The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 145: Solomon Builds the Temple (2023)

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Fr. Mike reads the story of Solomon's greatest action as king: building a temple for the Lord, showing us how important it is to give glory to the Lord for all he's done for us. He is learning from his father's mistakes, but this story will sadly conclude the greatest moments of his life. Today's readings are 1 Kings 3, 2 Chronicles 4-5, and Psalm 64. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using the Great Adventure Bible timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. It is day 145, and we are reading from 1 Kings 3. We're also reading 2 Chronicles 4 and 5. We are praying Psalm 64 today.

As always, the Bible translation that I am using is the Revised Standard Version, the Second Catholic Edition, and I am using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to download your own Bible in a Year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a Year. You can also subscribe to this podcast by clicking subscribe, and then that'll be done. As I said, we are reading from 1 Kings chapter 3. We're reading 2 Chronicles 4 and 5. We're praying Psalm 64 because it is day 145. The first book of Kings chapter 3. Solomon prays for wisdom.

Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He took Pharaoh's daughter and brought her into the city of David until he had finished building his own house and the house of the Lord and the wall around Jerusalem. The people were sacrificing at the high places, however, because no house had yet been built for the name of the Lord. Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father, only he sacrificed in burnt incense at the high places. And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice

there, for that was the great high place. Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings upon that altar. At Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, Ask what I shall give you. And Solomon said, You have shown great and merciful love to your servant David my father, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you. And you have kept for him this great and merciful love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne this day. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father, although I am but a little child.

I do not know how to go out or come in, and your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people that cannot be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant, therefore, an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this great people of yours? It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. And God said to him, because you have asked this and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right. Behold, I now do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you, and none like you shall arise after you.

I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that no other king shall compare with you all your days. And if you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days. And Solomon awoke, and behold, it was a dream. Then he came to Jerusalem and stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord and offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings and made a feast for all his servants. Solomon's wisdom in judgment. Then two harlots came to the king and stood before him. The one woman said,

O my lord, this woman and I dwell in the same house, and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. Then on the third day after I was delivered, this woman also gave birth, and we were alone. There was no one else with us in the house. Only we two were in the house. And this woman's son died in the night because she lay on it. And she arose at midnight and took my son from beside me while your maidservant slept and laid it in her bosom

and laid her dead son in my bosom. When I rose in the morning to nurse my child, behold, it was dead. But when I looked at it closely in the morning, behold, it was not the child that I had born. And the other woman said, No, the living child is mine, and the dead child is yours. The first said, No, the dead child is yours, and the living child is mine. Thus they spoke before the king. Then the king said, The one says, This is my son that is alive, and your son is dead. And the other says, No, but your son is dead, and my son is the living one. And the king said, Bring me a sword. So a sword was brought before the king, and the king said,

Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other. Then the woman whose son was alive said to the king, because her heart yearned for her son, O my lord, give her the living child, and by no means slay it. But the other said, It shall be neither mine nor yours, divide it. Then the king answered and said, Give the living child to the first woman, and by no means slay it. She is its mother. And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to render justice.

The second book of Chronicles, chapter four, furnishings of the temple. He made an altar of bronze, 20 cubits long and 20 cubits wide and 10 cubits high. Then he made the molten sea. It was round, 10 cubits from brim to brim and five cubits high, and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference. Under it were figures of gourds, for thirty cubits, compassing the sea round about.

The gourds were in two rows, cast with it when it was cast. It stood upon twelve oxen, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east. The sea was set upon them, and all their posterior parts were inward. Its thickness was a hand-breath, and its brim was made like the brim of a cup, like the flower of a lily. It held over three thousand baths. He also made ten lavers in which to wash, and set five on the south side, and five on the north side. In these they were to rinse off what was used for burnt

offering, and the sea was for the priests to wash in. And he made ten golden lampstands as prescribed and set them in the temple, five on the south side and five on the north. He also made ten tables and placed them in the temple, five on the south side and five on the north. And he made a hundred basins of gold. He made the court of the priests and the great court and doors for the court and overlaid their doors with bronze. And he set the sea at the southeast corner of the house. Huram also made the pots, the shovels, and the basins. So Huram finished the work that he did for King Solomon on the house of God, the two pillars, the bowls, and the two capitals on top of the pillars, and the two networks to cover the two pillars, the bowls, and the two capitals on top of the pillars, and the two networks to

cover the two bowls of the capitals that were on top of the pillars, and the four hundred pomegranates for the two networks, two rows of pomegranates for each network to cover the two bowls of the capitals that were upon the pillars. He made the stands also, and the levers upon the stands, and the one sea and the twelve oxen underneath it, the pots, the shovels, the forks, and all the equipment for these Huram Abi made of burnished bronze for King Solomon for the house of the Lord. In the plain of the Jordan, the king cast them in the clay ground between Sukkoth and Zerudah. Solomon made all these things in great quantities so that the weight of the bronze was not ascertained. So Solomon made

all the things that were in the house of God, the golden altar, the tables for the bread of the presence, the lampstands and their lamps of pure gold to burn before the inner sanctuary as prescribed, the flowers, the lamps and the tongs of purest gold, the snuffers, basins, dishes for incense and firepans of pure gold. And the sockets of the temple, for the inner doors to the most holy place, and for the doors of the nave of the temple, were of gold. Chapter 5. Thus all the work that Solomon did for the house of the Lord was finished. And Solomon brought in the things which David his father had dedicated, and stored the silver, the gold, and all the vessels in the treasuries of the house of God.

