Wednesday Night Service 7PM - The Construction of the Temple - II Chronicles 3-5 - Pastor Ryan Nicho

Good evening. How are y'all doing? You want to stand with me and I'll open us in a word of prayer?

Dear Heavenly Father, I just thank you for blessing us with this opportunity to come and God just realize your presence. We know that you're always with us. You're always watching. You're always acting. Your word just continues to be active in the world and us and around us, God. But I just thank you for giving us an opportunity just to come together as your body

and just know that you are here with us and to hear your word spoken to us and to sing praises that you only deserve. God, I just pray that as we're singing these songs, Lord, that it would just be our heart just opening up before you and being humble before you and aligning ourselves with you. May it just be our prayer this evening in your name. Amen.

Sing like ne'er tip your hoe. It's a new day. It's time to sing your song again. Whatever may, whatever lies before, let me be singing when the evening ends. You're slow.

Ten thousand reasons for my heart and my time. A thousand years and then for it. Isn't it an awesome thing to think that we're going to be singing this song again? We're just practicing right now. This is just the beginning.

That grace appears. My chains are gone. I've been set. God, my Savior, his ransom is a mercy unending.

His word.

My chains are gone.

My God, my Savior, his ransom unending. He's angry.

How soon? He's all like snow. The sun forbear to shut me in.

Creation, all of the earth, make straight a highway, a path for the Lord. Jesus is come.

Like the sinner, wake up the saint. Let every nation shout of your fame. Jesus is come. Be a church ready for you. Every heart long.

Even so, there'll be justice. All will be new. Your name forever. Faithful in Jesus is come.

Be a church ready. Even so, God, I just pray that you would be with us, that you would help us to be prepared for your coming, God. We know that it could be at any time. Lord, I just pray that you would. Make that apparent to us, not just in our minds, God, but in our hearts, in our souls, that we would want to prepare ourselves and follow you. Lord, I just pray that as Ryan comes and brings your word, that you would just anoint him with your Holy Spirit, that he would speak boldly in your name.

Good evening. If you have a Bible with you, open up to 2 Chronicles. 2 Chronicles, chapter 3. 2 Chronicles, chapter 3. Well, the next about five chapters is all going to be about the temple. It's really Solomon's greatest achievement, his greatest accomplishment was the construction of the temple. So the first two and a half chapters that we'll look at tonight have to do with the construction of the temple.

And then next week, we'll look at the dedication of the temple. And so remember, he had gathered everything together. He got all of his workforce. And as we come to chapter 3, verse 1, we see the building of the temple. Notice what it says. Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David,

at the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Onan the Jebusite. He began to build on the second day in the second month on the fourth day of his reign. Those first couple of verses there. Just sort of set the stage for us for what will be the rest of the construction of the temple. But I want to point something out to you. Because it reminds us again, the writer of the Chronicles reminds us again, of where this temple was to be constructed.

That this temple was to be constructed on Mount Moriah. Again, this is a fairly familiar site within biblical language. The first reason why it's familiar is because if we were to go back to the book of Genesis, we would come across the story of Abraham. And Abraham was the father of faith. And Abraham had a great deal of ups and downs. And his life, and in his walk with the Lord, and especially when it came to faith.

But God had answered the promise. God had kept his promise by providing him a son. A son named Isaac. But even after Isaac was born, Abraham still struggled with faith. And he struggled with areas of sin in his life. But there was one last great test in Abraham's life and in Abraham's faith. Abraham was told, take your son, your only son Isaac, and I want you to go to Mount Moriah.

Three days journey. And I want you to sacrifice him there to me. And that's exactly what Abraham did. Abraham gathered together the wood for the sacrifice. He gathered together the fire for the sacrifice. He got his son and they took a three day journey. And on that three day journey, we're told in the book of Hebrews, it was as if he was dead in his mind those three days.

And when he went up on top of Mount Moriah, he was ready to sacrifice his son to the Lord. Because he believed that either A, God would stop him. Or B, God would raise him from the dead because he knew he was the child of promise. And in that moment, God said, I see that now you have not withheld even your only son Isaac from me. And we're told that it was called Mount Moriah in the mountain the Lord will provide.

