Transcript
To refresh your mind, let me remind you that 1 Kings chapter 8 deals with the dedication of the temple of God, which Solomon has now completed building. The majority of the chapter is devoted to Solomon’s prayer of dedication. After he prays this prayer of dedication, he turns and he blesses the people. Our consideration of the text had gone down to verse 61, and we actually begin in verse 62, but for the sake of connection I want to read from verse 59 of chapter 8, 1 Kings 8:59, bearing in mind that we’ve covered 59, 60, and 61. Solomon is speaking to the people, and he says:
And may these words of mine, with which I have made supplication before the Lord, be near the Lord our God day and night, that He may maintain the cause of His servant and the cause of His people Israel, as each day may require, that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other. Let your heart therefore be loyal to the Lord our God, to walk in His statutes and keep His commandments, as at this day.
Now the king, and all Israel with him, offered sacrifices before the Lord. And Solomon offered a sacrifice of peace offerings, which he offered to the Lord, twenty-two thousand bulls and one hundred and twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the children of Israel dedicated the house of the Lord. On the same day the king consecrated the middle of the court that was in front of the house of the Lord, for there he offered burnt offerings, grain offerings, and the fat of the peace offerings, because the bronze altar that was before the Lord was too small to receive the burnt offerings, the grain offering, and the fat of the peace offerings.
At that time Solomon held a feast, and all Israel with him, a great assembly from the entrance of Hamath to the Brook of Egypt, before the Lord our God, seven days and seven more days, fourteen days. On the eighth day he sent the people away, and they blessed the king, and went to their tents joyful and glad of heart for all the goodness that the Lord had done for His servant David, and for Israel His people.
And it came to pass, when Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord and the king’s house, and all Solomon’s desire which he wanted to do, that the Lord appeared to Solomon the second time, as He had appeared to him at Gibeon. And the Lord said to him, ‘I have heard your prayer and your supplication that you have made before Me. I have sanctified this house which you have built, to put My name there forever; and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually. Now if you walk before Me as your father David walked, in integrity of heart and in uprightness, to do according to all that I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and My judgments, then I will establish the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, “You shall not fail to have a man on the throne of Israel.” But if you or your sons at all turn from following Me, and do not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them; and this house which I have sanctified for My name I will cast out of My sight. Israel will be a proverb and a byword among all peoples.
And as for this house, which is exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and will hiss, and say, “Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?” Then they will answer, “Because they forsook the Lord their God, who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, and worshiped them and served them; therefore the Lord has brought all this calamity on them.”
Now it happened at the end of twenty years, when Solomon had built the two houses, the house of the Lord and the king’s house, Hiram the king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar and cypress and gold, as much as he desired, that King Solomon then gave Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee. Then Hiram went from Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him, but they did not please him. So he said, ‘What kind of cities are these which you have given me, my brother?’ And he called them the land of Cabul, as they are to this day. Then Hiram sent the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold.
If I had ten dollars for every time somebody has said to me, “Be careful,” since I’ve been around for sixty-six years, I think I could probably retire off of the sum of money that I would have collected. If I’m getting into a car to drive to a part of the city which has a high crime rate, why, it would be appropriate for any friend of mine to say the same. If you’re going over there, be careful. If I’m beginning a task that involves any kind of risk, it would be appropriate for a friend of mine to say, “Be careful.”
I suppose that, given my reputation as a klutz with anything mechanical, even if I just picked up a hammer, somebody would be justified to say, “Be careful. Be careful that you hit the nail and not your finger.” And I suppose that all of us have had people say these words to us more than a few times, and hopefully we’ve appreciated their concern and their warning. But maybe it will surprise us to learn that the wisest man who ever lived, being Solomon himself, with the exception, of course, of our Lord Jesus Christ, the wisest human being that ever lived, needed to be told, “Be careful.”
Be careful. And no less a person told King Solomon that than the God of Israel. And so this passage that we are looking at today, I think, could be given the title, “King Cuidado,” or “Be Careful.” And it is possible that in listening to God say to Solomon, “Be careful,” we may also hear God say to you and to me the very same word, “Be careful.”
We just passed through Thanksgiving week, and in case you were inclined to ask me, and have not already asked me, I couldn’t relate to Joel this morning, who said that he had too much turkey, because I hadn’t had a bite of turkey during the Thanksgiving week, and I had a delightful plate of vegetables on Thanksgiving Day. And I’m not being facetious. They were really very, very good. And it seems appropriate to say that here, at the end of Thanksgiving week, as we return through the book of Kings, we are looking at what could very easily be described as a thanksgiving festival, a feast of thanksgiving.
