40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Kings 7:13-51 (Episode 299)

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

Solomon finishes decorates and furnishes the outside and inside of the temple. Water and bronze are everywhere. And the Gentiles being brought in is symbolized at the house of God. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! HWSS Regional Conference 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, make sure you go to the events page. We've got a great event coming up in April. It's a regional event in Bentonville, Arkansas. You want to come and hang out with us for sure.

It's going to be a good time. It was a blast last year. It was so good that we decided we're doing it again. So come hang out with Chad and me and Eric and Scott and Kelsey Clambara and Caleb Keith. And Andy Gullahorn is going to be there with his wife, Jill Phillips. That's worth coming just for that. You can come and hear me lather on for about 30 minutes or something like that. Then afterwards, you can hear Andy and Jill put on a concert

and Bentonville Brewing Company providing the beer. It's all included in your $99 ticket price for the two-day event. It's a good time, so make sure you go over there and register. We'd love to see you there. Chad, we are in 1 Kings 7. We got a temple built. Solomon's got a whole neighborhood built for himself, so that's nice. and uh but now we're gonna sort of go back to the temple after hearing about uh the the solomon's

you know suburb and we're gonna see exactly you know what all is what all is gonna go inside of this temple and we're gonna hear about some furnishings and you know this is probably one of those texts if you're you know doing your read through the bible in a year plan you're starting to read this you're like this is a little dry yeah that's what i was thinking this is this is not people's typical favorite part of scripture just because there's a lot of details here a lot of architectural details you know people skim over genealogies and they tend to skim over these details as well and i i totally get that so we're not going to spend a lot of time in the weeds as it were uh we're going to highlight a few of the the details because there are some

significant details such as the fact that two pillars have actually names you know why were they named. Why would you put people's names on these pillars? We'll talk about that. Talk about a few of the details about what was on them. And of course, the main character in this particular section is somebody that seems like we met him before, but we actually haven't. A guy named Hiram. So we'll talk about him. This is a pretty long chapter. 1 Kings 7 is 51 verses. And we've covered the first 12 verses, which was the neighborhood, the suburb Solomon built for himself picking up with with verse 13 through 51 we're going to hear about hiram we're going to hear about these pillars in front of the temple hear about the bronze sea a bunch of smaller

water basins and then we'll hear about some of the details of the furnishings inside the temple so anyway it's it's some uh it's a pretty interesting stuff to get to just because of the the symbolism of a lot of this these furnishings and the names that were given to them so starting out here verse 13 first king 713 king solomon sent and brought hiram from tyre now we've already heard about hiram a couple chapters ago he's the king of tyre so our first thought is oh wow so he's brought a foreign king to jerusalem well they do have the same name but these are two different guys so this Hiram is uh from Tyre but he is the son of a in the next verse he's described as a son of a widow of the tribe of Naphtali and his father was a man of Tyre a worker in bronze

so this guy is uh probably there's a couple different ways you can take this but probably half Israelite and half Turinian I say a couple different ways because it it's entirely possible probably not probable but possible that that uh Hiram was the the offspring of this widow's first husband in that case he would be full Israelite and then the man from Tyre would be a stepfather that's that's possible but I think it's more probable that this Israelite woman from the tribe of Naphtali she uh she was widowed and then she remarried this guy from Tyre and then she had this son with him who was named the same name as the king had now i think it's important because i think it's important that he has the same name as the king of tyre because he is going to bring

as it were the the symbolism of this gentile kingdom to israel he's going to be the one who's going to be doing all the work of bronze in uh in the temple and i'll talk as we go along more about why that why that's important the the next thing i want to point out about him is that he is described as full of wisdom understanding and skill for making any work in bronze now the reason that's important is because if you go back to the book of exodus and you read all about the construction of the tabernacle which was kind of like the you know the portable temple there was another guy who had basically this same role that hiram has his name was bezalel and if you go to exodus 31 1 through 5 god says to moses that he has filled with the spirit of god a guy named

bezalel and he's given him ability and intelligence knowledge and craftsmanship to devise artistic designs to work in gold silver and bronze and cutting stones and carving wood to work every craft so just like the tabernacle had its spirit filled bezalel to do all this kind of stuff so now the temple has hiram and he's never described as full of the spirit but he is described in basically the same sort of way so this guy's got he's wise he's understanding he's skillful he's learned this trade from his tyrrhenian father and so he's gonna be the one that solomon brings in in order to make all this bronze stuff bronze pillars bronze uh sea for holding water the bronze basins all the various utensils that are going to be needed at the at the temple so that's why we're introduced