The idea is that God would provide for himself a sacrifice. And that's the mountain on which they were to build the temple. Well, if we fast forward it all the way to the book of 1 Chronicles, we remember that at the end of 1 Chronicles, David decided that he would... have a census of the people. And the problem was not in the census. The problem was in the heart behind the census.

Because there was pride involved. He wanted to know how large his army was. And quite frankly, he wanted to know how large his kingdom was. And so David, in spite of the advice of the godly men around him, went forward with the census of the people. And didn't do it the way that God instructed. So when he realized that he had sinned, he confessed his sin to the Lord.

And the Lord said, you can choose your punishment. And he gave him three options. And the option that David had was, he said, I want to fall into the hands of the living God because he is merciful. And so there was three days of plague on the land. And at the end of those three days of plague, David cried out to God for mercy for the nation of Israel. He said, Lord, I'm the one that should be punished, not the people.

And so the angel of the Lord, who was putting the plague on the land, stopped at the threshing floor of Ornan, the Jebusite. And it was on Mount Moriah. And that would be the place where David would ultimately tell Solomon to build the temple. That was the place that God had chosen for the temple to be built. And here's what I think is so fascinating about this.

And here's what I think is so neat about this. Is that God took the place that represented David's greatest failure. And he turned it into the place that would become God's greatest place of glory. Because that's what God's in the business of doing. God is in the business of taking the areas of our life that we see as the greatest of failure and turning them into our greatest way to glorify the Lord.

Because in our weakness, he is made strong. And I love that about God. Because when we see the mistakes in our lives, when we see the failures in our lives, we think, can God ever redeem that? Can God ever do something with that? And God loves to take the things that we think are completely lost because of sin and turn them into glory. He turns them into a place where he displays his greatest amount of grace.

Where he displays the greatest amount of mercy and the greatest amount of love. And people say, that's why I want to know Jesus. Not because of all of your great victories, but because God showed himself faithful in the midst of your failure. Isn't it great that God is a God of grace like that? And so in this place, Mount Moriah, that's where he would build the temple.

Now, I brought a little visual aid here with me. When I say I brought it, I mean, I better put it up there because as we go through these different things with the building of the temple, I was just going to completely blow by these and be like, oh, you should read chapters three and four. They're all about the temple. But the more I read and the more I studied, the more I'm like, oh man, there's so much good stuff in here about the temple.

So bear with me. And I gave you a visual aid. So if you get bored of looking at me, you can look at that. And hopefully it creates a little bit of an idea of what's going on here. It says, now these are the foundations, verse three, which Solomon laid for the building of the house of God. The length in cubits, according to the standard, was 60 cubits and the width was 20 cubits.

The porch, which was in front of the house, was as long as the width of the house, 20 cubits and the height 120. And inside he overlaid it with pure gold. Now, as we look out here, we realize that there's three parts of the temple structure, just like there were three parts of the tabernacle. There's the outer court. They call it here the porch. And then there's the holy place,

which is just that first place inside there. And then there's the most holy place. That's the inner sanctuary of the temple. So the first place that's described to us is this porch. Now, the dimensions of the temple are about twice as big as the tabernacle, but still not very big. It's a pretty small structure, really, in the big scheme of things. Although if I understand correctly,

if you were to build this today with all of the gold and the bronze and everything, I think if I remember correctly, it said you'd be in the neighborhood of a billion dollars. Just because of the amount of precious stones and gold and everything that's in there with everything that's overlaid. So it starts off with this area of the porch. Now, there's something kind of significant about the area of the porch, because anybody could go into the area of the porch.

That was not restricted to just the priesthood. Anybody could go there, and that was the place where anyone could be, but it was the place of sacrifice. Okay? So he describes it as this open area, as you can see right there, and much of it is overlaid with gold. So there's that porch, there's that porch on the front. Then in verse five, it says, he overlaid the main room,

what we call the holy place, with cypress wood, and he overlaid it with fine gold and ornamented it with palm trees and chains. Further, he adorned the house with precious stones, and the gold was gold from parvam. He also overlaid the house with gold, the beams, the thresholds, its walls, its doors, and he carved the cherubim, on the walls. So inside of this inner area here, I'll point some other things out as we get there.

