The House of Grace (Part A)

You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house. They are built on grace, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. We are a royal priesthood. That's why we can go beyond the veil.

Two reasons. Christ split the veil and two, we are priests. We serve the Lord. Now granted, only the high priest was allowed to go behind the Jewish veil, but Christ, who is our high priest, has extended this.

This is a presentation about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of 1 Kings chapter 6, as he begins a new message called The House of Grace. 1 Kings chapter 6, The House of Grace.

That's the title. God gave instructions concerning building his house. First, the tabernacle of Moses, the portable house of God, and then to David. He gave instructions how he wanted his temple built in Jerusalem. Exodus 26 verse 30, God speaking to Moses, you shall raise up the tabernacle according to its pattern which you were shown on the mountain. And then 1 Chronicles 28 19, all this said David, Yahweh made me understand in writing by his hand upon me all the works of these plans.

Now here's where it starts to get interesting. There is an outstanding feature about David's temple. God took the consequences of David's two worst sins.

Peace of property, thrashing flora of Arunah, and a son. A son who would not have been born had it not been for David's sin. Romans 5 verse 20, where sin abounded, grace did much more. A piece of property and a son, both connected to disobedience and to sin, and this is the place where God decided he wanted his temple to go. Now you tell me if our God, if his house is not the house of grace or not. It's not the house of judgment. When you come to church, Paul called the house of God the pillar and ground of truth, and that truth is built on love.

God is love. Solomon built the temple on the property that David owned, that David bought, Mount Moriah. 2 Chronicles chapter 3 verse 1, Solomon began to build the house of Yahweh at Jerusalem on Mount Moriah where Yahweh had appeared to his father David at the place that David had prepared on the thrashing floor of Ornan, the Jebusite.

Ornan being the alternate name for Arunah. So Solomon the son that would not have been born except for his father's great sin. Now this is not in no way, it would be silly to say God is somehow endorsing sin.

God knows how the devil works and he preaches to his people in a multitude of ways. Moriah, where long ago sacrifice of the beloved son was postponed. Genesis 22 verse 2, then he said take now your son, your only son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. Now we know the story, God forbade Abraham from slaughtering Isaac and later in Jeremiah God will say in reference to those who make human sacrifice, God will say it was never in my mind to do such a thing.

It was a test of course and a demonstration at the same time. Romans 6 tells us, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

Certainly not. Just the mercy of God shines through the sin of people. People pay dearly for both of David's transgressions. This is the Bible that is telling us that the dwelling place of God is the house of grace. It encourages us to serve in spite of our failures when we've repented and confessed our sins, when we're dealing with our sins. Satan wants us to think that failure can make us useless.

That's the whole story of Philemon. His name is useful in the eyes of God. The grace of God says this to us. This sixth chapter divides the construction of the temple into two sections. From verses 2 through 10 we have the exterior of the building and then the interior verses 14 through 18. And as much detail as we're given in the record, the scripture concerning the temple, it's not enough to reproduce the structure with a guarantee that this is accurate.

There's still a lot of little things left out, but it's exciting nonetheless and I think educational. Let's look at verse 1. And it came to pass in the 480th year after the children of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month that he began to build the house of Yahweh. How come we don't have a month of Ziv? Well, it's his fourth year as king, about 967 years, give or take, a year before the coming of Christ.

This month, Ziv, is April, May. The Exodus, 480 years earlier, 1400 years before the coming of Christ, the Exodus. When we come across discrepancies between kings and chronicles, numerical discrepancies, I'm going to address that a little bit in the next verse, actually. Don't be shaken by those.

There are different standards that they use, different methods of calculating. This is a 12 generation of priests that it actually comes up with according to the names listed in chronicles. But anyway, verse 2, now the house which King Solomon built for Yahweh, its length was 60 cubits, its width 20, and its height 30 cubits. Now we're not going to get dragged down with all this cubit stuff. Rubitz is in here somewhere.

Rubitz, cubits, I know that's a stretch, but. So it takes seven and a half years to build the temple. Twelve and a half or so to the palace of Solomon to be finished.

We get that in 2 Chronicles 8 also. But where it says its length was 60 cubits. Now the cubit, there were two separate measurements for the cubit. There was the short cubit of about 18 inches and then there was the long cubit of about 21 inches. Ezekiel seems to go with the longer one and Ezekiel 40.

We're going to go with the short cubit, the 18 inch measurement in our calculations. Most scholars take that approach. It seems more accurate. Well, here's the Bible explicitly saying there are different standards. 2 Chronicles chapter 3, which parallels 1 Kings chapter 6, the building of the temple, says, this is the foundation on which Solomon laid for the building of the house of God.

The length was 60 cubits, now parentheses, by cubits according to the former measure and the width 20 cubits. So the chronicler inserts this, yeah, well, there's two standards at least. And it's sort of like saying, well, we're not using the metric, we're using the imperial standard. And so you have to factor that in when you come across some of the discrepancies.

