Bible Commentaries
1 Kings 8

Verse 27

1 Kings 8:27

I. Every one will recall the scene of Solomon, the mastermind stored with all the learning of the day, dedicating the Temple to God. He was speaking to a nation naturally given to idolatry and to the localisation of worship, to a nation exclusive in their religion and almost incurable in their low, semi-materialistic ideas of God, speaking, too, at the moment of dedicating their most magnificent temple to their national God; and yet he rises far above nay, he cuts clean across all their national prejudices, and in these sublime words reveals that God is infinite, not to be comprehended in temple or shrine. It was a stage in the revelation of God given to the world through Solomon, the great student of His works, a further revelation of the immensity, the inconceivability, of God. And yet Solomon dedicated the Temple to become the centre of the passionate religious fervour of the nation, to be deemed for a thousand years the most sacred spot in all the earth. How shall we regard this? Was it in Solomon a hypocritical condescension to popular superstition, and in the people an unconscious or forced inconsistency, or was it not rather in both a flash of anticipation of the great truth that every form of worship is inadequate and even misleading until we see its inadequacy?

II. We also have to learn this lesson, that all opinions about God, all systems of theology, are provisional, temporary, educational, like the Temple. They are not the essence of truth. It is the deepest conviction, not of philosophers only, but of the pious congregations of our land also, that the harmony, and co-operation, and brotherhood of Christians is the will of God concerning us, and that it is not to be sought for in unity of opinion, and can never be obtained as long as opinion is held to be of primary importance in religion. It is to be sought for in some far deeper unity of faith in Christ and service to Him. In the ideal Christianity which Christ taught opinion is nothing, and purity of life, charity, and the love of God are everything. Let us, each in our own little circles, try to assist in this glorious transformation of Christianity by the steady subordination of opinion to the practical service of Jesus Christ.

J. M. Wilson, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 161.

References: 1 Kings 8:27 , 1 Kings 8:28 . A. Watson, Christ's Authority, and Other Sermons, p. 187. 1 Kings 8:29 . E. Paxton Hood, Sermons, p. 1. 1 Kings 8:38 . H. Hayman, Sermons Preached in Rugby School Chapel, p. 193. 1 Kings 8:38-40 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv., No. 1489.

Verses 44-45

1 Kings 8:44-45

There is something very observable in its being "in heaven" that we ask that our prayers may be heard.

I. Heaven is supposed to be the place in which, in some extraordinary and by us unimaginable mode, God is pleased to disclose His magnificent perfections to the higher orders of created intelligence. It is not that God can be more present in heaven than on earth; it is only that His presence is made more manifest, His glory more displayed or rendered more apparent. The representation of heaven as our place of audience lifts us from our degradation and places us at once on a level with loftier orders of being.

II. Whatever else may be supposed to give fixedness to heaven, or to make it, according to our common ideas, a definite place, there can be no doubt that it is the residence of Christ's glorified humanity, and that this humanity, like our own, can only be in one spot at once. To desire that our prayers may be heard in heaven is to desire that they may be heard where alone they can be heard with acceptance. We can obtain nothing from God except for Christ's sake and through Christ's intercession. Tell the humble suppliant that heaven is the abode of the "Man Christ Jesus," that in heaven this Mediator carries on the work which He began on earth, and he will quickly realise that heaven, and heaven alone, is the place where human petitions may be expected to prevail.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2326.

References: 1 Kings 8:46 . Bishop How, Plain Words to Children, p. 102. 1 Kings 8:53 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxi., No. 1232. 1 Kings 8:57 . C. Garrett, Loving Counsels, p. 69; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. ii., p. 265. 1 Kings 8:62 . E. Thring, Uppingham Sermons, vol. i., p. 46. 1 Kings 8:0 Parker, vol. vii., p. 305. 1 Kings 9:3 . C. Wordsworth, Sermons Preached at Harrow School, p. 10. 1 Kings 9:0 Parker, vol. vii., p. 316.