Sermon on 1 Chronicles 22–29: The Temple as a Pattern for God's Building Project Today
A sermon from Latimer Church on what Solomon's temple preparations reveal about God's ongoing work of building his people.
Summary
James de Costobadie, Senior Pastor at Latimer Church, preaches through 1 Chronicles 22–29, eight chapters devoted entirely to the preparations for Solomon's temple. He frames the temple not merely as a historical building project but as a symbol that summarises the entire biblical story — from creation and the fall, through redemption, to the return of Christ. His central argument is that the temple points forward to the spiritual building God is constructing today: a community of people indwelt by the Holy Spirit, founded on Christ as the chief cornerstone. He draws three lessons from these chapters — that the temple was a magnificent witness to the nations, that it was to be built by an eternal king who brings rest, and that it required the willing participation of all the people — and applies each directly to the life of a local church.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: When Is a Building Not Just a Building?
James de Costobadie: We're working our way through the book of 1 Chronicles. Once a year, I take a book that I feel I know very little about — which is too many books of the Bible — and we go on a journey together. I picked Chronicles because I don't know too much about it, but I've discovered looking elsewhere that not many other people do either. So we're in this together.
Today we're looking at chapters 22 through to chapter 29 — these eight chapters — which are all to do with the preparation for building the temple that Solomon the king was going to build.
Let me ask you a question: when is a building not just a building? When is a building more than just the bricks and mortar that make it up? I don't know if you were the sort of person who in your upbringing only ever lived in one house. If you look back on that now, I hope the memories were good, but good or bad, if you spent your first 18 or 21 years in one house, you probably have memories attached to it where the house is more than just a building — it's everything that happened in your childhood.
Or look at the picture up on the screen. Bricks and mortar. But those are not just bricks and mortar, because as long as Auschwitz stands it will always represent more than the bricks and mortar that built it. It's representative. It's symbolic. And there are times when a building is therefore more than just a building.
The temple was to be that. There are stones, there are other things that would go into it, but it was always far more than just a building. Because in a way, the temple summarises the whole story of the Bible from beginning to end. You can pull the Bible together into thinking about the temple. It's really the story of how God made relationship with him possible again.
The Temple and the Four Stages of Biblical History
Think of that in four stages through the Bible.
First of all, creation. We were made to know God, we were made to meet with God. You think of Adam and Eve in the garden, able to walk with God, able to live with God. You might say that Eden was their temple, where they could do that.
Second stage, the fall, where God evicts them from the garden. Now that's not just saying no plants or flowers or that sort of thing — they had those outside the garden. It's a departure from the source of life. You remember how God put a flaming cherubim to guard the entrance. They're no longer allowed back into the garden. It's like saying: no more into the temple, no more meeting with me in that same intimate relationship they had back in the garden.
Third stage, redemption, where God makes a set of promises that one day he would bring his people back to himself. He begins to do that through the Exodus, and then here through the temple under Solomon that is to be built. It underscores that commitment for God to live with his people again. That's what this is about. It would be the place where God lives on earth with humanity.
And one day, much later, the Lord Jesus Christ would come into this world to fulfil this temple image. Remember how Jesus described himself as the temple — that is, the living presence of God in this world. And so as God calls his people to himself from around the world to believe in Jesus through the word of the gospel, he is now involved in building a building — a spiritual building — with Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone, where people are added in one brick at a time, united by his Spirit. Here is the temple in our current time.
The fourth stage will be the return of Christ, when those who are his people are gathered up and are with him in the new creation, able to live with him, able to see him face to face. Where we're told there will be no more temple — no temple there — because the Lord God Almighty will be the temple of the people.
So where are we at the moment? In the midst of these plans, at the current time, God is building a building — the temple of his people from across the world. In other words, he will meet with his people through his Spirit, in his people. It's a project that began — well, you might say in the Old Testament, but especially with the eleven disciples — and will be completed when Christ returns.
And so today, as we come to 1 Chronicles 22 to 29, we're really asking the questions: what can we learn from Solomon's temple that would inform us as we are involved in the building project in which God is building — the building of his people across the world? What are the lessons that come out from Solomon's temple?
Let me suggest three from these chapters.
Lesson One: A Magnificent Witness to the Nations
The Lord's temple would be constructed, first of all, as a magnificent witness to the nations.
Chapters 22 to 29 — and in fact tipping over into 2 Chronicles as well — are all to do with the preparations of the temple. That's ten chapters in total, just on the preparations. When is a building not just a building? When you have ten chapters on the preparations of the building, it shows that this is something that is big.
