Ted Lee: I have to say, having been studying Chronicles for the past several weeks, maybe a couple months or so, chronicles has become my favorite book in the Bible, right now at least.
Ted Lee: And I've enjoyed Matthew, as we've been going through Matthew in our morning services as well, in our morning services as well.
Ted Lee: So we continue today on our journey along Route 66, the 66 books of the Bible, and last Sunday we began our drive through Chronicles.
Ted Lee: I introduced last Sunday that there are two major themes in the book of Chronicles, and when I say book of Chronicles, I am referring to 1 and 2 Chronicles.
Ted Lee: We have two books, but the original text in Hebrew was really one scroll Chronicles.
Ted Lee: The first major theme which we covered last Sunday is God's commitment to the house of David, and the second major theme which we'll cover today is God's commitment to the house of David.
Ted Lee: And the second major theme which we'll cover today is God's temple and his presence in the worship of his people.
Ted Lee: Both of these themes are derived from the Davidic covenant.
Ted Lee: So let's take a turn to 1 Chronicles 17 as our starting point this evening.
Ted Lee: Okay, turn to 1 Chronicles 17, and I'll read from beginning the second part of verse 10.
Ted Lee: Furthermore, I declare to you that the Lord in prayer and I will establish his throne forever.
Ted Lee: Let's go to the Lord in prayer.
Ted Lee: Father, help us understand the deep significance of the Davidic covenant in our lives and to live in accordance to its truth.
Ted Lee: Amen.
Ted Lee: God spoke to David through the prophet Nathan.
Ted Lee: In that passage, david expressed his desire to build a house for Yahweh.
Ted Lee: Yahweh turned it around and he promised to build the house of David.
Ted Lee: The book of Chronicles centers on these two houses the house of David, the dynasty of David, and the house of the Lord, the temple.
Ted Lee: Last week we examined these two major themes God's commitment to the house of David and we looked at that in three points.
Ted Lee: We looked at God's commitment to the house of David by placing David on the throne, by promising that David would have an everlasting dynasty, and, thirdly, that God will be preserving David's dynasty.
Ted Lee: God's covenant, faithfulness to David and his royal line points forward to and is ultimately fulfilled by the greatest son of David, the Messianic King, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ted Lee: And our Lord Jesus Christ sits on that throne forever.
Ted Lee: So today we'll spend our time examining the second major theme God's temple and God's presence in the people's worship and, by the way, throughout Chronicles, and I mean 1 and 2 Chronicles.
Ted Lee: Okay, so Solomon's temple is given a lot of prominence in Chronicles, much more than in Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings.
Ted Lee: The emphases in Chronicles, taken as the whole book, can be seen in the overall structure of the book, and I touched on this last week.
Ted Lee: But I'll review briefly.
Ted Lee: The first nine chapters of Chronicles are genealogies.
Ted Lee: They're lists of people, father to son to son to son to son to son.
Ted Lee: These genealogies not only highlighted the Lion of David, the Davidic kings, but also gave a great prominence to the Lion of Aaron and the Levitical order.
Ted Lee: These are the individuals who would serve the tabernacle and the temple.
Ted Lee: The next 29 chapters in Chronicles reports on the reigns of both David and his son, solomon.
Ted Lee: These cover 73 years of rulership, 33 for David, because this is recording when David was in Jerusalem, not the earlier seven years of Hebron, and then the 40 years of Solomon in Jerusalem.
Ted Lee: And of these 29 chapters, 18 of them cover the planning and the building of the temple.
Ted Lee: And the last 27 chapters of Chronicles Survey the 345 years Of the line of Davidic kings, the kings of Judah After David and Solomon, and it particularly paid attention to how they treated the temple as a direct measure Of their relationship with Yahweh, and we'll get into more of that in this time together.
Ted Lee: So the chronicler's interest in the temple is not really the building.
Ted Lee: The chronicler's interest in recording in the book of Chronicles is really the fact that Yahweh moved into the temple to dwell among his people.
Ted Lee: So to seek the temple in the eyes of the chronicler really meant seeking the Lord, seeking God, seeking after Yahweh.