Keep following me here. You can see all around, well, maybe, can you see this very well? You can see all of these tables that are in there. You can see the cherubim all around, the palm trees and the chains. The palm trees, some of your translations may say the pomegranates, but the idea behind that is something that has growth in it, and I found this fascinating.

I turned to John Corson on this one, because if anybody, can pull gold out of the ground when it comes to the Bible is John Corson. And he pointed something out about the pomegranates and the chains, the palm trees and the chains. The pomegranates or the palm trees speak of the fruitfulness of our life in Christ, and the chains, which are linked together, speak of the unity that we have as the body of Christ. Because everything about the temple is representative of Jesus, including all of the ornate decorations.

But I want you to think about something. The entire inside of that structure was made of cypress wood, and then they overlaid all of that with gold. Now I don't know how long that would have taken to do that, but this was a strenuous sort of a thing to be done, to be able to take sheets of gold and overlay each of these boards and set it up there. So a pretty ornate structure within this holy place.

Now the thing about the holy place is only the priests were allowed to go in there. No one else could go past that, just the priesthood, which would have been those priestly divisions that we talked about a couple of weeks ago. It says this, now, verse eight. Now he made the room of the holy of holies. Its length across the width of the house was 20 cubits,

and its width 20 cubits, and he overlaid it with fine gold, amounting to 600 talents. The weight of the nails was 50 shekels of gold. Interesting that the nails were made of gold. He also overlaid the upper rooms with gold, and he made two sculptured, squared cherubim in the room of the holy of holies, and he overlaid them with gold. The wingspan of the cherubim was 20 cubits.

The wing of one of five cubits touched the wall of the house, and its other wing of five cubits touched the wing of the other cherub. The wing of the other cherub of five cubits touched the wall, and its other wing of five cubits was attached to the wing of the first cherub. So again, if you look in here, you can kind of see, hopefully you can, that there's those two giant cherubim that are right there, and right in the middle you can see a little box. That's supposed to be the Ark of the Covenant, and of course that represents that presence of God there within the nation of Israel.

So kind of fascinating how he made those, and of course that holy of holies, only the high priest was allowed to go into, and he was only allowed to go in there once a year. That was the presence of God, and it was an important place within the nation. But then he goes on to say, verse 13, the wings of the cherubim extended 20 cubits, and they stood on their feet facing the main room. And he made the veil of violet, purple, crimson, and fine linen, and he worked cherubim on it.

He also made two pillars for the front of the house, 35 cubits high, and the capital on the top of each was five cubits. And he made chains in the inner sanctuary, and placed them on the top of the house. And he said, place them on the tops of the pillars. And he made 100 pomegranates, and placed them on the chains. And he erected the pillars in the front of the temple,

one on the right and the other on the left. The name of the one on the right, Jachin, and the one on the left, Boaz. So the next thing that it points out after the holy place is it talks about the veil. And remember, there would have been a veil between the holy place, where the priesthood could go, where the service took place, and the most holy place, where only the high priest could go, where the presence was.

And that veil was anywhere, depending on who you read, anywhere from six to 16 inches thick. It was an incredibly thick veil. And there's a reason why that veil was so thick. It was because it was to keep people out of the presence of God. Because of sin, they were not allowed into the presence of God, except for the high priest that one time of year. When we get there in the book of Hebrews,

we will find that when the veil of his flesh was torn, the veil of the temple was torn in two, which represented our access to God. But until then, there was a veil that separated us from the presence of God. And of course, there was also the decorations within there. And then there were these two pillars. You can see them right there at the very front of the temple,

or excuse me, yeah, the front of the temple there. And they were both made of bronze. And these pillars were given names. And I find it fascinating that they named the pillars. And I tried to look and see if it said it on the top or on the bottom. But whatever it was, they were both named. And the names are kind of interesting because the name of the one is Jaqeen

and the name of the other is Boaz. Now those names have meanings, kind of like we talked about Sunday morning. Names had meanings at this point in time. The name Jaqeen means he establishes. And the name Boaz means in his strength. So it's kind of interesting because these two pillars that held up the temple, if you will, represented the fact that both God established