The ark of the covenant brought into the temple. Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the fathers' houses of the sons of Israel in Jerusalem to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is in Zion. And all the men of Israel assembled before the king at the feast, which is in the seventh month. And all the elders of Israel came, and the Levites took up the ark. And they brought up the ark, the tent of meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the tent. The priests and the Levites brought them up. And King Solomon and all the congregation of Israel, who had assembled before him, were before the ark, sacrificing so many sheep and oxen that

they could not be counted or numbered. So the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the most holy place, underneath the wings of the cherubim. For the cherubim spread out their wings over the place of the ark, so that the cherubim made a covering above the ark and its poles. And the poles were so long that the ends of the poles were seen from the holy place before the inner sanctuary, but they could not be seen from the outside. And they are there to this day. There was nothing in the ark except the two tables which Moses put there at Horeb, where the Lord made a covenant with the sons of Israel when they came out of Egypt. Now, when the priests came out of the holy place, for all the priests who were present had sanctified themselves without regard to their

divisions, and all the Levitical singers, Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun, and their sons and kinsmen, arrayed in fine linen with cymbals, harps, and lyres, stood east of the altar with a hundred and twenty priests who were trumpeters. And it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. And when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments in praise to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. The house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of

the Lord filled the house of God. Psalm 64, Prayer for Protection from Enemies, to the Choir Master, a Psalm of David. Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint. Preserve my life from dread of the enemy. Hide me from the from dread of the enemy. Hide me from the secret plots of the wicked, from the scheming of evildoers who wet their tongues like swords, who aim bitter words like arrows, shooting from ambush at the blameless, shooting at him suddenly and without fear.

They hold fast to their evil purpose. They talk of laying snares secretly, thinking, Who can see us? Who can search out our crimes? We have thought out a cunningly conceived plot. For the inward mind and heart of a man are deep. But God will shoot his arrow at them. They will be wounded suddenly. Because of their tongue, he will bring them to ruin. All who see them will wag their heads. Then all men will fear. They will tell what God has wrought and ponder what he has done. Let the righteous rejoice in the Lord and take Father in heaven, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for revealing your heart to us. We thank you for continually turning our hearts to you because our hearts can be so easily turned away from you. And so, Lord, I just, at this moment right now, God, I just want to speak to you about this psalm that we just prayed and how clearly the righteous find a place in your temple, how the righteous find a place in your heart, how the righteous find a place in you. And Lord, so often we are not righteous. So often we are the opposite of that. We are unrighteous. We are false and we're fickle and we're sinners. And yet you still take us back even then,

even when we're not righteous, even when we are disasters, you still love us and you never give up on us. Help us to never give up on you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Okay. Gosh. Okay. Let's, if we can do this, I keep doing this. I think I've done it for the last couple of days where we start in Chronicles and go in kind of the reverse order from Chronicles to Kings. But I just want to highlight in 2 Chronicles, this is Solomon doing his greatest life's work. This is the greatest thing Solomon will have done in his entire life. Remember that King David did a number of great things. King David united the tribes into a kingdom. King David had defeated all the enemies around Israel. King David had amassed all this

wealth for the people of Israel, and not only for the people of Israel, but for the building of the temple. And now Solomon is doing the single greatest task, the single greatest chore or assignment call that he had in his life, and that was to build the temple. And he does it so well. He does it incredibly well. This is for God's glory. And the chronicles that Solomon does this excellently, that everything is not, I mean, just think about, we have the finest materials to build with. We have Solomon building the temple according to the model that was given when it came to the tabernacle, right? When it came to the tent of meeting, you have Solomon who's lining all of these structures with gold and with silver. He makes these massively huge bronze doors. And not only that, but keep this in mind, Solomon is then sacrificing regularly,

massive, massive amounts of animals, essentially. He's giving the Lord the sacrifice that he believes the Lord desires. He knows he is sacrificing to the Lord what he believes he deserves. And so Solomon is doing so well. Last little, two little points here of 2 Chronicles. You have the chronicler highlight who carries the ark from where it was to the holy place, to the most holy place. It was the Levites. Not only remember that when David had

originally wanted to bring the ark from the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite, right? He was going passing through that area. And what happened? Uzzah stretched out his hand and he touched the ark. He was on a wagon and he died. Here is Solomon. He's learning from his father's mistakes and he is having the Levites carry the ark like they ought to be carrying the ark. And that's so important. And that seems to be honored by God. Why? Because as they install the ark into the most holy place,

