Solomon: the son of David who builds God’s temple

Solomon: the son of David who builds God’s temple

Open your Bibles with me to 2 Sam 7.  Today we bring our series to a close.  We have been studying types and shadows, OT people places and things that illustrate NT realities.  We have been especially focused on types of Christ.

The past few weeks we saw how God made promises to Abraham and his descendants and chose his descendants to be his very own people, his treasured possession.  They were enslaved in Egypt, God delivered them out of slavery.  In that exodus out of slavery in Egypt, their final destination was the land God promised to Abraham, but because they were rebellious and unbelieving, God caused them to wander in the wilderness for 40 years and only Caleb and Joshua from that generation were able to enter the Promised Land because they believed God.

TABERNACLE IN THE WILDERNESS

During their time in the wilderness, God made a Covenant with Israel and gave them the Law, through Moses, the commandments that the Israelites were to follow as his people.  A great portion of the Law of Moses contained regulations for worship.  God instructed them to build a tabernacle AKA a the tent of meeting.  It was a place where the Israelites would gather for worship and where the priests would perform their ministry before the Lord.  It was a structure that could be taken down and reassembled during Israel’s travels through the wilderness.  If you are curious about the dimensions and the appearance of the tabernacle or the tent of the testimony you can read about that in Ex 25-27.

GOD’S PRESENCE FILLED TABERNACLE

Then in Ex 40 we read of God’s presence filling the tabernacle.  Ex 40:34-38  ³⁴ Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. ³⁵ Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.

 ³⁶ In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; ³⁷ but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out—until the day it lifted. ³⁸ So the cloud of the LORD was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel during all their travels.

The tabernacle was the where God’s presence dwelt.  

WILDERNESS TENTS; PROMISED LAND PERMANENT DWELLINGS

While they were traveling, they all dwelt in tents and lived nomadic, God’s dwelling place, the tabernacle, the tent of meeting was the same; it wasn’t a permanent structure.  Well eventually, after the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, God’s people entered into the Promised Land.  All the people were able to dwell in permanent structures.  But for years and years and years, the Lord’s dwelling remained the tabernacle, the tent of meeting.

HISTORY FROM JOSHUA TO DAVID

Eventually Joshua died and Israel experienced a dark time when everybody did what was right in his own eyes; this period is known as the time of the Judges.  You can read about these times in the book of Judges.  Eventually Israel asked for a king so they could be like all the other nations around them, but in essence this was a rejection of God as king.  So God gave them a king; Saul.  He was okay for a while and then things just got ugly and eventually God removed Saul from office and gave the throne to David.  That is the context of our passage at hand.  David is king over Israel.

2 Samuel 7 ¹ After the king was settled in his palace and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him, ² he said to Nathan the prophet, “Here I am, living in a palace of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.”

 ³ Nathan replied to the king, “Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the LORD is with you.”

David is known as being a man after God’s own heart.  We see a glimpse of his heart here as David, as a king, dwelling in a nice palace took to heart that he was dwelling in a palace of cedar but the ark of God was still dwelling in a tent.  David expressed this to Nathan the prophet and Nathan said, whatever you have in mind, do it; God is with you.

 ⁴ That night the word of the LORD came to Nathan, saying:

So God didn’t have a conversation directly with David.  God spoke to Nathan.

 ⁵ “Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the LORD says: Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? ⁶ I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. ⁷ Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”’

So God did command them to build the tabernacle but He never commanded the Israelites to build him a temple.

 ⁸ “Now then, tell my servant David, ‘This is what the LORD Almighty says: I took you from the pasture and from following the flock to be ruler over my people Israel. ⁹ I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you. Now I will make your name great, like the names of the greatest men of the earth. ¹⁰ And I will provide a place for my people Israel and will plant them so that they can have a home of their own and no longer be disturbed. Wicked people will not oppress them anymore, as they did at the beginning ¹¹ and have done ever since the time I appointed leaders over my people Israel. I will also give you rest from all your enemies.

   “‘The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: 

Now this is ironic.  David had intended to do great things for God, but God is now talking about doing great things for his people and specifically for David.  I will make your name great.  Wicked people will not oppress my people.  

And in my opinion the coolest thing about this is David wanted to build a house for God, but God says no, David, I will build your house.  David wanted to build a physical temple for God to dwell in; God promised to establish David’s name and his family.  David wanted to build God’s house, but God was building the house of David.

