These passages deal with Solomon building God’s Temple and all the specifications and furnishings that went into the final product. (As a former geometry teacher, I was so tempted to check the calculation for the circumference of the Sea.) The important point here is that God gave very specific instructions for his Temple and Solomon was careful to follow the instructions to the letter. Many of the articles described in the passage are foreign to the service we follow today. I can’t imagine the sight of a sacrifice of 22,000 cattle along with 120,000 sheep and goats. Again, the point to remember is that Solomon and the priests were following specific instructions laid down by God. The footnote in my study Bible talks about the fact that there is a time to be creative and to put forth our own ideas, but not when the ideas add to, alter or contradict any specific directions from God.
The real takeaway for me from these passages, though, comes in a footnote to Chapter 7 which says that soon after Solomon’s reign, the Temple was ransacked because God’s people turned away from following him. At Hope, we frequently talk about how the church is really God’s people. We worship in a beautiful building.
Over Lent we raised money to build 267 new churches in Ghana and a replica of one of those churches was built on the stage. There was a striking difference between that structure and our own and the point is that the structure does not matter as much as the people and what happens inside. I have visited some beautiful churches in my life as well as some churches that were hanging on by a thread. In either case, what was happening inside these buildings was so much more important than how the church looked on the outside.
Questions for reflection:
1) Reflect on a time when you might have ‘modified’ God’s instructions. It doesn’t need to be ignoring the instruction, it could be adding to or altering in some way as well.
2) What are some ways you experience church beyond coming into the actual building?