In fact, I would even go so far as to say that the feast of thanksgiving that is described here at the end of 1 Kings chapter 8 is perhaps the most impressive feast of thanksgiving that has ever been held in the history of Israel up until the present day. Please remember that, as we said earlier, Solomon has completed the building of the house of the Lord, and he has prayed a very significant prayer of dedication. He has turned around and he has blessed the people, and he has encouraged them to be loyal to the Lord their God, to walk in His statutes and judgments.
And then he commences a round of sacrifices that is staggering, when you really stop to think about it. Solomon actually offers in sacrifice to God a total of twenty-two thousand bulls. Now if that strikes you as a large figure, that’s nothing compared to the number of sheep he offered in sacrifice, which was one hundred and twenty thousand. In other words, a total of one hundred and forty-two thousand animals were offered in sacrifice to God as burnt offerings and peace offerings, all of this a part of their dedication of the temple and expression of their gratitude to God.
Needless to say, even though he had built a big altar in the court of the temple, the altar couldn’t receive these offerings, and he has to use the middle section of the court to do it. Meanwhile, while these offerings are being sacrificed, and this must have been almost around the clock, even if they stopped at night they probably had to continue through the day for the next couple of weeks to get over these animal sacrifices, meanwhile, while this is going on, a huge congregation has gathered at Jerusalem. They’ve come all the way from Hamath, which was way up north in the land of Israel, and all the way from the Brook of Egypt, which was way down south.
A huge company is present, and they are holding a feast. And they hold the feast for seven days, and then it’s extended another seven days. Now we know from other passages that the second seven days was actually the same time as the Feast of Tabernacles, which was a regularly scheduled feast for Israel. So for fourteen days the children of Israel are actually feasting in the presence of the Lord, and enjoying the dedication of the house, and expressing their gratitude to God. And you’ll notice that in verse 66 of chapter 8, when Solomon dismisses the people after the fourteen days are completed, they bless the king and went to their tents joyful and glad of heart for all of the goodness that the Lord had done for His servant David and for Israel His people.
The nation of Israel has had fourteen days of feasting in the presence of God, and when they go home their hearts are filled with joy because of all of the goodness that God has shown to David the king and also to Israel His people. God has actually raised up the wise son for David’s throne, and he sits on the throne of his father David. Solomon has now fulfilled a desire that David had had in his heart. Remember, David had wanted to build the temple, and God said, no, not you, but your son will build it, and Solomon has done that.
And in addition to that, this is an era of peace and prosperity and power. This is the golden age of the nation of Israel. And so they go home to their homes, and their hearts are filled with joy and gladness because of all of the goodness that God has shown to David the king and also to Israel His people. Now, of course, you and I do not have a calendar of feasts that we observe under the Christian religion, but there is a sense in which we do have a feast, and we’re sitting at it today. This is the Lord’s table.
Our feast occurs once a week. It seems very appropriate that, since I’m going to talk about a feast, you had such a very good meal today, turkey and all of the other trimmings that go with it. And one of the things we need to remember about this meeting, I think, is that we’re not only here to learn what God may want to say to us through His Word, not only here to be instructed in the truth of Scripture, but we’re here to remember all of the good things that God has done for us. We are here, of course, to remember the death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and how He offered Himself for our salvation.
But as a result of that, God has blessed us with an absolutely free salvation. He has brought us into his family. He’s given us his Holy Spirit. We were hearing this morning he has filled our lives with his blessing. And one of the questions we might ask is, do we go home from this meeting as the children of Israel went home from their feast? Do we go home joyful? Do we go home glad of heart for all that the Lord has done for us through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? If we don’t go from this feast happy over what God has done for us, we have missed something very significant and very important about the Lord’s table.
Now there’s an even closer analogy when you stop to consider that in John chapter 2, you remember the Lord Jesus Christ was in Jerusalem, and the Father—he was either in the temple or near it—and He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The people thought He was talking about the Jewish temple that was right there, and they said, well, it took forty-six years to build this temple. Are You going to rebuild it in three days? But then the Bible explains to us that He was speaking about the temple of His body.
In reality, the real temple of God on earth was not Solomon’s building, which was simply a building of wood and stone, gold and silver, however magnificent that went into it, but the real temple of God is the Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh. Remember that John chapter 1 says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” And just as the glory of God filled the temple of Solomon on the day that they dedicated it, the glory of God always filled our Lord Jesus Christ.
And there is a sense in which, when we remember His death, we’re remembering the destruction of his body, but we never separate that, do we, from his resurrection, which is, shall we say, the rebuilding of the temple of God. He raised Himself up from the dead after three days, and there is a sense in which this celebration that we have here at the Lord’s table is a celebration of the resurrected temple of God in the person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Well, we can connect with the people that were participating in this service, and hopefully we can especially connect in terms of the joy and happiness and gratitude that they felt toward God.