Chapters 22 to 29 are made up of three speeches. They come in chapter 22, then in chapter 28, and then in chapter 29, with the chapters in the middle — 23 to 27 — giving details on the organisation of the people, because it's going to take a lot of people to build this thing.
The first speech comes in chapter 22, and verses 2 through to 4 give us the headline statements:
"David gave orders to assemble the aliens" — that means the foreigners living in Israel — "and from among them he appointed stone cutters to prepare dressed stone for building the house of God. He provided a large amount of iron to make nails for the doors of the gateways and for the fittings, and more bronze than could be weighed. He also provided more cedar logs than could be counted, for the Sidonians and Tyrians had brought large numbers of them to David."
This is going to be big — more cedar logs than you can count.
And then David begins to speak. Speech in the Bible nearly always interprets actions and events. You might get the action, you might get the event, but it's the speech that helps us to know what's actually happening through them. So David begins to speak in verse 5:
"My son Solomon is young and inexperienced, and the house to be built for the Lord should be of great magnificence and fame and splendour in the sight of all the nations. Therefore I will make preparations for it."
And so David made extensive preparations before his death.
There is a house to be built for the Lord, and this house will not just be — in the real estate speak we might use — unique, or have the ubiquitous wow factor. This house would be, we're told, of great magnificence. Try using that when you sell your next house: "This is a dwelling of great magnificence." And so it proves. You can see the magnificence through the materials that are used in this very extended treatment of what the building is made up of.
Have a look, for example, at verse 14. David himself says:
"I have taken great pains to provide for the temple of the Lord — wait for it — a hundred thousand talents of gold, a million talents of silver, quantities of bronze and iron too great to be weighed" — they've probably broken the scales with the gold and the silver — "and wood and stone. And you may add to them."
In other words, this isn't the total sum — this is what I'm donating, and you may wish to add more as well. This is going to be huge, massive.
And when we get to chapters 28 and 29, you get a bit more on it. Chapter 29, verse 2 — similar words:
"With all my resources I have provided for the temple of my God: gold for the gold work, silver for the silver, bronze for the bronze, iron for the iron, and wood for the wood, as well as onyx for the settings, turquoise, stones of various colours and all kinds of fine stone and marble — and all of these in large quantities."
This was to be a magnificent building. And the reason it was to be magnificent was because of who it was to be for. Chapter 29, verse 2: "The task is great because this palatial structure is not for man but for the Lord God." And back in chapter 22, verse 5: "The house to be built for the Lord should be of great magnificence and fame and splendour in the sight of all the nations."
So when is a building not just a building? When it is built for the Lord, to be a witness to the nations around.
The New Testament Temple: God's People
And when we get to the New Testament, therefore, we find another building project going on — which I referred to before — for exactly the same purpose. Have a look at these words from Ephesians chapter 2:
"Consequently, you who are no longer foreigners and strangers but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit."
Here is the temple that God is building today — a building not made of stones and bricks and mortar, but made of people, founded on the Lord Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone, built on the foundation of the teaching of the apostles and the prophets, and then comprising people. This is what makes this temple special: not just made of inanimate objects, but of people. And every person in this world is precious to God.
And so as people across the world hear the message of the gospel and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, they are added into this new building one at a time — as we might say, brick by brick. When a person comes to believe, they join the building which God is building across this world, a building made up of people from so many different nations and languages and skin colours and tribes and all that kind of thing. When we get to heaven, we're told there'll be more people there than we can count. It's a magnificent building.
But the thing that makes it most magnificent — the greatest part of the magnificence — is that God dwells in the building by his Spirit. In you, if you are a person who believes in Jesus. When a person comes to believe in Jesus, his Spirit, we're told, comes to live within us. He is with us as a down payment, a seal on our heavenly status, reaffirming to us that we are children of God. And so here is a double reason why the structure is magnificent: not just stones, but people who are precious to God — but even more so because the Spirit of God dwells within us.
What This Means for the Local Church
Let me ask you: what is special about a local church? It is the people who make it up, because the Spirit of God lives within them.
It's not unhelpful to think of it this way. Imagine you came in one day, sat down, and the person you sat next to turned out to be Jesus. I mean, it wouldn't happen, but just bear with me. Would it change your view of how you would speak to him? Oh yeah, probably would. Well, when you actually — back in the real world — come and sit in here and sit next to someone you don't know, and you find they're a Christian, the person sitting next to you has the Spirit of Jesus living in them. And that should affect the way we relate to believers.