   “‘The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: 

VERSE 12 ¹² When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. ¹³ He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 

Now, David wanted to build a house for the LORD, but God said that David would not.  It would be David’s son who would build the house for God’s dwelling.  God said He would raise up David’s offspring to succeed him and that God would establish his kingdom and that he would be the one to build a house for God’s name and God would establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

Now we have here a beautiful promise of the Messiah.  We have a prophecy that is ultimately Messianic but not exclusively messianic.  God is telling Nathan to tell David that though David wants to build a house for God, it will be the son of David who builds the temple for God to dwell in.

We find this fulfilled in Solomon, who was literally the son of David who literally built a physical temple for God’s presence to dwell in.  Solomon was in this way a type of Christ.  Christ is the antitype, the substance the fulfillment, the reality.  Solomon was the son of David who built the temple of God foreshadowing Jesus who was the son of David who built the temple of God.

So let’s look at how this unfolds in the Scriptures.  Let’s look at this son of David who was to build the temple of God.  Let’s look how this is manifest in type in Solomon and then in antitype in Jesus.  

FIRST OF ALL, IN SOLOMON

Who is Solomon?  David, though he was a man after God’s own heart, made a huge mistake.  He had an affair with Bathsheba and the offspring of that relationship was his son Solomon, who succeeded him on the throne.

Flip over to 1 Kings 8 with me.  Solomon did indeed build a temple for the LORD.  At the beginning of 1 Kings 8 we find that they made a multitude of sacrifices in honor of the newly built temple and the priests brought the ark of the covenant from the tent of meeting into the temple.  That’s where we pick up in verse 12…

1 Kings 8: 12-21 ¹² Then Solomon said, “The LORD has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud; ¹³ I have indeed built a magnificent temple for you, a place for you to dwell forever.”

 ¹⁴ While the whole assembly of Israel was standing there, the king turned around and blessed them. ¹⁵ Then he said:

   “Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, who with his own hand has fulfilled what he promised with his own mouth to my father David. 

So we see declared by Solomon himself in the Scriptures that God has fulfilled his promise to David:  that he, Solomon, the son of David would build the temple for God.  He continues:

For he said, ¹⁶ ‘Since the day I brought my people Israel out of Egypt, I have not chosen a city in any tribe of Israel to have a temple built for my Name to be there, but I have chosen David to rule my people Israel.’

 ¹⁷ “My father David had it in his heart to build a temple for the Name of the LORD, the God of Israel. ¹⁸ But the LORD said to my father David, ‘Because it was in your heart to build a temple for my Name, you did well to have this in your heart. ¹⁹ Nevertheless, you are not the one to build the temple, but your son, who is your own flesh and blood—he is the one who will build the temple for my Name.’

 ²⁰ “The LORD has kept the promise he made: I have succeeded David my father and now I sit on the throne of Israel, just as the LORD promised, and I have built the temple for the Name of the LORD, the God of Israel. ²¹ I have provided a place there for the ark, in which is the covenant of the LORD that he made with our fathers when he brought them out of Egypt.”

God fulfilled his words spoken to David through the prophet Nathan.  David’s son would build the temple.  Solomon, the son of David, built God’s temple.  This foreshadowed Jesus Christ, the son of David who built God’s temple.

Now as we move from the shadow to the substance, as we move from the type to the antitype I want to remind you that we move from the physical/natural to the spiritual.

NOW, THAT WE ESTABLISHED SOLOMON, THE TYPE, ONWARD TO JESUS as the son of David who built God’s temple.

First of all, how exactly is Jesus the Son of David?  Wasn’t David dead like 1000 years?  And wasn’t Jesus the son of Joseph (or so it was thought) but he was actually the son of God.  How was Jesus the Son of David?  

Open with me to the first verse of the NT.  Matthew 1:1  A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham.

So we can see very clearly that the bible’s usage of the term son of David doesn’t mean that David was his daddy any more than Abraham was David’s daddy.  What this verse means is that Jesus is a descendant of David and David was a descendant of Abraham.  So the idea carried in the term “the son of David” is the descendent of David.  That is exactly what Jesus was.  So in this sense, in the Biblical sense, Jesus is the Son of David as Jesus is a descendant of David.

WE SEE THIS ALL THROUGH THE GOSPELS.

Matthew 9:27 As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!”

Matt 12:22-23 ²² Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. ²³ All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”

They call him the son of David.  Jesus is the son of David.