Ted Lee: The temple was a sign of God's very presence with his people on earth.
Ted Lee: This is where the northern tribes got it wrong.
Ted Lee: They built other worship centers, not in Jerusalem.
Ted Lee: So they violated this principle.
Ted Lee: They did not seek the temple of Yahweh.
Ted Lee: God punished them and they went off into captivity as Assyrians took them away.
Ted Lee: So instead, those who sought the Lord in the temple in Jerusalem were filled with joy.
Ted Lee: So let's examine tonight Yahweh's temple, the place where Yahweh dwelt with his people and the place where his people sought the Lord and worshipped him.
Ted Lee: We'll look at Yahweh's temple by way of three points First, yahweh's plan for the temple.
Ted Lee: Secondly, yahweh's presence in the temple.
Ted Lee: And thirdly, yahweh's people in the temple.
Ted Lee: And as we go through these three points, I want you to imagine yourself in the year 424 BC In the shoes of one of those people living in the post-exilic community.
Ted Lee: You are the grandson or you're the granddaughter of one who served in rebuilding the temple under Zerubbabel, because he or she came back from Babylon, back to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel in that first return of exiles.
Ted Lee: And now you're reading this book of Chronicles, the first point, yahweh's plan for the temple.
Ted Lee: We'll look at the preparations and then we'll look at the construction.
Ted Lee: I mentioned last week that David's reign occupied 19 chapters in 1 Chronicles.
Ted Lee: David's reign in Chronicles is taking up mostly with the preparations for building the temple.
Ted Lee: Yahweh had been orchestrating this groundwork for decades.
Ted Lee: So first this preparation included transferring the Ark of the Covenant to the city of David.
Ted Lee: This happened very early during David's reign in Jerusalem.
Ted Lee: It happened not too long after actually, david conquered the Jebusites.
Ted Lee: The Jebusites were the ones who inhabited.
Ted Lee: They were Canaanites who inhabited Jerusalem and David had to conquer it.
Ted Lee: And when he did I.
Ted Lee: David had to conquer it, and when he did.
Ted Lee: I won't get into it now, but it's very interesting how he did that.
Ted Lee: It happens to Pat and I when we visited Israel we walked through Hezekiah's tunnel and there's a waterway that Hezekiah's tunnel.
Ted Lee: I'm going off on a tangent, but it channeled the Gihon Springs, which is the main water source of Jerusalem, to.
Ted Lee: It was located outside the city, but it was channeled into the city so that Hezekiah would have a water supply and that the Assyrians would not cut him off.
Ted Lee: But anyway, in that tunnel there was a shaft.
Ted Lee: David was smart enough to see that the Jebusites needed to go and get water from the Gihon Springs.
Ted Lee: They used that shaft.
Ted Lee: Well, david knew that he can climb up that shaft and get into the city.
Ted Lee: That's a whole other story.
Ted Lee: I didn't mean to go into that, but it just triggered the thought.
Ted Lee: David conquered the Jebusites and turned Jebus into the city of David.
Ted Lee: But don't you remember how painful it was for David to transfer the ark back to Jerusalem?
Ted Lee: It took him two times right.
Ted Lee: The first time, an individual called Uzzah walked alongside the cart and saw that the oxen were stumbling and he put his hand to stabilize the Ark of the Covenant.
Ted Lee: He was struck dead.
Ted Lee: Why he was struck dead?
Ted Lee: Why David encountered the problem where he ordered the ark's transfer but ignored the proper instructions from the law of Moses.
Ted Lee: How the ark was treated was equated to how God was being treated.
Ted Lee: This demonstrated a lack of reverence for the sacred object of God's presence and for the law of Moses.
Ted Lee: David and the Levites studied the Mosaic law and got it right the second time because God worked on David's heart.
Ted Lee: David's instruction to the priests and the Levites to consecrate themselves was not only for ritualistic purposes, but it was also, and even more so, for internal attitude change, their internal attitude in how they handled holy things.
Ted Lee: The second thing in terms of preparation we see in David's time is God worked on David's heart to appoint the Levites to a new ministry of music and praise.
