God didn't want His Temple built by a man of war.  However, David had a son, Solomon, who would one day be a peaceful king.  God said that Solomon

would build His Temple.  

So King David did whatever he could to get the materials ready for his son to build the Temple in the future.  When Solomon became King, he set about fulfilling what his father had started. Even King David's friend Hiram, King if Tyre, helped out by allowing Solomon to cut down cedar trees from Lebanon.  

All of the stones used to build the Temple were cut and

prepared somewhere else.  That way, the Temple site wasn't filled with the sounds of beating hammers and breaking rocks. It took seven years and many people to help build the Temple.

After it was built, it was time for the priests to move all the special things into the temple: The Altar of incense, the Table for Showbread, The Menorah, all the dishes and utensils and, most importantly, the Ark of the Covenant.

 
When all this was done, God filled the Temple with His Glory in the form of a cloud.  It was so thick that the priests could no longer see to work and had to leave the Temple.  

What happened next we can read about in II Chronicles 7. 

The Temple is gone now but the Bible says that God's Holy Spirit now lives in a new Temple, our hearts. So remember that your heart should be a special place for worshiping God.  Some day, a new Temple will be built in Jerusalem but that's another story. 

So, Israel had a great King and everybody worshiped God. Sounds like a happy ending, right?  Unfortunately, Israel was in for some dark times ahead.  Next week we will talk about one of the darkest.