Monday Club Sermons 1 Kings 6:1-14 And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt… Solomon's temple is the most wonderful and interesting building in the world's history. It was "the mysterious centre of Israel." It was far more to Israel than the Vatican is to Rome. It was, so long as it stood, God's only earthly palace and temple. The Pyramids of Egypt were old when it was built, and they show no signs of decay. Solomon's temple utterly perished after four centuries. Greek and Roman artists have given the laws of beautiful and stately architecture to the world, but no one has ever dreamed of copying, in any respect, the sacred building at Jerusalem. Brunellesehi's dome at Florence, St. Peter's at Rome, the Milan Cathedral are almost miracles of daring genius and patient toil. The temple was in comparison a homely and plain building in its style. Its size was, as compared with these, small and insignificant. Yet God in a peculiar sense was its architect. He filled it with His glory. "His eyes and His heart were there." The simple description before us is greatly amplified in this Book of Kings, and in that of Chronicles, where there are differences noted. Our attention may rest at present on the — I. DATE OF THE TEMPLE. It is given with precision. Months and years are mentioned for the first time since the Exodus. Here we have one of the two or three points clearly made in the Scripture by which its chronology is determined. We can easily remember that Solomon's reign began about one thousand years before Christ. Homer was singing of the Trojan war. Two and a half centuries must pass before Romulus and Remus founded Rome. It seems long since Columbus discovered America. Add a century nearly to this period, and you have the time between the Exodus and the temple. How long the decay! Wilderness wandering, rude days of the Judges, — nearly three hundred years. Samuel and the prophets, King Saul, and then David, — these all must come before God can have a permanent home on earth for men to see and admire and love. II. THE SITE OF THE TEMPLE. This is not mentioned in our text, because so familiar and so often recorded elsewhere. It was on Mount Moriah, to which Abraham centuries before had raised his eyes in sad recognition of the place for the sacrifice of Isaac. III. THE SIZE AND PLAN OF THE TEMPLE. Many a country church is larger than this famous edifice in its interior dimensions. The cubit is an uncertain measure; but allowing it the largest limit, we have a room inside of only ninety feet by thirty. It had three distinctly-marked parts. First, the "temple of the house" (ver. 3), or holy place, sixty feet long by thirty wide. Then, second, came the "oracle" (ver. 7), or most holy place, a perfect cube, thirty feet in each of its dimensions. This was perfectly dark. In front came, although part of the whole building, a porch fifteen feet deep, running across the whole east end of the structure. All this was of stone, covered, according to Josephus, with cedar. On the sides of this building there was what we should call a lean-to, i.e. sets of chambers, not for residence, but for some other purposes connected with worship. They were entered from without by a door and winding-stairs, so that the holy places themselves were always kept separate. IV. PREPARATIONS FOR THIS WORK. They had been going on for thirty years, ever since the day when David conceived of giving the ark of God a suitable home. Money had been accumulating, and a special treasurer had charge of it. It amounted, perhaps, to eighty millions of dollars. Spoils of battles were brought to it, like the banners hanging in Westminster Abbey. Shields and vessels of gold and silver were gathered in great numbers. But the materials of the temple itself were all brought from afar. V. THE WORKMEN AND THEIR WORK. They were largely foreigners, under Hiram, King of Tyre, or native Canaanites, reduced to practical slavery. Their numbers were immense, one hundred and fifty-three thousand Gibeonites alone engaging in the toil. Thirty thousand Jews, in relays of ten thousand, worked side by side with Tyrian and Sidonian. The significant statement is made that their work was so perfect that part came to its part without the sound of the axe or hammer. This is unparalleled in architecture. In boring the Mont Cenis Tunnel under the Alps, so exquisitely accurate were the engineers, that the two shafts begun at opposite sides of the mountain met each other with scarcely the variation of a line. The Brooklyn Bridge is a triumph of human courage and skill; but those silent seven years on Mount Zion, in which the house of God grew into form, each stone hoisted to its place without the shaping touch of the chisel, in which every beam sunk into its socket with no shading of its already true lines, — that perfect design, perfectly carried out, — where shall we find its equal? That silence was suggestive. It was Divine. VI. THE BUILDER OF THE TEMPLE. Not David, the man after God's own heart. Not the father, but the son; not the man of blood, but the man of peace. Thus one life completes itself in another. VII. THE USES OF THE TEMPLE. Here we must abandon our modern conceptions of a house of God. The temple was not a place for congregational worship. There was no such thing known in the world at that time. The congregation could assemble in the court before the temple, and witness the sacrifices of animals, but they could not enter there. Only the priests were seen within those mysterious portals. We must banish from our minds all conceptions growing out of the modern church, save as all churches are sacred to the worship of God. Solomon repeatedly says that Jehovah desired this place that His name might be there, — the name of His holiness. There God was to be represented in His true character, — merciful and gracious, but perfectly holy. Israel was to pray towards that place, but God was to hear in heaven, His dwelling-place. VIII. THE CONDITION OF GOD'S BLESSING ON THE TEMPLE. While Solomon was busy in the seven years' work, he was reminded that all his toil and expenditure would be in vain unless he walked in the way of the Lord. Stones and cedars, gold and jewels, fine needle-work and silver could not enclose and secure a purely spiritual presence. God speaks to Solomon himself as if He held him alone responsible for the preservation of the temple's sanctity. IX. THE TEMPLE A TYPE AND PROPHECY OF THE WHOLE BODY OF CHRIST. It expressed to the ancient people of God the idea of His dwelling amongst them. He ruled the world, even all the heathen nations; but Zion was His home. Israel was His abode. Amongst them His glory and power were to be displayed. Josephus and Philo thought that the temple was a figure of the universe. Others have thought it typical of the human form, others still a symbol of heaven itself; but we have the Scripture proof of its being a prophecy and type of that final temple silently reared by the Spirit of God, — each stone a living soul, — and the whole structure filled and glorified by Christ. (Monday Club Sermons.) Parallel Verses KJV: And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD. |
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