Which one is the author using? Well, in Chronicles, he's nice enough to tell us. But they don't always mention. And you say, well, which one is which?

So you just can't get bogged down. So we're going to go with the 18 inch one, as I mentioned. That would make the temple 90 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 47 feet high. Not counting the tower, vestibule, which is almost 20 stories. We'll get to that in a little bit. Twice the size of the tabernacle of Moses. If you were using the long cubit, then just add 16% to your numbers if it's really that important to you. Have at it. These discrepancies, as I mentioned, they should not frighten us. We move on now to verse 3. The vestibule in front of the sanctuary of the house was 20 cubits long across the width of the house.

And the width of the vestibule extended 10 cubits from the front of the house. Boy, this is some good reading, I tell you. Put a cup of coffee in the morning. Anyway, it is exciting when you're in the early stages of studying. You try to crack the code. But as you get older, and speaking for myself, I've already kind of figured out where this is going, and I'm satisfied. And so if you have to say, well I'm not, well then, you know, get yourself a calculator and have at it.

It's a good drill to do at least once in your life. Anyway, the vestibule, 15 by 30 feet. The tower, as I mentioned, 20 stories. We get the height of that in 2 Chronicles 3 verse 4.

Again, I'm more interested, drawn to the spiritual value of what's being recorded more than the dimensions, unless I can find some spiritual, direct spiritual meaning. Verse 4, and he made for the house windows with beveled frames, likely artistic shutters or lattice, fancy, but necessary. You would need ventilation, especially with all that incense burning inside the temple. Verse 5, against the wall of the temple, he built chambers all around. Against the walls of the temple, all around the sanctuary and the inner sanctuary. Thus he made side chambers all around it. Storage rooms, the salt and oil, wicks and cutlery and logs, administrative areas to track these things, utensils. Did the priests that were working, that were butchering the animals splattered with blood, did they walk home that way, or did they have a chamber to go change?

So, you know, this certainly offered them a lot more assistance, permanent assistance. The fact that they didn't have to haul the ark around anymore is significant alone. Verse 6, the lowest chambers was five cubits wide, the middle was six wide, and the third was seven wide. For he made narrow ledges around the outside of the temple so that the support beams would not be fastened to the walls of the temple. So they were seamless, trying to make this seamless picture, which they succeeded in doing. A series of widening ledges going from seven and a half feet to nine feet to ten and a half feet, giving it some dimension. So it just wasn't this box, the temple, the elevations and the recesses.

And so they put some thought into this. And in verse 7, the temple, when it was being built, was built with stone finished at the quarry so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built. Well, pre-cut limestone off-site, fabricated, this kind of fabrication, pre-casting, still practiced today, where he says, so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool was heard in the tabernacle while it was being built.

Well, that would make the job site relatively quiet, adding to the sense of sacredness in the work, as opposed to constantly hammering all these things. This distinguished the Hebrew worship from heathen worship, probably as a practice that was not done before like this. And this having no iron tool related to the altar, which the temple really is the altar. If you were at a distance, you could smell the sacrifices when they were being offered.

You couldn't smell the limestone, but along with the incense, there were fragrances coming from it, both on the altar, the incense altar and the brazen altar, or the bronze altar. Exodus 20, verse 25, tells us that before Israel entered the Promised Land, God pointed this out concerning the altar. He said, if you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it. And then Joshua, when Joshua is in the Promised Land now, he cites this, and that part from Exodus is repeated several times by Moses.

Well, Joshua brings it up. He says, as Moses, the servant of Yahweh, had commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of whose stones, over which no man has wielded an iron tool, and they offered on it burnt offerings to Yahweh and sacrificed peace offerings. Incidentally, they did this in the Promised Land on Mount Ebal.

So, Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim were the two mountains, and half the tribe went up one mountain and half the other, and they would recite the blessings and they would recite the cursings. The Jewish temple, again, itself was an altar. God's house is the place of sacrifice, because you don't benefit from the house of God without the blood. The blood sacrifices, and that is true to this day, were it not for the blood of Christ, we'd still be in our sin. Well, it is the house of God, the altar, a place where sinful man may approach a holy God, a God who is without sin.

The price of sin is high. Sin did violence to the commandment of God's word, and therefore, to resolve this, there must be propitiation, satisfaction. Romans 3, verse 25, whom God set forth as propitiation by his blood, he's speaking of the Lord Jesus, through faith to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance, God has passed over the sins that were previously committed. Jesus is our altar. The Bible tells us that straight out, Hebrews 13, verse 10. Now, remember, Paul is saying to the Jews that the temple spoke of Christ.

He has now satisfied the imagery, the emblems, the types. Hebrews 13, 10, we have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. Paul is saying, if you're still going to the temple offering sacrifices, you're not benefiting from the blood of Christ, because you think it's not enough. Those things have been made obsolete by the perfect offering, and you insult God by bringing an inferior offering and placing it next to the superior offering, which those sacrifices pledged would come and has now come. So iron tools, they were reserved for use upon our altar. Iron tools were used on our altar, Jesus Christ, wielded by Roman soldiers, and those spikes that we call nails. So the Jews, they could not use iron on their altars.

