Today in God's Word—February 2023
East Tallassee Church of Christ
February 14, 2 Chronicles 4
He made an altar of bronze, twenty cubits long and twenty cubits wide and ten cubits high. - 2 Chronicles 4:1
It's a matter of personal taste. Some people like simple, plain and understated. Other folks prefer more complex, ornate and outspoken. When you decorate your own home, others may not understand or appreciate the choices you make. But they don't live there or pay the bills, do they? You can design your space to suit yourself, especially if you're not trying to impress anyone else.
People with different tastes who share common space usually have to reach some kind of compromise. It's wise and kind to consider others’ preferences and not demand your way about what should be done every time.
Solomon leaned more toward the opulent and the extravagant. Since he was the king, his say determined the way the temple would be built and appointed. He told Hiram king of Tyre that the house he wanted to build for the Lord had to be “great and wonderful.” He wanted it to surpass the temples that were built for the pagan gods around them. If that was to honor God, it would be a fine motive. But if he only cared about impressing other people, it was not a very good motive.
Solomon did many things to excess. He described how that affected him in the book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon would have always wanted to super-size his burger, fries and drink at the fast food places. This tendency led him to do some things that failed to respect God’s word. When that becomes the issue, personal taste is not a valid excuse for doing a thing contrary to God's will.
God didn't give David or Solomon a detailed new plan for the temple as he did for Moses about the tabernacle. But the basic design of the structure and the theologically significant details of the temple were based on the tabernacle instructions found in Exodus.
Take, for example, Solomon's super-sized altar. It was thirty feet long and 30 feet wide. ( I had an apartment in college that was much smaller than that.) But the main problem with the giant altar was that it was fifteen feet high. That meant the priests had to climb steps to put sacrifices on the altar. God had specifically told Moses,”And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it.” Solomon’s innovation made the priests violate God’s law even as they obeyed the law about sacrifice.
The other glaring problem with Solomon's enhancements to the design is the obvious influence of pagan idolatry. God taught the Israelites not to make any images of him. Israel had struggled with this straightforward command since Mt. Sinai, when Aaron made the golden calf. The Canaanite fertility gods were commonly represented by bulls or oxen. Solomon incorporated a dozen of those idolatrous figures into the support for the giant sea or laver, the large bath where the priests washed themselves. The law said nothing about tall pillars at the front of the structure , but the pagan temples had them, and so did Solomon's.
When God's design tor the tabernacle called for one lamp stand, Solomon thought ten would be better. There was one table for the showbread in the original tabernacle, but Solomon ordered 10 gold tables for the temple. Where did that idea for the inner doors come from? It did not come from the law, which specified the veil to separate the most holy place and the ark it contained from view.
All that gold certainly made the temple and its furnishings and vessels a spectacle. Solomon’s temple was among the seven wonders of the ancient world. But the real glory of Israel's worship (and ours) is supposed to be the presence of God among his people. God would graciously accommodate the Israelites by filling the temple with the glory of his presence in a cloud. Later, when the nation and its leaders
turned to paganism, Ezekiel saw the Lord’s presence leave the temple.
Let's presume that Solomon's intention in all the spectacular size and materials he incorporated into the temple was strictly to honor and glorify God. That's what our guiding principle should be as well. But when elements of the design either contradict or add to what God has said, our edits and excesses don’t glorify the Lord at all.
Copyright © 2023 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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