Matthew 22:42  “What do you think about the Christ ? Whose son is he?” “The son of David,” they replied.  Jesus asks a very generic question: whose son is the Messiah?  Christ.  The son of David.  They were expecting the messiah to be the son of David.  They had good reason to, from the Messianic implications in our main text 2 Sam 7 to the rest of the prophecies found in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and so forth.

The Jews were expecting the Christ to be the Son of David.  That is exactly who Jesus was – the son of David who was to build God’s temple as foreshadowed in Solomon.

So now that we have established that Jesus is the son of David, in what sense does he build God’s temple?  In a spiritual sense.  Remember that as we go from Old Covenant to New Covenant we go from the natural/physical to the spiritual.  We go from physical circumcision to spiritual circumcision of the heart.  Physical sacrifices to spiritual sacrifices.  As we go from type to antitype as we go from shadow to substance we go from physical/natural to the spiritual.  

WE GO FROM PHYSICAL TEMPLE TO SPIRITUAL TEMPLE.  Jesus was trying to prepare people for this during his ministry.

Flip over to John 4.  Jesus and his disciples were traveling through Samaria.  Jesus encountered a Samarian woman at a well.

John 4:19-26  ¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”  (that’s where the temple is – that’s where God’s presence dwells)

 ²¹ Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

 ²⁵ The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

 ²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

Jesus, is speaking to a Samaritan woman.  She says the Samaritans worship on this physical mountain.  The Jews say we must worship on that physical mountain in physical Jerusalem.  At that physical temple.  Jesus says, the Jews know what’s up…but the time is here when we won’t have to go to a physical mountain a physical temple to worship but true worshippers will worship in spirit and in truth.  OC to NC shadow to substance physical to spiritual.  The old temple that Solomon built that got destroyed and was now rebuilt is being superseded by a spiritual temple that the Son of David the messiah now here is building.

Jesus is the messiah, the son of David who builds God’s temple, the Messianic temple, the new covenant temple, the spiritual temple.

Flip back a couple chapters to John 2 and we can get a better idea of this new covenant temple.  John 2:13-22  ¹³ When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. ¹⁵ So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶ To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!”

 ¹⁷ His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”^[b]

 ¹⁸ Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

 ¹⁹ Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

 ²⁰ The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” ²¹ But the temple he had spoken of was his body. ²² After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

So we see that Jesus is calling His body the temple.  

We also see in the Scriptures that his body is the church.  

Eph 1:22-23 ²² And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, ²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

So Jesus calls his body the temple.  The Holy Spirit inspired Scriptures claim that the church is his body, thus the church is the temple.

So back to our antitype.  Jesus is the Son of David who builds the temple.  So if the temple is his body which is the church, thus the church is the temple, that means that Jesus builds the church, which is the temple, thus fulfilling his role as antitype, the son of David who builds God’s temple.  Is that true?  Does Jesus build the church?

Look with me at Matt 16: 13-18 ¹³ When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

 ¹⁴ They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

   ¹⁵ “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

 ¹⁶ Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

 ¹⁷ Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. ¹⁸ And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

Jesus is the builder of his church.  His church is the temple.  What is the foundation for this temple?  A rock.  You don’t want to build a structure on sand.  How is this rock identified?  Peter.  A human being.  This isn’t a literal temple.  It is a spiritual reality.  God’s church is the temple, built not with human hands, but by Jesus himself.  

THIS TEMPLE IS MADE UP OF HIS PEOPLE.

Eph 2:19-22 ¹⁹ Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, ²⁰built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. ²¹ In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. ²² And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

So we have even further clarified the fact that the new covenant temple of God is a temple built on the foundation of the apostles, with Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone and believers joined together as stones that make up this magnificent dwelling place for the spirit of God.

1 Pet 2:4-5  ⁴ As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him— ⁵ you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Peter declares the same reality.  The old is passing away and being replaced by the new.  The old was physical/natural.  The new is spiritual.  You, like living stones are being built into a spiritual house.  This temple built by this Son of David is not a physical temple.  It’s not a man-made temple made up of literal stones.  It is a spiritual temple made up of living stones who are the people of God.

So as we can see Solomon is a beautiful expression of Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the true son of David who builds the true temple.

Jesus is indeed greater than Solomon!  Solomon was great.  His kingdom was great.  His wisdom was great.  His temple was great.  Solomon was great.  But as always with types and shadows, the antitype is far greater, vastly superior and more glorious than the type.

Matt 12:42 The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here.

Jesus is indeed greater than Solomon!

Solomon, in his wisdom was also foolish in his many wives and other such follies.  If there was such a thing, the foolishness of Jesus would be wiser than Solomon’s wisdom.

