Transcript
Download Handout: Solomon's Temple
One of the things that is very striking about reading a description of the type we are about to read is that without any visualization of it, it sounds complicated to us and hard to get an image of it in our minds.
I was fortunate to have access to a number of sources where there are diagrams made of Solomon’s Temple. And before we even attempt to read anything, I would like you to look once more at the diagram that I handed out to you.
There is more on this diagram than we will read about today. And I hope you will save this so that the next time that we consider the book of First Kings, we can have this diagram in hand. But you will find in the reading that we are going to do in a moment that the central structure here, the thing that is right in the middle of the handout sheet, is what is being described.
You will notice that beyond the structure there was an inner courtyard and an outer courtyard. They are not mentioned in the verses that we are about to read. Some of the things that I have also on the chart are not mentioned here, and I have put them in so that we can make use of them at another time.
But now I want you to make, if you will, the basic structure of this diagram that I have given you. You will notice that we have a building which is divided into two units. The one to your left is the inner sanctuary, the Holy of Holies. Do you see that? Where I have attempted with very little success to draw the cherubim. In case you wondered what those were, those are supposed to be the cherubim and the Ark of the Covenant.
This was, of course, the Holy of Holies. It was square. It was twenty cubits long and twenty cubits wide. Then to the right of this is the temple sanctuary itself, which is the holy place. This was twice as long as the Holy of Holies. It was forty cubits. And although they are not mentioned in our section today, it contained the altar of incense in front of the curtain that divided the two parts of the temple. And it contained two five-lampstands and apparently five tables of showbread on one side, five lampstands and five tables of showbread on the other side.
Then moving out of this second compartment you will notice that we get out to the far right in what I called a vestibule or a portico. Or portico we mean kind of a roofed porch here. And this was ten cubits long. In the seventh chapter we read that there are two pillars either standing free in front of this portico or helping to support it. Both ideas have been suggested. They had names Jachin and Boaz. Also those circles are the pillars and the names attached to them.
Now you will notice that around the three walls of the structure I have got these boxes. Do not count the boxes and take it as absolute fact that there were this many rooms around the side of the temple, because I do not know how many rooms there were. These box-like drawings are to represent a kind of an annex that was built on three sides of the temple and had three stories to it. And each story had a number of chambers, apparently storage chambers. So you notice at the top I say three stories of side rooms. You see that at the top there.
Now before we read the text, do you have any questions on the diagram so that you can kind of keep this diagram in mind as we read the text? But do you have any questions about the way I am trying to represent any section of this diagram? Or is this such a beautifully drawn diagram that it is perfectly clear to everybody exactly what each portion of it represents? Any questions?
All right. I assume you have no questions. That all is crystal clear. Apparently the lampstands were between the wall and the tables of showbread on each side. And they were directly across from each other with the middle aisle between them. So is that what you are asking? Yes, that is what most students of the structure of the temple conclude. That is the way they were arranged.
You remember that in the tabernacle there was only one lampstand, only one table of showbread. But this is the larger structure. And there are actually ten lampstands and ten tables of showbread. That is a good question. Any other questions that you have?
We all know what the Ark of the Covenant is, do we not? Made famous by the movies that dealt with the search for the lost ark. The Ark of the Covenant was placed between the cherubim in the Holy of Holies. And it was supposed to contain the tables of the law that God wrote and also the pot of manna that was deposited there. That is not mentioned either in the section for today, but just to clarify what that is about.
All right, we are going to read the first thirteen verses of First Kings chapter 6.
And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord. Now the house which King Solomon built for the Lord, its length was sixty cubits, its width twenty, and its height thirty cubits. The vestibule in front of the sanctuary of the house was twenty cubits long across the breadth of the house, and its width extended ten cubits from the front of the house. And he made for the house windows with beveled frames.
Against the wall of the temple he built chambers all around, against the walls of the temple, all around both the sanctuary and the inner sanctuary. And he made side chambers all around it. The lowest chamber was five cubits wide, the middle was six cubits wide, and the third was seven cubits wide. For he made narrowed ledges around the outside of the temple, so that the support beams would not be fastened to the walls of the temple. And the temple, when it was being built, was built with stone finished at the quarry, so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built. The doorway for the middle story was on the right side of the temple. They went up by stairs to the middle story, and from the middle to the third.
So he built the temple and finished it. And he paneled the temple with beams and boards of cedar. And he built side chambers against the entire temple, each five cubits high. They were attached to the temple with beams.
