5.1 Solomon Worship

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Intro
We begin with a question. How often do you find yourself thinking about Kings and Priests? You may think it a rather strange question and answer ‘No time at all really’. But let me expand a little. By kings and priests I do not necessarily mean men of ancient times with golden crowns and sceptres or men in ceremonial clothing making sacrifices and blessing people. No, I mean do you think about rule, about leadership, authority and control? I mean, what about prayer and worship, what about confessing sins and finding forgiveness, dealing with the deepest issues of life?
The Bible has a lot to say about kings and priests and it has a lot to say about these important related issues. I say this because we are looking at the life of Solomon and so far have thought of him, understandably, chiefly as a king. We have done that by looking at 1 Kings 1 and 2. I suppose the obvious thing would be to go on next to 1 Kings 3. However, as we have said, the Book of Kings is not the only place that talks about the life of Solomon. There is also quite a lot in the Book of Chronicles. Perhaps we ought to say something about Kings and Chronicles at this point.
In English Bibles, Chronicles comes after Samuel and Kings and is with the history books. This is adopted from Greek Bibles, which place Chronicles in that position under the heading Paraleipomenon - ‘Things forgotten’ or ‘Things passed over’. Certainly the chronicler mentions things not found in Samuel and Kings. He also leaves out things that are there but it is rather misleading to think of Chronicles in this way. There is more to it. The real issue is a different approach.
The Chronicler has been accused of many bad things such as being too narrowly focused, rather aloof, eccentric and given to riding his own hobbyhorses. He is also supposed to be too black and white, rather inventive, sometimes inconsistent and given to exaggeration, lacking in theological clarity and an unattractive writer. Understandable as such accusations may be they are wide of the mark. He may not be the writer that the author of Kings is (‘less a stylist more a pastor’ someone has said) but the differences can all be understood if we bear in mind these four things.

1. Chronicles is found at the end of the Hebrew Bible and so acts as a summary of Old Testament history and theology though focusing on the period of the kings.
2. Whereas Samuel and Kings was completed at the time of the exile, Chronicles was completed after the exile. The books have two different aims and address two different situations. Both have the same underlying message, however, of the covenant God at work with his people and both point to Messiah but one describes a drama working towards a crisis, while the other is much more down to earth in ethos.

[Pic Ezra was perhaps the author of Chronicles]

3. Chronicles is really a sermon on the relations between God and his people. The writer uses history to spell out a simple

lesson about the faithfulness of God and the fact that he is a God who answers prayer.
4. The writer of Chronicles has a special interest in matters to do with the temple and the priesthood.

So what we will do is to consider David’s charge to Solomon to build the temple. Building the temple was one of the greatest achievements of Solomon’s life. He is the one who God used to bring this about. He was not only the king but the one who lead the people in setting up the Temple of God in Jerusalem following the preparations made by his father David. I want us to consider first Solomon’s commission to do this work. This covers a sizable portion of Scripture. - really all the final chapters of 1 Chronicles, from Chapter 22 to 29, but especially Chapters 22, 28 and 29.
Just as a study of the establishment of the kingdom pointed us to Christ and the importance of obedience and ruthless discipline in order to establish God’s kingdom so these verses point us to Christ and his work of establishing the true worship of God in every place.
In the Old Testament worship came to centre on the Temple in Jerusalem, which replaced the tabernacle of the desert years. The Temple was very much a physical entity of stone and wood and metal but it symbolises the true spiritual worship of heaven and points forward to the establishment of God’s church here on earth with God himself at its heart. Christians are to be the true temple of God.
In these verses we are thinking of David and Solomon together. Both point us to Messiah.
1. David and his words speak of victory in battle and points us to the work of Christ on the cross.
2. Solomon, whose name means peace, points us by his actions to the benefits of Christ’s work on the cross and the establishment of God’s worship on earth that must follow from the victory on the cross.

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