Dr. Manny Arango (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the Journey family. Welcome to day 165. We're gonna tackle a couple more chapters of First Kings. We're gonna start five, six, seven, and eight today. So four chapters of First Kings. Like always, if you've done the reading, then everything that I'm gonna talk about is gonna make crystal clear sense. If you haven't done the reading, then it's probably not gonna make a lot of sense. Cause you don't have context. So do the reading. Dive into 1 Kings chapter 5, 6, 7, and 8. You can pause the video, pause the audio if you need to make sure you do the reading. Because this content is not designed to replace Bible reading, but to enhance Bible reading. So do the reading. Come on back. Let me give you some context clues. Okay, this is a big question that I found that we ask a lot in academic spaces, but we don't ask in church spaces. So this may rattle your cage just a little bit, but I promise, like, there are tons of scholars. There's tons of academic scholarship surrounding the question that I'm about to ask. First Kings, chapter 5, 6, 7 and 8 is really centered around the construction of the temple. A lot of scholars pose this question, is God okay with the building of the temple? Is this something that God's for, or is this something that God's against? What's going on with the construction of the temple? And I'm gonna let the cat out of the bag, like right up at the start, I'm actually gonna argue, which is a lot of scholars are gonna argue that God is anti temple. He's anti temple. Now, this shouldn't come as that big of a shock because when David says to God, hey, I live in a house. You live in a tent. That's not good. Can I build you a house? God goes, no, I don't need a house. I don't want a house. And there's a lot of scholars who actually would contend that what David is doing is actually some political maneuvering. Because as long as God dwells in a tent, then the tent then can travel around to all the tribes. And no one tribe has a monopoly on the religion or the religious worship of Yahweh. But once the temple is In Jerusalem now, all the tribes have to travel to get to that temple. So we have to remember, at no point does God say, yeah, it's a good idea. I like that idea. I'm cool with it. And I think this is where we have to begin to ask, is there a difference between a concession or something that God has willed? Is there a difference between God saying, all right, I'll allow that, or, yes, that is my best. And as we kind of start to define wisdom, I always love to tell people that wisdom is not trying to decide between good and bad. Once you get to a certain level of spiritual maturity, you're no longer really deciding between good and bad. Wisdom, though, is necessary for deciding between good and best. And I don't think that just because God allows something that is best. A lot of times if God allows something, sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's good, but it's definitely never best. And I would say I think that God allows the building of a temple. And we'll talk about why he allows that at the end of this episode. But the building of the temple, I think that the author of Kings is actually trying to tell us that this is not good. Okay, why is it not good? So also, remember I told you that there's gonna be a scorecard for each king. So let's kind of grade Solomon so far. There's four things that Solomon's already doing. Number one, there's an Egyptian princess living in the palace. So God said, no foreign wives. There's already a foreign wife. There's a political alliance. So that no bueno. No, that's not good. We're not doing good. Number two, this is actually really, really, really, like, obscure. And I'm going to pull it up in logos because there's forced labor. Okay? Solomon has slaves. And this is not good. Why is this not good? This is not good. Because the people of Israel were slaves. So their whole brand, this is very off brand for a group of freed slaves to have slaves. Not good. And this is going to be in chapter four, chapter four, verse six. It's going to say, adoniram, son of Abda, in charge of forced labor. Do you see how I want you to see this? That the author of Kings is subtle, that once we get more and more and more through the Bible, the Bible's gonna do less telling and more showing. So it's not gonna tell us, hey, Solomon's failing. It's not gonna break the third wall in that way. It's just gonna tell you there's an Egyptian princess. And then just keep on moving with the story. And then it's gonna go. There's forced labor. And then keep on moving with the story. And if you're not a careful reader of scripture, you'll miss stuff like this. This is just half of a verse. The full verse says, this is also in the list of a bunch of names. Okay, so Azariah, son of Zadok, the priest Elohoreth. That's a hard name. In