The House of Grace (Part C)

You saw no wood. The priest that was in the holy place and the holiest of holies, when he looked around, he did not see wood. He saw gold. God never sees me apart from his son, the king.

Gold is the emblem of royalty. And when God looks at me, he doesn't see the sinful nature that is ungodly. Underneath what has been made valuable by the blood of the Lamb.

And thank God it is that way. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1st Kings.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick will conclude his message called, The House of Grace. And today he'll begin in Ezekiel chapter 7. You get to Ezekiel 7 verse 22 and there God says, I will turn my face from them and they will defile my secret place for robbers shall enter it and defile it. He's talking about Solomon's temple that's being built that will be dedicated when we get to chapter 8. Chapter 7 is the palace of Solomon. Chapter 8 is the dedication of the temple when they bring the ark in. In 200 years there about, the temple is going to be destroyed and God is laying it out so that when it happened, the Jews, this was no accident. We're not the victims of foreign invaders. We're the victims of our abominations against God and the prophets were telling us.

They gave us details, precise little details and now they've fulfilled. Ezekiel in the 8th chapter, God says, go down to the temple Ezekiel. Let me show you what they're doing there. They're abominations, the men and the women. And then by chapter 9, God says, gives Ezekiel a vision of six men and they have weapons except one, clothed in linen.

He's the team leader. He's got an ink horn and he's going to put a mark on those who sigh and cry over Jerusalem. But those who do not have the mark, they're going to be judged, singled out. Verse 6 of Ezekiel 9, utterly slay, do not come near anyone on whom is the mark and begin at my sanctuary. This is Solomon's temple. So they begin with the elders who were before the temple and he said to them, defile the temple and fill the courts with the slain, go out and they went out and killed in the city and he's just very graphic in that section.

I've taken out some of it. This is how we preach. We say this to people who are lost. Look, there is going to be weeping and gnashing of teeth. There's going to be sorrow and resentment towards God for daring to be God. Tell me why again you don't believe that Christ is your savior? Is there anyone, anyone that even comes close to offering what Christ offers? Hold them accountable to their conscience, hopefully. Now it sounds simple from the pulpit. You can just say, and God had reached a loss.

Yeah, man, it is a war, but it's doable else you wouldn't be here. Verse 14, so Solomon built the temple and finished it and he built the inside walls of the temple with cedar boards. From the floor of the temple to the ceiling, he paneled the inside with wood and he covered the floor of the temple with planks of Cyprus. Everything's going to get covered in gold. The entire inner sanctuary, the inner sanctuary and the outer sanctuary, the holy place, the holy place, all gold. And it's just the nails, the screws, the pegs, the pins to fasten, you know, the doors and the hinges all dipped in gold or not dipped in gold, probably some of it maybe gold relief, which is a skill that was long in existence. You know, you make the gold like aluminum foil and you hammer it onto the various objects that you want to cover, the gold plate.

2 Chronicles 3 verse 9 tells us that even the nails were covered in gold. Gold is not a strong metal, though it's a heavy one. Those who like heavy metal, are they just talking about lead or gold? Because lead is just as heavy. Anyway, one of my brothers was always able to acquire things that the legality was questionable. And I don't know, at one point he had this lead ingot, it's a bar that was, you know, minted out like in lead. So if I forget verses, it's that lead poisoning from handling this thing as a kid. And it was very heavy, it wasn't that big, like, you know, twice the size of a common stick of butter. And gold, kind of lost my thought, but I can say this, I used to unload gold at Kennedy Airport from Air Argentina would bring it in every Tuesday at 1030. And that little box was so heavy, two of us on our, you know, our hands, you know, back of us shoving it with our feet just to get this thing 10 feet out the door of the belly of the plane onto the conveyor belt, then four men had to lift it off the conveyor belt into the armored truck.

