Dedicating our Church Building to the Glory of God!

“But will God really dwell on earth with men? The heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built! “ - 2 Chronicles 6:18

The key points from the dedication of the Temple. Having a right view of God - He does not dwell in temples, or church buildings like this for that matter in the sense that he is not restricted or contained by them ormdependent upo them to function. God is...

OMNIPRESENT, everywhere at the same time

OMNIPOTENT, all powerful

OMNISCIENT, He knows all things

OMNIBENEVOLENT, He loves you inspite of what is known about you!

However God does come to dwell with us in buildings - and that is why we are excited about this one!

Just as Solomon and the priests experienced the felt-presence of God so can we in a very powerful and very tangible way!

This is why God allowed Solomon to build a “magnificent temple for you, a place for you to dwell forever.” (6:1) but not because He needed it but because humans did!

And what the people got, which was much better and more awesome than this temple building was the felt, tengible presence of God! - “Then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God. “(2 Chron 5:13-14).

And this is not something just in the past! - God still dwells among men - that is why the Incarnation of Jesus is so significant! So powerful! God with us! As John Henry Newman said, so poetically: “I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: "Go down again - I dwell among the people.”― John Henry Newman

“Nothing in or of this world measures up to the simple pleasure of experiencing the presence of God.” - Aiden Wilson Tozer

Key points:

God keeps His promises - You can trust Him! - vs 16,17.

It is estimated that there are around 7000 promises of God in the Bible, such as

God sees and is aware of EVERYTHING you go through.

God CARES about EVERYTHING you go through.

God grieves when you hurt.

God loves you UNCONDITIONALLY.

God will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5)

Not one of His good promises towards His people will fail which is why twice in this passage we read the quatation from the Psalms, “He is good, His love ensures forever.”(5:14;7:3)

The quotation from the Psalms (vPsa 136 - 6:13b) encapsulates in a sentence what the entire temple project was about, that over the years since God’s first promise to David as recounted in 16:4-11 (see 1 Chr. 17:12), God’s faithful love (Heb. ḥesed) had ensured the 7 year building project was a success.

Underlying the temple was the person of God: He is good.

That is why he responds to Israel’s worship with what later Jews called the shekinah glory (vv. 13c–14). We read that “the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God.”

Both in the case of the cloud and the glory filling the temple, the associations with Moses are very close (see Exod. 40:34–35). Clouds are a particularly rich biblical symbol of God’s presence (e.g. Exod. 13:21–22; Dan. 7:13; Acts 1:9), emphasizing his mystery and majesty. Note chapter 7:1-3 “When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. The priests could not enter the temple of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it. When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the Lord above the temple, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, “He is good; his love endures forever.”

The temple could never belong to humankind, not even to priests who, though they had sanctified themselves, now found it quite impossible to carry out any of their prescribed tasks.

God is good. He keeps His promises - “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven or on earth—you who keep your covenant of love with your servants who continue wholeheartedly in your way. You have kept your promise to your servant David my father; with your mouth you have promised and with your hand you have fulfilled it—as it is today. “Now Lord, God of Israel, keep for your servant David my father the promises you made to him when you said, ‘You shall never fail to have a man to sit before me on the throne of Israel, if only your sons are careful in all they do to walk before me according to my law, as you have done.’ 17 And now, O Lord, God of Israel, let your word that you promised your servant David come true.”(vs14-17).

Think of what I told you about Marilyn! Mocked and ridiculed as she was for wearing her God keeps His promises - “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

God makes promises to you, “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever beleives in Him shall not perish but shall have eternal life.”(John 3:16).

If you beleive and trust you will be saved. That’s good news!

God keeps His promises - You can trust Him!

2. God loves us to pray - You can tell Him anything! - vs 19-40.

There is a connection between the promises of God and prayer. As C.H Spurgeon pointed out: “The best praying man is the man who is most believingly familiar with the promises of God. After all, prayer is nothing but taking God’s promises to him, and saying to him, “Do as thou hast said.” Prayer is the promise utilized. A prayer which is not based on a promise has no true foundation.”― Encouraged to Pray: Classic Sermons on Prayer

God loves you. You can tell Him anything!

Paul Miller said: “Prayer is a moment of incarnation - God with us. God involved in the details of my life.”― A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World.

That the wonderful thing about prayer, you can talk to God about all the details of your life. You can tell him anything you want to!

Solomon is concerned that the temple should be “a house of prayer” - “May your eyes be open toward this temple day and night, this place of which you said you would put your Name there. May you hear the prayer your servant prays toward this place. Hear the supplications of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Hear from heaven, your dwelling place; and when you hear, forgive.”(6:20-21).

Solomon wants people to know that God not only hears prayer but answers it also! - 6:40 “Now, my God, may your eyes be open and your ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place.