Ahijah, son of Shisha, Secretaries. Jehoshaphat, son of Ahalud, recorder. Benaiah, son of Jehoiada, commander in chief. Okay, Zadok and Abiathar, priest Azariah, son of Nathan, in charge of the district governors. Okay, so you're skipping this stuff. Typically in your Bible, you're skipping it. Don't lie. I know you're skipping it. You just see a long list of names, you skip. But guess what? The last name says the last name. Adoniram, son of Abda, in charge of forced labor. You see how the Bible doesn't make a big deal out of the fact that Solomon has slaves, but it slips that line in there so that the careful reader of Scripture starts to fill out the scorecard based on Deuteronomy, chapter 17. All right, I want you to see the other two. We've got horses and chariots. The Bible's gonna tell us that the kings are not supposed to have horses and chariots, but man, Solomon has a whole lot of them. Verse 26 of chapter four says this Solomon had 4,000 stalls for chariot horses and 12,000 horses. That's a lot of horses. That's a lot of chariots. The author's not telling you that this is good or this is bad. The author assumes that you know Deuteronomy. And if you know Deuteronomy, you can judge for yourself whether or not this is good or bad. And then the last thing is that there are still high places. Okay? So I don't want you to associate high places with the worship of Bael or Asherah. High places are worshiping Yahweh, but worshiping him in a place and in a way that he doesn't want to be worshiped. All right, with all that, let's actually move into what's going on with the temple. Couple of clues that the temple is not something God's very, very happy about. Number one, the temple is being built with forced labor. So there are slaves building a temple. Now. This is not good. This is not good. Because the whole point of the book of Exodus was for slaves to get free. So they could do what? Worship God out in the wilderness and build a tabernacle. God's goal was always a tabernacle, not a temple. Now Solomon is using slaves to build a temple. This is no bueno. Number two. If you look at one, Kings, chapter six, verse seven. Let's actually go there. So this is one of the little details. Now we're into nerdy nuggets. Okay, I gave you all the context that you need. Now let's transition into nerdy nuggets. If you get to first, Kings 6, 7, it's gonna tell us a tiny little detail in building the temple. Only blocks dressed at the quarry were used. Only blocks dressed at the quarry were used. And no hammer, chisel, or any iron tool. What are those for? Hammers, chisels and iron tools are for what? Dressing the blocks. Ok, but they were dressed where at the quarry. No hammer, chisel, or iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built. That's interesting. Well, let's go to the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. Exodus 20:25 is going to say this. If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it. So Exodus already tells us, you better not dress blocks if you use stones. So what does Deuteronomy tell us? Let's go to Deuteronomy, one more verse. Deuteronomy, chapter 27, verse 5 tells us this. Build there an altar to the Lord your God. An altar of stones. Do not use an iron tool on them. So here's what Solomon does. In order to get the temple to be as beautiful as he wants it to be, Solomon disobeys Exodus and Deuteronomy by dressing the blocks. Not at the site that the temple is being built on, but by dressing the blocks with tools that God said don't use at the quarry. So he's dressing the blocks into perfectly cubed shapes at the quarry, then bringing them to the temple site as if they were just naturally found. Like this. God says, I don't want man made beauty when you're trying to worship me. When you look at the sunset, no one looks at the sunset and goes, wow, humanity's incredible. Humanity's so impressive. When you look at the Mona Lisa, you think to yourself, wow, humans made that. When you look at the pyramids, you think, humans made that. When you look at something that is a feat of engineering, you think to yourself, Humans made that. But God says, when you come into my house, I want creation to be on full display. So do not dress blocks. Get them the way that they were naturally made and you put them together without chiseling them with a tool. Because the moment you put tools on it, you're adding your own ingenuity to it. Family, the wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an angel ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. Next thing I need you to see is that when the tabernacle is built, God dictates all the instructions for how to build the tabernacle. Who dictates the instructions for how to build the temple? Solomon. So the tabernacle God gives all the dictations for how to build it, what the measurement should be like, what this should be, what that should be. When you