It really has nothing much to do with anything I'm talking about except these flashbacks. Verse 16 was they built the 20 cubit room at the rear of the temple from the floor to the ceiling, the cedar boards, he built it inside as the inner sanctuary as the most holy place. So the holy place is 30 feet square, wide, long, and tall. This gives it about 15 feet of loft space as you're standing, you know, and by the, the Ark of the Covenant, gold overlaid the cedar boards and Wayne Scott pattern, it seems also. Verse 16, we'll come back to this, verse 17, and in front of the temple sanctuary was 40 cubits long. So the holy place with a golden incense altar stood 60 feet long, 30 feet wide, 45 feet high. So you had the outer sanctuary where the lampstand was, the incense altar that was in gold, the showbread, then the inner sanctuary separated by curtain in this temple by doors also, doors and curtains.

I'll give you that verse, maybe if I'm in the mood, I'll give it to you in a little while. Verse 18, the inside of the temple was cedar carved with ornamental buds, that means there were ornamental friendly guys faces, there's the buds. Hey bud, anyway, covered with ornamental buds, you'll never see that again, read that the same way again. Ornamental buds, open flowers, always cedar, there was no stone to be seen. See those little statements, they're like zingers, you know, but they're blessings, they're the opposite of zingers.

You know somebody, you talk to them and they just have to always lead you to a snide remark, you know, that guy, just always say something to ruin it. Well, this is the other way around, always something to make you go, hmm, there's something there. Okay, the temple with the cedar, the carved ornaments, we got that. Remember, David designed this as according to the vision given to him by God or the inspiration, but there was no stone to be seen.

Well, sandstone's not unattractive, why? Well, these verses come to mind for me. Ezekiel again, 36 this time, verse 26, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

Matthew 13, some fell on the stony places where they did not have much earth and they immediately spring up, but because they had no depth of earth, they withered away, and then 2 Corinthians chapter 3. So I'm saying this little feature just for me triggered in my memory, man, there's verses that talk about stone working against us in this context, because of course we have the foundation and the rock of Christ, so you have to balance it, but 2 Corinthians 3 verse 3, clearly you are an epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but by the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of flesh, that is the heart. And so you have this tabernacle, this temple, and the structure, permanent structure, not portable like Moses, and God is saying I need the stone for the foundation, but everything has to be in its place.

Inside I want the beauty and the glory, and on the outside or beneath it, I want the strength, but there's more. Verse 19, and he prepared in the inner sanctuary inside the temple to set the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord there. Now the Ark is not here yet, that will not happen until chapter 8, the first verse, the dedication, but this room, this holy of holies, is not now a holy of holy place in the truest sense. It's an empty space until the Ark arrives, then it becomes the most holy place because the Ark is the presence of God to the people saying I am with you. The Shekinah departs, and Ezekiel talks about that in chapter 10 of his prophecy, and it's a reluctant departure. At first he lifts off the cherubim, then he goes by the threshold of the door, then he crosses over the brook, and it's this sad distancing of God having to leave the people who want nothing to do with him. And those who accuse God of deism, just abandoning the planet, they don't understand. So here, the sanctuary, where the Ark is going to go, is just an empty space until the presence of God comes, and that presence of God will depart because of their apostasy.

So much to think about, you know, if you're going through this in your devotional time, at least for me, these are the things that make you say, you know, I gotta think about this. Verse 20, the inner sanctuary was 20 cubits long, 20 cubits wide, and 20 cubits high. He overlaid it with pure gold and overlaid the altar of cedar. Eleven times in this chapter we read the word gold, and ten times we read of that gold being overlaid. You saw no wood.

The priest that was in the holy place and the holiest of holies, when he looked around, he did not see wood. He saw gold. God never sees me apart from his son, the king. Gold is the emblem of royalty. And when God looks at me, he doesn't see the sinful nature that is underneath what has been made valuable by the blood of the lamb.

And thank God it is that way. When Jesus looked at Peter and said, tonight you will deny me three times, he saw beyond Peter, Peter's failure, because he says to him, when you return, strengthen your brothers. And what we see in Acts chapter 2, Peter, the one who failed miserably, is leading, you know, multitudes to Christ.

Peter didn't even know what to do with him. He preached a sermon so good he didn't know how to finish this thing. So God interfered.