Then the word of the Lord came to Solomon, saying, “Concerning this temple which you are building, if you walk in My statutes, execute My judgments, keep all My commandments, and walk in them, then I will perform My word with you, which I spoke to your father David. And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake My people Israel.”
I suspect that one of the facts that we tend to forget about ourselves as Christians, one of the facts that we pay the least attention to, is the fact that we read about in First Corinthians chapter 6.
Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?
I presume that all of us, when we think of the fact that we are Christians, we think readily of the fact that we have eternal life, that we have the forgiveness of sins, that we are in the body of Christ. Perhaps. But how often do we give really serious attention to the fact that each and every one of us is a walking temple of God?
I like the old King James a little bit better here. It says,
What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own?
And that could easily be said to a lot of Christians. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?
And I think that as we look at this passage about the Jerusalem Temple, that we will learn principles that are applicable to our own personal life and experience. Because we ourselves are a living, moving, breathing temple of the living God.
After giving us the exact date when Solomon began to construct the temple, the writer gives us first of all the dimensions of the temple. You will notice them in verse two. “Its length was sixty cubits, its width twenty, and it was thirty cubits high.” Now it is widely felt that the cubit was equal to about one and a half feet. So we can give the dimensions of this structure in terms of feet. And approximately we would say it was ninety feet long. It was thirty feet wide. And it was about forty-five feet high.
It was not a very big building. In fact, in terms of modern buildings this would be a relatively small building. And even in terms of some of the ancient buildings that existed in the ancient world, it was small. Ninety feet long. That is about thirty yards on a football field, something like that.
By contrast with this, the throne room in the palace in Babylon was one hundred and seventy feet long and fifty-five feet wide. I want to stress this. This is the most important building in the world that Solomon is building. No building that was ever constructed before it was as important as this one. The tabernacle, of course, was a tent. No building that would be constructed in Solomon’s lifetime came anywhere close to matching this. And yet this was not a big building.
And I am struck by that. Because sometimes we kind of misconceive God. We know that God created a universe that is immense. And we think God is only interested in big stuff. And we think we only have God’s blessing on something if the stuff, if whatever it is, is big. You are wrong, folks. God is real big.
Many years after this, when after the temple had been destroyed and the second temple was built, some of those who observed the second temple thought it was even less impressive than Solomon’s. And I am sure that it was. And God came to Zerubbabel, the man who was in charge of building that second temple. And He says,
Who will despise the day of small things?
And earlier He had said to Zerubbabel,
Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord.
And one of the things that we always need to keep in mind is that God is a God of small things. Very frequently surprising us by bypassing big things in order to deal with small. Fact. Did you stop to think of the fact that the Bible says even the very hairs of your head are all numbered? The Bible says that a sparrow does not fall down except by your heavenly Father.
When Jesus was born into this world, He was not born in a great big mansion. He could have been. But there was no room for Him anyway. Even in the inn where He was about to be born, He was born in a manger. And I want to get over to you that the temple is not a huge, humongous building. But the most important building in the world.
Sometimes when you are in a small church, you think, “Well God must not be doing very much here because we are so small.” Let us not kid ourselves, shall we? God is a God who works frequently and effectually through very small groups and objects. You remember the little boy with his five loaves and two fishes. A very big lunch? Look what Jesus did with it.
So the temple was small. Notice also that in verse four it had windows. “And he made for the house windows with beveled frames.” We do not know exactly where these windows were. And I have not tried to represent them on the diagram. But it is possible that the central structure rose two stories. And the windows were high up here. Or it is even possible that the windows were in the roof. But the thing I want to point out to you is that the interior of the house of God, where worship and service of God was carried on, was illuminated by light from heaven. By the light of the sun that came through these windows.
In other words, the center of God’s worship was also a focus of light. But God had the temple constructed so that light penetrated it from above. One of the ideas that people often have about worship is that it really does not matter how you worship. “Do we not all worship the same God? Does not matter how you worship.” Have you ever heard that? And almost all of us have heard that.
Remember the woman that Jesus talked to at the well. She said, “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain. But you say that Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” And Jesus replied to her,
Woman, you worship what you do not know.
He says, “You do not have any light in your worship. You are blind. We know what we worship, because salvation is of the Jews. God is a Spirit. And they that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
We are not at liberty as creatures to decide in what way we choose to worship the Creator. We must worship the Creator according to the light of His Word, according to the light of His truth. He must be worshiped not only from the heart, but He must be worshiped in spirit and in truth. So this was a building that was illuminated by light from above.