the place of worship and God strengthens the place of worship or he sustains the place of worship. And they are the reminder that our relationship with God is both established by his work and it is sustained by his work. It's not what we do. It's what he has done. He is both the establisher and the strength and the sustainer of our walk with him. Now it's kind of interesting

to look at these three main parts of the temple construction. You have the porch, you have the holy place, and you have the most holy place. The porch, as we mentioned before, represented the place of sacrifice. The holy place represented the place of service. And the most holy place represents the place of presence. And within that picture, there's a really good question

that we should all ask ourselves because I think that there is a representative truth of the way God works. Of the way our walk with Jesus Christ can be. You see, some of us stop at the place of sacrifice. You're saved and you're completely fine with that. You have accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ into your life, but you're still on the outskirts because you're not really willing to go in

to what God has for you. The sacrifice has been made. Maybe your salvation has been purchased, but you're content with a surface level walk with Jesus Christ. Some of you have moved past the place of sacrifice and you've moved into the place of service. You are beginning to serve God. You see yourself as a servant of the Lord. You've gone a little bit deeper

in your walk with Jesus Christ, but quite frankly, there's still a little bit of you that's held back because time is a constraint because there's things going on that occupy your attention and quite frankly, going too deep with the Lord is going to require more of you than you want to give up. And then there's some of you that go into the presence of God and you sit in the presence of God. And you're willing to be in that place where you say, I'm not content just to have my sins forgiven. I'm not content just to be a servant of the Lord.

I want a full relationship with the God who created me. I want a full and complete relationship with the God I was created to know. You see, there's the sacrifice and there's the service, but then there's the sitting. I'm reminded of that story of Mary and Martha, right? Martha gets given a bad rap, because I think that she was doing a good thing in serving the Lord.

But remember, Jesus had gone over to Mary and Martha's house and was eating a meal there, or going to eat a meal there, and Martha's running all over the place trying to get everything ready, making sure that all the place settings are right and the food is exactly as it should be. And she wasn't doing a bad thing, but she might not have been doing the best thing because Jesus was right there with her. And then there's her sister Mary. And Mary was sitting there sitting at the feet of Jesus, hearing what he had to say, taking in all the things that he had to say.

And finally, Martha gets a little huffy. She's probably the oldest. Anyway, she gets a little irritated with her younger sister, and she says, Jesus, would you make Mary help me? And Jesus says, Martha, you're busy about a whole lot of things. Mary, she's chosen the better thing, and I'm not going to take that away from her. I have a question for you. Do you choose the good things,

or do you choose the better things? Do you choose to busy yourself with the things of this life, or do you choose the best thing of sitting with the Lord? I'm doing another discipleship thing with some kids up in Winfield, and I was telling them today that the first thing that I have told every group of kids that I work with is the first thing FCA tells me I'm supposed to tell the kids to do, and it's because I believe it too. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing it.

And that's that if you're going to engage people to disciple them, the first thing that you have to do is you have to engage God first. Because if you don't engage God first, you have nothing to offer to anyone else. I can't give out what I don't have. I can't give to you what I don't already possess. And the thing that I have to possess can only be given to me from the Father.

I'm reading a fantastic book right now by Warren Wiersbe. It's called On Being a Servant of God. And in that book, he talks about the importance of the minister, the importance of the servant of God first being filled up by God. Because God not only wants to bless those that are served, He wants to bless those that do serve. And too many of us put all of our emphasis

on doing and not nearly enough emphasis on receiving. And I don't mean receiving from other people. I mean receiving from the Lord so that we have something to give out to the people that are around us. And that's what this temple represents for us, is it represents Jesus. And so I have a question for you. Where are you in this temple right now? Are you right there in that area

where the sacrifice is and you're just content to be saved? Are you serving or are you sitting? Are you in the presence and taking in what God has for you every single day? And so, we see this construction of the temple, but now there's also the furnishings of the temple. And so, it starts off in chapter four, verse one, it says this. Then He made a bronze altar,