to him and why solomon brings him in now we're first of all told about uh these two pillars that he makes this is verse 15 he cast two pillars so these things are immense they're 18 cubits high so a cubit's about a foot and a half so we're looking at about 27 feet high and there's there's gonna be two of them and there's a lot of details if you're if you follow along in the bible verse 15 through 22 describes all you know the thickness of them and their capitals how big they were what they look like but the only thing i want to point out here as far as what they did look like is that They had kind of a checker work or a lattice work on them. They had pomegranates at the tops on the capitals.

And the purpose of these is to kind of frame the entrance to the temple. So when you're walking up, just like if you were to approach the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve were kicked out, you had these two cherubim that were guarding the entrance to it. so these are kind of like the guards if you will there's their station there at the entrance to to the temple and they're made to kind of have this garden like appeal this we talked like we talked about in the last episode everything at the temple is intended to be an architectural replication of the garden of eden so we discussed that last time because this is the replacement garden the replacement paradise where god dwells with his people and so that's why you have

pomegranates on these capitals on top of these these bronze pillars it's made to look like a garden paradise so that's what you're going to see when you're when you're walking up there their their height is impressive they got the pomegranates and we're told in verse 21 that they have names so one is called i guess in english how would how would we say this in english joaquin i don't know i was looking at hebrews in hebrew is yeah in hebrew it's joaquin your j is pronounced like a y so joaquin is the name of the first and the other is named boaz now joaquin we might not be familiar with as a name boaz of course we all heard of yeah good old boaz from from the book of ruth and it is the same spelling in hebrews so boaz is a personal name that we are

familiar with. Joachim, not so much. But what do they mean? Well, there's different kinds of ideas here as to how to put these two together. But Joachim is from the verb kun, and we've actually seen this multiple times. So if you go back to 1 Kings 2, I think three or four times you have this verb occurring where God is establishing the kingdom of David or the kingdom with Solomon. So that's the verb. Kun is the verb there. So to establish is something that God does multiple times already in Solomon's reign. He establishes his throne. He establishes his kingdom. So when we get to this pillar, this pillar is named from that same verb, and it means something like he establishes. So Joachim means he, in reference to God, God establishes. So that's the

first of these, and it's probably indicative of the fact that God is establishing the throne of David or he's establishing his presence in Israel by means of this temple. The other one is called Boaz, and Boaz comes from the Hebrew word os, which means strength. So Boaz would mean something like in him is strength or strength in him or something along those lines. So you got two pillars and they both have names names that have these meanings but they're still but they're still names now i don't know but but you damn what i find most interesting about the fact that they're named is not kind of the the hebrew meaning of the names but the fact that we have pillars with names and then when you look elsewhere in the scriptures the bible talks about

people being pillars so if you go to uh revelation chapter 3 verse 12 this is uh christ speaking and he says the one who conquers i will make him a pillar in the temple of my god so christ is picking up on the imagery of the old testament temple which had two pillars with names, Joachim and Boaz, and Christ is saying to us that the one who is in him, the one who conquers in him, is going to be like a pillar in the temple of his father, which of course is kind of the image of the church. So Christ is picking up on the temple imagery, the pillar imagery, to talk about individual Christians also being pillars in the church, pillars in the in the temple of god and it was and it's pretty common back uh in the temple building days back

when these sort of structures happened uh when everything that was big had pillars it wasn't uncommon at all for pillars to look like people uh we we there's yes there's examples of this all over i mean rome did this sort of stuff all the time as well i mean this went on for a long time uh so saying that you would make somebody a pillar isn't weird uh in a time when you had temples and coliseums and this sort of stuff uh that was that was a way to sort of uh honor someone or enshrine someone that was very important or you're basically saying that we're going to build structures on the on the shoulders of this giant right and so this was a this was a pretty common thing to do yeah and then uh in was it in galatians where paul echoes

the same language when he goes and he visits the the three the three pillars of uh of the church there talking about uh peter what peter james and john right yeah so anyway this is a this is kind of a common idea that you have in the rest of the scriptures too so to have these pillars named after guys is is a foreshadowing of what's going to be happening in in the life of life of the church so that's the pillars that ends the section with verse 22 now 23 is going to shift away from the pillars to talking about this famous music called the bronze sea so verse 23 says then he made that still talking about a hyrum here then he made the sea of cast metal and this thing was a monstrosity i was trying to i was trying to come up with an image that we might be more

