>> Jen: Good morning friends and faith listeners. Thanks for tuning into the Bible explain podcast to share a cup of tea or coffee with me as we discuss one kings chapter six. I have a really exciting announcement. Tomorrow I'm going to be having a very special guest on the podcast. This is the most special guest I have ever had in my entire life, life and ever will have at any point in time. I don't know if you can guess who it
is, but I'm not going to tell you right now. You're just going to have to wait till tomorrow and be surprised. I'm going to pump up the suspense here, but I'm just telling you this is a really cool guest I'm going to have on the podcast tomorrow. Now, on Friday, I did say who was going to be on the podcast with me, but
Friday's episodes are for Ko Fi members. So if you would like to gain access to the the Friday episodes that I do, which we are going through the book of psalms right now, then you gotta go over to Ko Fi, which is linked in the description of the episode, and click on it and then sign up for the ko fi tier. And that is how you gain access to Friday's episodes. But for today, we've also got a really
interesting topic. We're gonna be talking about first Kings, chapter six, and the completion of the inside of the temple to God bless. So let's read this. As I usually don't, I will be reading out, uh, of the NLT version today, which is actually my favorite version of the Bible. I love the NLT. Personally, I usually read out of the web because it is a version that is in the public domain. But I also like some of the things the web does. For example, they use God's
proper name, which is Yahweh. I really love that about the web. But today we'll be reading out of the NLT, because the NLT just words today's portion in just more modern English, which I appreciate, especially if we're talking about measurements, which is what we're going to be talking about today. First Kings, 614 through 38. Grab your bible out of the version that you prefer. Let's jump right in. So Solomon finished building the temple. The entire inside, from floor to ceiling, was paneled
with wood. He paneled the walls and ceilings with cedar, and he used planks of cypress for the floors. He partitioned off an inner sanctuary, the most holy place at the far end of the temple. It was 30ft deep and was paneled with cedar from floor to ceiling. The main room of the temple outside of the most holy place was 60ft long. Cedar paneling completely covered the stone walls throughout the temple, and the paneling was decorated with carvings of
gourds and open flowers. He prepared the inner sanctuary at the far end of the temple, where the ark of the Lord's covenant would be placed. This inner sanctuary was 30ft long and 30ft wide and 30ft high. He overlaid the inside with solid gold. He also overlaid the altar made of cedar. Then Solomon overlaid the rest of the temple's interior with solid gold, and he made gold chains to protect the entrance to the most holy
place. So he finished overlaying the entire temple with gold, including the altar that belonged to the most holy place. He made two cherubim, um of wild olive wood, each 15ft tall, and placed them in the inner sanctuary. The wingspan of each of the cherubim was 15ft, each wing being seven and a half feet long. The two cherubim were identical in shape and size. Each was 15ft tall. He placed them side by side in the inner
sanctuary of the temple. Their outspread wings reached from wall to wall, while their inner wings touched at the center of the room, he overlaid the two cherubim with gold. He decorated all the walls of the inner sanctuary and the main rooms with carvings of cherubim, palm m trees and open flowers. He overlaid the floor in both rooms with gold. For the entrance to the inner sanctuary, he made double doors of wild olive, wooden, with five sided doorposts.
These double doors were decorated with carvings of cherubim, palm um trees and open flowers. The doors, including the decorations of cherubim and palm trees, were overlaid with gold. Then he made four sided doorposts of wild olive wood. For the entrance to the temple, there were two folding doors of cypress wood, and each door was hinged to fold back upon itself. These doors were decorated with carvings of cherubim, palm trees and open flowers, all overlaid evenly with
gold. The walls of the inner courtyard were built so that there was one layer of cedar beams between every three layers of finished stone. The foundation of the lord's temple was laid in mid spring in the month of Ziv, during the fourth year of Solomon's reign. The entire building was completed in every detail by mid autumn in the month of Bul, during the 11th year of his reign. So it took seven years to build the temple.
