2 Chro No.2 The Greatness of God

Two Chronicles, Chapter Two. Here we have, as the heading says, preparations for the building of the temple. Two Chronicles, Chapter Two.

Solomon gave orders to build a temple for the name of the Lord and a royal palace for himself. He conscripted 70,000 men as carriers and 80,000 as stone cutters in the hills and 3,600 as foremen over them. Solomon sent this message to Hiram, king of Tyre.

Send me cedar logs as you did for my father David when you sent him cedar to build a palace to live in. Now I am about to build a temple for the name of the Lord my God and to dedicate it to him for burning fragrant incense before him, for setting out the consecrated bread regularly and for making burnt offerings every morning and evening and on Sabbaths and new moons and at the appointed feasts of the Lord our God. This is a lasting ordinance for Israel.

The temple I am going to build will be great because our God is greater than all other gods. But who is able to build a temple for him since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain him? Who then am I to build a temple for him except as a place to burn sacrifices before him? Send me therefore a man skilled to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron and in purple, crimson and blue yarn and experienced in the art of engraving, to work in Judah and Jerusalem with my skilled craftsmen whom my father David provided. Send me also cedar, pine and algum logs from Lebanon, for I know that your men are skilled in cutting timber there.

My men shall work with yours to provide me with plenty of timber, because the temple I build must be large and magnificent. I will give your servants, the woodsmen who cut the timber, twenty thousand cores of ground wheat, twenty thousand cores of barley, twenty thousand bars of wine and twenty thousand bars of olive oil. Hiram, king of Tyre, replied by letter to Solomon, Because the Lord loves his people, he has made you their king.

And Hiram added, Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, who made the heaven and earth. He has given King David a wise son endowed with intelligence and discernment, who will build a temple for the Lord and a palace for himself. I am sending you Hiram Abbi, a man of great skill, whose mother was from Dan and whose father was from Tyre.

He is trained to work in gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood and with purple and blue and crimson yarn and fine linen. He is experienced in all kinds of engraving and can execute any design given to him. He will work with your craftsmen and with those of my Lord David, your father.

Now let my Lord send his servants the wheat and barley and the olive oil and wine, he promised, and we will cut all the logs from Lebanon that you need and will float them in rafts by sea down to Joppa. You can then take them up to Jerusalem. Solomon took a census of all the aliens who were in Israel.

After the census, his father David had taken, and they were found to be 153,600. He assigned 70,000 of them to be carriers and 80,000 to be stone cutters in the hills with 3,600 foremen over them to keep the people working. Amen.

The second chapter of the second book of Chronicles, and in the fifth verse, this is what you hear. The temple I am going to build will be great, because our God is greater than all other gods. But who is able to build a temple for Him, since the heavens, even the highest heavens cannot contain Him? Who then am I to build a temple for Him, except as a place to burn sacrifices before Him? It is Dr. Packer who says this.

When the man in the church, let alone the man on the street, uses the word God, the thought in his mind is rarely of divine majesty. Yet majesty means greatness, and that is what God is. Thus the opening verses of our service this morning, which were plucked from the ninety-third psalm, tell us of this great God that all praise and honor belongs to Him because, verse one, the Lord reigns.

He is robed in majesty. The Lord is robed in majesty and is armed with strength. Peter highlighted a couple of events in the life of our Lord Jesus, and he writes of them in the epistle that he directs to the early churches.

He says in the second chapter of his second epistle, or rather the first chapter, that when actually he recaptures in his mind the events of our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, that there he had a glimpse of the majesty of God. We were eyewitnesses, verse sixteen to Peter chapter one, we were eyewitnesses of his majesty for he received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the majestic glory saying, this is my Son whom I love. With him I am well pleased.

The majesty of God is shown in our Lord Jesus, the Mount of Transfiguration, Mount Calvary, and also after his resurrection when our Lord Jesus ascends back into his Father's presence. How is that described for you? Well, in the first verses of the opening chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, you read this, in the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

After he had provided purification for sins, what? He sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. Sometimes we distort in our overemphasis on the person of God. We distort that at the expense of comprehending the majesty of God.