20 cubits in length and 20 cubits in width and 10 cubits in height. And also He made the cast metal sea, 10 cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits. And its circumference, 30 cubits. Now figures like oxen were under it and all around it, 10 cubits entirely circling the sea. The oxen were in two rows, cast in one piece. It stood on 12 oxen,

three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east. And the sea was set on top of them all, on top of them in all their hind quarters, turned inward. It was a handbreadth thick and its brim was made like the brim of a cup, like a lily blossom. And it held 3,000 baths. Okay, so you wanna put that back up there? Perfect. So the first thing He describes is

over there on the far right, my far right, which is the place of sacrifice, it is the altar. And you'll notice that the altar was made of a specific metal. Did you take note of the kind of metal that it was made out of? The type of metal that it was made out of was bronze. You'll find that everything on the outside of the temple was made of bronze. And the reason is,

is that bronze represents judgment in the Bible. And until sin is judged, there can be no presence of God. And so He builds this brand new altar. Look at that giant thing that's over there. Look how high up that thing sits. That sea that's down on the bottom side that you see there, that thing's gonna stand about seven feet tall. So that's how tall that altar is.

It's pretty big, right? And so there's that altar that's over there, and that's where they would make the sacrifices. The only thing from the old tabernacle that would have come in to the new temple was the Ark of the Covenant. So He builds this altar. Now, each of the furnishings of the temple is gonna represent something for us about Jesus. Because everything about the temple represented Jesus.

I actually learned that from the book of Hebrews, that it was an earthly model of a heavenly reality. And so the earthly model of the temple with the bronze altar, of course, represents Christ as our sacrifice. There is no entrance into the temple, there is no entrance into the reality of a relationship with God if it does not first start with sacrifice. If it doesn't first start with the fact that our sins are dealt with.

I have people come to me sometimes, and they say, I've got somebody I'm talking to right now about the gospel, and, well, what does it mean? What does it mean to follow Jesus? What steps do you take to become a Christian? And I said, listen, it always is gonna start with the sacrifice of Jesus. I had a young man come to me one time, and his marriage was falling apart.

It was about three years ago. My marriage is falling apart. I wanna heal my marriage. How do I start with that? I said, well, you first have to start with your sins. Because if you don't deal with that, you can't be right in any other part of your life. You have to start there. Because this young man was not a believer in Jesus Christ. I said, you have to start there,

because if you don't start there, everything else that I tell you to do is never gonna work, because you haven't dealt with the root of the problem. And the issue that we're dealing with in the culture right now is we've not dealt with the root of the problem. The root of the problem that we're dealing with in our world is the fact that our world is bent on sin. Our nation is bent on sin.

The nation is bent on sin. I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. We'll get there next week. But in 2 Chronicles 7, verse 14, there's this wonderful promise that's given to us by God. And the promise is, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and seek my face, then I will turn and I will forgive them and I will heal their land. See, I believe that if we wanna see anything

really take place in the country, it has to start in the church. In the book of Daniel, when Daniel realizes that the time is close for the end of the Babylonian captivity, Daniel said, I realized from the readings of Jeremiah that the time was near. And so Daniel set about to pray. And do you know how Daniel started his prayer? Daniel started his prayer by first of all confessing his own sins

and then confessing the sins of his people. He interceded for the land by beginning to confess the sins. And I just wonder sometimes as the church, when we see all the things that make us upset in the nation today, we see all the things that make us upset in the world, if we're a little too angry with all of their sins and have never really dealt with any of ours, if we're a little too upset with what the world is doing and not nearly enough upset with what we're doing, that maybe if we started like Daniel did, by confessing our sins and then also confessing the sins of our people, because whether we like to admit it or not, this is our nation. And if we don't like what's going on there, then we should probably start inwardly looking

and start confessing the sins of our nation. Who knows that God might not begin to move again. And so you have to deal with Christ as the sacrifice before any of the other things can take place. That's why that's the first implement that's mentioned. The second one that we're shown is this bronze sea. Picture a large above-ground pool. I was sitting in my office.

My daughter was sick today, so I had to work from home. And so I'm sitting in my office, and I'm looking at my big above-ground pool in the backyard. And it's very Beverly Hillbillies of me, and I love it. And so it's about 15 foot around, which is about what this sea would have been. Actually, I think it's 16 foot around. Like, okay, basically, it's not bronze.

It looks really sweet if it was bronze, right? That would look really amazing. And it's real deep, and this thing was so that the priests could do their ceremonial bathing before they went in and did the service of the temple. You see, this bronze sea represents the word of God which cleanses us. Remember what Jesus said? You are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.

