Bible Commentaries

1 Kings 6:7

The building of the Temple on Mount Moriah is a parable of the present world. St. Paul applies the simile of the text to the building of the Church of God when, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, he says that this Church is built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, and that it groweth with a noiseless growth into a holy temple for the Lord. The text is a revelation of the twofold condition of the life of the Church of Christ as it is to-day.

I. There are three conditions of the Church's life: two present, one future. The Church is militant on earth; the Church is expectant in Paradise; the Church shall be glorified in Jesus Christ when He comes and she passes into Paradise. However chequered may be the Church's course on earth, within the veil Jesus is realising His thought of His Church, not in the transitory conditions of time, but under abiding conditions in eternity. Jesus is the Builder of His Church in Paradise, for He is the true Solomon.

II. When Solomon built his church, the first thing he did was to dig deep, that his foundations might rest upon a rock. Christ lays the foundations of His Church deep in His own wounded form. Upon the person of Jesus, as the crucified Redeemer, do the foundations of the Church rest.

III. Solomon laid the foundation stones of the Temple. The Bible tells us that the foundation stones of the Church are the twelve Apostles. Their influence is a living power with us today.

IV. We are not as yet in Jerusalem; we are in Lebanon. God's great work is going on age after age; the purpose of the Church is to be the school of heaven, the place where men and women are made ready for eternity.

G. Body, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 1.

What Lebanon was to Zion, this world is to heaven. This world is the quarry and the work-field, heaven the temple. Gradually in its calm magnificence, far out of sight, that temple in Zion is rising and stretching on, in its preordained proportions, to its vast circumference. Another and another stone is being added to it, but not one that has not been hewn and fitted here.

I. God sends His stone-squarers to His children; afflictions ply their hammers, and unkind men their sharp chisels, until the heart, measured as with a plumb-line, is set to the whole will of God, and we are conformed to the heavenly and made correspondent to the Divine.

II. Here on earth the stones lie disjointed and isolated; they are good stones, but they want union. There, in that great spiritual structure, all will be gathered into a perfect oneness, and each shall bear his own proper and necessary part in the temple.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 8th series, p. 201.

Taking the Temple as an emblem of the Christian, we say that it was (1) the place of mercy; (2) the place of law; (3) the place of worship.

I. In the Temple was erected the throne of mercy; there mercy was, as it were, localised. The Christian only has a clear idea of mercy as a living principle. He knows his need of it, and knows mercy as an attribute of God. The sense of our need of mercy produces humility and peace.

II. The Law was deposited in the ark, and remained there till the time of Titus. The law of God should dwell in every Christian heart.

III. In the soul of the Christian, as in the Temple, there is communion with the Divine presence, there is the true worship of God. Fellowship with ourselves and the indwelling Spirit of God is the essence of true religion and the true idea of a spiritual temple.

C. Morris, Preacher's Lantern, vol. iii., p. 563.

References: 1 Kings 6:7.—G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 187; Bishop Woodford, Sermons on Subjects from the Old Testament, p. 80; Sermons for the Christian Seasons, 1st series, vol. ii., p. 613; Dawson, Sermons on Daily Life and Duty, p. 242; New Manual of Sunday-school Addresses, p. 262; E. Thring, Uppingham Sermons, vol. i., p. 71; J. W. Burgon, Ninety-one Short Sermons, No. 86.

1 Kings 6:29

The question naturally arises, Why this peculiar carving exclusively? Wherever the worshippers looked they were met by this threefold ornamentation, everywhere cherubim, palm-trees, and open flowers.

I. The first thought that strikes us is the union of the earthly and heavenly, the natural and spiritual, in worship and religion. The highest spiritual objects and two of the most prominent natural objects were portrayed together in the house of God. The highest creature in the spiritual realm was here set alongside of natural objects known to all. Worship of God will never be healthy and many-sided if it excludes the view of the outer world. Look at the Book of Psalms. Deep, manifold, and awful is the tragedy of human life there, and glorious are the bursts of melody and hope that sweep across it; but through all struggle, and agony, and shouts of triumph there come the scent of flowers, and of pines, and of mown grass, the singing of birds, the lowing of cattle, the roar of the sea, and the murmur of the stream. So in the house of God and in worship heaven and earth are brought together.

II. We learn that life is the grand source, material, reality. There were three kinds of life portrayed on these walls. It is life that gives value to all things. Life is that which has fellowship with God; life is that which loves God and longs after Him; life is that which feeds upon God's truth. All life has the same grand general laws.

III. We see the union of three things in the spiritual life: worship, fruitfulness, and beauty. Worship is represented by the cherub, fruitfulness by the palm-tree, and beauty by the open flower. True spiritual life shows itself, not in one of these, but in all.

IV. We see the union of these three things in the worship of God—aspiration, growth, and receptivity. The open flower is the way to the cherub; by reception the plant and the flower live; and by reception the soul of man lives and grows.

J. Leckie, Sermons Preached at Ibrox, p. 133.

References: 1 Kings 6:35.—J. Reid Howatt, Churchette, p. 51. 1Ki 6-7—Parker, vol. vii., p. 295. 1 Kings 7:5.—Preacher's Monthly, vol. ii., p. 144. 1 Kings 7:5, 1 Kings 7:6.—S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 193.