God is not just personal. He is great. Like us, he is personal, but unlike us he is magisterial.

And so the Psalmist, or rather the prophet Isaiah has to say in the fortieth chapter of his prophecy, speaking as though it is the Lord himself communicating his word directly to his readers, verse twenty-five, to whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal, says the Holy One? The answer is you can't compare God to anyone. He is incomparable. And later on in the twenty-seventh verse of Isaiah forty, speaking of the knowledge of God and the impossibility of keeping anything out of his vision, why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord, my cause is disregarded by my God.

God is not just incomparable, God is omniscient. He has all knowledge. God is not just incomparable and omniscient, he is immutable.

What does that mean? The armistice service always commences with, at least within a few minutes of its start. Speaking of the dead of the first and second world wars, they will not grow old as we grow old. I don't criticize that poetry though, there's quite a lot of hyperbole in it.

But you can say that literally of God. Verse twenty-eight of Isaiah forty, do you not know, have you not heard, the Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.

Why this excursion into the New Testament and into the Old Testament when you're supposed to be dealing, Mr. Preacher, with King Solomon and the building of the temple? Well, I'll tell you why. You'll never understand the colossal challenge that God gave to Solomon to put up this edifice without some grasp as to the nature of God. Because Solomon is here saying in this fifth verse, the temple I am going to build, Second Chronicles two, will be great because our God is greater than all other gods.

But who is able to build a temple for him? Why? Well, the heaven of heavens cannot contain him. He's not just personal, he's great. He's not just a person like I am, he is magisterial.

Did you read the book Mission Impossible? Never read it myself. Or the film, did you see that? I never saw it myself. But I like the title of both the film and the book, which had to do with exploits, I believe in the Second World War.

You see, it seems to me that as a subtitle for my address this morning I could say not only am I endeavoring to speak on the greatness of God, but I'm also bringing you face-to-face with Mission Impossible. Who is able to build a temple for him? Since the heaven of heavens, the highest heavens cannot contain him. Who then am I? Well, you think that's a problem that only Solomon had and he lived.

Years ago he got on with it, let's leave him alone. Not so. You see, if you're a Christian, it's your problem too.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, and here I'm just jumping ahead though I'll come back to it in a little while. Writing to the Corinthians, he has this to say, that we are the temple of God. There is a sense in which you are called to do what Solomon was challenged to do, to build an edifice for the honor and for the praise of God.

It won't be a literal physical edifice at Jerusalem, but it will be the representation before men and before God of his power working in your life. Because the most important temple was not built by Solomon. The most important temple was not the temple of Herod to which our Lord makes reference in the Gospels.

All those attempts at building temples in the Old Testament, as far as the Jewish community is concerned, are but an aid, a visual aid, a prophecy that one day in this world will be built a temple without hands. It will constitute men and women, Jew and Gentile, who recognize who God is. And the task of Christian believers, as part of that temple, is to honor the greatness of God.

And you cannot honor God without having some understanding as to His attributes. That's why I'm talking about the majesty of God and the greatness of God. And the difficulty that it was for Solomon to be challenged to put up a temple commensurate with the greatness and the grandeur and the might of the God of the Israelites.

It's a mission impossible. And this is what he recognizes. The temple I'm going to build will be because our God is greater than all other gods.

But who is able to build a temple for Him since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain Him? So who then am I to build a temple for Him except as a place to burn sacrifices before Him? You see the problem that Solomon had. And in one sense it's the problem that you have and I have. Our lives are to be lived as a praise to His glory.

The time will come, as you will find as we go through 2 Chronicles, when the temple has been completed. God in great power comes down upon His children. He makes His presence felt.

Now my understanding is this, that what God did then, He wants to do now. What He did on the day of Pentecost when He bypassed Herod's temple and opted for 120 people gathered together in an upper room, laying hands upon them as being the new spiritual temple and releasing His power amongst them, so that strangers passing by realized that something extraordinary was happening. What God did at Pentecost, He wants to be doing to you and amongst us.