As I mentioned, it was reserved. No man made tools to create noise at the tabernacle of Solomon, and no debris, less hazards on the ground. No skillful chiseling at God's house.

No chiseling at the place of sacrifice and grace. 1 Peter chapter 2, you also as living stones are being built up a spiritual house, built on grace, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. We are a royal priesthood. That's why we can go beyond the veil.

Two reasons. Christ split the veil, and two, we are priests. We serve the Lord.

Now granted, only the high priest was allowed to go behind the Jewish veil, but Christ, who is our high priest, has extended this, and we have access. Solomon tried to shape the kingdom using the wisdom God gave him. Instead of using it the way we would have liked to have seen him use it more, he began to, you know, make moves, political moves.

He became the savvy statesman on the throne. But God again wanted to shape the kingdom, not let Solomon do it, although the Lord did not force this. And God, of course, he wants to shape our faith, keep the chisels out, keep the man-made hard tools away. Now, in building the temple, wooden tools, block and tackle, made of hemp and wood, they would have been used to finish the work, to set the stones in place, but no forged iron tools.

And I hope I've been able to communicate the value behind this prohibition. Anyway, verse 8, the doorway for the middle story was on the right side of the temple. They went up by stairs to the middle story, from the middle to the third. Stairways going up to the various chambers. This the priest would have appreciated, because scaling the wall every day would have been a drag. Verse 9, and he built the temple and finished it, and he paneled the temple with beams and boards of cedar.

Well, the description's not even started up yet. It's going to enhance this tremendously and significantly. As I mentioned, I'm interested in the spiritual values more than some of the details that seem to be above my reaching any great meaning, bringing out a great meaning from the numbers.

Anyway, sometimes the numbers, of course, do have great value, but they're difficult to connect in this. Verse 10, and he built the side chambers against the entire temple, each five cubits high. They were attached to the temple with cedar beams. Well, the ceilings are about seven and a half feet high in this area that he's talking about.

This completes the exterior. Now, I mentioned the numerical spiritual values. Well, they are attainable in many places, but some commentators, they become far-fetched, I think. They read into, you know, and this number means that, and they have no basis for that, to come up with that.

Peter's, you know, 158 fish. Well, it means this, and I just think they're stretching it sometimes. But then in other areas, it's right there.

You get it. Well, verse 11, then the word of Yahweh came to Solomon, saying, now before we read this, before we get to the interior, the Lord has something to say. The historian, I don't know if it was intentional on his part. It certainly was intentional on God's part. He's inserting this.

He's interrupting the flow on purpose. We are not told how this invitation and warning was delivered to Solomon, but we're told that we, here it is. And it's a repeat. It echoes what was given in chapter 2, verse 4. So, looking at verse 12 now, God is speaking, concerning this temple which you are building, if you walk in My statutes, execute My judgments, keep all My commandments and walk in them, then I will perform My word with you, which I spoke to your father David. This will make God blameless when He allows the temple to be destroyed both times.

But there's, of course, more. It's an ominous word that is conditional. The promise is conditional, Solomon.

You have to do something too. You know, we Christians have a saying, you know, don't get to the place where you want Jesus to do all the dying, crucify the flesh. If you walk in My statutes, the civil law, if you execute My judgments, if you uphold the law, it's not enough to quote the scripture.

Are you actively trying to bring it to life? To keep My commandments, to both spiritual and moral commandments. The Jews, they failed with the spiritual commandments first, the idolatry, which led them into the moral sin. Walk in them, he says, in other words, live there. John the Baptist, looking at Jesus as he walked, we read in the Gospel of John, chapter 1, looking at Jesus as he walked, he said, behold the Lamb of God. Isn't that profound for us? You know, the just shall live by faith. We walk not by sight. And there we, well, we walk by faith looking at the Lamb of God. 1 John, evidently, it never, he never lost sight of this.

He writes in 1 John, chapter 2, verse 6, he who says he abides in him ought himself also to walk just as he walked. Wouldn't it be amazing if Jesus were alive today, if he came at this day and age and he was driving somewhere? Wouldn't you want to be in the car with him? He wouldn't get angry at anybody. Would he do the speed limit exactly?

I would have loved to just, you know, maybe ignorance is bliss and maybe I don't need to know. But anyway, to walk as the Lord walks is mainly with each other. And that's where the real problems are. He says here at the bottom of verse 12, then I will perform my word with you, which I spoke to your father David, as I mentioned, echoing 2, 4, verse 13.

And I will dwell among the children of Israel and will not forsake my people Israel. Why does God have to repeat this so much? Because life is movie trapped. It works against us. The universe is winding down. I mean, you don't put, you know, eggs in the refrigerator and come back the next day and there's egg salad.

Everything just wears down. 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 Cross-Reference Radio dot com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast, too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just visit Cross-Reference Radio dot com and follow the links under radio. Again, that's Cross-Reference Radio dot 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.