Ted Lee: This is what he conducted in the presence of the Ark of the Covenant as it was successfully transported to Jerusalem.
Ted Lee: This was a whole new function for the Levites and the priests.
Ted Lee: This was the prelude to temple worship.
Ted Lee: Solomon also continued this same practice in organizing the Levites for temple worship, and that's in 2 Chronicles 8.
Ted Lee: David and his singers wrote psalms for temple worship.
Ted Lee: They actually prefigure Christ in leading the people in singing praise to Yahweh.
Ted Lee: The Levites were also assigned other temple duties, including being gatekeepers, treasurers, and this is all recorded.
Ted Lee: David expanded the roles of the Levites and the priests to prepare them for a greater role for worship and leading the people to worship.
Ted Lee: A third piece of evidence of preparation, of God working on David's heart, is actually, through David, he secured all the borders around Israel, around the nation of Israel, during the time of David.
Ted Lee: Now you would think, how does that prepare for temple construction?
Ted Lee: Well, the Davidic wars as you will see in 1 Chronicles 8, chapters 18 to 20, allowed David and Solomon to focus on the task that God gave them to build the temple.
Ted Lee: They weren't distracted to fight a war with the Ammonites.
Ted Lee: They weren't distracted to fight with the Moabites.
Ted Lee: That was all done.
Ted Lee: They had peace.
Ted Lee: A fourth supporting piece of evidence in preparation for the construction of the temple is recorded in 1 Chronicles 21.
Ted Lee: Do you remember David?
Ted Lee: After he had victory over the Philistines in a battle, a big battle, in a battle, a big battle, he asked Joab, his key commander, and his commanders, to take a census, a military census, a census of all the men of military age.
Ted Lee: David took this census, in spite of a recent victory.
Ted Lee: Usually you do a census to draft more men if you find that you have not enough fighting men.
Ted Lee: Or you do a census because you want to levy taxes.
Ted Lee: The writer of Samuel actually portrayed this as a sin of David's faithlessness, lack of faith.
Ted Lee: Right, because he did this in spite of having a victory against the Philistines.
Ted Lee: But you know the writer of Chronicles.
Ted Lee: I mentioned to you last week that Chronicles is not just a reporting of the facts or the events that are happening.
Ted Lee: Chronicles is a divine commentary on what has happened.
Ted Lee: So the writer of Chronicles, in this instance, used this story to show God's mercy.
Ted Lee: How is that?
Ted Lee: Well, as you know, because of David's sin of faithlessness, god did punish him.
Ted Lee: God saw his faithlessness and punished him.
Ted Lee: And remember, david said I'd rather fall into the hands of a merciful God than men.
Ted Lee: So God put a plague and killed 70,000 people in Jerusalem, and then God told him to build an altar and make sacrifices.
Ted Lee: Where David was told to do that happened to be on a threshing floor, a place where, in fact, arona is his name and he's also called Nankam.
Ted Lee: His threshing floor was used as an altar.
Ted Lee: David purchased that land to be an altar, to be made an altar because the angel of the Lord stopped over that threshing floor.
Ted Lee: Turn with me to 1 Chronicles 21.
Ted Lee: I'd like to recount that story in the words of the Lord stopped over that threshing floor.
Ted Lee: Turn with me to 1 Chronicles 21.
Ted Lee: I'd like to recount that story in the words of the chronicler 1 Chronicles, chapter 21.
Ted Lee: Go down to verse 27.
Ted Lee: I'll read from there.
Ted Lee: Then the Lord spoke to the angel and he put his sword back into its sheath.
Ted Lee: At that time David offered sacrifices there.
Ted Lee: When he saw that the Lord answered him.
Ted Lee: At the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, the tabernacle of the Lord which Moses made in the wilderness and the altar of burnt offering were at the high place in Gibeon.
Ted Lee: But David could not go before it to inquire of God because he was terrified of the sword of the Lord's angel.
Ted Lee: You picture this.
Ted Lee: The angel of the Lord is right above him.
Ted Lee: He is standing right at the threshing floor.
Ted Lee: And the Lord told the angel who has a sword out there, to stop slaying people.