The greatness of God. Well, we're confronted with this mission impossible in terms of responding to its challenge. Last week when we were talking about Solomon, Tim here and myself at Maybridge, we referred to the worship that he brought to the Lord.

We referred to the wisdom that he received from the Lord, and the wealth that was bestowed upon him from the Lord. I guess if you asked anyone who's reasonably educated about biblical things, what word they associate immediately with the name Solomon, and they would say wisdom. As a second runner they would say temple, because Solomon is known as the man who built a temple in the honor of the Lord.

Would it not be wonderful if you too are known for the wisdom that God will give you and for the determination in your life to reproduce in yourself all that the temple should have stood for in terms of a person through whom the glory of God is released to this world. I was in Bangalore last year, right down in the southern part of India. I'd only got a couple of days.

One of my problems in going to India is I've never seen the sights, at least not the sights that tourists see. I've forgotten how many times I've been to India, but I've yet to see the Taj Mahal. I've never seen any American or English tourists in most of the places where OM have set up their bases and other missions that I work with.

But somebody gave me a little tourist leaflet in Bangalore saying that I ought to go to the state of Mysore, which is just next door to the state that Bangalore is in. And the publicity that I read said that Mysore has the most grand temples in the whole of India. India is a land that's crammed full of temples.

Only Nepal, I think, could perhaps be a possible competitor in the countries that I've traveled in, in terms of the ornateness and the grandeur of the temples. But those temples are quite horrific in many ways. Some of the gods that they depict on the frescoes as you go into the temple are grotesque, engaged in immoral acts.

And the idea is rife in India and Nepal and other lands where you find literal temples still built today, or the remnants of temples of yesteryear, that somehow you localize your god in the building of the temple. This is one of the reasons why, if you read through 2 Samuel 7.5, the Lord has a certain reservation about any temple being built in His honor, because temples can be abused as far as your valuing of them is concerned. And the Lord God, whenever He's alarmed that something good could be put to an improper use, always is justified in so doing, because He knows.

He knows something of the perversions of human nature. So you discover His fears are realized as you get to Jeremiah 7, and you find here the prophet, with the temple built, having to disabuse the Old Testament Hebrews of the notion that as they had the temple with them, and God trapped within His temple, so it would act as a large lucky charm that would stop all the Jewish enemies from advancing upon Jerusalem and bringing that city under their control. God says, no, in the fourth verse of the seventh chapter, do not trust in deceptive words and say this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.

You change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly if you do not oppress the aliens, and so on and so forth. Then I'll work with you, says the Lord, as I summarize His teaching here. And He goes on, do not say, we are safe, safe to do all these detestable things.

Has this house which bears My name become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching, declares the Lord. The problem with a physical temple was that it might be misunderstood, and pagan ideas might be introduced into Hebrew thinking that because the wonder of the ancient world, as a result of the expertise of Solomon, is now planted in Jerusalem, that would mean therefore that the Hebrews could live as they wished, because God had been trapped. And you see how in advance of its time is Solomon, as he considers this mission impossible, and he says, although I will build a temple for the Lord, I recognize that God cannot be restricted to the four walls of this building.

The heavens, the highest heavens cannot contain Him. Here is Solomon who is the instigator, under God, of this most remarkable architectural project, getting his theology right at the very beginning, and realizing that as far as the Hebrews are concerned, it's not just a question of building a temple to the glory of God. But as worshippers, it is a challenge to live lives which are commendable in the sight of that God, because they live in such a fashion that they please Him.

Transfer that through yourself to this present age. You're part of the temple. You don't need me to remind you of that, but there is a sense in which you can almost presume, upon having been to church from time to time, or read Scripture with a sort of Will-o'-the-Wisp attitude, as though somehow this little bit of Christian inheritance has become your lucky charm.

And it doesn't really matter how you live. The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, we have that in Jerusalem, our evangelical heritage. We have that as part of our pedigree.

No, says the Lord, it's not basically to do with the literal temple, neither is it to do with your pedigree by inheritance. It's where you are at as a person, how you are living here and now. That's the important thing.