as they complete the temple, what happens is the cloud of glory fills the space. And this reminds us of the cloud of glory that led the people of Israel out of Egypt and into freedom, out of Egypt and through the space. And this reminds us of the cloud of glory that led the people of Israel out of Egypt and into freedom, out of Egypt and through the wilderness, that the cloud of glory that would rest upon the Ark of the Covenant, upon that tent of meeting, upon that tabernacle, is filling this space. And you have the sense of like, here is God saying, yes, here's God affirming, that's maybe the word I was thinking of or confirming what Solomon had done and what

the people had done in coming together and giving free will. Remember, David took up a free will offering and giving freely the sacrifice to the Lord. And this is just so, so massively important because on one hand, we have our own sacrifices, right? We have the things that we're going to do. Here's what I'm going to do for God. And yet we wonder sometimes, okay, God, are you receiving what I'm offering? Do you even want what I'm offering? The Shekinah, we possibly could be the Shekinah glory cloud, like to call it the

glory cloud. It possibly could be that this is a sign of God's favor, not just a sign of God's presence, a sign of God's acceptance, you know, as I said, a confirmation and affirmation of what they're doing and not simply a sign of his presence where they're like, okay, yes, we've done the right thing. We have offered to the Lord what he deserves. And we even have offered to the Lord what he desires. And that is just a remarkable thing. But this concludes essentially in Chronicles, at least Solomon's high point, right? His greatest task, he'll do other things, but this concludes the greatest task of Solomon's life. And we? His greatest task. He'll do other things, but this concludes the greatest task of Solomon's life. And we might talk about that later on in the next couple of

days. But going back to first Kings and Solomon, we have him praying like we covered a couple of days ago, praying for wisdom. One thing to note is that Solomon prays for wisdom at Gibeon at the place of sacrifice before the temple in Jerusalem becomes a place of sacrifice. He is sacrificing the Lord. He's praying to the Lord and he's giving to the Lord a sign of his heart. He's giving the Lord a sign of his life. That's what sacrifices are, right? They're a sign of our desire to give ourselves to the Lord by giving him something valuable. And that's what is at the heart of virtually every sacrifice is it's rather than myself being sacrificed,

I am sacrificing something on my behalf. I'm sacrificing something that is of importance to me. And Solomon is doing this. And here's the Lord who comes to him and says, what do you want? And he asks for this wisdom and right understanding in discernment and judgment. And he gets given this, this great gift. And we see him play it out. We see this played out in one of the, I remember this story from when I was a little kid. It just was so striking of the two women who both had children. One of the children had died and there was this debate. You know, she said, and then she said, and who's right? And then Solomon, he's the tiebreaker here by employing and utilizing the wisdom that

God had given to him, which is also good. It's also good. And yet, at the very beginning of 1 Kings chapter 3, we get thrown this line, or maybe not thrown a line, we are given a line. And that line is that David had married the daughter of Pharaoh. Now, this isn't necessarily completely proscribed, right? Not completely prohibited, but we're going to see what happens in that. We're going to see what happens because of this when it comes to marrying the daughter of Pharaoh, that this begins Solomon's expansion, essentially, when it comes to his own household and the way in which Solomon is wanting to make alliances with the nations around him

by marriage and by his marriage to many, many of the daughters of influential people around them. And this is the first time we get this sense that here is Solomon who's doing something and it's going to come around and it's not going to be good. It's not going to be helpful and he's not going to show himself to truly be wise. Now, we talked about this yesterday that, or maybe two days ago. Gosh, time flies, you guys. That here is Solomon who, yes, he is wise, but he's not necessarily good. Here is Solomon who has the wisdom to be able to discern right and wrong, but he doesn't necessarily always do the right and avoid the wrong.

And so this is one of the first chinks in his armor that we see with King Solomon. Always, we can know the right thing to do, but just knowing the right thing to do does not get us to do it. And we can believe the right things, but believing the right things doesn't always get us to the place where we do the right things. And so here we are in a place today, knowing that we need God's grace, not just to know the truth and not just to be wise, but also to choose the truth and to live in wisdom, to live in life and to choose life for ourselves and for our family members. So we need God's grace and we need prayers. So we pray for ourselves, obviously, because if we're not sustained by God's grace, then the people around us

will suffer for that. And we also pray for each other. And this community of people walking through the Bible in a year, you guys, this is a, it's a, it's a genuine community. It might be virtual, it might be online. It might just be in your ears. But I know that for everyone who's listening to this and is praying through the Bible in a year with us, it's in your hearts. It's, it's a real thing that you've committed. I mean, it's day 145 for crying out loud. This is not, this is not a fad for you anymore. This is your life right now. And these are your people. And these are your people are walking with you and praying for you. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow.

God bless. you