Sermon on 1 Chronicles 22–29: The Temple as a Pattern for God's Building Project Today
A sermon from Latimer Church working through 1 Chronicles, focusing on chapters 22–29 and what Solomon's temple preparations reveal about God's ongoing work in the world.
Summary
James de Costobadie (Costa), Senior Pastor at Latimer Church, delivers a sermon on 1 Chronicles 22–29, covering David's extensive preparations for the temple that Solomon would build. Costa argues that the temple is never merely a physical structure — it is a symbol that summarises the entire biblical story, from Eden as the original place of meeting with God, through the fall, through redemption, to the new creation. He traces how the temple theme runs through Scripture and finds its fulfilment in Jesus Christ and, currently, in the church as a spiritual building made of people indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The sermon draws on Ephesians 2 to show that the same logic of magnificence that governed Solomon's temple — built for God, as a witness to the nations — applies to the church today. Costa challenges the congregation to recalibrate how they view one another and their local church gathering in light of this reality.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: When Is a Building Not Just a Building?
James de Costobadie: We're working our way through the book of 1 Chronicles. Once a year, I take a book that I feel I know very little about — which is too many books of the Bible — and we go on a journey together. I picked Chronicles because I don't know too much about it, but I've discovered looking elsewhere that not many other people do either. So we're in this together.
Today we're looking at chapters 22 through to chapter 29, these eight chapters, which are all to do with the preparation for building the temple that Solomon the king was going to build.
So let me ask you a question. When is a building not just a building? When is a building more than just the bricks and mortar that make it up? I don't know if you were the sort of person who in your upbringing only ever lived in one house. If you look back on that now — good memories or bad — if you spent your first 18 or 21 years in one house, you probably have memories attached to it where the house is more than just a building. It's everything that happened in your childhood.
Or look at this picture up on the screen. Bricks and mortar. But those are not just bricks and mortar, because as long as Auschwitz stands, it will always represent more than the bricks and the mortar that built it. It's representative. It's symbolic. There are times when a building is therefore more than just a building.
And the temple was to be that. There are stones and other things that would go into it, but it was always far more than just a building.
The Temple as the Story of the Bible
Because in a way the temple summarises the whole story of the Bible. From beginning to end, you can pull the Bible together into thinking about the temple. It's really the story of how God made relationship with him possible again. You can think of that in four stages through the Bible.
First of all, creation. We were made to know God. We were made to meet with God. Think of Adam and Eve in the garden, able to walk with God, able to live with God. You might say that Eden was their temple, where they could do that.
Second stage, the fall, where God evicts them from the garden. Now that's not just saying no plants or flowers or that sort of thing — they had those outside the garden. It's a departure from the source of life. Remember how God put a flaming cherubim to guard the entrance. They're no longer allowed back into the garden. It's like saying no more into the temple, no more meeting with me in that same intimate relationship they had back in the garden.
Third stage, redemption, where God makes a set of promises that one day he would bring his people back to himself. He begins to do that through the Exodus, and then here through the temple under Solomon that is to be built — which underscores that commitment for God to live with his people again. That's what this is about. It would be the place where God lives on earth with humanity.
And one day, much later, the Lord Jesus Christ would come into this world to fulfil this temple image. Remember how Jesus described himself as the temple — that is, the living presence of God in this world. And so as God calls his people to himself from around the world to believe in Jesus through the word of the gospel, he is now involved in building a building — a spiritual building, with Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone, where people are added in one brick at a time, united by his Spirit. Here is the temple in our current time.
And the fourth stage will be the return of Christ, when those who are his people are gathered up and are with him in the new creation, able to live with him, able to see him face to face. We're told there will be no more temple there, because the Lord God Almighty will be the temple of the people.
So where are we at the moment in the midst of these plans? At the current time today, God is building a building — the temple of his people from across the world. In other words, he will meet with his people through his Spirit in his people. It's a project that began, you might say, in the Old Testament, but especially with the eleven disciples, and will be completed when Christ returns.
And so today, as we come to 1 Chronicles 22 to 29, we're really asking the question: what can we learn from Solomon's temple that would inform us as we are involved in the building project in which God is building the building of his people across the world? What are the lessons that come out from Solomon's temple?
Let me suggest three from these chapters.
Lesson One: A Magnificent Witness to the Nations
The Lord's temple would be constructed, first of all, as a magnificent witness to the nations.
Chapters 22 to 29 — and in fact tipping over into 2 Chronicles as well — are all to do with the preparations of the temple. That's ten chapters in total just on the preparations. When is a building not just a building? When you have ten chapters on the preparations of the building. It shows that this is something that is big.
Chapters 22 to 29 are made up of three speeches. They come in chapter 22, then in chapter 28, and then in chapter 29, with the chapters in the middle — 23 to 27 — giving details on the organisation of the people, because it's going to take a lot of people to build this thing.
The first speech comes in chapter 22, and verses 2 through to 4 give us the headline statements:
"David gave orders to assemble the aliens" — that means the foreigners living in Israel — "and from among them he appointed stone cutters to prepare dressed stone for building the house of God. He provided a large amount of iron to make nails for the doors of the gateways and for the fittings, and more bronze than could be weighed. He also provided more cedar logs than could be counted, for the Sidonians and Tyrians had brought large numbers of them to David."
Okay, this is going to be big — more cedar logs than you can count.
