AP

1 Chronicles 17:5-6  I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought Israel up out of Egypt to this day. I have moved from one tent site to another, from one dwelling place to another. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their leaders whom I commanded to shepherd my people, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?

There is a very important principle contained in this message that the LORD entrusted to Nathan the prophet to tell David.  As the very successful and highly acclaimed King of Israel settled into his beautiful new cedar palace in Jerusalem, he had the best of intentions in his desire to provide a ‘dwelling place’ for his God (1).

But the LORD knew what a stumbling block such a building would become for his people.  David’s ‘offspring’, Solomon, would eventually be commissioned to build the edifice David had in mind, in accordance with the promises given through Nathan (11-12), but, whereas these promises themselves anticipated a fulfilment in time and space, they obviously foreshadowed a much more glorious and permanent fulfilment than Solomon’s Temple, magnificent as that was.  This ultimate fulfilment is hinted at in the LORD’s words here: ‘I have moved from one tent site to another’.

The Apostle John puts it like this: ‘The Word became flesh and made his dwelling [lit. ‘pitched his tent’] among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth’ (John 1:14).  Jesus was both the ‘Offspring’ of David, and the ‘Tent’ in which God lived – glorious, and grace-ful, and true!

Like David, our forefathers had the best of intentions in erecting, throughout the world, beautiful church buildings for the glory of God; but they, too often, have become a stumbling block for the work of ministry, both financially and functionally.  We have beautiful edifices today that attract an annual insurance premium that exceeds the pastor’s stipend!

As we struggle with this inherited ‘legacy’, let us remember what the apostles Paul and Peter said: ‘Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?’ (1 Corinthians 3:16); and ‘… you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ’ (1 Peter 2:5).

It is not surprising, in the light of all this, that, in God’s providence, the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman Emperor, Titus, and has never been rebuilt as such, leaving us in no doubt that God’s redeemed people are now his everlasting ‘Temple’. 

– Bruce Christian