The Temple of God

Good morning. Greetings in Jesus' name this morning. I think I'm notorious for having too many moving parts, so bear with me a minute while I set up here.

Thank you to you all for the ways that you've supported us over the last three weeks with meals and things like that. We really appreciate all that you've done and given to us. So thank you for that. It's really good to be here with you all in this seemingly short season.

The reality is setting in very quickly. We'll be gone next Sunday, but then we hope to be back for one more Sunday yet before we head back overseas. So it's been a really good and refreshing time to be with you all this morning or in this time. All right. So this morning for a sermon, I would like to talk about I would like to talk about buildings and then more specifically a building as we go on. But as we're thinking about that, have you ever contemplated buildings? Probably not. We don't spend a lot of time thinking about buildings unless you are unless there's something outstanding or you're personally involved in construction or something like that.

We just don't think a lot about buildings. But as I was thinking about this, an interesting thought came to mind. It was a bit of a bunny trail. But did you realize that buildings are a result of the fall?

I believe. It seems like God didn't have buildings in His original design. He had a garden that was comfortable enough without a building. But every one of us has a building or either owns or rents a building to live in. And some of us have multiples, multiple buildings.

Anybody have an idea how many square feet of indoor space there is in the United States? It's impossible to get a correct number, exact number. But it's approximately 340 billion square feet of indoor space. And that comes out to right around just under 1,000 square feet per person of indoor space. That's including houses and warehouses and all those things. And continuing on that subject, last year, there was 1,600,000 new housing units that were added in the United States. So building is quite a thing.

If I were to ask you what the most outstanding and ornate buildings in the world today are, what comes to mind? What's the first thing that comes to mind? Maybe it's religious institutions, churches, cathedrals. I want to just look at a few of those really quickly here.

St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican is considered the largest church in the world. It has 3.7 acres of indoor space and standing room for 60,000 people, 20,000 if you're seating or sitting.

I didn't do a measurement of our church, but just rough estimate, I think we have 0.08 acres of indoor space here. In contrast, this church took 120 years to build. The next one I would like to look at is Masjid al-Haram, the Great Mosque in Mecca.

It's considered the largest mosque in the world. It covers 88 acres and accommodates 3 million people. And rough estimate, it cost $100 billion over time to build. And it's still always under construction. Quite an impressive building, most expensive building in the world. The third one I want to look at here, this comes a lot closer home, this is let me see if I can say it, the Swaminarayan Akshardham Hindu Temple in New Jersey.

This took about 15 years to build and costs $100 million and sits on about a 183-acre plot. And it's home to 10,000 statues. This is not so far away. It's actually the third largest temple in the world today. So there's an incredible amount of time, energy, and resources that are put into construction and buildings and making places to store things, make things, live in, to worship in. And I guess as I look at all this construction, these buildings, I think one of the most outstanding things is the amount of time and effort and energy that goes into making buildings for God, buildings, religious buildings.

And that's where I would want to take my thought from this morning in our time together here. Is God looking for us to build large, extravagant buildings like the churches and mosques and temples that we're looking at? Is He looking for any building at all? Do mega church complexes and massive cathedrals bring God any glory?

So my title this morning is The Temple of God. And as the title suggests, God does have a dwelling place here on this earth, a place where He meets His people and shows His glory. And if it isn't physical churches and cathedrals and temples, then where is it? And how should those places look?

The first thing I'd like to look at this morning is where has God lived? Where has God dwelled throughout time, throughout history? So we're going to go way back to the garden. That was God's first dwelling place. We know He created a beautiful space in Eden. And in that space, He created image bearers. And He would come and walk with them in the cool of the day. That was His first dwelling place here on this earth. And obviously, we know what happened. Adam and Eve chose their own way. They were banished from this beautiful place, separated from dwelling with God in a place here on this earth. Moving on, many years later, we see God again establishing a place where He could live with His people here on earth.

The children of Israel had left the slavery and oppression of Egypt and went out into the wilderness. They crossed the Red Sea. And they came to the base of Mount Sinai. And there, God called Moses up on the mountain. And He told him to go down to the people and begin collecting building materials as every person felt in their heart to give or was led in their heart to give. Exodus 25:8 and 9 says, "And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst, exactly as I show you, concerning the pattern of the tabernacle and all its furniture, so you shall make it." And obviously, this is just a bit of a computer-generated rendering of that.