You see, the sins were dealt with at the bronze altar, but we need that continual cleansing. We need that continual cleansing of the word of God. We need that continual cleansing of the words of Christ in our lives. Husbands, we are told to wash our wives with the word, that the word should be what flows from us. The word should be what we use to counsel. The word should be what we use

in the lives of the people that are around us because the word of God is what continues to wash us. And listen, if you go a few days without a shower, you stop noticing it, but everybody else doesn't, right? I always use the camping analogy with kids. Like, when you go camping, the first night, you're like, I think I'm probably pretty funky right now. It's a little bit warm and toasty out here.

And then I sat around a campfire, I smell like, you know, BO and burnt wood. And you notice it the first night. But you get up the next morning and you go about your day and you're like, man, why do I smell so fresh? Here's the thing, you don't. And then you come home after three days of camping and you walk in the door and your mother or your wife looks at you and goes,

please don't talk to me, go take a shower. Because they don't want to be around you because even though you went nose-blind to yourself, you didn't go nose-blind to anybody else around you. And that's what happens to us if we go a few days not being in the word. It's pretty soon we go, eh, how do I not stink? I've been around a lot of filth. And everybody else is going, you do.

We just don't notice it anymore. But if you're showering every single day, you start picking up on the stench, amen? And so we have to be in that word all the time. And that's what that bronze seat represents, the continual cleansing of the word of Christ. But the next thing that we see comes to us in verse 6. It says,

And so if you can see here, this is going to be a little bit harder for you to see, but there's these little itty-bitty wash basins, sorry for whoever's watching online, these little wash basins all along here. There's five of them here, and there's some on the other side. And that was so that they could wash the implements that they would use in their service, particularly in the service of the burnt offering. Now, I struggle to understand this one, but John Corson pointed it out really good, and I thought it was kind of interesting.

It speaks to the fact that Christ is our intercessor. Christ is our intercessor. You see, when we don't know how to pray or when our prayers don't make much sense to us, Jesus comes in as our intercessor, and he cleans them up for us. That sacrifice of praise and prayer that we offer to the Lord, which is oftentimes insufficient at best, Christ comes in and intercedes on behalf of us and cleans up the mess.

Well, the next thing that comes is the golden lampstands. Perhaps you can see those all along the side. Picture the menorah. And there's 10 of them that are in there. It says in verse 7,

And he set them in the temple, five on the right side and five on the left side. And of course, the golden lampstand represents Jesus as the light of the world. Can you imagine how dark that temple would have been apart from that light? There's no windows in it. As a matter of fact, there's just a curtain on the front and a curtain on the inside and walls all around.

There would be no illumination inside of that. If it weren't for those lampstands, it would be completely pitch black. And yet, you light those lamps and it would illuminate the whole place. Can you imagine the brightness? Can you imagine all of these walls being gold and a whole bunch of lamps burning and all of the light shining off of the gold walls? It would have illuminated the whole place

and everything would have been visible just like Jesus does. Jesus is the light of the world. He takes a world that is dark any other way, and he illuminates it. And then not only does he illuminate it, but just like those gold walls, you become a reflection of the light of Jesus throughout the world. We're told that in the book of Matthew, right? Jesus says in Matthew,

you are the light of the world. You can't hide the light. As a matter of fact, you need to let your light so shine that they see your good works and they glorify your Father, which is in heaven. And so the next thing that we see, verse eight, as it says, he made 10 tables and he placed them in the temple, five on the right side and five on the left. And they made 100 gold bowls.

