Well, apparently I am off to a late start today….I’ll blog later this morning on the passage. Enjoy your day!
Solomon’s Temple could be the final resting place for the Ark of the Covenant. Some believe it is still on the site today, buried beneath the temple mount. Others believe it was taken away before the city fell, and hidden in some foreign country. I suppose it’s possible that the people hid it before the Babylonians came and ransacked the city. It disappears from the pages of history about that time, and it never reappears..
In fact, if you read Jeremiah 3:16 it says “16 “And when your land is once more filled with people,” says the Lord, “you will no longer wish for ‘the good old days’ when you possessed the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant. You will not miss those days or even remember them, and there will be no need to rebuild the Ark.”
If God told Jeremiah “there will be no need to rebuild the Ark” it makes it sound like it was either disassembled, or taken away never to be returned. Of course, the greater point is that we don’t need the Ark anymore, these days the Holy Spirit inhabits his people individually instead of living only in the Ark.
I was wondering as I read this where exactly the Ark had been kept recently. I remember David sending for it, from the town of Kirjath-jearm when it had apparently been stored at a farmer’s barn. David recognized that the farmer was unusually blessed, and was motivated by that circumstance and his love for God to bring the Ark into Jerusalem. When it arrived in Jerusalem, David apparently housed it on the highest point in the old city, a slight hilltop called mount zion. Calling Zion a mountain is really a stretch, it’s simply the highest point in the area. As the city grew and encompassed a larger area, another place became the “highest” place in town, Mount Moriah. David identified this hilltop as the one where the temple would be constructed, and that’s exactly what Solomon did.
Moving on: When I first read through Solomon’s prayer I was a little uneasy about the number of times he said “the temple I built”. That led me to be uncomfortable about the whole “turn toward the temple and pray” idea as well. But we have to remember that in his day, this is where God lived. The idea that God was everywhere was foreign to them, and so was the concept of God loving everyone. God was the ruler of the Israelites, and anyone who wanted to serve Him would have to adhere to all the laws handed down by God through Moses. All of that to say, at this point I believe Solomon’s heart is right before the Lord, and his intent is pure.
When you and I run into problems, we are encouraged to “look up”. Psalm 121 says “Where does my help come from? my help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth”. Just like our friend Solomon, or any of the Israelites we need to turn our face expectantly toward Jesus and with humble hearts request his help when the problems are too big for us to handle. In fact, why wait? Ask for help immediately, and maybe they won’t ever get to that size.
Faithfully,
PR