Word of Encouragement (02/26/2025)
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)
In His assurance to hear the prayer made in the temple, the Lord said, “For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever” (v. 16a). We are bothered by this language of “forever.” We know that Solomon’s temple was destroyed in 586 B.C. at the hands of the Babylonians. The temple stood for less than 500 years. Even before it was completely leveled, it was ransacked many a time. It seems that God’s promise here was broken. If so, can we trust God to keep all His promises to us?
This is not the only promise of “forever.” After Abram and Lot separated, God told Abram, “The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever” (Gen. 13:14-15). Obviously, the people of Israel were exiled from the land during the Babylonian captivity. And for over a millennium, the Jews had lived outside of the land without a nation of their own. What should we think of God’s promise to Abram?
Here, it is important to remember the mode of God’s revelation in the Old Testament. The Westminster Confession of Faith says, “This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all fore-signifying Christ to come, which were for that time sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the Old Testament” (7:5).
According to the principle of types and shadows, we can say that Solomon’s temple was a type of Christ, “the temple of his body” (John 2:21), the true, heavenly temple. So then, the promise God made to Solomon regarding his temple was ultimately about Jesus Christ and the heavenly, eternal temple. That is why we now pray in Jesus’ name, not in or toward an earthly temple. This is a far better fulfillment of His promise than Solomon or anyone in the Old Testament could have imagined. God is indeed faithful to His promise. We can trust Him when we pray. We can trust Him for this life and for the life to come.