Chapter 153. 1 Kings 5. The Materials for the Temple.
WHEN Solomon was fully established on the throne of Israel, he began to prepare for the building of the temple as his father, David, had commanded him. First, he wrote a letter to King Hiram of Tyre, who had been his father’s friend. and told him what he intended to do and asked his help. In Hiram’s country, Mount Lebanon abounded in lofty cedar and fir trees. These Solomon wanted for his building. He asked the King of Tyre for men who did the work skillfully to cut the trees down for him, and he would pay them whatever was asked.
Hiram was glad to help Solomon, and sent back word to him he would do all that David’s wise son desired. He said his men would cut the trees and bring them to the seaside and float them along the shore to any pia e Solomon might appoint; and he could take them up from there. In return, Solomon should give food for Hiram’s household.
So the two kings made a league between themselves, and Solomon promised each year to send twenty thousand measures of wheat and twenty measures of refined oil. Then he sent an immense army of workmen to Lebanon to help Hiram’s workmen. He collected thirty thousand men out of all Israel, and sent them in bands of ten thousand, one band at a time for one month, while the others stayed at home two months. Then apart from them he had seventy thousand men to carry burdens, and eighty thousand to hew stones out of the mountain rock. Over these men, there were three thousand three hundred to oversee them.
These great figures give us an idea of the greatness of the work undertaken. It was not that Solomon wanted to erect a building that would give his posterity to know how rich and clever he was, but he was to follow a pattern given to David by God. God was the architect of that temple, and Solomon obediently followed divine directions. We know that God’s wisdom went further than simply to get a place of worship on earth worthy of Himself. Indeed, nothing is worthy of Him who has created all things, and for whom all things were created. His purpose was to give a beautiful type or picture of another temple—a spiritual temple, not made by hands. In Ephesians, 2:20-22, we read that all Christians “are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth into an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” Believers in Christ are then the materials of which this spiritual building is made. Like the stones, the cold dead stones, hewn out of the mountain, we could do nothing to raise ourselves out of the place where we were,” Dead in trespasses and sins.” Every stone that went into the temple was raised by a power outside of itself. Someone had to go into the pit, and hew them, and draw them out. None but those that were drawn out were out. Just as helpless are sinners in the pit of sin. “No man can come to Me except the Father which has sent Me draw him,” said the Lord Jesus, and that is why God sent Him. Solomon and his father, David, before him, gave gold and silver for those great costly stones, but God gave His Son. “Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” (1 Pet. 1-18, 19.) Since God has sent His Son to die for sinners, then there is no judgment for those who believe in Him. Christ is risen from the dead and God has raised us up with Him.
“Death and judgment are behind us,
Grace and glory are before;
All the billows rolled o’er Jesus,
There they spent their utmost power.”
God sees the sinner in his natural condition, as dead and helpless, but man often sees himself as the great and lofty tree of Lebanon. But before it could be used in the temple, the tree had to be cut and felled. It must be taken down to the water, then taken out at Joppa to be made ready for the building. Is not this the way God brings a soul to Himself? The sinner must learn that he is nothing but evil; Christ is his only righteousness. Self must be brought down, into the waters of death, before it can be raised in possession of the new life with the risen Christ. How hard to learn that there is not a spark of goodness in us and that Jesus not only had to die for our sills but for us as well.
ML 03/12/1916