God’s Work and Man’s Work

Solomon built the temple, and after it his own palace. The palace was twice the size of the temple and took twice as long to build, yet Scripture gives it a mere twelve verses, set in the middle of the account of the temple’s construction.

Measured by size or by time, the palace was the greater undertaking, but what Scripture keeps at its center is the temple, not the palace. The furnishings of the temple were made by Hiram, the son of a Jewish mother and a Tyrian father, who grew up without his father. God, who does not judge by outward appearance, made this man the one in charge of the temple’s building. The two pillars raised at the temple entrance, Jachin and Boaz, likewise declare that it was established not by man but by the power and authority of God, and the bronze Sea and the basins show that only after being washed clean could anyone enter the holy place, filled with gold.

Temple and palace alike are nothing more than instruments, given so that God’s people might fulfill the calling he has entrusted to them. Just as the temple, not the palace, was meant to stand at the heart of Israel’s history, so God, not self, must stand at the center of our lives. When the work of God comes first, we come to live a life that God himself establishes and fills.