And of course, underneath of each of those lampstands, there's a bunch of little tables that sit on both sides. And each of those tables held the showbread. And of course, that showbread speaks of Jesus as the bread of life. Jesus is that bread of life that fills us and takes away the hunger for everything else. He takes away the hunger for anything else. I read something recently

and I thought it was kind of interesting. It was just a quick little snippet of a thing, but it was a fascinating thought that I've kind of pondered quite a bit. And it said this, if sin was satisfying, you wouldn't keep doing it. I thought, you know, that's a really good point. Because Jesus, as the bread of life, stopped my search for anything else. I don't search for other things

to try to give me fulfillment. I don't search for anything else to try to be my meaning or my purpose in life. Because I found it in Jesus as the bread of life. And yet when sin comes along, sin always makes you desire to go back for more because it never really fulfills you. You think, now I need a little bit more and it's got to be a little bit more. Whereas when you find Jesus,

well, you're filled. And you've got everything that you need. And you realize that your search for meaning was over. And so Jesus is that bread of life. It goes on from there to say, then he made the court, verse eight, for the priests and the great court and the doors for the court. And he overlaid the doors with bronze. Of course, those doors that are in between those two pillars

represent Jesus. Because if you remember in, the Gospel of John, Jesus says, I am the door of the sheep. He is the entrance. And interestingly enough, did you take note of what those doors were overlaid with? They were overlaid with bronze. Which speaks to the fact that our entrance into the presence of God comes about because judgment was laid upon Jesus. All of the judgment for our sin

was put upon him. So that he could be our access into the presence of God. Isn't it great how everything in there represents who Jesus is? It's almost like God had a plan. What goes on from there to say, he set the sea, verse 10, on the right side of the house toward the southeast. And Huram also made the pails, the shovels, and the bowls. And Huram finished doing the work

which he performed for King Solomon in the house. The two pillars, the bowls, and the two capitals on top of the pillars. And the two networks to cover the two bowls and the capitals which were on top of the pillars. And the 400 pomegranates for the two networks. Two rows of pomegranates for each network to cover the two bowls of the capitals which were on the pillars.

He also made the stands and he made the basins on the stands. And one sea with 12 oxen. The pails, the shovels, the forks, and all its utensils, Huram made of polished bronze for King Solomon. For the house of the Lord. On the plain of the Jordan, the king cast them in the clay ground between Sukkoth and Zeredah. And then Solomon made all these utensils of great quantities.

For the weight of the bronze could not be found out. Seven years we're going to find is how long it took for the construction of this temple. Which when you read about all of the intricate designs you think that had to have taken some time. And it did. Seven years in fact. I never want to hear about a slow building again. Just kidding. Seven years to build that thing.

It's pretty fascinating. But what I really want to point out to you is what it says in verse 18. I'm going to read it to you again. Thus Solomon made all these utensils in great quantities. Pay close attention. For the weight of the bronze could not be found out. It's an interesting statement that in and of itself doesn't mean a whole lot until we remember what the bronze represents.

It represents the judgment for sin. And we are reminded that while the bronze was so much in weight that it couldn't be found out. I find that kind of interesting with all of the other details that we're given in here. That we're not given the amount of the bronze that was used. And I think there's a reason why God concealed that. It's because we have been forgiven of an immeasurable

amount of sin. Because it is immeasurable to know the depth of the love of Jesus Christ that he showed to us. By taking on the judgment that was immeasurable for all of our sin. And it's kind of interesting to think that that's what God displays there. It's the truth of the gospel in that moment. Then in verse 19 it says, And Solomon also made all the things that were in the house of God,

even the golden altar, the tables with the presence of the showbread on them, and the lampstands with their lamps of pure gold to burn in front of the inner sanctuary in the way that was prescribed. The flowers, the lamps, the tongs of gold, the purest gold, the snuffers, the bowls, the spoons, the firepans of pure gold, and the entrance of the house, its inner doors for the holy of holies, and the doors of the house, that is, the nave of gold. And so now we come to chapter 5, the ark. It says this, Thus all the work that Solomon performed for the house of the Lord was finished.

And Solomon brought in the things that David his father had dedicated, the silver and the gold and all the utensils and he put them in the treasuries of the house of God. I always wondered the excitement that went into that day. Having been a part of construction, I was the guy that was the best at talking to the people, which is why I wasn't as good at construction. And so they would always put me at the end of the job talking to the customers the most.

And there was always so much excitement when people got to move into their new building. And you kind of got to be there for it and help them and show them where things were. And there's so much excitement when they start moving in and they can actually turn the key to the door for themselves. And they start putting the desks in the right place and all the implements in the right place.