Ted Lee: The angel who has a sword out there to stop slaying people.
Ted Lee: David was terrified.
Ted Lee: He wouldn't go any further.
Ted Lee: Now, chapter 22, verse 1.
Ted Lee: Then David said this is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of burnt offering for Israel, of burnt offering for Israel.
Ted Lee: David declared that this place was to be the house of the Lord God, the threshing floor and the altar of burnt offering for Israel.
Ted Lee: And now turn with me to 2 Chronicles 3.
Ted Lee: 2 Chronicles 3.
Ted Lee: Verse 1.
Ted Lee: Then Solomon began to build the Lord's temple in Jerusalem, on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father, david, at the site David had prepared.
Ted Lee: On the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
Ted Lee: Solomon's temple was to be erected, right at that site of the threshing floor, the place where God showed mercy, and this is going to be a place where God will continually pour out his mercy on his people the temple, pour out his mercy on his people, the temple.
Ted Lee: These events, these collected events before the transporting of the Ark to the city of David, the expansion of the duties of the Levites and the priests to include worship, music and praise.
Ted Lee: And thirdly, the Davidic wars which gave peace to Israel.
Ted Lee: And then this fourth one that I mentioned, the identification of the location where the temple was to be built, a place where God showed his mercy.
Ted Lee: All of these events taken together paved the way for building the temple which would house the ark, the symbol of God's presence with his people.
Ted Lee: Yahweh was David's motivation to build a glorious temple, and David began preparations during his reign.
Ted Lee: Those four events were during David's reign.
Ted Lee: It indirectly and directly involved him, but David himself here is putting into the preparation.
Ted Lee: David collected construction materials, boundless metals, woods, jewelry, gold, tons of gold His own personal as well as the national account of gold and silver and bronze.
Ted Lee: He created the temple staff I mentioned to you the Levites right, the priests, the musicians, the gatekeepers, the treasurers and other officials, and these are recorded in 1 Chronicles 23-26.
Ted Lee: David also gave Solomon, his son, when he commissioned him, the actual blueprints for the temple and for the vessels that needed to be housed in the temple, as well as its staff.
Ted Lee: It echoes back to Moses and the instructions Moses received from God in building the tabernacle in Exodus.
Ted Lee: These all tell of God's sovereign work in David's life to make preparations for building the temple.
Ted Lee: And these are preparations.
Ted Lee: The construction of the temple was left to his son, solomon, but David's influence on the construction was very significant.
Ted Lee: Not only did David give the detailed plans from God and pass them on to Solomon, david gave Solomon a strong charge.
Ted Lee: He charged Solomon to follow after and obey the Lord.
Ted Lee: Simple command, very hard to do, wasn't it?
Ted Lee: Follow after and obey the Lord.
Ted Lee: And with this David reinforced the link between obedience and temple blessing.
Ted Lee: The link also was between disobedience and being forsaken.
Ted Lee: This is 1 Chronicles 28, verses 9 and 10, when David is commissioning Solomon to build the temple.
Ted Lee: If we move to a couple of chapters later in 2 Chronicles, we see that the first nine chapters in 2 Chronicles record Solomon's reign and this is taken up mostly by the building and the dedication of the temple.
Ted Lee: God provided Solomon with the wealth, the materials and the workers, the materials and the workers to build the temple.
Ted Lee: And not only do we see Yahweh's divine plan for the temple being revealed over the four decades David reigned in Jerusalem, but really, arguably over millennia, because this all started with Adam.
Ted Lee: The planning of all of this, we saw that in the genealogies.
Ted Lee: Well, let's now examine Yahweh's presence in the temple, god's presence in the temple.
Ted Lee: This was a high point.
Ted Lee: The high point of Chronicles is actually the dedication of the temple, the dedication ceremony of the temple, which we can see in 2 Chronicles 5-6.
Ted Lee: 2 Chronicles, chapters 5 and 6.
Ted Lee: The ark, which represents God's presence, entered the most holy place in the temple, called the Holy of Holies and placed under the wings of the cherubim.
Ted Lee: This was a grand finale of the whole construction process.
