A box

A box has four sides, a top and a bottom. They come in all shapes and sizes designed to contain something important for storage, protection or travel. We put all sorts of things in boxes from breakfast cereal, diamond rings to enriched plutonium. But when it comes to an almighty, all-knowing, always present creator how does one go about containing that kind of glory in a box made by hands?

King David built for himself a very large and beautiful palace. His residence was so incredible that he felt guilty about living in it while God only had the tabernacle or tent of meeting to dwell in. David decided to build a house or temple for God to live in but with all the blood on his hands God did not allow him to be the one to complete it. So David’s son Solomon became the builder of one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.

I would not want to be the one who was chosen to build a box to put God into. How or better yet why would we want to put God into a box to begin with? Having said that putting God into a box is what most of us try to do on a regular basis. We either put limitations on what we believe God can accomplish in our lives or we come to our heavenly Father as one comes to a magic lamp rubbing it to summon the genie waiting inside.

So it begins in the 480 year after the exodus from Egypt during the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel that construction begins on the first temple in Jerusalem. In 1 Kings 6:7 it says “And the temple, when it was being built, was built with stone finished at the quarry, so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built.”

It’s important to pause and ask ourselves why this fact was mentioned before moving on to the actual construction. Let’s look at one other verse in Deuteronomy 27:5 “And there you shall build an altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones; you shall not use an iron tool on them.”

This command was from God right before the Israelites crossed over the Jordan River and into the Promised Land God was providing for them. Key word here is “that God was providing for them.” First remember who it was that released them from the iron grip of Pharaoh, parted the Red Sea and provided for them during forty years of desert wandering. 

God is our provider. He is the source of our existence and He is the author and finisher of our salvation. God puts a hint here as he commands the Israelites to set up stones to whitewash and write all the words of the law and then instructs them to build an altar with whole stones instead of using iron tools to carve and shape.

Iron was a metal that man discovered how to manufacture and forge. The use of iron tools, to build an altar to the Lord, would have focused and pointed their attention to what man can accomplish and not to what God had already done for them. It was the same idea when it came time to build the temple in Jerusalem so the stones were cut, quarried- tooled away from the building site then delivered to the building site.

We are now under the New Covenant through the work of Jesus Christ, who once again paid our sin debt in full and bought us with a price. No iron tool or cleverness of man has had any part in our salvation, but rather God is the sole provider of our redemption. Interesting though, the only man-made thing we will witness in heaven will be the holes in Christ’s hands and feet. Holes that were made by iron nails pounded in by iron tools intended to put Jesus to death. That will be a humbling time for all of us who have chosen to receive our salvation through God’s limitless grace and mercy. To see and realize what the ingenuity of man did to God’s Son when He came to redeem His creation. 

So man might have moments of cleverness and invention, I’ll give you that, but when it comes to putting God into a box we had better leave the lid off that idea. So remember when we come to worship let’s leave the iron tools behind and worship God in spirit and in truth. Because worship does not take place on this mountain or that mountain or in this church or that church but begins only in the center of our being that is our heart!