The Walls

If the Church is to be God’s holy Temple eternally, the walls of Solomon’s Temple will show us something pictorially of our future state. The stones for the walls were fully prepared away from Jerusalem. God is today getting His stones out of nature’s quarry by means of the Gospel. Evangelists are God’s quarry men, and pastors and teachers are His masons, by their unfoldings of Christ shaping and fashioning the stones according to the mind of God. Direct divine dealing in the way of suffering also helps largely towards the desired end. David’s afflictions molded his character as uninterrupted prosperity could never have done. But no stone was seen in Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 6:18). All were completely covered with refined silver (1 Chron. 29:4). In like manner, all that we were by nature is covered by Christ’s redemption. The walls were also covered with boards of cedar. In the Tabernacle shittim wood is prominent. It was the incorruptible acacia of the desert, the only wood that was available there. In the Temple the principal woods used were the cedar and the olive. The shittim wood suggests what was true of our blessed Lord even when in wilderness circumstances; the cedar points to what will be true of the saints in glory. “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Cor. 15:53).
The cedar-wood boards were beautifully carved. Cherubim, palm-trees, and open flowers were wrought upon them, and all were covered with gold. The walls were treated exactly as the doors, which will come before us in due course. Seeing that the doors typify Christ, who is the only way to God, the carved doors remind us that we shall be like Christ when the work of grace is completed in glory. “The whole house (Solomon) overlaid with gold” (1 Kings 6:22). “All was bright with the glory of divine righteousness that distinguished the throne of God which was placed there” (J. N. D.). Gold being the most precious of metals is frequently used in Scripture as symbolical of that which is of God.
Even the floor-boards were covered with gold. For the Tabernacle no floor was provided; the feet of the priests trod the desert sand. In the Holy City Jerusalem “the street is pure gold, as it were transparent glass” (Rev. 21:21). What a spectacle of glory and majesty was the interior of Solomon’s Temple! Above, the ceiling was “overlaid with fine gold” (2 Chron. 3:6); below, the priests walked upon gold― “gold of Parvain,” says the record, as if to suggest to us that only the best was used. All around the ministering priests gold glittered; and as if this were not glorious enough, even the gold was “garnished with precious stones for beauty” (2 Chron. 3:6). Truly, when we look around us in “God’s eternal day,” not at a mere material structure, but at the glorified saints who will form His holy temple, our eyes will behold everything that is expressive of Christ. None of His divine graces will be lacking in a single saint. “What hath God wrought!” (Num. 23:23).