Ted Lee: No-transcript.
Ted Lee: As Yahweh dwelt in the temple and dwelt among his people.
Ted Lee: This initiated the temple as the center of worship for all of Israel.
Ted Lee: Turn with me now to 2 Chronicles 5, and let's look at this text 2 Chronicles 5.
Ted Lee: This is on the dedication ceremony of the temple, starting at verse 2.
Ted Lee: Chapter 5, verse 2.
Ted Lee: At that time, solomon assembled at Jerusalem the elders of Israel, all the tribal heads, the ancestral chiefs of the Israelites, in order to bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord up from the city of David, that is, zion.
Ted Lee: So all the men of Israel were assembled in the king's presence at the festival.
Ted Lee: This was in the seventh month.
Ted Lee: All the elders of Israel came and the Levites picked up the ark.
Ted Lee: They brought up the ark, the tent of meeting and the holy utensils that were in the tent.
Ted Lee: The priests and the Levites brought them up.
Ted Lee: King Solomon and the entire congregation of Israel, who had gathered around him, were in front of the ark, sacrificing sheep, goats and cattle that could not be counted or numbered because there were so many.
Ted Lee: The priests brought the ark of the Lord's Covenant to its place, into the inner sanctuary of the temple, to the most holy place, beneath the wings of the cherubim.
Ted Lee: Now skip down to verse 10.
Ted Lee: Verse 10.
Ted Lee: Now skip down to verse 10.
Ted Lee: Verse 10.
Ted Lee: Nothing was in the ark except the two tablets that Moses had put in it at Horeb, where the Lord had made a covenant with the Israelites when they came out of Egypt.
Ted Lee: Now, all the priests who were present had consecrated themselves, regardless of their divisions, when the priests came out of the holy place, regardless of their divisions.
Ted Lee: When the priests came out of the holy place, the Levitical singers, dressed in fine linen and carrying cymbals, harps and lyres, were standing east of the altar, and with them were 120 priests blowing the trumpets.
Ted Lee: The Levitical singers were descendants of Asaph, heman and Juduthun and their sons and relatives.
Ted Lee: The trumpeters and singers joined together to praise and thank the Lord with one voice.
Ted Lee: They raised their voices, accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and musical instruments, in praise to the Lord, and this is what they sang For.
Ted Lee: He is good.
Ted Lee: His faithful love endures forever.
Ted Lee: The temple, the Lord's temple, was filled with a cloud, and because of the cloud, the priests were not able to continue ministering, for the glory of the Lord filled God's temple.
Ted Lee: Wow, there was a great celebration at the dedication of this temple.
Ted Lee: Celebration with music, lots of sacrifices, too many to be counted, but more importantly, did you note God's word, those two tablets in the ark?
Ted Lee: God's word finds the central location in the most holy place in the temple.
Ted Lee: God's word was placed in the most central place of the most holy part of the temple.
Ted Lee: What does this tell us about where God's word should sit in our own lives?
Ted Lee: The Psalms tell us Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee.
Ted Lee: That's Psalm 119, verse 11.
Ted Lee: And then this one I've learned since childhood Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.
Ted Lee: That's Psalm 119, verse 105.
Ted Lee: But what is your attitude toward the word of God From that text?
Ted Lee: There's another observation to make here.
Ted Lee: There is a direct connection between God's presence and God's glory.
Ted Lee: The presence of Yahweh was so strong that the priests were not even able to stand because the glory of the Lord filled God's temple.
Ted Lee: That's 2 Chronicles 5, verse 14.
Ted Lee: We just read when God is present, there too is his glory.
Ted Lee: This reflects back to exodus 40 and verses 34 and 35 regarding the cloud covering the tent of meeting, and the glory of the lord filled it so much that moses could not enter it.
Ted Lee: Yahweh's special dwelling place, his presence among his people at this stage in history was particularly in the physical temple.
Ted Lee: The temple was the center of Jewish life and worship.
Ted Lee: Well, when the people returned from exile back to Jerusalem, they rebuilt the temple.
Ted Lee: But this temple was no comparison to the glorious temple that Solomon built in his day.
