1 Kings 6:1-13: ‘Unless the Lord builds the house…’

Introduction:

As we look at the start of the building process, in among all the building details the text points us to the most important part of this building venture, the blessing of God.  The portion we are looking at begins with the details of the exterior of the temple, but God interrupts the building process with a very important message in v11-13, ‘Now the word of the LORD came to Solomon,12 “Concerning this house that you are building, if you will walk in my statutes and obey my rules and keep all my commandments and walk in them, then I will establish my word with you, which I spoke to David your father.13 And I will dwell among the children of Israel and will not forsake my people Israel.”’  Solomon is credited with writing two of the psalms, though he may have written more, and psalm 127 is one of those.  It is a famous psalm which seems to flow from the emphasis in this chapter, v1, ‘Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.  Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.’  So as we kick off the section which looks at the temple being built we want to take note of the most important part of this process, the blessing of God.

Sifting through these sorts of details is very hard for our generation, we don’t have the temple in front of us, we get lost in the detail, and fail to appreciate the significance of it.  Every part of the temple is indeed significant and we will explore the various parts of the temple in future messages but today we want to note the faithfulness of God in bringing them to this point, the reverence with which the building process was managed, and finally and most importantly we want to look at the message from God which interrupts this most important building project.