But there's a lot of details and instructions that God gave to them. So we have kind of an idea of what this building looked like. And we don't have time to get into that this morning. But God gave very detailed, specific instructions. And I think it was a very beautiful place. It shows that God really did care about what sort of building was made for Him to dwell in. So again, God had a house on earth. It was a tent for His presence, not in the same way as a garden, but a place where He could be among His people. Jump ahead many more years to when David, who was king over Israel, David had just brought the symbol of God's presence, the ark, back to Jerusalem.

And he put it in a tent. And one day, he had a thought that troubled him. Now, I'd like to read 1 Chronicles 17:1 to 12 really quickly here. "Now it came to pass when David was dwelling in his house that David said to Nathan the prophet, 'See, now I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of the covenant of the Lord is under tent curtains.' Then Nathan said to David, 'Do all that is in your heart, for God is with you.' But it happened that night that the word of God came to Nathan, saying, 'Go and tell my servant David, thus says the Lord, you shall not build me a house to dwell in, for I have not dwelt in a house since the time that I brought up Israel, even to this day, but have gone from tent to tent and from one tabernacle to another.

Wherever I have moved about with Israel, have I ever spoken a word to any of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people, saying, 'Why have you not built me a house of cedar?' Now therefore, thus shall you say to my servant David, thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the sheepfold, from following sheep, to be a ruler over my people Israel. And I have been with you wherever you have gone, and have cut off all your enemies from before you, and have made your name made you a name like the name of the great men who are on earth. Moreover, I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own and move no more, nor shall the sons of wickedness oppress them anymore as previously.

Since the time that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel, also, I will subdue all your enemies. Furthermore, I tell you that the Lord will build you a house, and it shall be, when your days are fulfilled, when you must go to be with your fathers, that I will set up your seed after you, who will be of your sons, and I will establish your His kingdom. He shall build me a house, and I will establish His throne forever."

So David had the thought about how unfair it was that he lived in a house of cedar and God had a tent. And so he was going to build a house. But God spoke to him through Nathan the prophet and said, "No, you just wait. You're a man of war. You're busy. You don't have peace at the moment.

Your son will take care of this." And we see then in 1 Kings 5, Solomon said that he took on that responsibility, that building project himself, and went ahead and built the temple. And as we know, this temple of God that was built was incredibly extravagant. And the project was amazing and beyond probably anything of the day. And I want to come back to that temple at the end of our time here and just take a look at that. But I have a question for one of the older children right now. Does God still live in a temple in Jerusalem? And do people go there every year to make sacrifices?

Who can tell me? Does God still live in that temple in Jerusalem that Solomon built?

Do you know Cade? No. No, God's not there. God is in Jerusalem, of course. God is everywhere. But He does not have a specific house as He did when Solomon built it. So if it's not there, then where is it? Remember what Jesus said when He met the Samaritan woman at the well? John 4:19 to 23 says, "The woman said to Him, 'Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain. And You, Jews, say that in Jerusalem is a place where one ought to worship.' Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe Me. The hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you do not know.

We know what we worship. For salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship Him.'" So here in this account, we see Jesus as God dwelling on earth, Jesus Emmanuel, God with us. So in this time, God was on earth through Jesus. And Jesus is telling the Samaritan lady that the time is coming when they would no longer need to go to Jerusalem.

But rather, they would meet God where they are. So the question is, if God's specific place isn't at Jerusalem, then where is it now? And I see that I missed a picture. I just wanted to put up another rendering of the temple that Solomon built there in Jerusalem.

So in 1 Corinthians 3:16 and 17, we have Paul here talking to the church at Corinth. And he says this, "Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are."

So here, Paul is saying, "OK, so the temple is no longer this building. But rather, it is you." And he's speaking to the church. He says, "You as a church are the temple of God." And just a few chapters later in 1 Corinthians 6:19, Paul says this, "Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own. You were bought at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." So here we see Paul saying that the temple of God is now in the church. It is the church. And it's also us personally.