First of all, it should make us come with an enthusiasm. Most of us — I mean, real life and all of that — it's all you can do to get to church. You sort of scoop the porridge off the ceiling, you've locked the keys at home, you finally get into the car and get here, and in a way we probably come without the best frame of mind. But actually, when you recalibrate and think about it, we are meeting with the people of God who have the Spirit of God living in them. Here is the high point of our week.
It affects the way we talk to people. It affects the enthusiasm we come with, the anticipation. It affects the way we talk to people because we're interested in them, we care for them. It affects the love we have one for another. It also affects the way that we frankly see church — not so much just as an event. It's easy to think of church as an event, perhaps as I've just described, as driving to an event. Well, it's an event of sorts because we're gathering, but the church is more than an event. It's the people. And whether it's here, whether it's a growth group, or whether it's meeting up informally during the week, it's the people of God who matter, because the Spirit of God is living in them.
The people of God are more precious than we could imagine — far more precious than rubies and jewels. And that's why, in the way that we treat each other and the love that we have one for another, in the care that we have, we should be praying that God would help us to grow in that love one for another over a period of time. A mature church is a church where people are growing in care and love for each other.
I think it's really easy to take being part of a local church for granted. I was speaking to someone recently who — I felt it as a backhanded rebuke, really. I was talking to them and they'd suffered from a bout of illness where they weren't able to get out of the house for quite an extended period of time. I said, "What are you looking forward to doing?" They said, "I'm most looking forward to being back at church with the people of God." Now there's someone who appreciates what it means to meet with the people of God around the word of God. Like anything in life, we can become familiar, but sometimes you have to take stock of what's more important and what's less important in life. And being able to meet with the people of God is this crucial thing.
And as a church grows in their love for each other, we become a witness to the world. "By this, all men will know that you are my disciples," said Jesus — by the way you love one another. It's the quality of relationships that speaks so highly.
Every Sunday we have people coming into our services who would not call themselves Christians, who often meet non-Christians at church. And I hope you come with the same attitude of wanting to welcome people and meet people. As they see the relationships that happen within church life, it can be such a powerful witness to them.
I think of a friend of mine some years ago who left school and went off to find himself around the world. Didn't find himself. Came back home. And then he thought, "Well, I've been to temples in Thailand and various things in India and this, that and the other — why haven't I been to the church down the road?" So he went to the local church down the road. He said, "I found there a quality of relationship I have never seen before." And he became a follower of Jesus.
Well, it's a great example of how the local church — though we may feel ordinary ourselves — can be a witness to the world around. To say nothing of the places that God then puts us in individually during the week. You may be the only Christian in your class at school or at college or university. You may be the only Christian in your workplace. You may be the only Christian in your family. But nothing is by accident in this world, and God has put us where he's put us so that we can be a witness.
I should say, we don't have to be perfect in being that witness. Sometimes giving an apology for the way that we've spoken or treated someone is a way by which we can witness. Actually, having the humility to apologise for something — that might be the thing that catches. So it's not a case of being perfect, but it is a case of having the Spirit of God within us and being able to witness to him as we speak of Jesus.
A magnificent witness to the nations — that's what the Lord's temple would be.
Lesson Two: Built by the Eternal King Who Brings Rest
Then secondly, the Lord's temple would be constructed by the eternal king who would bring rest.
We've seen already that God had made a promise to King David that one of his descendants would be a king who would rule forever — that this descendant would establish the eternal kingdom of God. And in verses 6 onwards of chapter 22, God reminds Solomon of this. He charges him to build a house for the Lord the God of Israel.
David said to Solomon, verse 7: "My son, I had it in my heart to build a house for the name of the Lord my God. But this word of the Lord came to me: you have shed much blood and have fought many wars. You are not to build a house for my name, because you have shed much blood on the earth in my sight."
Which is kind of curious, because God told David to fight. So whether David had gone above and beyond and had shed more blood than he ought to have done might be one thing, or maybe it just wasn't David's place to build the temple — David had to clear the land, and it would be Solomon's job. Just a different job, no better or worse than David's. I'm not quite sure.
Verse 9: "But you will have a son," says God to David, "who will be a man of peace and rest, and I will give him rest from all his enemies on every side. His name will be Solomon, and I will grant Israel peace and quiet during his reign. He is the one who will build a house for my name. He will be my son and I will be his father, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever."
The rest that had been lost in the garden of Eden would now be restored. What does rest mean in the Bible? It means the harmony that comes from a relationship with God. And Solomon would be the person to bring the rest of the land, exemplified by the building of the temple — the place where humanity and God would be able to relate once again.