Ted Lee: The physical appearance was far less glorious.
Ted Lee: Also, the manifestation of God's dwelling place, manifestation of God dwelling there, was very different.
Ted Lee: In fact, in the last kings of Judah, just before the exile, god departed from the temple.
Ted Lee: He left the temple.
Ted Lee: So Israel had many failures, failures in obeying God's commands and to keep his covenant.
Ted Lee: Many prophecies about this, about the temple, did not really refer to Solomon's temple or the post-exilic temple.
Ted Lee: Instead, they referred to a future temple to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the church, and fully in the new heaven and new earth.
Ted Lee: When you example the temple theme in Chronicles, we had just reviewed God's plan for building the temple, god's presence in the temple, and now we want to consider God's people and the temple.
Ted Lee: So God's people, how?
Ted Lee: God's people revered or did not revere Yahweh?
Ted Lee: The writer of Chronicles addressed these questions regarding the identity of Israel and tried to renew their hope and confidence because they'd just returned from a 70-year captivity.
Ted Lee: The genealogies of Israel that we see starting this book trace the people's ancestry back to Adam, and this is to remind them that Israel has always been at the center of God's focus from the very beginning of creation.
Ted Lee: But in spite of being only a remnant and a small outpost on the fringes of a very large empire, israel needed to remember that its security and destiny rested entirely with their covenant-keeping God.
Ted Lee: This is the God who rules over all nations and has given the land to Abraham's descendants forever.
Ted Lee: But, being a sinful people living before a holy God, they had to pay special attention to personal purity and holiness.
Ted Lee: First thing, god demanded that only one tribe, levi, be the ones to serve him at the altar.
Ted Lee: Major reason for this, as we see in the genealogies that the chronicler presented it, was to show which Israelites were allowed to serve the priestly duties.
Ted Lee: You recall when Uzziah, one of the Davidic kings, entered the holy place, he quickly was rebuked by the litical priests.
Ted Lee: They said to him Uzziah, you have no right to offer incense to the Lord.
Ted Lee: Only the consecrated priests, the descendants of Aaron, have the right to offer incense.
Ted Lee: Leave the sanctuary, for you have acted unfaithfully.
Ted Lee: You will not receive honor from the Lord God.
Ted Lee: This is 2 Chronicles 26.
Ted Lee: And the next verse says that the Lord struck him with leprosy because he violated the laws of purity and took the presence of God without reverence, reverence, without reverence.
Ted Lee: Secondly, the kings of Judah allowed showed much, how much they treasured and revered God by how well they maintained the temple.
Ted Lee: The hearts of the kings of Judah was measured by how well they treated and maintained the temple.
Ted Lee: King Ahaz, for example, in 2 Chronicles 28, gathered up the utensils of God's temple.
Ted Lee: He cut them into pieces, shut the doors of the Lord's temple and made himself altars on every street corner in Jerusalem.
Ted Lee: And he anchored the Lord in Jerusalem and he angered the Lord.
Ted Lee: Now, ahaz's grandson, manasseh, really the most wicked king of Judah in that line of David, in 2 Chronicles 33, manasseh built altars to all the stars in the sky in both courtyards of the Lord's temple.
Ted Lee: He passed his sons through the fire in Banhinom Valley.
Ted Lee: He sacrificed his sons.
Ted Lee: He practiced witchcraft, he practiced divination and sorcery and consulted mediums and spiritists.
Ted Lee: He did a huge amount of evil in the Lord's sight, amount of evil in the Lord's sight.
Ted Lee: Angering him For his sin, god sent an army of Assyrian soldiers from the king of Assyria.
Ted Lee: They captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with shackles and took him to Babylon.
Ted Lee: Thirdly, in contrast to these wicked kings of judah, the godly kings consistently devoted themselves to the temple.
Ted Lee: They opened its doors and purified its courts.
Ted Lee: They resumed its sacrifices and repaired its structures.
Ted Lee: Joash, in his early years, when he was under the influence of Jehoiada the priest, is an example of this.
Ted Lee: If you remember Joash, hezekiah is another godly king who exemplified this, and Josiah later on also exemplified this behavior.
