The Purpose of the Temple

Sermon: The Purpose of the Temple

Preached: September 30, 2012

Scripture: 1 Kings 8: 22-30; 41-45; 54-61

Rev. Mike Abma

1 Kings 8: 22-30

22 Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands to heaven. ²³He said, ‘O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love for your servants who walk before you with all their heart, ²⁴the covenant that you kept for your servant my father David as you declared to him; you promised with your mouth and have this day fulfilled with your hand. ²⁵Therefore, O Lord, God of Israel, keep for your servant my father David that which you promised him, saying, “There shall never fail you a successor before me to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your children look to their way, to walk before me as you have walked before me.”²⁶Therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you promised to your servant my father David.

27 ‘But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! ²⁸Have regard to your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today; ²⁹that your eyes may be open night and day towards this house, the place of which you said, “My name shall be there”, that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays towards this place. ³⁰Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray towards this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling-place; heed and forgive.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

A HOUSE OF PRAYER

I remember when we were planning to build the Ministry Center. We had discussed different designs, and different layouts. At one point, Bob Walters brought a stryrofoam model of what the planned Ministry Center would look like. It was kind of cool — we could pull the roof off and look inside and think, “Okay, so that is what it is going to look like.”

In many ways, the Temple was also built to be a model of sorts.

The Temple was built to be a mini-model of creation as it should be —

Yes, back to the Garden of Eden

A creation perfectly filled by God’s presence.

There was an Outer Courtyard with its large altar and huge basin of water called the bronze sea – so big I read it could hold 10,000 gallons of water. This Outer Courtyard represented planet Earth — the Land and the Sea. This is where the people could gather.

Then inside the Temple, in the Holy Place, draped in purple and deep blue curtains with winged creatures, and surrounded by not just 1 lampstand, but 10 lampstands each with 7 lights – that Holy Place represented the visible heavens: the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars. Only priests could enter this.

Then there was the Holy of Holies, which no one was allowed to see, except the High Priest once a year. The Holy of Holies contained the ark of the covenant with large angel figures, cherubim, on either side. This was meant to represent the throne-room of heaven – that invisible dimension of reality where God is seated on this throne surrounded by the heavenly host.

In perhaps his finest moment, Solomon acknowledges that there is no way this little Temple, this little model of the new creation, could contain the full reality of God. Not even heaven (the visible heavens that is) not even the highest heaven (the invisible heavens) could contain the full reality of God. God is simply too big, too great, too immense to be contained.

And yet, here was this Temple – newly built and being dedicated.

What was its purpose?

The truth is, we need something durable, something concrete —

As we heard last week, yes something institutional —

to direct our worship and discipline our lives.

The Temple in Jerusalem became that focus.

It did not contain God, but it carried the name of God.

It did not house God, but it held God’s attention.

And so, in this eloquent prayer, Solomon asks God to listen to

all the prayers that are prayed in the direction of this place,

all the prayers spoken in God’s name.

That is why the Temple was, first of all, a House of Prayer.

Sort of like a megaphone,

rooted on earth

and carrying prayers to God in heaven.

At the end of this first reading Solomon says:

Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place; O hear in heaven, your dwelling place; heed and forgive.

Solomon then launches into a prayer that has 7 specifics requests.

6 of the 7 requests have to do with God granting Israel justice when it needed

But there is one more request – request number 5, that is easily overlooked.

1 Kings 8:41-43

41 ‘Likewise when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a distant land because of your name⁴²—for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm—when a foreigner comes and prays towards this house, ⁴³then hear in heaven your dwelling-place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and so that they may know that your name has been invoked on this house that I have built.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

FOR ALL PEOPLES

This 5^th prayer request is something of a surprise.

Suddenly we realize that this Temple was not supposed to be a House of Prayer only for Israel, but it was to be a House of Prayer for all the peoples of the Earth.

The more we think about it, the more we realize

this is why God chose Israel to be his people,

this is why he chose Jerusalem to be his city,

this is why he chose this building, this temple, to bear his name.

So that all the people of the world would come know his name, and to worship and pray to him.

Clearly Solomon knows this.

It is part of his prayer.

But knowing something and living something are two different things.

What I find most striking about this 5^th prayer request of Solomon’s is that he draws attention to foreigners who come from distant lands.

Why foreigners from distant lands?

What about the foreigners who lived next door?

What about the aliens who lived within the borders of Israel?

This is where Solomon’s prayer and his practice begin to part company.

If we were to read all of 1 Kings 5-11 we would realize that Solomon loved building stuff.

Yes, he built this Temple.

He also built himself a lavish palace.

He built his queens lavish palaces.

He built cities and storage facilities all over the country.

So who actually did the work?

What labor force did he use?

In the very next chapter (1 Kings 9:20) it tells us that everyone in Israel who was not an Israelite – Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, and every other kind of “ite” — these Solomon conscripted as his slave labor force.

Solomon prays for the foreigner from far away,

but he is absolutely brutal to the foreigner in his own back yard.

The truth is, neither Solomon nor Israel is very good at sharing this Temple.

Our little reading ends with Solomon reminding God

that he built this house.

He happens to repeat this 6 times in his address – 6 times “that I have built!”

And that became part of the problem.

Over time, the Israelites became more and more possessive of the Temple:

they built it,

they owned it

they ran it.

They belonged to God, and God belonged to them – and seemingly no one else.

This kind of attitude infuriated the prophets.

Take Jeremiah.

He was sick and tired of the smug attitude of the people in Jerusalem.

They lived as they pleased,

And then said,

“We have the temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord,

the Temple of the Lord.”

“Bah Humbug,” Jeremiah said ….maybe not literally.

