Word of Encouragement (03/21/2024)
"But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built! 28 Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O LORD my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, 29 that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you have said, 'My name shall be there,' that you may listen to the prayer that your servant offers toward this place. (1 Kings 7:27-29)
This prayer was offered at the dedication of the temple. David wanted to build it, but he was not allowed to due to the much blood he shed as a man of war. Solomon was allowed to build it. This was not lost on Solomon. He understood what an amazing privilege this was. So, he did not spare any expenses in building the church: he used the finest materials and placed the most qualified people to carry out this building project. The result was an architectural marvel.
But as he dedicated the temple, offering his prayer to God, what struck him was not the crown of his achievement, this marvelous building that had taken so much money and material and labor; rather, it was how utterly inadequate and shabby the temple was in view of the incomparable majesty and glory of the LORD. He was reminded that heaven and the highest heaven could not contain God. Even though he did not know what we know through our scientific discoveries, he knew that the heavens above were much bigger than the earth he inhabited. As the wisest of men, maybe he had a better understanding of the vastness of heaven than his father David, who marveled, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him” (Ps. 8:3-4)? We know much more than Solomon, but we also know that his words stand true still. If God is infinite, He cannot be contained in this universe, as vast as it may be. If heaven and the highest heaven could not contain the infinite God, how could the earth contain Him?
But the temple Solomon built did not cover the whole earth—far from it! It was on a tiny plot of land, tiny even in comparison to the land of Israel, to the city of Jerusalem. How could this temple contain God? Solomon must have known that the temple was only a microcosmic representation of the proper dwelling place of God in heaven. As a representation, it was not the proper dwelling place of God in heaven. But because it was a representation, it had a connection to God’s heavenly dwelling place in some way. It would serve as a place of worship, a place of meeting between God and His people, until the appointed time when God would replace it with a living temple, in which God and His people dwell together (not just occasionally meet)—a living temple, which is made up of God’s redeemed people (Eph. 2:22, 1 Pet. 2:5), whom He purchased with His own blood (Acts 20:28). This living temple is being built by David’s greater Son Jesus Christ and God is pleased to dwell in it forever. You, who belong to this temple, are destined for glory and beauty. May your life show forth the glory and beauty of the Lord, who dwells in you. “[D]o you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).