We are God's dwelling place. Have you ever taken the time to think about what this means, that you are God's house, you are God's temple? Think about what we've talked about, the time, effort, and millions of dollars that have been poured into building churches and other places of worship to God throughout history. No cost has been spared. Think of just I didn't get an estimate of what St. Peter's Basilica costs. But I can only imagine how incredibly expensive. And some of these places were under construction for tens or even hundreds of years to make that. Think about the detailed instructions that God gave for the tabernacle and how He gave the dimensions and which fabric should be used where, very specific, just a lot of attention to detail.

And then think about the effort that Solomon went to to build this temple in Jerusalem. Now, I want you to think about the constant focus, effort, and time that we personally and the church of God are going to today to make a suitable house for God, or are we?

How much effort are we putting into making sure that God has a suitable house, a place where He can live? God says that His temple is holy. And if anyone defiles it, God will destroy them. And that's a serious thought. So my main point this morning is, what kind of a temple are we presenting to God to live in? And is it suitable for Him? There's a lot of temples on this earth today that have been built to false gods.

And I'm going to take us on a bit of a trip this morning to see some of those temples. And I want us to compare ourselves to what we're seeing and hearing in these temples to make sure that we're not corrupting God's temple as these temples have been corrupted.

Satan is constantly trying to lead us astray and turn us into temples that aren't suitable for God to live in. So with that in mind, I'm going to call this so I have four temples here that we're going to be visiting. And I'm going to call this the shiny temple.

This is a temple I visited in Chiang Mai, Thailand, a number of years ago. And this temple looks pretty good. It's got quite an impressive roof there, peaked roof. It's got gold everywhere. It's got those large pillars. It's got landscaping. And you can tell that there's a lot of time and energy put into keeping this place glittering.

But we look at this, and we say, "It's all show. The power of God is not there." I'm not sure if I mentioned, but this is a Buddhist temple. "The power of God is not there. There's nothing there. It's just a shell." And then we go inside, and we see much more glitter. Sorry if some of you in the back might not be able to see it well. But basically, it's gold. Everywhere you look is gold and ornate decorations. There's a huge Buddha up there in the front.

So a big, shiny, glittering, good-looking temple, does that sound familiar at all to us? Are we tempted to be that kind of a temple for God? Is the church that kind of temple for God? Everything looks right about it. But in the end, it's just simply show. I think as we look around at Christianity today, that is probably the most common temple that we see for God that people are offering to God. And I know from personal experience, that's the kind of temple that Satan tempts me to be, to look right. I do the right things. I go to church two to three times a week. I pray a little bit every day. I read a little bit in the Bible.

I give my offering. And the list goes on. And we might look and sound like a good temple of God, a good Christian. But does it go beyond that? Is it just show and glitter and glitz?

The rubber meets the road when God comes to that temple and says, "Can I be the keeper? Can I rearrange some things?" And are we going to let Him do that, let Him come in and make the adjustments that need to be? Are we just going to hang on to that shiny temple that's nice and convenient and makes us feel good? Matthew 15, Jesus was talking to the scribes and Pharisees. And these were good-looking religious men who did all the right things. They taught the right things. And what did Jesus say about them? "Their traditions and habits have become their faith." Jesus said that these are hypocrites. They're blind leaders leading blind followers. And they're deceivers.

He said in verse 8 and 9, "These people draw near to Me with their mouth and honor Me with their lips. But their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men." And then further down in Matthew 7, Jesus talks about another kind of people who have shiny Christian lives. They have shiny temples.

But in the end, God will say, "I never knew you." Matthew 7:21 to 23, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven. But he who does the will of My Father in heaven, many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I would declare to them, 'I never knew you. Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'" So here we have people who were doing all sorts of good things. They were casting out demons. They were prophesying. They were doing wonders. But it was just show in the end.

The temples looked good. But God wasn't living in them, apparently.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, "Take heed or beware that you do not do your good deeds and practice your righteousness in front of men to be noticed by them. If we do that, we have no reward from our Father, which is in heaven."

And in 2 Corinthians 13, Paul says to the Corinthians, "Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless indeed you are disqualified, make sure that you are in the faith and Christ can live among you."

So this is quite a serious thing. God said that if we are His people, that we are His temple. We are His place of dwelling. But He's looking for a true temple, not one that's just shiny on the outside and looks good and is appealing to the eye. He's looking for substance. And if we're offering God just this shiny temple, He's not going to be able to live there. It's going to be a defiled temple. Because for Him to live in a temple, to come to a temple like that, would be a mockery of His power.