And I just wondered how much excitement went into putting all of the things inside of the temple. They're like, man, we get to do this thing. Oh, be careful with that. Where do these tongs go? They go over there. And all the moving in that went in because all the work was finished. But then comes the most important part. Verse 2, Then Solomon assembled to Jerusalem

the elders of Israel and the tribes, the leaders of the father's household, of the sons of Israel, to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion. And all the men of Israel assembled themselves to the king at the feast that is in the seventh month. Now, we don't read anything about the construction of the ark in this particular section because that ark was already constructed. It was constructed when they were in the wilderness.

And that's going to be the same ark that they put in there. It's a mess to not think a little bit about how this ark was constructed because obviously the most important part, the central piece of the entire temple was the ark of the covenant. Just like the central thing in our lives is the presence of God. Well, this ark was made of acacia wood. I learned something new this go around.

That's what I love about the Bible. I learn something new every time I study it. I learned something new because somebody went into what acacia wood actually is. This particular type of tree that it came from was a tree that was found in the desert that the wood of which did not rot. It was covered in thorns. And on the inside of it there was a in the inside of the actual tree itself

there was a gummy substance that actually had medicinal qualities in it that they would use for the healing of certain wounds. And so it's kind of interesting because if we think about what the ark represents which is Jesus amongst the people that ark that is made from a wood that doesn't rot that was covered in thorns and has medicinal use in it we're reminded of the fact that this ark absolutely represents who Jesus is. Because Jesus in himself is eternal. He'll never rot.

Jesus wore a crown of thorns. And we're told in the book of Isaiah that by his stripes we are healed. Matter of fact, there's another place in the book of Isaiah that says that he will arise with healing in his wings. And so it's interesting to think that everything about this ark even the wood of which it was constructed absolutely speaks to us of the person of Jesus Christ and the sacrifice that he would make for us.

But that's not the only thing that speaks of it. It was a wooden box that was overlaid with gold. It was a wooden box that was overlaid with gold. That wooden box actually speaks of the humanity of Jesus because it's of the earth. And the gold that it's overlaid with because gold always speaks of divinity speaks of the divinity of Jesus Christ. And I'll take it one step further for you

because in just a minute it's going to say well let's just read it real quick. It says,

The priest brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord to its place into the inner sanctuary of the house to the holy of holies under the wings of the cherubim for the cherubim spread their wings over the place of the ark so that the cherubim made a covering over the ark and its poles. The poles were so long that the ends of the poles of the ark could be seen in front of the inner sanctuary but they could not be seen outside and they are there to this day. There is no ark except the two tablets which Moses put in there at Horeb where the Lord made a covenant with the sons of Israel when they came out of Egypt. So the only thing inside of this ark by the way which speaks of both the humanity and the divinity of Jesus was the law.

That's what those two tablets were because at the heart of Jesus is the holiness of the law. But do you know what the ark of the covenant was covered with? The top of it was called the mercy seat. And that mercy seat is where the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled once a year on that day of atonement. Do you know what Romans refers to Jesus as? Romans chapter 5 refers to Jesus

as the mercy seat. And so that ark which has the law the holiness of God in the heart of it and mercy on top of it speaks of Jesus who in his heart had all of the holiness but he was still the covering for sin. I just love all these things in the Old Testament because they so point to the reality of the Jesus that we now know so well because he took on flesh and dwelt among us. And so next week we will get into the dedication of the temple and Solomon's prayer over the temple and God's response to that prayer.

But like I said there was just way too much to cover in there. I started getting into all the stuff of the ark or all the stuff of the temple and I just kind of geeked out a little bit. I hope you enjoyed the geeked out journey with me. I hope you enjoyed the geeked out journey as well. We'll do more of it next week. Sound good? Father we come before you and Lord I just thank you.

I thank you Lord that you made it so clear from the very beginning that everything was all about you. Lord that you that visible representation of the triune Godhead made yourself known to us not only through the temple not only did you speak to us through the prophets but Lord you have spoken to us through your son. And so Father be with us as we go through this week and Lord may we not be content to dwell in the outer courts. Lord may we not be content to dwell in the holy place Lord.

But as that wonderful song says Lord take us into the holy of holies. Take us in by the blood of the lamb. Because we want to be able to sit with you and hear from you. So Father we just pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. Be blessed.