Would it surprise you to know that the incident that occurs in the first part of the ninth chapter apparently occurred thirteen years later? That’s not the impression we get when we first read it. Notice, if you will, again in verses 1 and 2. “And it came to pass, when Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord and the king’s house, and all Solomon’s desire which he wanted to do, that the Lord appeared to Solomon the second time, as He had appeared to him at Gibeon. And the Lord said to him, ‘I have heard your prayer and your supplication that you have made before Me.’”
Now when we hear those words from God, it almost seems as if this ought to have occurred the day after the prayer was prayed. But as a matter of fact, we have already learned in the book of Kings that it took Solomon seven years to build the Jewish temple. He started in the fourth year of his reign. He completed it in the eleventh year. And it took him thirteen years to build his own palace. Now we might perhaps have guessed that he was building his own palace at the same time that he was building the house of God, but it just took him a little bit longer.
We might even have guessed that he started building his house right at the beginning of his reign, but apparently neither of these two things is correct, because if you glance down at chapter 9, verse 10, it says, “Now it happened at the end of twenty years, when Solomon had built the two houses, the house of the Lord and the king’s house.” So apparently, first he builds the temple, seven years, then he builds his own palace, thirteen years. And this appearance by God to Solomon—I wanted to get this because of what I think is a very important point—this appearance to Solomon by God occurred thirteen years after the events of verse 8.
And now God comes to Solomon and says, “I heard your prayer,” the prayer that he had prayed thirteen years ago. God says, “I have heard your prayer.” I don’t know whether you noticed that when we read verse 59 Solomon expresses the wish in verse 59, “of these words of mine, with which I have made supplication before the Lord,” being near the Lord our God day and night. I want these words of mine to be right close to God every day, every night, every day, every night. And thirteen years later God says to him, “I’ve heard your prayer. Your prayer’s before Me today as it was on the day that you prayed it.”
I don’t know about you, but I find a tremendous encouragement in that. I know that I have prayed a lot of prayers about various things that I have totally forgotten. I think I’ve prayed some bad prayers too, and hopefully I’ve forgotten them. But I have forgotten some good prayers that I prayed as well. But you know what? God hasn’t forgotten even one of them. And every prayer that we pray that is received by Him in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is before his mind and heart as if it had been prayed today. God never forgets the prayers that we offer to Him.
And God can come to Solomon thirteen years after Solomon has prayed his prayer and say, “Oh yes, Solomon, I heard that prayer. I know what you asked, and I’m answering. I’m keeping My eyes on My house just as you prayed that I should.” But, of course, God’s appearance to Solomon on this occasion is not simply to tell him that He heard his prayer. His real purpose in coming to Solomon here is to say to Solomon, “Be careful. Be careful.” Because now He says, if you will walk before Me with integrity of heart, as David your father did, then, He says, you will not lack a son who sits upon your throne.
But He says, if you or your sons at all turn away from Me, and despise My statutes and My commandments, then He says, I’m going to cast Israel out of this land, and this house, even though it is hallowed, I will cast away. And when people pass by the sight of this house they’ll whistle. The word “hiss” is probably better translated here, whistle. You know, if I see something that really strikes me as amazing, I’ve got a little whistle left. And He says people will pass by the site of this house and will whistle, that is, in astonishment, and say, why has God done this to this land and to this house?
And they answer, and we’ll come back to this, because they forsook the God who brought them out of Egypt. They embraced other gods, and they worshiped them and served them, and the Lord has brought all this calamity. God says, Mr. Solomon, be careful, because this can happen. And, folks, it did happen. If we were to turn to the end of 2 Kings, to chapter 25, we would read about Zedekiah, the last of Solomon’s descendants to sit upon the throne of Israel. We’ve been reading about him in Jeremiah, have we not? He’s not a very inspiring king.
And in chapter 25 of 2 Kings, Zedekiah is captured. Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, is overthrown. The king of Babylon overthrows him at a place called Riblah. While he is watching, his sons are killed in front of him, and then the king of Babylon puts out his eyes, he’s bound with bronze fetters, and he is led away captive to the land of Babylon. And then we read the Chaldeans set fire to the house of God, and to the king’s palace, and to all of the homes of the important people in Jerusalem. They were all burned, because God had said to Solomon very clearly, if you don’t follow Me, if your sons do not follow Me, this house can be destroyed, and this nation can be cast out of this land.
And people will say, what happened? And the answer will be, they served other gods than the God who delivered them from Egypt. Do I need to tell you that even though we are saved people, and our salvation is permanently secured, even though we know that we will be in the presence of God forever, that if we turn our backs on the God who has blessed us in this way, and who blesses us day by day, provides for us, that the temporal blessings that we now enjoy can be stripped away from us? We can lose our health. We can lose our money. We can lose our home. We can lose our family.