Ted Lee: Fourthly, when the people now we're talking about the people, not the kings.
Ted Lee: Now, when the people now we're talking about the people, not the kings.
Ted Lee: Now, when the people obeyed god, the temple was a great place of joy and blessing.
Ted Lee: Um, after solomon dedicated the temple, he sent the people home.
Ted Lee: What were they doing?
Ted Lee: They were rejoicing with happy hearts for the goodness the lord had done for david and for solomon and for his people, israel.
Ted Lee: That was the people's response after the dedication of the temple.
Ted Lee: Another example of this is Hezekiah.
Ted Lee: Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 29,.
Ted Lee: In the very first year of his reign, opened the doors of the temple, repaired them and had the Levites cleanse it of all impurities and consecrate it.
Ted Lee: He restored the temple worship.
Ted Lee: Then Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced over how God had prepared the people, for it had come about suddenly.
Ted Lee: For it had come about suddenly.
Ted Lee: Fifth, when the sinful pride of people distort their understanding of God's covenant blessings, they suffer God's curse.
Ted Lee: Let me repeat that when the sinful pride of people distort their understanding of God's covenant blessings, they suffer God's curse.
Ted Lee: And this is what the chronicler wanted the post-exilic community to avoid happening again.
Ted Lee: This led them to be taken to exile into Babylon.
Ted Lee: In the first place, disobedient Judah had sought for anything that could give them a sense of security, and this gave rise to a very popular belief that the temple provided some sort of guarantee of God's protection and presence, as if God was bound to do that, even in spite of their disobedience and corruption.
Ted Lee: The temple was a false reassurance of God's protection.
Ted Lee: It was a good luck charm.
Ted Lee: That's how they took it.
Ted Lee: They trusted in a temple rather than God.
Ted Lee: So God sent Jeremiah to give a message to correct this wrong thinking.
Ted Lee: That's recorded in Jeremiah, chapter 7.
Ted Lee: So the temple polarized God's covenant people.
Ted Lee: Obedience and humility and worship brought covenant blessings.
Ted Lee: Disobedience and arrogance brought covenant curses.
Ted Lee: So, in summary, the major themes in Chronicles are derived from the Davidic covenant, david asked to build God a house, a temple.
Ted Lee: So, in summary, the major themes in Chronicles are derived from the Davidic covenant.
Ted Lee: David asked to build God a house, a temple, but Yahweh responded saying that he would build David a house, a dynasty.
Ted Lee: Chronicles has been about these two houses how God raised up the Davidic dynasty as a promise of hope and, secondly, how David's royal house was constructed and maintained, maintaining Yahweh's temple.
Ted Lee: These two institutions, the monarchy and the temple, are really integrally connected with each other.
Ted Lee: Last Sunday, we looked at God's commitment to the house of David.
Ted Lee: Today we examined God's temple and its presence and its people, and we reviewed Yahweh's temple by way of the three points God's plan for the temple, god's presence in the temple and God's people and the temple.
Ted Lee: The event of the ark coming to rest in the Holy of Holies is given a fair amount of space, indicating its importance.
Ted Lee: A cloud filled the temple and showed that Yahweh visibly took up residence with his people in the temple.
Ted Lee: Today, the glory of God dwells in his people by the Holy Spirit.
Ted Lee: As we conclude, I want to leave you with two questions.
Ted Lee: The first question to reflect on is how can you celebrate this important blessing that God has given us today?
Ted Lee: And secondly, why is it better for us to have the glory of God dwelling in us by the Spirit than to have it outside us in a visible cloud?
Ted Lee: I'll repeat that question again why is it better for us to have the glory of God dwelling in us by the Spirit than to have it outside us in a visible cloud?
Ted Lee: Let's pray, father.
Ted Lee: Thank you that Solomon's temple was a symbol of your everlasting presence among your people.
Ted Lee: Today, we no longer need the temple, because you dwell in and among your people by your spirit, because your spirit dwells in us, produce in us the fruit of the spirit and impart in us an atmosphere of joy as we serve you and your people.
Ted Lee: Amen.