familiar with that would actually kind of fit with with the the immensity of this thing so so this bronze seat is immense it holds uh 12 000 gallons so at the end of 26 it says it's 2 000 baths so uh that's about yeah it's about 12 000 gallons i'm just kind of come up an image from like that we might be familiar familiar with as to how big this was like a backyard pool swimming pool or something like that but the the bronze sea is is intended to be this reservoir of water but it's more than that first of all the very name itself is is suggestive and i was trying to come up with all of the the symbolism that might be suggested by by the bronze sea and i I don't, it's kind of hard to know where to stop to begin with in,

in the Hebrew mind, the Yom, which is the word for sea, the sea is symbolic of the Gentile world. We see that all over the place. So you've got this bronze sea that is full of all this water and immense amount of water and the sea itself in the biblical mind is represented by the Gentile world. but in this case the sea is upheld by 12 oxen so verse 25 tells us the bronze sea stood on 12 oxen three facing north three west three south three east now 12 we associate with the 12 tribes

of israel so at least it seems to me and of course we're dealing with symbolism here so there always has to be a little bit of a you know a question as to whether this is accurate but it seems to me that what's being suggested is that you have the 12 oxen representing the 12 tribes of israel and they bear up as it were the gentile world which is symbolized by the by the bronze sea so it's it's this idea that uh god through israel is using his chosen people as the ones who are as it were bearing up the rest of the world because it will be through israel that all the promises that he gave are going to spread to the rest of the world that's at least one one interpretation the other idea here is that the sea was iconic of confusion and chaos and disorder

and god has as it were brought the the water into order he's brought order out of the chaos by enclosing it within this this bronze sea that's another another way to way to see this either way the water the water itself also served a practical purpose it had its symbolism it was also a practical purpose because there was a need to use the water for washing for cleaning up and so it acted practically speaking as this place from which the smaller basins that we'll get to in just a second were were filled so you had the the vast bronze sea held up by these 12 oxen and then you also had verse 27 10 individual stands of bronze now these are this is this is all analogous to but different from what we had at the tabernacle so if you go back to the tabernacle

you had a wash basin but it was small it wasn't of course anything like this bronze sea for one thing they had to transport it everywhere they went so it was a lot smaller but it was it was there between the altar and the and the tabernacle in order that the priests could wash their hands and their feet in it so what's happening now is you have this huge bronze sea full of all this water but then you also have these smaller stands of bronze that are presumably filled from the bronze sea and then these are going to serve the more practical purpose of being the place where priests can wash sacrifices wash their hands and and their feet and then these were stationed on the north and south side of of the temple it's you almost get the image here of these bronze

basins lined up each one filled from the bronze sea and they're almost like a uh a gauntlet like you got some over here you got some over there on the north side of the temple on the south side of the temple and as i'm reading this i'm almost getting the the image of so when you're approaching the temple you're you're as it were walking between these places of water that are filled from the reservoir called the the bronze sea so it's sort of a uh an exodus image they walk between the walls of the walls of water to cross the red sea and now you're walking with basins over here and basins over there that are filled from this vast this vast sea so there's a possibility of a of an exodus uh motif there well and here here's what's interesting about this is

that we don't have you know god giving these you know specific instructions to make all of this stuff this way right so you know the tabernacle very he he gave pretty specific instructions on how to do this one of the reasons that this is this is different is that we don't know that he has like specific instructions from god he's following some some blueprint you know that dropped out of heaven or whatever as you get the details of it it does sound pretty impressive yeah yeah because one of the ways one of the main ways this is different from the tabernacle if you go back and you read exodus you know that it's uh it's almost like you hear all the stuff twice so god says to moses make this this way he goes through all he gives like the whole blueprint

and then we're told moses did that and then it goes through the whole blueprint again that's not what's happening here in the temple i mean we we haven't kind of been jumping back and forth between kings and chronicles on purpose but if you go to chronicles we're told that god gave the kind of the to david the the blueprint as it were to how this is supposed to look but we're not told what that was you can't go to chronicles and read the equivalent of right of what happens in the book of exodus so you know i'm assuming that there was some creative leeway here for solomon and for hyrum to do what to do what they did so yeah i mean they're doing this on purpose they're they're adding all the symbolism on purpose because