Solomon was clothed in splendor, but Jesus is arrayed in majesty among the lampstands.  His hair is white like wool.  His eyes are like blazing fire.  His voice like the sound of rushing waters.  He holds the seven stars in his right hand.  A double edged sword protrudes from his mouth.  His face is like the sun shining in all its brilliance.  Solomon was clothed in splendor, but Jesus is clothed in majesty more majestic than Solomon could ever dream of.

Solomon’s kingdom was great, but Christ’s kingdom is far greater as it is a kingdom of everlasting righteousness.  His kingdom is advanced not by the sword, but by the proclamation of the everlasting Gospel.  His kingdom is characterized not by an eye for an eye but turning the other cheek and going the extra mile, doing to others what you would have them do to you.  It is characterized by humility, integrity, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, honesty, hospitality, sincerity, and purity.  And Christ, our king reigns on his throne gloriously.  Solomon’s kingdom was great, but Christ’s kingdom is far greater.

Solomon’s temple was great.  He had it built from the mighty cedars of Lebanon.  1 Kings 5:13-18 ¹³ King Solomon conscripted laborers from all Israel—thirty thousand men. ¹⁴ He sent them off to Lebanon in shifts of ten thousand a month, so that they spent one month in Lebanon and two months at home. Adoniram was in charge of the forced labor. ¹⁵ Solomon had seventy thousand carriers and eighty thousand stonecutters in the hills, ¹⁶ as well as thirty-three hundred foremen who supervised the project and directed the workmen. ¹⁷ At the king’s command they removed from the quarry large blocks of quality stone to provide a foundation of dressed stone for the temple. ¹⁸ The craftsmen of Solomon and Hiram and the men of Gebal cut and prepared the timber and stone for the building of the temple.  Solomon’s temple was magnificent.  But it was inferior to the messianic temple in that it was geocentric and that it was built with human hands.  It was of this world, so to speak.  It was magnificent indeed, but you had to go to Jerusalem to see it.  It was geocentric; it was limited only to the land.  And it was built by human hands.  Thus it was fallible and destructible.  It was indeed destroyed in 586 BC at the hands of the Babylonians.  They rebuilt it only to have it destroyed again in 70 AD at the hands of the Romans.  However, the temple built by Jesus, the Son of David, is not a temple built with human hands but is a spiritual reality, a spiritual temple built by the Lord Jesus himself and it will never be destroyed.  Not even the gates of Hades could prevail against it.

We are that temple.  Think about what that means.  

TYPES EXIST TO TEACH US.  

Animal sacrifices were put in place to help humans understand the gravity of sin, the penalty of sin the fact that sin must be punished and atoned for and that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.  So there was a sacrificial system in place throughout the OC age in which God’s people constantly made bloody sacrifices.  Those sacrifices were a picture of what the blood of Jesus would ultimately do.  

In the same way, the temple was a picture.  It and before it the tabernacle existed to show in a physical way that the glory of God could not fully dwell with man and that there is a veil of separation between the Most Holy place where God dwells and the rest.  The fact that only the high priest could enter in and only after various ceremonial washings and cleansings and only with blood painted a picture of the fact that God is Holy and cannot dwell with that which is unclean, lest he destroy them.  These are concepts illustrated by the types and shadows of the OC that help us grasp the realities that we have in the NC in Christ.  

We are that temple.  Thus, we have been made clean, otherwise God could not dwell with us or within us.  But the reality is that God’s glory does dwell with us and within us because Christ has made us clean.  Christ has made us holy.  He has made us fit to be a temple in which God dwells by his Spirit.

But there is a practical aspect to this, I believe.  In 1 Cor 6, Paul touches on this concept of the body being the temple.  1 Cor 6:19-20 ¹⁹ Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰ you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

Our Body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.  This is the dwelling place of God.  The temple Solomon built was to honor God.  Temples were built to honor gods and to worship them there and put them on display.  Other nations built temples to their gods Baal or Dagon in order to worship them and pay tribute to them and to honor them.  In a certain sense it was a my god is greater than your god kind of thing.  The purpose of the temple, ultimately was to honor God.  

If that physical temple built by human hands of the shadow world was intended to honor God, how much more the spiritual temple that is the true substance, the reality, the fulfillment.

Our body is the temple.  Christ is the chief cornerstone, built upon the foundation of the apostles, we like living stones are joined together to make up the temple of God.  Let us honor God with this temple.

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰ you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.