So Solomon has a problem. How do you house this all-glorious God in a temple made with hands, at its highest, purest realization? The person of God is beyond anything that Solomon could really comprehend. All the metaphors describe God in the Old Testament.

He is as the wheels that blaze and spin round in Ezekiel's vision. He is as a bush that starts to burn when Moses comes alongside and has an encounter with God. It's very difficult to find words to describe this Lord.

There is that of God which is utterly incomprehensible. But He does call you, and He does call me, to live our lives in such a fashion with a limited understanding as to who He is, in a way that will bring honor and glory to Him. You see, Solomon is very well versed in his grasp of the theology of God compared with most of his contemporaries.

Move on to the sixth chapter and the thirty-second and thirty-third verse. Here he predicts a time when strangers, foreigners, will come across the borders of Israel, and they may be tempted to move towards the temple themselves, not just as curiosity-inspired tourists, but as men who believe that within Judaism God has revealed Himself in a very special way. So he says in the thirty-second verse of the sixth chapter, "'As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel, but has come from a distant land because of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm, when he comes and prays towards this temple, then hear from heaven your dwelling place and do whatever the foreigners ask of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you as you do your own people Israel, and may know that this house that I have built bears your name.'" Solomon is concerned about the evangelistic implications behind the temple that he will build.

He appreciates that God transcends an actual building. That's the reason if you stay with the sixth chapter but come up a little bit in the reading, you will see in the eighteenth verse Solomon's question set down, will God really dwell on earth with men? The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. How much less this temple that I have built.

Solomon has a problem. He wants to build a temple that honors the Lord, but he realizes that it's a mission impossible. And he doesn't want to be guilty of what many of his contemporaries are, believing that God's presence is restricted to a mere building.

When you go on into the New Testament, you discover that that lesson has been sustained, preserved, and is enlarged upon. Here is, for example, Stephen on the occasion shortly before his death, one in the seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, reflecting on the words of Solomon and putting them into a further example as he reviews Jewish history. He says in the 48th verse of Acts 7, however, the Most High does not live in houses made by men.

As the Prophet says, heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or where will my resting place be? There's the cross thought of both Solomon and Isaiah interwoven in that particular quotation. And here is the illustrious Apostle Paul.

He's gone to Athens, you remember. And in the 17th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, you get his reaction. He's there in the temples.

He discovers an altar inscribed to an unknown God. And these superstitious Athenians somehow believe that God's presence is confined to the temples that have been built in Athens. So Paul corrects the notion and says in the 24th verse, the God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.

And He is not served by human hands as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. Behind the whole of creation there is God. Do you believe that? Do you recognize that? You see basic to Solomon's understanding of the doctrine of God is all that he's picked up from his even more famous Father David.

And in the 29th chapter of 1 Chronicles, before David dies, he's handing the baton on to Solomon. And he's talked about the stores that he's already put on one side. The gold and the silver and the precious jewels for the temple that Solomon will build, which David is disallowed from building because he's a man whose hands are tinged with blood.

And he says in the 15th verse of 1 Chronicles 29, we are aliens and strangers in your sight, O God, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow without hope. O Lord our God, for all this abundance that we have provided for building you a temple for your holy name, it comes from your hand and all of it belongs to you.

You see the point? There's nothing that you can contribute to God, basically, that you're responsible for. Everything that you are, everything that you own, everything that you ever will be, is as a result of the sovereignty of God placing those things at your disposal. So, behind the temple is God.

And when God comes down in the temple, his presence will still circumnavigate the globe. You say, I don't understand that. Neither does anyone else, because we're talking about a God who is not just personal, but magisterial.

God is in his heavens, but he's not trapped in his heavens. The heavens are his throne. The earth is his footstool.

The Lord is in his holy habitation, therefore let all the peoples of the earth be silent before him. You can bring together scriptures from the Old Testament and from the New Testament and they underline this, the magisterial nature of this God. Solomon has a problem with the greatness of God and the finiteness or the finitude of himself in contrast.

You've asked me to do this, but what am I? I'm just an ordinary man. As David his father says, who am I and who are my people? Sometimes we have too high an opinion of ourselves, my brothers and sisters. Without the grace of God, we are nothing.