Bah, Humbug….Repent, and start treating your neighbor justly,

and quit oppressing the foreigners who live next door (Jeremiah 7: 1-8)

It wasn’t only Jeremiah.

Other prophets dreamed of a Temple that actually functioned the way it was supposed to – to be a place for everyone – all nations, all peoples.

Take Isaiah.

He dreamed of God welcoming everyone to his holy mountain,

He dreamed of everyone being joyful before God,

He dreamed of God’s house truly being a house of prayer for all nations (Isaiah 56: 6-8).

But before we get lost in this dreaming,

Let’s read one more passage when Solomon gives his parting blessing.

I Kings 8:54-61

54 Now when Solomon finished offering all this prayer and this plea to the Lord, he arose from facing the altar of the Lord, where he had knelt with hands outstretched towards heaven; ⁵⁵he stood and blessed all the assembly of Israel with a loud voice:

56 ‘Blessed be the Lord, who has given rest to his people Israel according to all that he promised; not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he spoke through his servant Moses. ⁵⁷The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our ancestors; may he not leave us or abandon us, ⁵⁸but incline our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances, which he commanded our ancestors. ⁵⁹Let these words of mine, with which I pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, and may he maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires; ⁶⁰so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other. ⁶¹Therefore devote yourselves completely to the Lord our God, walking in his statutes and keeping his commandments, as at this day.’

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

SO THAT ALL MAY KNOW…

These chapters are the high-water mark for Solomon and for Israel.

The Nation is united and at peace.

The Temple is built and dedicated.

But there are cracks in the kingdom, and everything is downhill from here.

Instead of Solomon and Israel being a light to the nations,

instead of pulling the world into God’s presence,

the world pulls Solomon, and Israel too, away from God’s presence,

and into the shadows.

In these chapters Solomon has just built the Lord God a temple.

But just a few verses later,

Solomon is building temples for the Ashtorehs of the Sidonians,

temples for the Molechs of the Ammonites,

temples for the Chemoshes of the Moabites

temples for many other gods of the region.

It is a sad story, isn’t it, but all too familiar:

people chosen to be a light to the world

elect to draw the world to the one true living God,

and what happens?

The world, in fact, pulls the chosen away from their first love,

and distracts them from their true worship.

CHOSEN FOR A PURPOSE

We Reformed folk like talking about election and being chosen.

But I think we know, deep in our hearts, that our election,

our chosenness,

is not simply about our salvation.

It is also about our task, our job, our purpose in this world.

We are chosen for a purpose — to be ambassadors of the gospel.

We have a job to do:

the job of representing God to others,

and representing others to God.

But what does this mean, we wonder — what does that really mean?

I mentor a group of Seminarians at Calvin Seminary. This past summer they were all doing summer assignments in churches in Michigan, Illinois, upstate New York, Ontario, California.

Most of the churches they went to are struggling.

According to my students,

each of these churches knew they had to reach out,

knew they had to witness,

but didn’t have a clue what that looked like in practice.

The thing that most distressed my seminarians is that there seemed to be such little spiritual vitality in these churches:

Prayer was something people didn’t seem to do publicly or privately;

Worship wasn’t fun – it was actually the cause of a lot of fighting.

And in terms of any kind of outreach, these churches felt there was nothing they could do. They lacked the resources: no money, no time.

So how can we, the chosen of God, let our light shine?

While thinking about this, my mind wondered to a church Shirlene and I visited in Hoima, in northwestern Uganda. Even by Ugandan standards, this place is in the sticks. The paved road literally ends in Hoima.

A number of years ago the Fellowship Christian Church of Hoima began worshipping under a large tree on the edge of town.

Worship and prayer became the heartbeat of this community.

Eventually they scrounged up enough money to buy some property and build a church building. They were ecstatic.

They had only worshipped in their new building for a few months when the tribal chief of the area came with an entourage and burned the church down.

He did not want a church there.

So what did they do?

They went back to that tree – and kept worshipping under it for years.

And while worshipping and praying, they planted 84 worshipping centers in that chief’s tribal territory.

84 !

Being God’s people in the world is never about buildings —

it never was, never is, and never will be.

Being God’s people in the world

is about being a body of believers

Who worship God and pray to him,

Who love our neighbors

Who live out our faith.

CONCLUSION

You know, after this elaborate dedication ceremony to the Temple is done,

God makes one last appearance to Solomon.

In fact, this is the last time God literally appears to anyone in the Old Testament.

He may speak to others, but he does not appear to them.

This has puzzled scholars for centuries.

Was God so disappointed with Solomon,

and so disappointed with Israel,

that he decided to withdraw?

The Old Testament prophets lamented this.

They said, “We will wait for the Lord,

who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob.”

Then, one day, the waiting was over….

For God so loved the world,

that one day

in the town of Bethlehem

God appeared to us.

And now we, God’s chosen ones, his elect ones,

His body, His temple,

are working and waiting again:

Working to proclaim the good news to the whole world

But also waiting….

Waiting for the day

the heavenly temple descends to earth,

the day God dwells on earth with us again

the day we see him face-to-face,

the day all nations walk by his light

and are encompassed,

and embraced

and enfolded

by his glorious presence.

That is the vision God’s elect dream of,

That is the vision we pray for,

That is the vision we live our lives to further.

Amen

Prayer

Lord, we live in a world of divisions,

A world easily angered,

A world easily offended.

But here we are, people representing

all kinds of nations,

all kinds of languages

all kinds of cultures

here we are

in your presence

and praying in your name

as one people.

One in faith,

One in hope

One in love,

One in Christ.

For this we give you eternal thanks

Amen