We need to do more than look like temples. We need to actually be temples for God, a place for God to live. The second one I want to look at this morning, I'm going to call this the full temple.

This is a Buddhist temple in Tibetan, China, Western China. And as we entered this building, we could just feel a sense of darkness and evil. And I remember standing out on this balcony in front and just looking down over the town and realizing that everyone, almost everyone, as far as we knew, for hundreds of miles around, had no knowledge of Jesus.

They were living in darkness. It was a very superstitious part of the world. And people were just in bondage. And the main thing I want to notice about this temple is the sheer amount of idols. And I know it's a little hard. But you see the floor at the bottom.

And I don't remember how high the ceiling was. But it was stacked tens of feet high with idols, with images. And many of them were very grotesque looking.

And there was something new and strange around every corner, as you can see in this many-armed image here.

So I'm calling this the full temple because there was no place for God to live there. Of course, God has the power to enter any place. And we had a great experience there that showed that God was in that place as well. And I can tell you that some other time. But God cannot live in a place that is full of other gods, full of other things that compete for His attention. In Isaiah 42:8, God says, "I am the Lord. That is My name. And My glory I will not give to another, nor My praise to carved images."

So here it says, God cannot and will not share His glory. So as we think about the full temple, I want to think about, how is our temple that we're offering to God to live in? Is it clear, clean? Is there space for God? Or are we making it full? God will not be able to live in us if He has to share the space with other things. So have we emptied our temples? Or do we think that God's OK with just living with the things that we hold dear as well? And what are some things that we might try to worship in our temples at the same time that we hope that God can come in and live in us as well?

And some of the things that come to mind, sure, there's many more. But money, power, sports, prestige, entertainment, love of the world's ideas. We've been talking about some of these things already this morning. Social media, media in general, that's one thing I struggle with myself, just the amount of media. I love reading news and just hearing what all is going on in the world. But it can become an idol. It can become something that distracts, takes away from God. Anything that we devote more attention to than God ends up being something, or it can become something that God cannot live with. It's something in the way. There's something in the temple.

And Satan's always offering us new things to put in our temples. And then he feeds the lie that God's going to be fine with you having other rooms in His temple to worship those things. That'll be fine. I think last week, it was pretty clear at Charlie Kirk's memorial how the church today is worshiping earthly power and politics right along with God. I've read that the same crowd stood and clapped and cheered when his widow offered her forgiveness to the shooter. And just minutes later, the same crowd stood and clapped and cheered when the president said that, "I hate my enemies. And we will bring them to justice." So we see there's that mixing of things.

And I'm just amazed these days what people will bring into their lives to fill the void when God is not there. Apparently, right now, there's this little ugly doll that has some sort of creature. It comes from some TV show. It has fangs, I think, and big, grotesque eyes. And it's become a status symbol. Even the rich and the famous are clipping this little doll on their designer bags. And just things like that that people will bring in.

We're not going that far, I trust. But just being an exaggerated example of, we are willing to bring in some pretty strange things sometimes into our temples. And God cannot dwell with those things. 1 John 2:15 and 16 says, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world."

So we are God's temple. But if He finds a full temple, a place where He has to share with others, He can't dwell there. He'll have to turn away. And we don't normally play video clips here. But I would like to just take you really quickly into a religious ceremony that we walked into in Western China, a Buddhist religious ceremony, to just emphasize the point. And as we walked in there, it just gave me the shivers to hear the sounds of obeisance being made to strange and false gods.

And I'm going to suppose that maybe this is something like God hears when He comes to someone who He's created to be His temple, and He finds it occupied with other gods already.

2 Corinthians 6:16 says, "In what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God." And is that what God hears when He comes to our lives? And He sees there's other things. The noise of the world is there. And that was just sobering to me to think about that. The third temple I would like to look at this morning is the dirty temple.

And this is a Hindu temple in Kathmandu, Nepal. The name is Pashuptanath Temple. It's a huge complex there in the center of the city. And if you would be able to look really closely, you would see that the ground is just littered with junk and dirt and red dye and powder and paste and rice. And the list goes on. It's just an incredibly dirty place. And even the people themselves are painting themselves up.