Two things this king needed to do. Go forward to chapter 28, verse 9:
"And you, my son Solomon, acknowledge the God of your father and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever. Consider now, for the Lord has chosen you to build a temple as a sanctuary. Be strong and do the work."
Two things Solomon had to do as the eternal king to build this temple. First, he had to serve the Lord with wholehearted devotion. And secondly — in words very reminiscent of Moses handing on the reins to Joshua — he needed to be strong.
Solomon gets a very good write-up in 1 Chronicles, better than he does in the book of Kings, actually. In chapter 29, verse 25, you get the summary statement: "The Lord highly exalted Solomon in the sight of all Israel and bestowed on him royal splendour such as no king over Israel ever had before."
He was a king who needed to serve with wholehearted devotion and be strong as he did so.
Solomon Points Forward to Christ
Solomon, of course, was not to be the eternal king. He sinned, as every other king would do afterwards — and we'll come on to some of those in 2 Chronicles. But he points us forward to his later and greater son, the greatest king, whose heart would always be devoted to the Lord his God, and who was always strong in resisting the devil and living for the purposes of God.
You think of Jesus living his whole life under a level of temptation which we can barely understand. The devil knew that if only he could persuade Jesus to sin but once, it wouldn't just be that the building project would come crashing to the ground — it would never get off the ground. Only by serving the Lord with a wholly devoted heart would Jesus be able to rescue his people and begin the building of God's people around the world.
And so Jesus devoted himself at every stage, with a devoted heart, to the plans and purposes of his Father. And Jesus was strong — strong at resisting temptation. He was fighting through temptation for you and for me. And now he is equally strong, equally determined to build this building, to gather people from around the world.
You remember how Jesus said that he would build the church and the gates of hell would not prevail against him. I want us to think about that just for a moment. What that means is that Jesus will complete the work that he has begun. He is absolutely committed to calling people from around this world to believe in him. And one day he will take his people to be with him in the brilliant new creation when he returns to this world.
And so the challenge for us is: can we believe that Jesus will actually do that? I say that because in normal life it can be difficult to believe that Jesus is completing these plans. Perhaps we don't see a lot of action, so to speak. Perhaps we know far more non-Christians than we do Christians. We might be the only Christian in our family, or that sort of thing.
But I have to believe that when Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against his purposes, he means it. In other words, there is nothing and no one in this world who can stop Jesus from completing his plans. And though his promise may not apply to any single individual in particular, we can be absolutely rest assured that he will claim all of his people for himself. Whether we come to see that in our lifetime or not, he will take every one of his people and ensure that they come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is what gives us every incentive to keep reaching out with the good news of Jesus. If someone moves, they need to hear about Jesus. We open our mouths and we speak of him, because we know that Jesus will surely take his people and enable them to believe in him. Whatever our experience on the ground from day to day, this temple will be established by the eternal king.
Maybe sometimes people hear the gospel through the quiet work of their parents and teachers in the kids groups here, maybe coming across a friend at college or university, maybe in the workplace. Over the years at Latimer, we've seen people come to know Jesus from all different walks of life and all different situations — sometimes God using the difficult things in life to turn them for good. He's the expert at bringing good out of bad. And so our job is to keep on speaking to people, knowing with confidence that God will certainly build his temple through his eternal king who cannot be resisted.
Lesson Three: Constructed Through the Willing Efforts of All the People
And that leads to the third thing that comes out from these chapters: the Lord's temple would be constructed through the willing efforts of all the people.
Solomon's heart needed to be in this, and it was. But so did the people's hearts as well.
First of all, the leaders. Go back to chapter 22, verse 17. David orders all the leaders of Israel to help his son Solomon:
"Is not the Lord your God with you? And has he not granted you rest on every side? For he has handed the inhabitants of the land over to me, and the land is subject to the Lord and to his people. Now devote your heart and soul to seeking the Lord your God. Begin to build the sanctuary of the Lord God, so that you may bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord and the sacred articles belonging to God into the temple that will be built for the name of the Lord."
First thing you need to do: devote your heart and soul to seeking the Lord God. Seeking — meaning not trying to find God, God has revealed himself to them — but seeking as in making God their number one object of devotion and desire in their heart.
You see, when is a building not just a building? A building is not just a building when it is a spiritual project. The stones, even the gold, were never there just in and of themselves. What would make it precious was that God would be there. And therefore the leaders needed to seek him. It would be absolutely no good ending up with a magnificent building but God himself at war with his people. What's the good of that? A building without God — absolutely no use at all. Cue many of the great cathedrals of Europe and my home country and all of that. It's no good having the building without the gospel going in the building, so to speak.