get to the temple, you don't get any dictation from God. You actually just get Solomon. Solomon and David are just designing this thing. And here's the. This is just the nail in the coffin. Is that all of the furnishings and all of the architecture is Phoenician and pagan. It doesn't look Jewish at all by the time Solomon is done with it. This thing is not even the dimensions of the tabernacle. I know a lot of people say in church, well, the tabernacle and the temple is really the same thing. One's just permanent and one can move around. That's not true. That's actually not true. The laver is not the same dimensions. The cherubim not the same dimensions. There's a bunch of stuff that just are not the same dimensions. So let's keep going. The temple will constantly get attacked and sacked and destroyed. I mean, multiple times. You have to rebuild the thing by the time you get to Jesus time. I Mean, this is round three on rebuilding this thing. Whereas the Tabernacle, outside of the Philistines taking the Ark of the Covenant one time, the tabernacle was never stolen, never attacked, never ransacked. And the only reason that the Philistines could take the Ark of the Covenant is because the people of Israel, by disobeying God, took the Ark of the Covenant out of the tabernacle and took it to battle when they weren't supposed to. So the temple keeps getting attacked, keeps. There seems to be no divine protection around the temple, which means. I don't think this is God's idea. This was Solomon's idea. Next, the author's gonna do something really, really, really subtle. He's gonna show us that the heart posture of David and Solomon are very different. What's the heart posture of David? David is saying this. Although he's wrong, his heart is in the right place. He says, man, it's not right that I live in a palace and God's in a tent. I want to honor God by building him a house in the middle of the temple being built. We're going to get this interesting little verse. It took seven years to build the temple. Okay, it takes seven years to build the temple. And then chapter seven, verse one. It took Solomon 13 years, however, to complete the construction of his palace. That the hard partial for David is, man, I live in a palace. God lives in a tent. I want to honor God for Solomon. He's like, I'm a build this thing and I'm going to make it beautiful. I'm going to use tools on it. It's going to be gold. It's going to be awesome. But then you wait till you see my palace. There's. The author is showing us Solomon is not living for God's glory, but his own glory. Next, the other reason why I'm like, I don't think the temple was something that's God's idea, because when you get to the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, Jesus is going to be compared to the tabernacle. Jesus is going to. It's going to. The author of Hebrews is going to say, and there's a type and shadow that the tabernacle was just a reflection, a shadow of something that was in heaven, and Jesus is the fulfillment of it. In John chapter one, the Bible is going to say that the Word was God, the Word was with God, and the Word became flesh and tabernacled amongst us. So the New Testament is gonna focus a lot on the Tabernacle as an amazing thing, something that Jesus fulfilled. But about the temple, Jesus is gonna prophesy that it's gonna be destroyed. So the temple is not just a permanent version of the tabernacle. I would actually conclude the temple is not God's ideal. He was really cool to be in a tent. Next. What does Solomon say when he's dedicating this temple? Because what Solomon says when dedicating the temple is rather fascinating. There's also some other little slight. Look, this is. I'm pretty sure this is chapter eight, First Kings, chapter eight, verse seven, the cherubim. So of course, Solomon can't make cherubim normal size. He's got to make gigantic cherubim. Okay? The cherubim spread their wings over the place of the ark and overshadowed the ark and its carrying poles, which. The ark isn't the presence of God, but the ark represents the presence of God. And you can see these glorious cherubim that Solomon made. And the Bible says they overshadow the ark of the covenant, which is man's glory overshadowing God's glory. The temple is not God's idea. At the end of this episode, when we get into our timeless truth, we're gonna talk about, so if it's not God's idea, why does God allow it? We'll get into that. Okay. Listen to what Solomon says. I have indeed built a magnificent temple for you. A place for you to dwell forever. A place for you to dwell forever. How. How prideful to think that God would dwell in houses built by human hands. This is not where God will dwell forever. This is. This is political maneuvering. Okay, let's think about it. Forever would include today. Is God dwelling in that temple that Solomon built today? No, actually, Ezekiel gets a