When somebody dies in the Hindu belief system, they bring their bodies within 24 hours to this temple. And on these platforms, they cremate the body. And then they take those ashes, and they push them into the river. And people will wash themselves in the river. They'll drink that water.

It's just incredibly dirty there. And as we stood looking over this temple, too, it just broke our hearts to see the deception and the bondage that was happening there. And they have millions of gods to please. You can tell Satan is literally dragging them through the dirt.

Even the bugs crawling on you could be your ancestors. And so you don't want to risk killing one of them.

And so these people and their priests have just allowed themselves to be drugged through the dirt, the spiritual dirt. And just like this dirty temple that we see here and in India and places like that, Satan is tempting us to dirty our temples as well.

And just as with a shiny shell of a temple or a full temple, God can't live in a dirty temple either. Remember what Jesus did when He came to the temple in Jerusalem and found the money changers and people doing business there, thievery? He says, "Then He went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold. And it sang to them, 'It is written, My house is a house of prayer. But you have made it a den of thieves.'" God is just as jealous of us as His temple as He was of that temple in Jerusalem.

So I just want to take a little look at some of the dirt that God cannot tolerate or live with in our temples as well. So it's clear that God that's just another picture of the temple there in Nepal.

God cannot tolerate the works of the flesh. That's dirt in His temple. Galatians 5:19 to 21, "Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like, of which I tell you beforehand, just as I told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." And then in 2 Timothy, "But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.

And from such people turn away." And if you're like me when you read this list, it's easy to focus on the big sins and overlook the things that come a little closer home, maybe. For example, we see things like adultery and fornication, idolatry, sorcery, lewdness, hatred, murders, drunkenness, being unholy, being brutal. And we agree, of course, these things can't be tolerated in somebody that God created to be His temple.

That's a no-brainer. But what is sobering to me is that that's just a few of the things that God has mentioned here in these passages that are read. What about contentions? What about jealousy? What about just a few selfish ambitions? What about a little bit of anger as necessary, or allowing ourselves a little love for money? What about being unthankful? That can't be that bad, can it?

Being headstrong, loving pleasure rather than loving God, these are more things in that same list that God considers to be dirt in His temple.

It's pretty easy for us to use our own judgment and allow some of these things in our lives. Think about all the contentions and divisions and splitting that we hear about in the churches today. Is that OK? Are we ever tempted to be contentious? What about loving pleasure more than loving God? What if we would invest as much time and energy and money into the kingdom, into kingdom projects, as we do into our hobbies and vacation?

You know, it's interesting how these days there's kind of a buzzword to self-care, taking care of yourself. If you want to really serve God well, you need to take good care of yourself. And that means expensive vacations and good food, fancy food. And I think I especially think about this because it's quite, I think, rampant among the expat community and people serving overseas. You know, we do this. And so probably we should be having our self-care time here and going to nice places.

But at what point are we loving pleasure more than loving God, or loving the world's ideas more than loving God? There's a lot more we could talk about. But my challenge is to get Christ's perspective of what makes a dirty temple that He's unable to live in, to dwell in. Isaiah's words to Judah were fitting for us as well. "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. We are not our own. We are purchased property for God's use, for Him to live in. And we need to consult Him about what we bring into His house." Recently, I signed a new rental contract there in Jordan.

And it was pretty clear on that piece of paper that if I mess things up, I fix it up. And it's not my house. I'm just living in it temporarily.

And the fourth and last temple that I would like to look at this morning is the empty temple. This was another Buddhist temple in Vietnam. And I'm not going to say a lot about this one. But what we saw when we visited this temple has stuck with me ever since that time. People were coming into this temple. And they were going to the idols and doing their little prayers and sprinkling water on the gods. And then they would come to this concrete or stone box in the center of the temple. And they would lean up against it. And I suppose they were praying. But the futility of their prayers just struck me. There was no power or presence of God there.

It was just cold, hard concrete. These people came in with discouragement and fear. And they left with discouragement and fear.

And as I think about this temple, I have to think about the temple that we might be offering to God or to others if we're living a spiritually weak or disconnected life. And this is a real challenge to me. How much time am I putting into staying connected to God and having that vibrant and open place where God can live and other people can see God there and meet God there in my temple?