So these leaders needed to seek the Lord first of all. And those who lead God's people in the construction of the building — that is, the building of his people — need to seek the Lord first of all. The trouble is, it's very easy just to be taken up with the construction. For example, it's easy if you're a vestry member, a member of our church council, just to be taken up with the issues of the church council — a lot of practical things and all of that. But really the first duty of a leader is to seek the Lord first of all. Easy for a growth group leader to be taken up with preparing studies — you think, well, that's a good thing. But something actually comes ahead of that, which is wanting to seek the Lord through his word. It's not just a job in and of itself.
The Levites and the Organisation of the People
Well, the leaders get underway. Chapters 23 to 27 give us the Levites and the priests — they're kind of overlapping categories; all Levites were priests but not all priests were Levites.
Beginning of chapter 23, we see that they had four jobs. One was they were to supervise the work of the temple. It's interesting — a couple of times we're told that they're out of a job, because they used to look after the tabernacle. The tabernacle was like the portable form of this, and twice we're told that there was no need for them to do that anymore because their logistical needs had gone. Now they're going to have a permanent structure. I think we can probably relate to that as we move from here to our site later on. So now they're to supervise the work of the temple.
Secondly, in chapter 25, they are to be singers — to lead the praise of the Lord through music. Interestingly, three times in chapter 25 we're told that they prophesied. The Levites who were singing — in that as they sing, what are they doing? They're proclaiming God's word with God's authority. They're prophesying in that sense. They sang biblical truths with the authority of God.
Thirdly, there are gatekeepers in chapter 26 — that means security. And fourthly, they are supervisors. Chapter 27 talks about the army divisions — it's really, I think, the national guard kind of being responsible for the storehouses and all of that. So there's a clarity to it. People know what job they're doing and they do it. They have a job to do and they're engaged in it.
The Willing Hearts of the People
And just as we finish, that's the point I want us to see: their hearts were in this. Solomon was to follow the Lord wholeheartedly, but so were the rest of the people.
Have a look at chapter 29, verse 16:
"O Lord our God, as 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. I know, my God, that you test the heart and are pleased with integrity. All these things I have given willingly and with honest intent. And now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you."
So it's this wonderful thing where the leaders set an example and their hearts are involved. Verse 9 of chapter 29: "The people rejoiced at the willing response of the leaders."
The leaders of God's people — their hearts have got to be in it. They've got to give themselves sacrificially to do this, because the temple's not just going to build itself. The leaders have actually got to be in for this. And it's a lovely thing when the leaders of God's people set an example in sacrificing themselves.
Some years ago, in fact at one of the earlier churches I was part of, when I'd not long been a Christian, there was a guy there who was a church warden — one of the senior representatives on the church council. He held that position for a number of years. He stepped down from it, and the same year that he stepped down, he volunteered to help with Sunday school. And I thought it set a great example. There is a leader who cares for the people.
So you need an example from the leaders, but then you need the people to follow the example. And here they do. "I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you."
And over many years in this church, I've seen people willingly give themselves — sometimes out the back, teaching kids; sometimes midweek, teaching youth; sometimes during the daytime when no one else is around, cleaning the building; sometimes at odd times of the week, preparing food or helping or folding or doing a million things that need to be done — because their hearts are in it.
And someone who didn't understand might say, "Gosh, you spend a lot of time working in church — do you enjoy it?" To people who give a lot of their free time — because people in this church do give a lot of their free time — the funny thing is, when your heart's in it, what would you rather be doing? Do you want to build your own kingdom somewhere else, or be involved in building God's kingdom? These are his plans for the world — building his people — and in our own little way here, you being involved, us being involved, is the way by which we contribute to that.
It's not to say that other things in life are not worthy. It's not to say that we can't glorify God in all of life, or serve God in all of life. We're going to have a think about this a bit next week when we come on to it. But we have to realise in life that not everything is of equal value, and the time that we spend building up the people of God, we are spending building a building that will last for eternity.
Closing Prayer
Well, let's pray and ask that God would give us those same willing hearts of which he speaks here.
Dear God in heaven, you have been so gracious in including us in hearing the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. I do pray for any who are here this morning who have not come to believe in him — I pray that you would draw them to a living faith in him. I thank you for the work of your Spirit, and ask that you would give to us hearts that are willing, longing to see more people come to know Christ, and to build up your people and care for your people, that we might be an encouragement to them in their walk with Jesus as well. In Jesus' name, amen.