He also wants God to be merciful when people pray to him - “Hear from heaven, your dwelling place; and when you hear, forgive.”(6:21). Then again when Israel us defeated by enemies due to their unfaithfulness to the Lord as in v24 “When your people Israel have been defeated by an enemy because they have sinned against you and when they turn back and confess your name, praying and making supplication before you in this temple, then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your people Israel and bring them back to the land you gave to them and their fathers.” Or when there is famine in the land due to a lack of rain, because of Israel’s unfaithfulness as expressed in 6:26-27 “When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because your people have sinned against you, and when they pray toward this place and confess your name and turn from their sin because you have afflicted them, 27 then hear from heaven and forgive the sin of your servants, your people Israel. Teach them the right way to live, and send rain on the land you gave your people for an inheritance. “When famine or plague comes to the land, or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers, or when enemies besiege them in any of their cities, whatever disaster or disease may come,..”

He also wants God to act against injustice - “When a man wrongs his neighbor and is required to take an oath and he comes and swears the oath before your altar in this temple, then hear from heaven and act. Judge between your servants, repaying the guilty by bringing down on his own head what he has done. Declare the innocent not guilty and so establish his innocence.” (6:22-23).

He also wants people to bring all of their needs and problems to God - “...and when a prayer or plea is made by any of your people Israel—each one aware of his afflictions and pains, and spreading out his hands toward this temple— then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Forgive, and deal with each man according to all he does, since you know his heart (for you alone know the hearts of men), so that they will fear you and walk in your ways all the time they live in the land you gave our fathers.”(6:29-31)

He also wants people from all over the world to encoutner God in the temple - 6:32-33 “As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm—when he comes and prays toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name.”

He also wants God to restore Israel to their land when they repent ad return to him - 6:34 -39 “When your people go to war against their enemies, wherever you send them, and when they pray to you toward this city you have chosen and the temple I have built for your Name, then hear from heaven their prayer and their plea, and uphold their cause. “When they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin—and you become angry with them and give them over to the enemy, who takes them captive to a land far away or near; and if they have a change of heart in the land where they are held captive, and repent and plead with you in the land of their captivity and say, ‘We have sinned, we have done wrong and acted wickedly’; and if they turn back to you with all their heart and soul in the land of their captivity where they were taken, and pray toward the land you gave their fathers, toward the city you have chosen and toward the temple I have built for your Name; then from heaven, your dwelling place, hear their prayer and their pleas, and uphold their cause. And forgive your people, who have sinned against you.”

And just to emphasize the fact that God is both a prayer hearing and prayer answering God, chapter 7:11-12 says, “When Solomon had finished the temple of the Lord and the royal palace, and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the Lord and in his own palace, the Lord appeared to him at night and said: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices.”

This is reinforced in 7:15-16 “Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there."

God loves us to pray - You can tell Him anything!

But you don’t know anything about me; you don’t know how bad I have been; the things I had said and done!

Solomon says, “there is no one who does not sin” - We “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”(Rom 3:23).

But there is a solution and answer in Jesus Christ our sin-bearer and substitute, who died in our place an forgives us our sin by making atonement upon the cross.

And He calls us to be in relationship with Him and to become like Him, teaching us to pray, saying “Our Father in Heaven…forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”(Matthew 6).

We as WCF practice being with Jesus in community. Walking together with Him and with one another in faith and love.

Jesus is our Lord and Saviour but He is also our friend and brother and we want to become familiar with him in froiendship and companionship along the way. As Brother Lawrence said: “The most holy and necessary practice in our spiritual life is the presence of God. That means finding constant pleasure in His divine company, speaking humbly and lovingly with him in all seasons, at every moment, without limiting the conversation in any way.

3. God calls us into Relationship - You can be in His Family - 2 Chron 7:12—22

God’s relationship to Israel was a covenantal one -

A covenant is an agreement and in this case, God has set the terms of the covenant and promised the people that if they obeyed the covenant all would go well with them but if they disobeyed the terms of the coventnat they would be be cursed.

God appears to Solomon at night and makes a covenantal promise with him along the terms given to the nation but of course the coventantal terms are so very demanding because as we have seen “there is no one who does not sin”— (see 7:17-22).

What then? Was the breaking of the covenantal terms the end of all hope? What hope is there for them and us is there when we inevitably fail to keep the terms of the covenant.

7:14 gives the answer: “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

There is always hope when God calls us into relationship. He knows we are sinners and He knows that we will mess up again and again but he offers us way back!

“There’s a way back to God through the dark paths of sin;

Therre’s a door that is open and you may go in.

On Calvary’s cross, is where yoyu begin,

When you come as a sinner to Jesus.”

The cross is where you begin this relationship, into a “new covenant” in the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, that we commemorate in holy communion:

but it is not a once only thing - 1 John 1:9-2:2 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Our daily relationship with our Lord is maintained by our daily confession of sin and daily receiving teh forgiveness of our transgressions! That is why the Lord’s prayer is a daly prayer!

We are called to be in community as a family. Today in this building we rededicate outselves to building a community in which we are committed to:

Being with Jesus;

Becoming like Jesus

Doing what Jesus did!

We are part of His Kingdom, living as salt and light in this world seeking to work with God, calling people into the Kingdom of God through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus.

God is hear and He calls upon us to hear, “repent and believe” the good news of salvation through Jesus.

Become a part of our community here.

God let this be a place where you ar encountered; where people discoer that you keep your promises; hear and answer our prayers and long for us to walk in a close relationship with Jesus in community together.