And are people coming to us for answers, for hope? And they find there's nothing there. There's no power. There's no warmth. There's no connection. There's no clear answers. Or maybe we even isolate ourselves from people who would be interested in meeting with God. Are we an empty temple? Maybe there's a form of godliness, like we read. But there's no power there. Jesus calls us the salt and light of the earth and reminds us that if we're tasteless or if we're hidden, then it's worthless. So in order not to be this empty temple of cold, hard concrete, we need to stay connected to the vine so that there is life and substance. That when people approach us, they find more than a cold, empty box.

But they find a temple of God where God is living, where they can meet God. God is interested in working through lives that are on fire for Him, not lukewarm, half-hearted efforts. In Revelations, God's words to the church at Laodicea, "Where I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So then, because you're lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth." Seems like they had become wealthy and self-sufficient and disconnected from God. And I find, too, that if we're not intentional in our pursuit of God, then the busyness of life, the comfort, and self-sufficiency will come in. And they'll distract.

And they'll gut us spiritually. And we can easily become a hollowed-out temple that God isn't living in and cannot live in. So I know I started out on a pretty negative note or continued on a pretty negative note.

And so to end here, we've looked at a number of temples here and compared to the negative things. But to end here, I would like to take a little more of a positive note. So my question now is, as we, as the church, as God's temple, and personally as God's temple, what sort of effort are we putting into making a beautiful and suitable place for the God of the universe to come and live in? And I want to read the account of Solomon building the temple in Jerusalem.

And I want to notice the time and care and effort that he put into that project, attention to detail. And I want to draw a sense of inspiration and maybe a sense of reverence from that as we, as the church, and personally as we make a temple for God to live in. So I would like to read 1 Kings, starting in 5, chapter 5, verse 13, through chapter 6.

"Then King Solomon raised up a labor force out of all Israel, and the labor force was 30,000 men. And he sent them to Lebanon, 10,000 a month in shifts. They were one month in Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of the labor force.

Solomon had 70,000 who carried burdens and 80,000 who quarried stones in the mountains, besides 3,300 from the chiefs of Solomon's deputies who supervised the people who labored in the work. And the king commanded them to quarry large stones, costly stones, and hewn stones to lay the foundation of the temple. So Solomon's builders, Hiram's builders, and the Gibeonites quarried them. And they prepared timber and stones to build the temple." So here we see just the incredible amount of people that are working on this project. And now, as we read chapter 6, I want you to think about the detail and extravagance of this building. "And it came to pass in the 480th year after the children of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Zev, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord.

Now, the house which King Solomon built for the Lord, its length was 60 cubits, its width 20, and its height 30." So right away here, we start to see a pattern: 60, 20, and 30. "The vestibule in front of the sanctuary of the house was 20 cubits across the width of the house. And the width of the vestibule extended 10 cubits from the front of the house. And he made for the house windows with beveled frames. Against the wall of the temple, he built chambers all around, against the walls of the temple, all around the sanctuary and the inner sanctuary. Thus he made the side chambers all around it. The lowest chamber was five cubits wide.

The middle was six cubits wide. And the third was seven cubits wide. For he made narrow ledges around the outside of the temple so that the support beams would not be fastened into the walls of the temple. And the temple, when it was being built, was built with stones finished at the quarry so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built.

The doorway for the middle story was on the right side of the temple. They went up by stairs to the middle story and from the middle to the third. So he built the temple and finished it. And he paneled the temple with beams and boards of cedar. And he built side chambers against the entire temple, each five cubits high. They were attached to the temple with cedar beams.

Then the word of the Lord came to Solomon, saying, "Concerning this temple which you are building, if you walk in My statues and execute My judgments, keep all My commandments, and walk in them, then I will perform My word with you, which I spoke to your father David. And I will dwell among the children of Israel and will not forsake My people Israel."

So Solomon built the temple and finished it. And he built the inside walls of the temple with cedar boards from the floor of the temple to the ceiling. He paneled the inside with wood. And he covered the floor of the temple with planks of cypress. Then he built the 20-cubit room at the rear of the temple from floor to ceiling with cedar boards. He built it inside the inner sanctuary, the most high place. And in front of it, the temple sanctuary was 40 cubits long. The inside of the temple was cedar, carved with ornamental buds and open flowers. All was cedar. And there were no stones to be seen.

