God In a Box?

Even though David had been anointed king, he didn’t take the throne for about a decade. Saul remained king and David first served him and then fled from him when Saul attempted to kill him. But, finally, after Saul’s death by suicide on Mt. Gilboa, David becomes king—first of the tribe of Judah and, three years later, all of Israel. David’s early years as king weren’t easy, either, as he confronted one enemy after another.

When God has given him some measure of rest from constant warfare, and he is established in his capitol city of Jerusalem, David desires to build a temple for the Lord. But God tells him no. David will not be the one to build the temple. Apparently, as a warrior, David has shed too much blood to be allowed to build a place of worship (1 Chronicles 22:8). David’s son, Solomon, is to be the builder of the temple.

Our reading picks up after David has died and Solomon has taken his place as King.

Read 1 Kings 5:1-5; 8:1-13; John 2:13-21

Our first reading (1 Kings 5:1-5) details the determination of Solomon to build a permanent structure to house the ark of the covenant.

King Hiram was a friend and ally of David. When he hears that David’s son Solomon, has become king of Israel he sends a delegation to Jerusalem to congratulate the new king and to assure him of his friendship. In his reply to Hiram, Solomon declares his intention to build the temple that David had not been allowed to, and asks that Hiram supply him with wood from the fabled cedars of Lebanon.

Chapters 6 and seven tell about the building of the temple. As you read the description (and I hope you do), what strikes you is the over-the-top ornateness of the whole thing. Built of dressed stone and lined inside with cedar planks covered with gold, it was as Solomon himself describes it, “a magnificent temple” (8:13).

The second reading (8:1-13) takes place after the temple has been built. It is now time to move the sacred furnishings that had been in the tabernacle into the temple. Especially important is the Ark of the Covenant, which symbolized for Israel the presence of God.

The best way to think about the layout of the temple is to picture a set of concentric boxes. First, was the outer courtyard, then the inner courtyard, then the sanctuary itself. The sanctuary was divided into two parts: The Holy Place and separated from it by a thick curtain (some say as thick as the width of a human hand) was the Holy of Holies. In the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant, itself a box covered in gold. Inside the Ark were the “two stone tablets”—the Ten Commandments which God had given to Moses on Mt. Horeb (Sinai). Consider that symbolism, at the very center of the worship of Israel was the word of God.

Now the ancient Israelites knew that you could not keep God in a box, even a fancy decorated box like the Ark of the Covenant. They knew that their God did not live in buildings made by human hands. They knew that you couldn’t control God by placing him inside a building and then limiting access to him. In fact, in his dedication prayer for the temple, Solomon acknowledges this fact, 

“But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” (vs. 27). 

However, it wasn’t long before there developed around the temple a man-made system of “salvation management” that stood between the people and their God. And the temptation arose, as it always does, to worship the form of God—the box in the temple—rather than the reality of God. The temple worship became perfunctory and empty. So much so that the prophets began to speak out against the temple practices.

¹¹"The multitude of your sacrifices- what are they to me?" says the LORD. "I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. ¹²When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? ¹³Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations- I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. ¹⁴Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them (Isaiah 1:11-14).

God’s people had placed too much importance on the box in the temple and not enough on the Word of God in their midst which called them to live justly with one another.

Our third reading, John 2:13-21 takes us forward in time about 1,000 years. The setting is again the temple. Only this is not the temple that Solomon had built, because that temple had been destroyed. This is another temple, built by Herod. The main character of this drama is a young, itinerate preacher from Galilee named Jesus of Nazareth.

He comes to the temple and he comes face-to-face with that system of salvation management that Isaiah and the other prophets had decried. The place has become a market place as the pilgrims who came to worship and make their offerings to God were forced to “jump through the hoops” placed in their way by the cabal of men that ran the temple system.

And Jesus was angry. He chases the animals and the merchants out of the temple. He turns over the tables of the money changers. And he makes this audacious claim, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days (vs. 19).”

Jesus wasn’t threatening to destroy the temple, as he would later be accused of doing. John explains, “But the temple he had spoken of was his body (vs. 21).” Jesus was saying that his body was the temple. He was the Word-made-flesh, and when his body is destroyed by death, it will be raised again. You can’t confine God to a place you control, not even the grave.

Let’s go forward again, this time to the early sixteenth century. The church of that day had devised a system to manage God—to keep God in a box. Those in authority decided who were saved and who weren’t. To raise money for the building of St. Peter’s in Rome, they began selling forgiveness of sin for money. They were called “indulgences.”

But a young German priest named Martin Luther stood up to the authorities in Rome and said, “No, this is not right! I protest!” And so, 500 years ago this Tuesday, began the movement known as the Protestant Reformation. You and I are its heirs today. Every Protestant church traces its lineage back to Luther or one of his fellow reformers—people who stood up to the power of corrupt authority to say, “God cannot be contained by your structures and he is not controlled by your decrees. His grace is free and available to all.”

Our human tendency is to make idols of our doctrines and our practices; to put God in a box of our own making and then give too much honor to the box and not enough to God. The problem is, God keeps bursting out of the box. He is out working in the world, not just inside these four walls.

God is always ahead of us and we need to be light on our feet to keep up with him. That’s what we see in the book of Acts. When Peter first preached to the Gentiles in the home of Cornelius, he was breaking a whole bunch of rules—rules about whose house you entered, who you ate with, who was in and who was out. But when the Spirit came upon that household, Peter could only say, “If God gave them the same gift as he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could oppose God (Acts 11:17)?”

How do we try to control God and limit people’s access to him? Do our practices draw people closer to God, or do they form a barrier between God and people? What about the language we use? Does it suggest an approachable God, or it some arcane code that only the initiated can understand? What is essential to the faith and what can we discard when it becomes a detriment to our mission to preach the Gospel to every person? How do we know which things are essential and which things are optional?

Well, one thing I think we can do is to take a cue from the ancient Israelites. By placing the Word of God in the very center of their faith and life, they got it right. We must place the Word at the very center of our worship, of our life together, of our thoughts and identities. The written word—the Bible, the spoken word—our teaching and witness and, most of all, the Living Word—the Lord Jesus Christ.

When we share in the Communion we remember that when he died, the veil of the temple—that thick curtain which separated mankind from God was torn in two “from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51)” showing us that now, through Jesus, access to God is open to everyone. Come this morning and share in the bread and the cup. Celebrate together that the God who cannot be contained chose to clothe himself in human flesh, chose to give his life on the cross to pay the penalty of sin. Rejoice in his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God. Look forward with joyous expectation to his return at the end of the age to gather us to himself.