Then in verses five and six we have the description of the chambers. And you will notice them all around the side. We have already pointed them out to you. There were three stories of chambers here. If I allow these rooms we might be tempted to ask why. But we are not told exactly what they are for. Most students, I think, have correctly concluded that they were storage rooms. After all, the worship of God was going to go on in the Jewish temple. Where did you put all the stuff that you needed for worship? Priestly garments, the implements and items that you needed to take care of the altar and extra things like the lampstands.
It has also been suggested that when people gave gifts to God, valuable objects that were dedicated to God, they were stored in these rooms. It is clear that Solomon, in constructing the temple, had in mind that the temple, which was the center of worship, would be well supplied. Because he got all these rooms for all of the things that might be needed or might be valuable in the worship of God.
May I suggest that in a certain way God does exactly the same thing when He makes us a temple of the living God. He sees to it that we are well supplied. Remember the statement in Ephesians.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
And Peter writes in Second Peter one,
Even as His divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness.
When God made a temple out of us, He gave us everything, spiritually speaking, that we would ever need to live for Him, to serve Him, to worship and honor Him. And so it seems to me that the structure of His house with its storage rooms surrounding the center of worship reminds us that the house of God will always be supplied. And God, of course, is able to supply.
We notice in verse seven that the construction site on which the temple was built was not noisy. Did you observe that? “And the temple, when it was being built, was built with stone finished at the quarry.” Where they dug the stone out, they finished the stone so that they did not have to use any kind of tool on any of the material that came into the temple. Have you ever been to a construction site when everybody is working and you feel like putting your hands on your ears? “I cannot hear a thing. I cannot think.”
That was not the atmosphere in which the temple of God was constructed. It was constructed in relative quiet, relative silence. No physical tool was heard in the construction of this temple. Why? I think because, quite obviously, this was considered to be a house of God. And the silencing of the clatter and clamor and noise was an act of reverence for the God who was going to live in this temple.
You remember in Habakkuk 2:20 it says,
The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silent before Him.
And in Psalm 46 God says,
Be still, and know that I am God.
Did it ever strike you that we live in a noisy society? I mean we have become a noisy society. I moved out of a couple of apartments because people played loud music above you or down below me. You drive along the street. Some guy drives up with their windows up. You can hear the blaring noise that they are playing on the radio. People walk down the street with their earplugs in and they are carrying their Walkman and God have music.
The so-called discos where people like to go are just cacophony of sounds. And may I say that even in religion we get noise. So people get noisy. There are some religious services that are as loud and noisy and glamorous as possible. I think maybe we can learn something from the Bible. That there is a very significant place for silence, particularly when we are in the presence of God. “Be still and know that I am God.”
How can I think about God if my ears are assaulted with noise? How can I think about that if I am jumping up and screaming or somebody else is jumping up and screaming? Have you ever observed that this is one of the quietest meetings? If I would shut up it would be perfectly quiet. But do we not have periods of silence here before someone begins to minister the Word? How do you use those periods of silence?
Do you realize that God is here?
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
Be sure to use the silence to think about God. And you know, we have trouble finding silent time at home, do we not? It gets so busy. Over time, and particularly my sympathy is for moms who have heard that, have kids running around the house. And you pack them off and look to have silence. But let us face it. Silence in the presence of God is a very significant spiritual discipline. And all of us need to cultivate it.
And the temple, which was His dwelling place, was not allowed to be a noisy construction site. But the building went up as silently as possible. Then you notice in verse eight it says, “The doorway for the middle story was on the right side of the temple. They went up by stairs to the middle story, and from the middle to the third.”
We are not surprised to discover always, since they had three stories of storage rooms, that they had a way to get up to the second and third levels. They had a stairway. Would have been a terrific oversight if they had not had one. But this suggests to us a very simple fact. Whether the temple is going to be very well supplied for all of the things that are put in these storage rooms. But which were the easiest storage rooms to get to? Well, they were the ones on the bottom floor. The hardest were up at the top.
And if you wanted to get to the supplies on the second floor, you had to climb some steps. No elevators. No escalators in the temple. And if you wanted to get what was on the third story, you had to climb two flights of steps. And while it is true that God richly and lavishly supplies us with everything that we need, may I put it this way? Not everything that He supplies is on the bottom story. But sometimes we have to move a little bit higher in our experience with Him. We have to do a little climbing to get at the spiritual resources that He has for us.