Well, not interfered, but intervened. And he had the people say, what must we do to be saved? And Peter was saying, yeah, you know, I couldn't just quite close it. I thank you. All right, so I say that because we don't know this naturally.

You know, you preach to Christ, you refute arguments, and you have to also know, you want to get them to the point where you say, repent, that times of refreshing may come. And I think that, you know, when you think of the tabernacle, it's this way with Moses' tabernacle, in many ways also, but this whole room was just all gold. But it was not a museum. It was not a social center.

You couldn't go see it. Only the priest got to see this, or the Levites. Verse 21, so Solomon overlaid the inside of the temple with pure gold. He stretched gold chains across the front of the inner sanctuary and overlaid it with gold. Verse 22 now, the whole temple, he overlaid with gold until he had finished all the temple. So he overlaid with gold the entire altar that was by the inner sanctuary. That's the golden incense altar to distinguish it from the bronze sacrificial altar where the blood offerings were outside the temple would take place. And that was a big deal, because King Uzziah tried to offer incense on that, and the priest withstood him. They were going to die before they let him come in there and offer incense, which was reserved for the priest.

So, of course, he was smitten with leprosy. It's, you know, the father of John the Baptist is ministering on the incense altar when the angel appears to him. Well, verse 22, the whole temple he overlaid with gold until he had finished all the temple.

I did read that, but I'm almost done. Also, he overlaid with gold the entire altar that was on the inner sanctuary. Second Chronicles chapter 3 in the eighth verse tells us it's about 24 tons of gold. By today's standards, that's over 11 billion dollars worth of gold. Again, God uses this stuff like asphalt up in heaven, so he's like, I just make it.

When I want it, I just call it into being. Verse 20, you know the Russians in the 50s, I think it was the 50s, the Soviets, they thought that the road atlas, the American road atlas was propaganda. Nobody could have that many roads asphalted, leading to so many places, and so they would tell their people, that's just propaganda. The Americans can't do that.

But it was real. I don't know where those gold roads lead in heaven. I don't know.

I'm going to think of some funny things to say, but I'm not going to say them. And verse 23, inside the inner sanctuary, he made two cherubim of olive wood, each ten cubits high. Well, these things were beasts by, you know, we would say. The cherubim, what do they speak of? Man's failure and God's solution, and God's delay of the solution. That's what the cherubim speak to us about, Genesis chapter 3, after Adam and Eve sinned. So he drove out the man, and he placed cherubim at the east end of the Garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. Well, God is saying, I'm serious about this. I'm going to provide a solution, but I do not want you coming back into this garden and eat of the tree of life that you won't die.

You'll live in your doomed state. And God made sure he put a halt to that, but look how long it's been before the ultimate completion in humanity. So, again, the cherubim, to me, they speak of man's failure and God's determination to implement his solution and take his time doing it.

He is not going to be rushed in his perfections. Verse 24, or the reason why, one reason why is because it's not all about one generation. Verse 24, one wing of the cherubim was five cubits, the other wing of the cherub's five, ten from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other, and the other cherub was ten cubits. Both cherubim were of the same size and shape. Verse 26, the height of the cherub was ten cubits and so was the other cherub. So these spiritual beings, the cherubim, 15 feet high, 15 feet wide, the wingspan, they're not to be confused with the cherubim that are on the mercy seat of the ark.

The ark is not yet in the room. There will be four emblems of cherubim in the holy of holies, not to mention the ones that are on the curtains. So again, that emphasis of the cherubim, it must mean something more than just, hey, there's some other extraterrestrial beings. Do I believe on life other than life on earth?

Of course I do, life in heaven. Verse 27, then he set the cherubim inside the inner room and they stretched out their wings of the cherubim so that the wing of one touched the wall and the wing of the other cherub touched the other wall and their wings touched each other in the middle of the room. Verse 28, he overlaid the cherubim with gold. They're in the middle of the room, not the center, about 15 feet deep into the room. Verse 29, I will pause to say, you know, when you cover this or I covered this in Exodus, you have other applications.