The potential disasters that await those who do not walk with God are enormous, and that’s why God always wants us to be very careful. I’ve told this story before, but it’s worth telling again. Years ago my fellow teacher, Hal Lindsey, was visiting with a former pastor on the West Coast. This particular pastor had had a very productive ministry. God had blessed his church and blessed his ministry, but he had become involved with a woman in his congregation. This had come out, and he had lost his ministry. And Hal said to this man, “Is there something from your experience that I could take back to the young men that I teach at Dallas Seminary?”
And I’ll never forget the answer this man gave to Hal Lindsey. The man said, “Tell them that when they stop walking with God, they are walking on the edge of a precipice.” When they stop walking with God, they are walking on the edge of a precipice. King Solomon needed to be told, “Be careful.” Well, with that, our passage concludes with a strange story, really. Apparently it takes place at about the same time that the appearance of God takes place to Solomon.
Twenty years have now passed in which Solomon has completed his building projects, and during that time he had a very faithful, loyal helper, Hiram king of Tyre. Hiram, you remember, was very fond of Solomon’s father David, and was a loyal supporter of King Solomon. And we’re told here in verse 11 that during this period of building he had liberally supplied Solomon with cedar wood, cypress wood, and gold, as much as Solomon desired. So at the end of twenty years Solomon decides to give him a gift, and he picks out twenty cities way up north in the land of Israel, close to the border of Hiram’s kingdom, and he gives these twenty cities to King Hiram.
And naturally King Hiram would like to see what kind of a gift Solomon has given to him, and so he goes out to inspect the cities. And I’m paraphrasing here. When he sees the cities he says, “Oh, ugh. What kind of cities are these?” Very politely he sends a message back to Solomon which says, “What kind of cities are these which you have given me, my brother?” In other words, what kind of a gift is this? And he called this area with these twenty cities by the name Cabul. I have read that in the Phoenician language, in which Hiram would have spoken, the word Cabul means unpleasant, disagreeable, something like that.
So here is this quaint area, this area of twenty cities, and when Hiram sees it he names it unpleasant, disagreeable, bad. And then this is what I can’t get over. Hiram sends the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold in response to this. Now, if the margin of your Bible says one hundred and twenty talents of gold, that doesn’t sound like much to you, but if we translate that into modern financial terms, my margin suggests that amounts to six hundred ninety-one million two hundred thousand dollars. And even if it was only half that much, this is big money for an area that Hiram called Cabul, unpleasant, undesirable.
In the face of this pitiful gift by King Solomon, Hiram continues to be lavishly generous. You know, when you read this story, you say, how could this be? What was Solomon thinking when he gave a gift like this to a man who’s given so much to him? Well, maybe it happened like this. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but maybe Solomon one day was with his counselors and he said, “You know, we really ought to give Hiram something for what he’s done for us.” And maybe one of his counselors said, “You know, we’ve got twenty cities up there near his border. Why don’t we give him that?” And maybe Solomon said, “Okay, let’s do it.”
Now that’s the best scenario. The worst scenario is that Solomon thought, if I’m getting something to give him, something, well, I will give him the worst cities I can think of on his border, and hopefully maybe he’ll never come out and look at them. Maybe he’ll just take my word for it and say, well, that’s great. Fine. He gave you twenty cities. I don’t really know how it happened, but one thing I think it obviously shows is that Solomon’s appreciation for Hiram was shallow, superficial, and inadequate. Even if he said to his counselors, go up and vote him those cities, and he didn’t even bother to find out if they were cities worthy of the man to whom he was giving them, that’s shallow and inadequate appreciation.
And I think the writer of the book of Kings wishes us to understand that that’s also the way that Solomon will treat God. You see, God showered Solomon not only with wisdom, but with riches and honor and power, and by the end of Solomon’s life he is engaged in idolatry of the type that arises out of shallow, inadequate, superficial appreciation. May I suggest to you that one of the saddest things that I have seen in the ministry over a great many years is to meet Christians who know that they are saved by the sacrifice and death of the Savior, by the awful sufferings that he went through. They know that they are saved by simple faith, as a free gift, that they are going to heaven.
And they give a little bit back to God, but you know what it’s like? It’s like Solomon’s twenty cities. It’s undesirable. It’s pitiful. It’s shallow. It’s unappreciative. You remember what the first chapter of the book of Romans tells us. It tells us about the history of mankind. It says, “When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the image of corruptible man, and birds, and four-footed creatures, and creeping things.”
So where does it all start? Right up there. Neither were thankful. They did not glorify God. They did not give Him His thanksgiving. On a scale of one to ten, be honest with yourself, on a scale of one to ten, how much do you appreciate what the Lord Jesus Christ and God has done for you? And then, are you giving Him what He deserves again from you? The words of the songwriter come to my mind in this connection: “What should I give Thee, Master, Thou who hast died for me? Shall I withhold one portion from Thy gifts so full and free? Not just a part or half of my heart, I will give all to Thee.”
When it comes to gratitude, folks, be careful.