Contact Points
1 Kings 5:1-5; 8:1-13

Are there sacred places in your life where you feel God is present? For many people creation is a source of such contact between heaven and earth. A beautiful Mississippi sunset, the Gulf of Mexico, the forest, the mountains, or a starlit night can all be places where we sense the mysterium tremendum, the tremendous mystery we call God. For others the contact point might be the family homeplace, a cemetery where our loved ones are buried, or our house of worship.

This sanctuary where we come to worship God each Sunday is certainly a contact point between heaven and earth for us. Sometimes during the week, I come over here and sit, pray, and think. I feel God’s presence here. In the sanctuary we sing our faith, hear beautiful music and wonderful anthems, listen to God’s word read and proclaimed, and celebrate the sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and Baptism.

The temple in ancient Israel was their connecting place between heaven and earth. King David had aspired to build the temple, but God forbade him from carrying out his plan because David was a man of war with blood on his hands from the countless battles he waged against Israel’s surrounding enemies. However, the LORD blessed King Solomon, David’s heir, with peace and prosperity. Solomon set out to realize his father’s dream.

It took seven years to finish the project. 1 Kings 6-7 describes the building of the temple, constructed on Mount Zion. 1 Kings 8 records the dedication of the temple. The elders of Israel, all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of all the ancestral houses of the Israelites, and all the people of Israel assembled in Jerusalem for the dedication.

Solomon sacrificed so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted. Then the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant and placed it in the Holy of Holies, the most holy place in the temple. After the priests placed the Ark in the temple, a cloud filled the house of the LORD. The cloud was a manifestation of God’s presence and glory. “And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord” (1 Kings 8:10-11).
Solomon proudly proclaimed to God, “I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell forever” (1Kings 8:13). On that day the LORD came to dwell among his people, just as God had dwelt with Israel in the tabernacle in the wilderness. The temple became the center of Israel’s religious life. Sacrifices and offerings were presented to the LORD each day.

The citizens of Israel began to practice the ritual of pilgrimage, especially for the Feast of the Passover. Psalms 120-134 are called Songs of Ascents. It is thought that the Jewish people sang these psalms as they approached the Holy City on pilgrimage and the temple came into view. Psalm 122 is a fitting example of the Songs of Ascents.

1 I was glad when they said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the Lord!”
2 Our feet are standing
within your gates, O Jerusalem.
3 Jerusalem—built as a city
that is bound firmly together.
4 To it the tribes go up,
the tribes of the Lord,
as was decreed for Israel,
to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
5 For there the thrones for judgment were set up,
the thrones of the house of David.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May they prosper who love you.
7 Peace be within your walls,
and security within your towers.”
8 For the sake of my relatives and friends
I will say, “Peace be within you.”
9 For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your good.

The house of the LORD became the contact point between heaven and earth for Israel. It was a sacred place where they could experience God’s presence.

They were sure God would hear the prayers they offered and answer them according to God’s gracious will. We did not read the long prayer of dedication Solomon offered in 1 Kings 8:22-53. The most used verb in the prayer is “hear.” Israel was sure the LORD would hear them whether it was a prayer of repentance, a prayer of petition, or a prayer for victory in battle.

Remarkably, even non-Jews from distant lands could also come to the temple and pray. “Likewise when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a distant land because of your name —for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm—when a foreigner comes and prays toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and so that they may know that your name has been invoked on this house that I have built” (1 Kings 8:41-43). The temple became a reliable place where all people could come in contact with God.

It is interesting that wise Solomon also acknowledged that the temple was limited in its capacity to house the LORD of heaven and earth. Despite his remarkable achievement, Solomon was not overly proud. He asked and answered, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27). In addition to being a wise man, Solomon was also a good theologian!

God is transcendent. God is beyond the limits of our ordinary human experience. God is completely different from creation and its creatures. As our reformed tradition teaches, “God is a spirit and hath not a body like man.” God said through the prophet Isaiah, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, or are my ways your ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8-9).

Nonetheless, God is, by his condescension, also immanent. God is within the limits of possible human experience and knowledge. This is true through the work of the Holy Spirit, particularly in special revelation. We can look at the universe and deduce that there is a creator. That is general revelation that is available to everyone, but we need special revelation to know who the creator is, what God is like, and how God works in the universe.

It is highly significant that there was nothing inside the Ark of the Covenant when it was placed in the temple with one exception. “There was nothing in the Ark except the two tablets of stone that Moses had placed there at Horeb, where the Lord made a covenant with the Israelites, when they came out of the land of Egypt” (1 Kings 8:9). Inside the Ark were the Ten Commandments! Those commandments distilled God’s special revelation to Israel and to the nations.

The temple in Jerusalem, filled with the glory of God and housing the Ten Commandments, was unsurpassed in its day. It was a sacred place, a reliable contact point between heaven and earth.

But I tell you, something greater than the temple is here now (John 12:6). Jesus Christ was God incarnate. In Jesus Christ the full transcendence and immanence of God cohered in one person, in one place. Jesus was Immanuel, God with us. Jesus’ miraculous conception, his perfect obedience to the law of God, his miracles disclosing the kingdom of heaven on earth, his sacrificial death for the sins of the world, his glorious resurrection from the grave to conquer our last enemy, Death, and his ascension to the right hand of God the Father almighty, all of these things were far greater than Solomon’s temple.

And Jesus was also the Word of God incarnate. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God (John 1:1). Jesus taught the full implications of God’s law in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Jesus preached good news to the spiritually and materially impoverished. He embodied and revealed God clearly. He said, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). He said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus was and is the reliable contact point between heaven and earth, between God and human beings. If you want to know God, you need only come to Jesus Christ.

And now I tell you a real mystery. The Apostle Paul asked, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you” (1 Cor. 3:16)? The Apostle Peter said, “Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 peters 2:5). As heirs of the Reformed Tradition, we believe in the priesthood of all believers.

We cannot embody God fully, any more than the temple in Jerusalem could contain the fullness of God, but each one of us has become a living, breathing, moving, thinking, speaking temple of God! We have God’s word written in holy scripture, and we know the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ. Christ is in us, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).

Our lives can be a contact point between heaven and earth, between God and human beings. This is a great, great privilege and an awesome responsibility. William J. Toms perhaps said it best, “Be careful how you live. You may be the only Bible some person ever reads.”

Brothers and sisters, friends, the glory of God is in us. The Word of God written and incarnate is hidden in our hearts. God can use us in this fallen world to bring light and life to those who sit in darkness. Through us the light of God’s special revelation can shine. People can taste and see that the LORD is good, and they too can become living temples of almighty God.

Praise the LORD for He is good, for His mercy endures forever. May the LORD build us into a temple of living stones so others may come and worship the God of heaven and earth, so others may touch God for themselves. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! Alleluia! Amen.