And then David begins to speak. Speech in the Bible nearly always interprets actions and events. You might get the action, you might get the event, but it's the speech that helps us to know what's actually happening through them. And so David begins to speak in verse 5:
"My son Solomon is young and inexperienced, and the house to be built for the Lord should be of great magnificence and fame and splendour in the sight of all the nations. Therefore I will make preparations for it."
And so David made extensive preparations before his death.
There is a house to be built for the Lord. And this house will not just be — in real estate speak — unique, or have the ubiquitous wow factor. This house would be, we're told, of great magnificence. Try using that when you sell your next house: "This is a dwelling of great magnificence." And so it proves, and you can see the magnificence through the materials that are used for it — this very extended treatment of what the building is made up of.
Have a look, for example, at verse 14. David himself says:
"I have taken great pains to provide for the temple of the Lord — wait for it — 100,000 talents of gold, a million talents of silver, quantities of bronze and iron too great to be weighed."
They've probably broken the scales with the gold and the silver.
"And wood and stone. And you may add to them."
In other words, this isn't the total sum. This is what I'm donating, and you may wish to add more as well. This is going to be huge, massive.
And when we get to chapters 28 and 29, you get a bit more on it. Chapter 28 gives a bit more detail, but have a look down at chapter 29, verse 2. Similar words — with all my resources, I have provided — this is now a public statement. Chapter 22 is like a private statement; chapters 28 and 29 are a public speech:
"With all my resources I have provided for the temple of my God: gold for the gold work, silver for the silver, bronze for the bronze, iron for the iron and wood for the wood, as well as onyx for the settings, turquoise, stones of various colours and all kinds of fine stone and marble — all of these in large quantities."
This was to be a magnificent building. And the reason it was to be magnificent was because of who it was to be for. Chapter 29, verse 2: "The task is great, because this palatial structure is not for man but for the Lord God." And back in that verse we read before, chapter 22, verse 5: "The house to be built for the Lord should be of great magnificence and fame and splendour in the sight of all the nations."
So when is a building not just a building? When it is built for the Lord, to be a witness to the nations around.
The New Testament Temple: A Building Made of People
And when we get to the New Testament, therefore, we find another building project going on — which I referred to before — for exactly the same purpose. Have a look at these words from Ephesians chapter 2:
"Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit."
Here is the temple that God is building today. A building not made of stones and bricks and mortar, but made of people. Founded on the Lord Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone, built on the foundation of the teaching of the apostles and the prophets, and then comprising people. This is what makes this temple special — not just made of inanimate objects, but of people. And every person in this world is precious to God.
And so as people across the world hear the message of the gospel and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, they are added into this new building one at a time — as we might say, brick by brick. When a person comes to believe, they join the building which God is building across this world. A building made up of people from so many different nations and languages and skin colours and tribes and all that kind of thing. When we get to heaven, we're told there'll be more people there than we can count. It's a magnificent building.
But the thing that makes it most magnificent — the greatest part of the magnificence — is that God dwells in the building by his Spirit. In you, if you are a person who believes in Jesus. When a person comes to believe in Jesus, his Spirit, we're told, comes to live within us. He is with us as a down payment, a seal on our heavenly status, reaffirming to us that we are children of God.
So here is a double reason why the structure is magnificent: not just stones, but people who are precious to God, and even more so because the Spirit of God dwells within us.
What This Means for How We See the Local Church
Let me ask you: what is special about a local church? It is the people who make it up, because the Spirit of God lives within them.
It's not unhelpful to think of it this way. Imagine you came in one day, sat down, and the person you sat next to turned out to be Jesus. I mean, it wouldn't happen because he's in heaven, but just bear with me. Would it change your view of how you would speak to him? Oh yeah, okay, probably would.
Well, when you actually — back in the real world — come and sit in here and sit next to someone you don't know, and you find they're a Christian, the person sitting next to you has the Spirit of Jesus living in them. And that should affect the way we relate to believers.
First of all, it should make us come with an enthusiasm. Now, most of us — real life and all of that — it's all you can do to get to church. You sort of scoop the porridge off the ceiling, lock the keys at home, finally get into the car and get here. And in a way, we probably come without the best frame of mind. But actually, when you recalibrate and think about it, we are meeting with the people of God who have the Spirit of God living in them. Here is the high point of our week.
It affects the way we talk to people. It affects the enthusiasm we come with, the anticipation. It affects the way we talk to people because we're interested in them, we care for them. It affects the love we have one for another.
It also affects the way that we frankly see church — not so much just as an event. It's easy to think of church as an event. Perhaps as I've just described, it's driving to an event. Well, it's an event of sorts because we're gathering, but the church is more than an event. It's the people. And whether it's here, whether it's a growth group, or whether it's meeting up informally during the week, it's the people of God who matter because the Spirit of God is living in them.
The people of God are more precious than we could imagine — far more precious than rubies and jewels. And that's why, in the way that we treat each other and the love that we have one for another, in the care that we have, we should be praying that God would help us to grow in that love one for another over a period of time. A mature church is a church where people are growing in care and love for each other.
I think it's really easy to take it for granted, being part of a local church. I was speaking to someone recently — and I felt it as a backhanded rebuke, really. I was talking to them and they'd suffered from a bout of illness where they weren't able to get out of the house for quite an extended period of time.