they don't they don't want to just look pretty in other words they're not like you know well i think i think if we had some oxen holding up the sea that would be really neat so let's just do that there's there's never a simply a uh a motivation that something is going to be pretty for doing this is always a symbol behind that and so anyway like the 12 oxen it's pretty hard not to connect that with the with the 12 tribes of 12 tribes of israel yeah because you don't know how how explicit any of these instructions are i mean it could be as simple as and the temple is to be surrounded by water and then solomon is like how are we going to do that in like the coolest way ever yeah yeah yeah and how are we going to wrap all this symbolism in

that you just don't know i mean it was it seems unlikely that it was like i need this much water here and this much over like that it probably wasn't that detailed and uh and solomon just like we're gonna have a lot of water up in this basin and we're gonna have it flow down to these and we're gonna have to see up here and then we're gonna have the flow down to these basins it's pretty cool yeah it is it is pretty cool you know and it matches so well with what we know from uh the temple's connections to other parts of scripture the eden for instance is described as a well-watered garden so you know what you know there was water everywhere well of course this is the replacement garden of eden so there needs to be water everywhere and there was i mean all

these gallons in the in the sea and then all the wash basins yeah there was plenty of water this was not a desert garden it was like an oasis there was water everywhere and uh then you know all the other kind of connections with uh the sea and whatnot and then you go to uh the book of Ezekiel and he got the famous vision of the river of the water of life that comes from where well from the house of the Lord so it flows from the house and then of course this is the river that goes down and desalinates the the salt sea there's trees of life on either side of it so Ezekiel 2 sees the the temple in connection with water so it makes sense that if you want to convey that symbolically then you need to have a whole lot of water so you got all these wash basins you got the

bronze sea there's water water everywhere at the at the temple yeah and of course it's hard to talk about all this be like what is what is the connection between all this water uh and the sort of life of the people of god right so the the worship life of the people of god it seems like water has a lot to do with this obviously you have the initial connection to the crossing of the red see, which is, you know, a very identity-forming moment in the life of Israel, that they never really move past that, right? And they shouldn't. This is a pivotal moment in how they identify themselves. And of course, as Christians, water is directly associated with the life of the Christian because of baptism. And Jesus sort of comes along and says, you know, all of this water

that was always going on in the life of Israel? Well, let me explain to you exactly what that's all sort of pointing to, which is I'm going to use water to bring you from death to life and bring you out of darkness into light and out of rebellion to God into the household of God. So it's hard to see, like, why? Why do you have the sea? Why do you have all these different ways?

Why is that water surrounding everything? Well, as a baptized Christian, I think it becomes easier to see. Yeah, I think I understand why you have to pass through all this water to get into the temple. Yeah, water is one of those biblical themes that kind of ties everything together. Yeah. I mean, you've got water in Genesis 1 and 2. You've got water in Revelation 21 and 22. Then you have all these water stories.

You've got water at the temple. And then, yeah, well, why? Because it's all leading us really to baptism. It's all leading us to that water by which God the Father makes us one with his Son. I love it when churches, not all churches do this, of course, but some churches will put their, if they use one of the baptismal fonts, they'll put it either at the entrance to the church or they'll put it, as it were, in the way, like when you're going up to the altar. It's like purposely in the way. It's there to make sure that you realize that it's only by going through water that you come to God. So even, of course, the symbolism of some churches

is set up to make sure you get the point. You get to God wet. Yeah. He baptizes you. Yeah, our church is like that, where if you're going to go receive the Lord's Supper, you're going to have to pass by the font, and it is in the way.

It splits, and people have to go on either side of it. They have to walk around it, you know? yeah the same way our church is set up as well yeah i love the i love that kind of placement because it makes sure you the water always remains uh front and center of of our life so the temple communicated that as as well now uh we're at verse 40 and we're gonna just hear about a few more details here about some of the other stuff that he made made some pots he made some shovels he made some basins presumably all of these were made out of bronze as well and then we have this now listen to this listen to this verse it's kind of easy to

kind of just brush past this and not miss a connection that's being made this is the second half of verse 40 so Hiram finished all the work that he did for King Solomon on the house of the Lord what's happening in kind of between the lines they're really nodding between the lines it's just embedded within the text itself, is an echo. I think we are intended to hear an echo of Genesis 2.2. So Genesis 2.2 says, On the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and then he rested on the Sabbath day.