vision that during exile, where the spirit of the Lord leaves the temple and goes out into exile with his people. Because God doesn't want to dwell in a temple. He wants to dwell amongst his people. So the temple is not. This is not a positive thing. This is not a good thing. What was good was the tabernacle. Tabernacle, Amazing. Tabernacle. Great, great, amazing job. And I think that in church spaces, we don't do enough to delineate the difference between tabernacle and temple in academic spaces. There's a clear distinction between tabernacle and temple. Most academic spaces, scholars really make a strong dividing line between the tabernacle, which is amazing, and. And the temple, which really not that good. Last thing that Solomon is going to say, praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel. This is verse 15. Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, who with his own hand has fulfilled what he promised with his own mouth to my father David. For he said, since the day I brought my people out of Egypt, I have not chosen a city in any tribe of Israel to have a temple built so that my name might be there. But I have chosen David to rule my people, Israel. God didn't say that. Solomon's quoting God. He's quoting something God never said. God never said that. But you could see how if you are from the tribe of Judah and Jerusalem is the hub of Judah and you want all the tribes to be gathered around Judah and Jerusalem, you could see how you would build a temple that can't be moved, and you would put it in a city that is your capital next to your palace. You could see why Solomon would put these words in God's mouth. But God never actually said that. We have no place in the Bible prior to this moment where God says these words. This is Solomon just putting words in God's mouth. My father David had it in his heart to build a temple for the name of the Lord, the God of Israel. But the Lord said to my father, David, you did well. Nevertheless, you're not the one to build the temple, but your son. What son was God talking about? Hmm, let's think. What else did God say in that conversation? He said, there will always be a descendant on the throne, and your son will rule. The son he was talking about was Jesus, not Solomon. Solomon interprets God's words as saying, your son will build a temple, but the son that's really going to be a temple, AKA the church, is Jesus. Jesus is actually the descendant of David, the son of David, who God was talking about, not Solomon. All right, last thing. So why in the world does God allow this temple to be built? Well, because without it, there won't be a sacrificial system. And so God relents on his perfect will and moves into his permissible will. Because without this temple, there won't be a sacrificial system. And there has to be a sacrificial system in order for people to walk in covenant faithfulness with God. And so the temple, this whole project, is humans building something that God never gave the green light on. And that's our timeless truth, because we all build stuff that God has no parts in. The sad reality is that there are a lot of people out here building a lot of things in the name of God. And God's just going, that's just not what I asked for. Like, I'm impressed, I guess. But the thing you built in my name reflects more glory on you then it reflects glory on me. And these buildings will pass away. But man, I really want to dwell with my people. And this is a classic moment of misinterpreting God. And we all misinterpret God because there's something in us that just wants to build temples. For some of us, temples look different, but there's something in us where we put glory and the buildings that we build, the stuff that we can establish. And it's no different than the Tower of Babel. The men and women who say we're going to build a tower to get to heaven so that we can make a name for ourselves, this isn't a temple for God. This is actually a new Tower of Babel. And we've got to fight that urge in us to create Towers of Babel. And as the Bible goes on and on and on, it's going to require that you understand the earlier stories so that you can interpret the later stories. Because as the Bible continues, it's not gonna say flat out whether or not this is good or bad. It's just gonna tell you the facts and you have to deduce for yourself whether or not what's happening is good or bad. All right, I'll see you tomorrow for day 166 as we continue our trek through 1 Kings tomorrow. I think we've got chapters 9, 10, and 11. I'm so proud of you for being consistent with this Bible reading plan. If you're on a streak, don't break it. If you need to start a streak, no better day like today than to start a streak. I'll see you tomorrow. I love you. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at the Bible Department and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.