Word of Encouragement (02/19/2025)
Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. 13 When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, 14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. 16 For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. (2 Chron. 7:12–16)
Having prescribed how the Jews should pray, God specifically assures Solomon, “I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (v. 14). Interestingly, He says, “I will hear from heaven....” In the following verses, He says, “Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time” (vv. 15-16). With these words, God affirms what Solomon suspected: “But will God indeed dwell with man on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built” (6:18)!
God was making it clear that the temple was only a sign. His dwelling place proper is heaven. Of course, even this idea is anthropomorphic. God is omnipresent. There is a sense in which the whole cosmos is His temple: “Thus says the Lord: ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest’” (Isa. 66:1)? But the idea of heaven as God’s dwelling place highlights God’s transcendence as well as heaven as our ultimate destination and eternal abode (not this present world). But in the meantime, especially during the Old Testament era, the temple was to be a tangible sign of heaven and God’s presence among His people. So, the temple had a tripartite structure (the Most Holy Place [where the mercy seat, symbolizing God’s throne, was situated], the Holy Place, and the court like the cosmos [heaven, earth, and under the earth]).
Whenever the Jews came to the temple, they were to rejoice in the covenant favor God had shown to them by this sign of His presence among His people. At the same time, they had to look beyond the temple to heaven and remember that their God was the Lord of heaven and earth. While their worship and prayer had to be centered around the temple, they had to remind themselves that they were communing with God, who reigned from high above the heavens. They could be assured that, as the exalted Lord of all, He could be trusted to protect them and answer their prayers.
We would do well to remember the truth as well. We no longer have a temple to go to as a tangible sign of heaven. But “And the Word became flesh and dwelt [or, tabernacled] among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). In Jesus Christ, we have both the exalted Lord of all and Immanuel (“God with us”). We have so much greater assurance that He, who is almighty, hears our prayers in compassion and love. That is the blessing and privilege we have in praying in Jesus’ name, not just toward an earthly temple.