So this idea of God finishing the work that he had done, and now Hiram finished all the work that he did, is one more connection between what's happening in the temple and then what God did in creation. so just Moses along with Bezalel were sort of creators if you will and I put that in air quotes they're creators making this little bitty cosmic world of the tabernacle so now Solomon along with Hiram are again quote creators making this little cosmic world of of the temple and just like God finished his work now hyrum finishes his work on this ongoing place where god dwells with his

people and then the rest of those verses describe just more the details of the stuff that he made get to verse 45 we hear about the pots the shovels the basins all these vessels that he made were of bronze and we're told where this took place he didn't do this in jerusalem he happened he worked on the plain of the Jordan. That's where he made his casts, and I guess it was clay ground in the plain of the Jordan that he used. And then after they were made, they were transported to Jerusalem. So the work of Hiram is finished. Everything that he made out of bronze is described. Now notice the transition that takes place. So we're at verse 48 now. We've heard about all this stuff, everything from the big bronze seed to the little bitty shovels that Hiram made out of bronze.

All that stuff was used outside the temple proper. So you got the temple building, and then you have all the stuff around it in the court. All that stuff in the court was made out of bronze. Hiram did that. Then verse 48 says, Solomon made all the vessels that were in the house of the lord the golden altar the golden table for the bread of the presence the lamp stands of pure gold and then it goes on to describe the the rest of those and then verse 51 echoes what was said earlier about hiram thus all the work that king solomon did on the house of the lord was finished so here's what's happening in uh in the temple you have the gradations of holiness that we've talked about multiple times where of course the holy of holies

is the epicenter of holiness and then you have the holy place and you have the holy court holy city holy land and the farther out you get the less holy things are so that i mean that's That's obvious just from the way things are named. But you also have gradations of holiness that are connected with the stuff that's in these places. So if you're in the holiest place, the holiest area, which is the temple itself, everything in there is made out of gold. and there's even a different hebrew word that's used for the craftsmanship of like the curtains that are within this this holiest place so that that particular place is most holy and so the materials that are used in it have to be also the highest quality so in the holy of holies you

couldn't have bronze you gotta have gold now solomon we're told is the one who did all the golden stuff so solomon's israelite king and so he does all the gold and the gold is connected with the holiest place in the temple so all of these adhere together because they're the highest gradation of holiness as it were so you can't have in other words you can't have hiram who is half israelite half tyrrhenian doing the stuff with the gold because that's reserved for the king of israel that makes sense yeah yeah yeah so i mean i it's fascinating to me that all of these all of these details uh are reflective of the whole structure of the temple itself so you got the the court that's connected with with hiram and bronze and hiram himself is part israelite

part Gentile. Now, what is the court? The court itself is the picture of the world, like the sea is part of the world, you've got water as part of the world, and all the elements that are part of this court, which is symbolic of the world, are made by Hiram, who himself is half gentile half israelite so the the israelites share this court the outermost part of the temple with the gentile world and so the guy who makes all of the stuff that's in there is himself part israelite part part gentile so even the artisan who's involved in this is something which fits with the symbolism of the of the temple i like verse uh 47 uh where it says that solomon left all the vessels unweighed and talking about these vessels of bronze because there were so many of

them that the bronze the weight of the bronze was not ascertained and if you read if you're reading through this there's a lot of bronze stuff on the outside of this thing i mean a lot i don't you might have picked this up as we've gone through stuff but weighing stuff is like a really popular thing to do they really want to know like how much stuff weighs and how how how much how many gallons of this and the thing there is and how long this thing is this dude's making so much bronze stuff that's even solomon uh who is like we're not weighing all that yeah even solve a master of details right he's like nope ain't happening way too much bronze things to weigh we're not weighing all the stuff yeah it is kind of ironic in this chapter which is like

super detailed i mean down to like how many pomegranates per cubit are you going to have on this and then finally you get down to like how much did all this bronze stuff weigh psalm is like we're not even going to find out yeah it's weird it's it's a kind of an anomaly in the scriptures for them to make a reference to not knowing how much something weighed because there was so much of it yeah i guess it underscores the fact that this was this was so immense there was so much bronze out there that uh it seemed just vain to to try and figure out how much all this weighed yes okay so uh that takes us through pretty much the uh the end of the chapter uh if you if you're looking in your bible you'll see that uh there's reference in 48 and 49 to some