There are a lot of stairways that we decline to climb. For example, reading our Bibles, praying, meditating. And as I have been saying to you, if we want all of the things that are available to us from God, we may have to move up a little bit. Well, there was a hymn that we used to sing in the Baptist church. “Lord, lift me up and let me stand by faith on heaven’s tableland. A higher plane than I have found. Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.”
That was a great hymn. The songwriter was saying, “Lord, let me move in the Christian life. Let me find a higher place. Let me get higher and higher. Plant my feet on higher ground.” And you will not get, as Dr. Hendricks used to say to his students, he says, “God does not put all His cookies on the lower shelf.” That means they are not all down there that you know that you get them easy. Some of them are on the upper shelf. And resourceful kids know how to get the cookies on the upper shelf. And God’s children should know how to cry into the presence of God and get the resources that are available to them if they move up to get them.
So in verse nine he built the temple and finished it. “And he paneled the temple with beams and boards of cedar. And he built side chambers against the entire temple. Each five cubits high. They were attached to the temple with beams.” Notice that as he finishes the temple, he gives it a finished appearance. And that he panels the interior with cedar beams. And he connects the chambers at the side of the temple to the temple with cedar beams.
The emphasis here obviously is important. The use of cedar wood. Now in the ancient Middle East cedar wood was highly esteemed, particularly the cedar wood that came from the cedars of Lebanon. And you remember the last time we were together we saw how Solomon entered into an arrangement with Hiram king of Tyre to provide him with cedar wood.
Now there were two things about cedar wood that made it desirable. First of all, if you were building something to last, cedar wood was a good thing to use because cedar wood was durable. But I was also interested to find out that the cedar wood gave off a slight aroma. And that the aroma was repellent to insects but appealing to people. So here is the temple of God paneled on the inside with cedar wood. Suggesting that God, that Solomon intended that this temple, that as you walked in it, smelled good. The bugs were not there to bother you. But to you it smelled good.
You remember that in the New Testament it says,
Walk in love, even as Christ loved us and offered Himself as a sacrifice and offering for us, a sweet-smelling aroma to God.
The Apostle Paul says, you know, kind of try to smell like Christ did. He loved us. He sacrificed Himself for us. And that sacrifice that He made was like perfume going up to God. Walk in love just as He loved. Let God smell the odor of your life. And I said I really think that as Christians who are indeed the temple of the living God, that God ought to see and our lives enough of the Lord Jesus Christ to smell the aroma of the Savior.
Remember that Paul says, “Thanks be unto God who always leads us in triumph in Christ and makes manifest the odor of His knowledge in every place.” He says God leads us around victoriously. And everywhere we go we diffuse the aroma. The perfume of the knowledge of God. Is that the kind of temple that you are to God and people? Let me use the metaphor here. Can people smell the Lord Jesus Christ in you? Can God smell Him?
And of course the nice thing about being a temple of God in this day and age is that it is durable. Because we will always be the temple of God. The Spirit of God will never leave us.
Now it is at this point that God speaks a word to Solomon. And He says, “If you walk in My statutes, execute My judgments, keep all My commandments, and walk in them, then I will perform My word with you, which I spoke to your father David. And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake My people Israel.”
There is a sense, my friends, since we are talking about a flip that traces the fall of the house of David, there is a sense in which the history of the temple represents that. And when we get eventually bored with it to the last chapter of the book of Kings, which is of course the last chapter of Second Kings, we will find that this temple is burned to the ground. Why? Because Israel did not walk in the commandments and ordinances of God. They did not value the presence of God in that house sufficiently for God to remain in their presence and to allow the house to continue to stand.
Now as I have said, we are never going to cease to be the temple of God. We belong to God forever. But there is a sense in which we can lose the experience of God’s presence. Remember that Jesus said in John 14,
If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. And My Father will love him. And We will come and make Our home with him.
We can love Me, says Jesus. You are going to obey Me. And by My Father will have a special love for you. And the two of us, the Father and the Son, will come. We will live with you.
Now that is what is parallel here, is it not? God says, “I am going to stay in the midst of My people Israel as long as they are obedient to My commandments.” So we need to redouble our commitment to God to continue to be obedient to Him. That we may experience His presence. That God may be at home in our lives. And then all of the privileges and benefits of being a temple of God will be experienced for ourselves.
Okay, comments or questions from any of the men?