You can't exhaust it so much. Verse 29, then he carved all the walls of the temple all around both the inner and outer sanctuaries with carved figures of cherubim, palm trees and open flowers. Verse 30, and the floor of the temple he overlaid with gold, both the inner and the outer sanctuaries. So, 2 Chronicles 3, in its account of this, he decorated the house with precious stones for beauty.

And yet again, this was not open to the public. How profound, what are the meanings of this? You know, that God would lavish the sanctuary and the inner sanctuary with gold and all of this art work, the cedar wood, and yet it was not a social center. The people had to take by faith that God was more valuable than anything that could go into a physical structure. Anyway, verse 31, for the entrance of the inner sanctuary, he made doors of olive wood and lintel on the doorposts were one fifth of the wall. Verse 32, the two doors were of olive wood and he carved them on them figures of cherubim, palm trees and open flowers, overlaid them with gold and he spread gold on the cherubim and on the palm trees. So, the doors to go into the holy place about six foot high, the doors to go into the not as holy place would be seven and a half feet. But the entrance to the inner sanctuary had two doors made of olive wood and the veil or curtain hung there. In addition, you get that from 2 Chronicles 3, verse 14, and that would shield the art from someone peeking in.

One of the priests who was not high priest would might want to, I just want a little look, and it would be closed. God was saying, I'm pretty serious about this. Verse 33, so for the door of the sanctuary, he also made doorposts of olive wood one fourth of the wall. Verse 34, and the two doors were of cypress wood, two panels comprised of one folding door, two panels, trying to make it interesting, dramatic reading comprised of the other folding door. So, these doors from the vestibule into the holy place were cypress wood with olive at the doorpost. This would then enter, go to the outside, verse 35, then he carved cherubim palm trees and opened flowers on them and overlaid them with gold applied evenly on the carved work. And we have no idea, really, I mean, we have an idea what the cherubim looked like, but wouldn't you love to see what the Jews had to be handed down, I don't know, from Adam, with Adam's, Eve, were the first humans to see a cherubim, actually, and the others saw them in visions.

Yeah, that'd be pretty interesting. Verse 35, then he carved cherubim, palm trees, flowers, you got it. He built the inner court, verse 36, with three rows of hewn stone and a row of cedar beams.

And this is the court, what we know of the priests, and we get there from 4, 9 in 2 Chronicles, verse 37. In the fourth year, the foundation of the house of Yahweh was laid in the month of Ziv, verse 38. And in the eleventh year, in the month of Bul, which is the eighth month, the house was finished in all its details and according to all its plans. So, he was seven years in building it.

He's rounding off the number here. They're not always trying to be, you know, to the day. But the foundation and the furnishings and the structure is complete.

This is October, November now, seven years from the beginning. All of it will be destroyed, well, about 400 years, thereabout, a little less, because they blatantly disrespected God. They incorporated, and this is the close of the message, they incorporated gods made by other people, the idolatrous Jews. They were not even creative enough to make up their own gods. They had to import them. Didn't they tell you something?

I mean, what is that? And it's a danger that we all have to watch, the church has to watch that she doesn't look to the world to be able to conduct business as the church, the called out ones. They imported these gods from Gentiles. Well, David, we'll close with this verse. This is what he was talking about when he said, through your precepts, Psalm 119 verse 104, I get understanding. Through your rules of life, I get it.

I can figure it out because you've told, you've given me the map. Then David adds, therefore, I hate every false way. That Psalm, I believe, I can't hold, David wrote Psalm 119. That's my view. The Jews had that verse.

They just did not avail themselves of it. Let's pray. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

We trust that what you've heard today in the book of First Kings has had a lasting imprint on your life. If you'd like to listen to more teachings from this series or share it with someone you know, please visit CrossReferenceRadio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast, too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just visit CrossReferenceRadio.com and follow the links under radio. Again, that's CrossReferenceRadio.com. Our time with you today is about up, but we hope you'll tune in next time to continue studying the word of God. Join us again as Pastor Rick covers more in the book of First Kings on Cross Reference Radio.