of the interior furnishings you've got this uh the golden altar the golden table the golden lamp stands uh and the tongs when i when i saw the the tongs referenced it my mind jumped immediately to isaiah 6 and uh you have uh the great vision of the prophet who's possibly you know some people say isaiah was it was a priest as well which is you know entirely possible but prophet priest and he sees this great vision of the uh of the seraphim and they're they're chanting kadosh kadosh kadosh holy holy holy and he says uh woe is me for i am undone for i'm a man of unclean lips and i live among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the king the lord of hosts and one of the angels takes uh tongs and gets a coal from the altar and then

touches his lips and says you know you're clean that the coal has has purged you so So just the idea that these utensils, one of which was tongs, was made, was then used by an angel to cleanse the mouth of the prophet in this famous vision is pretty fascinating. Yeah, yeah. All right, so chapter wraps up with saying King Solomon finished all this work on the house of the Lord. That's another echo back to that Genesis 2 verse that we referred to a few minutes ago.

And then it wraps up by saying Solomon brought in the things that David, his father, had dedicated, the silver, the gold, and the vessels, and stored them in the treasuries of the house of the Lord. So Solomon is wrapping up everything that, of course, David had wanted to do. David wanted to build a temple. God says, no, I'm going to build a house for you, but your son will come along and will do this. And of course, this is exactly what Solomon has been doing. And this is a major signpost, if you will, along the journey from creation to redemption, because the temple looms so large, and we're not even done with it. I mean, we have to get to, they're bringing the ark in, in chapter 8, and we have Solomon's

long prayer, all the sacrifices. so much time is being spent on this because this is uh it's just a huge moment in israel's history it's a huge moment in in salvation history because creation is being redone in a sense because this is the new guard of eden the exodus as we talked about before is now being brought to its fulfillment because god has now established his house on this holy mountain just like was just like the Israelites sang about back in Exodus 15. And now that we have the temple, now that we have King Solomon, now that we have all this stuff happening in Zion,

we have this portrait ahead of time of so much of the work of the Messiah. I mean, everything he's going to do in Jerusalem, the fact that his body is the replacement temple that he's going to rebuild in his resurrection, the fact that he's going to be the ultimate sacrifice that is going to be offered that will bring to an end all of the sacrifices at the temple. And then he's going to be the one who establishes the new temple, which is the church with human pillars, as we discussed a few minutes ago. So it's hard to overestimate just how important these chapters are for the bigger story of scripture so much comes to so much comes to a head here that is then going to come to

also come to a head in the ministry of christ yeah you can't read the rest of the bible honestly from this point forward without the temple playing a role i mean whether that's the temple being destroyed and the temple being rebuilt or the uh jesus coming along and life you know and doing all kinds of things at the temple right i mean the temple is uh once it's there uh it's it is central until i mean this is the reason i mean when jesus says things like i want to destroy the temple and then rebuild it in three days i mean you just heard what like what this look what this temple looks like and how the process of that i mean like you know what kind of a outrageous statement that would be and like why that would

hit people uh in a way that they didn't like too much yeah and then and the fact that the temple becomes uh over time in fact not doesn't take very long the temple becomes a place where people think that they're they're safe because oh we have a temple so god's happy with us jeremiah will preach about this as well so the simple becomes also while it's intended to be a symbol of the presence of god and his holiness it it uh in in a sadly ironic sort of way it becomes really the the bastion of iniquity as you see any like in ezekiel because ezekiel will see all sorts of idolatry taking place there and god will withdraw his presence from the temple so it's a it's one of these it's kind of a catch-22 i mean it's a it's a beautiful place it's where god

dwells with his people and then at the same time it becomes an ugly place where sin dwells in the midst of God's people, and then he departs. And all of that together is really one more way that God is preparing people for the necessity of Christ the temple to come to take care of the needs of humanity. Yeah, this is why when Solomon was set up to build the temple, when God doesn't say a word about the temple, instead he talks about fidelity and worship, because if you're asking the question can you make an idol out of a house for god the answer is yes you can yes you can it's happened many times all right well we'll leave it right there and uh next week we will get into uh getting back to the ark it's been a little while since we talked about the ark

and so we'll get to do that next week i'll see you then all right see you then Thanks for watching!