We stand before him as worms and no man. The only dignity that you will ever have is a dignity that has been deflected to you from God, who loves you and sets the stamp of his image upon you and causes your sins to be forgiven through the shed blood of Jesus at the cross of Calvary. So what in conclusion can we learn from Solomon? Well, like Solomon, you and I have a responsibility to prepare a place for God.

A vicar was calling on one of his congregation, and unfortunately the person wasn't there. And according to the Reader's Digest, which always gets it right, he left the little note, I called and found you out. God is always calling at the temple that you have built.

For thus saith the High and Holy One, who inabiteth eternity, I dwell in the high and holy place, and with him who is of a humble and a contrite heart. Like Solomon, our lot is to prepare a place for God. Like Solomon, we must glory in the challenge.

David wasn't given the responsibility of this project. Solomon was. By God's grace, you have been called to a knowledge of him, and therefore you should be singing.

So often the words found in Horatio Boner's great hymn, Fill thou my life, O Lord my God, in every part with praise, that my whole being may proclaim thy being and thy ways. Fill every part of me with praise. Let all my being speak of thee and of thy love, O Lord, poor though I be and weak.

So shall no part of day or night from sacredness be free, but all my life in every step be fellowship with thee. Lord, as you visited Solomon's temple, so visit me as I glory in the challenge of being part of the spiritual temple brought about by the sovereignty of Jesus. Solomon, to achieve his end, enlisted the help of others.

Hiram, the man who had a workforce in neighboring Phoenicia, sending down his skilled craftsmen. So you and I are not called into this temple as a single stone. No, says the Apostle Paul, when you read Ephesians chapter 4, we are called into a temple where there are many people who are working alongside us, and we need the help of one another, says the Apostle, shifting the metaphor from a temple to a body.

He speaks in the 16th verse about every supporting ligament growing and building itself up in love as each part does its work. Together, the children of God, the body of Christ, the temple of the Lord. And what does Paul have in mind in terms of the blessings that this temple will be to God himself? Well, he says now in verse 20 of Ephesians 3, now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us, to him be what? Be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen. And that's what Solomon wanted, glory in the temple, not for his honor, but for God's honor, so that the wayward foreigner would make his way to Jerusalem, discover that the God of the Jews had a place for the foreigner, so that all the world might know that at Jerusalem and amongst the Hebrew community the power and the majesty of God was being displayed, and His message made known to the world, and as it was in the days of Solomon. So it is for you and for me as Christian people.

God wants glory in the church through Christ Jesus, to Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy to the only God our Savior. Be glory, majesty, power, authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before all ages now and forevermore. Amen.

There was glory in Solomon's temple because he recognized the greatness of God and attempted a mission impossible. May there be glory in this church and glory in your life as we continue to build an even superior edifice to the Lord God than Solomon's, the church of Jesus. Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise.

The city of our God, the holy place, the joy of the whole earth. Is the Lord in whom we have the victory. He aids us against the enemy.

We bow down on our knees. And Lord we want to lift your name on high. And Lord we want to thank you for the works you've done in our lives.

And Lord we trust in your unfailing love. For you alone are God's eternal throughout earth and heaven above. Is the Lord and most worthy of praise.

The city of our God, the holy place, the joy of the whole earth. Is the Lord in whom we have the victory. He aids us against the enemy.

We bow down on our knees. Born to lift your name on high. Lord we want to thank you for the works you've done in our lives.

And Lord we trust in your unfailing love. For you alone are God's eternal throughout earth and heaven above. And Lord we want to lift your name on high.

And Lord we want to thank you for the works you've done in our lives. And Lord we trust in your unfailing love. For you alone are God's eternal throughout earth and heaven above.

And Lord we want to lift your name on high. And Lord we want to thank you for the works you've done in our lives. And Lord we trust in your unfailing love.

For you alone are God's eternal throughout earth and heaven above. And Father that rounds it all off. All blessing and honor and power belongs to you.

You're not just personal. You're great. You're not just great.

You're magisterial. Help us to live in the light of this truth.