And he prepared the inner sanctuary inside the temple to set the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord there. The inner sanctuary was 20 cubits long, 20 cubits wide, and 20 cubits high. He overlaid it with pure gold and overlaid the altar of cedar.

So Solomon overlaid the inside of the temple with pure gold. He stretched gold chains across the front of the inner sanctuary and overlaid it with gold. The whole temple he overlaid with gold until he had finished all the temple. Also, he overlaid with gold the entire altar that was by the inner sanctuary. Inside the inner sanctuary, he made two cherubim of olive wood, each 10 cubits high. One wing of the cherub was five cubits. And the other wing of the cherub, five cubits, 10 cubits from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other. And the other cherub was 10 cubits. Both cherubim were the same size and shape. The height of one cherub was 10 cubits.

And the other and so was the other cherub. Then he set the cherubim inside the inner room. And they stretched out the wings of the cherubim so that the wing of the one touched the one wall and the wing of the other cherub touched the other wall. And their wings touched each other in the middle of the room.

Also, he overlaid the cherubim with gold. Afterthought there. "Then he carved all the walls of the temple all around, both the inner and outer sanctuaries, with carved figures of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers. And the floor of the temple he overlaid with gold, both inner and outer sanctuaries. For the entrance of the inner sanctuary, he made doors of olive wood. The lintels and the doorposts were one-fifth of the wall. The two doors were olive wood. And he carved on them figures of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers and overlaid them with gold. And he spread gold on the cherubim and on the palm trees. So for the door of the sanctuary, he also made doorposts of olive wood, one-fourth of the wall.

And two doors were of cypress wood, two panels comprised one folding door and two panels comprised the other folding door. Then he carved cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers on them and overlaid them with gold applied evenly on the carved work. And he built the inner court with three rows of hewn stone and a row of cedar beams. In the fourth year, the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid in the month of Zev. And in the eleventh year, in the month of Bull, which is the eighth month, so the house was finished and all of its details and according to all its plans. So he was seven years in building it." I know that's a lot to follow along with.

And you can sort of glaze over after a bit. But the amount of detail and extravagance and time and effort is just incredible to me. And just a few of the things that I see as we go through this account is planning. There was a lot of planning that went into this. He was talking with neighboring kings and seeing how he could source the materials that were needed for this project. There was preparation. He put thought into how to accomplish a construction in an efficient manner and reverent manner as well. He hired workers.

There was the effort. If I did my math right, there were 183,000 men that were working on this project. We think sometimes that a crew of 10 or 12 might be getting a little out of hand if we're trying to oversee them. Order. He had overseers and a plan to keep his men from working. He was going to send a group of men and then bring them back and send another group of men. There was discipline and dedication. We see that he kept at this for seven years. I'll admit that I have a pretty short attention span. And I don't know, working with olive wood and overlaying it with gold for a month or two, I would be done.

But Solomon just kept on. This was being done for God. This was God's house. Detail. We see lots of exact measurements. There were carvings. There were folding doors. There was a 30-foot—I think it came into about a 30-foot cube. There were bevels everywhere. Sorry. I think what I wanted to say is the inner sanctuary was a 30-foot cube. We see bevels everywhere.

Extravagance, the size of it. It was overlaid with cedar and gold. And I was very interested in what a place like this would cost as well. And there's no—I mean, comparing from that time to this time, you really can't come up with something exact. But estimates are $149 billion, if you would translate what he did to today. $149 billion.

And reverence says the stones were cut off-site. So there's no sound of hammer and chisels on-site. What's amazing to me is Solomon's—how he perceived God. He did this amazing project. And I think most of us would probably stand back and say, "Well, God's really going to like this. I've just put seven years of my life and all this extravagance into it. God is just really going to love this." But what did Solomon do? After he had done all this work, he stepped back. And he said, "But will God indeed dwell on earth? Behold, heaven and the heavens of heavens and the heaven of heavens cannot continue. How much less this temple which I have built?"

Basically, in the end of all of this, he stepped back and said, "What is this? What is this for God?" And he recognized that it just wasn't enough for God. And what I want us—the thought I want us to end on is that this same God is wanting to dwell in us through His Spirit.