Solomon now has begun building the temple to God bless, so he pretty much finished building the outside of the temple. But now the more detailed and artistic part of the temple comes into play with the inside of the temple. It says the entire inside, Verse 15, from floor to ceiling was paneled with wood. He paneled the walls and the ceilings with cedar and he used planks of cypress for the floors. So this obviously was the best quality wood that you could possibly get back in the days of
Solomon. So it says that he used this beautiful cypress wood to, uh, panel the entire inside of the temple, including the floors. It says he partitioned off an inner sanctuary, or the most holy place at the far end of the temple. The most holy place, it says, was 30ft deep and was paneled with cedar from floor to ceiling. The main room of the temple outside the most holy place was 60ft
long, so 90ft in total. We talked about that the, or, uh, last week, cedar paneling completely covered the stone walls throughout the temple. And the paneling was decorated with carvings of gourds and open flowers. So it sounds like the wood itself was carved into to produce almost like art of blooming flowers and gourds and things like that. And you might wonder why gourds? Because when I think of a gourd, I think of a
pumpkin. But I believe if you go back to the decorations that God wanted to put in place for the tabernacle way, way back in the book of Exodus, when God first told the people to build a tabernacle to Him, He asked them to include just pretty pictures of pomegranates and different kinds of fruit on the walls and on the clothing of the priests and stuff like that. So Solomon was probably taking inspiration from how God wanted the tabernacle built about 650 years prior to this. So
Solomon was going all out in the making of this temple. He was doing things to the best of his ability and using the most, uh, beautiful quality ingredients that he could find to make this temple to God. And he was taking inspiration from the tabernacle back in the days of the wilderness. Now, the inner sanctuary would have been the most holy place. It says he prepared the inner sanctuary at the far end of the temple where the ark of
the Lord's covenant would be placed. This inner sanctuary was 30ft long and 30ft wide and 30ft high. So a perfect square. He overlaid the inside with solid gold and he overlaid the altar made of cedar. So this altar, I don't think, was in the most holy place. I believe it was right outside the most holy place. It says Solomon overlaid the rest of the temple's interior with solid gold and he made gold chains to protect the entrance to the most holy
place. So, um, after everything has been, you know, paneled with this beautiful cypress, wooden, and it says with cedar wood as well, he then overlaid everything with gold. So all of those carvings that were done in the wood were then overlaid with gold, not meaning that they were filled in, but that the art almost looked embossed. You know, you can imagine how beautiful the inside of this temple was. But what's really interesting about this is that this was
for almost nobody's eyes. The only people that were allowed to go into the temple were the priests. They were the only ones that were allowed to see this absolute beauty on the inside of the temple. The outside of the temple actually kind of looked relatively ordinary. It wasn't until you got to the inside of the temple that everything was glittering and glossy and shining like gold and embossed and just beautiful. And probably the smell on the inside of the temple
was absolutely phenomenal. You can imagine, like, all that cypress and cedar wood, like cedar smells so good. And then not to mention the incense that would be burning on the inside of the temple, it just probably smelled, I would imagine, so good on the inside of this temple. So everything from, like, all of your senses would just be overwhelmed with the beauty of the inside of this temple. So the most holy place, though, because it was the most holy place, meaning this was where God's spirit
was living. That was the Holy Spirit's house, was on top of the ark of the covenant. The ark of the covenant had a little lid on the top of it called the mercy seat. And there's two gold cherubim that sat on top of the ark of the covenant with their wings, like, spreading over the mercy seat. And right in between, right in the middle of all of that, that is where the Holy Spirit would
live. He would live there. And because the Holy Spirit is so much greater than us in every single capacity, we just, like, get incinerated in His presence. And, uh, not because He wants to, like, burn us up or something like that, but because our fleshly, sinful, mortal bodies literally cannot handle God's presence. I've heard a good description of God. He's similar to the sun. You know, the sun is good and life giving and wonderful, and we love the sun.
But the closer you get to the sun, the more you burn up. You get literally incinerated. Our bodies can't handle it. And in a way, that's kind of how we are with God. We just get incinerated in his presence, basically. Especially if the priests were nothing following the rules that God specifically laid out. Because being in God's presence was kind of dangerous for the priests. In fact, they would have to wear bells on their clothing
so that. And, uh, they would wear a rope, a really long rope as well that attached to the outside of the most holy place. So whenever anybody, whoever was the high priest for the year would go into the most holy place, he would have this rope on and these bells. And if the people that were outside the most holy place heard the bells stop, uh, ringing, they knew that the priest had died and they had to pull him out with the rope. That is how dangerous it was being in God's presence.
And that was why God always said, you need to be very careful with following these rules specifically so you don't get incinerated in my presence. Do things the right way and you won't get incinerated. Do things the wrong way and you very well might. So the most holy place was a dangerous location if the priests weren't following the commandments of God very well, which, as we know throughout history, the priests never did.
We're going to see, actually, after Solomon dies, it only takes a few years for the temple to just get raided. And that is because Solomon, in the later parts of his life stopped caring about God and things of God and started worshiping other gods, which we are going to get into. So Solomon was leaving Israel vulnerable to these kinds of attacks. The temple ended up getting looted by the Egyptians only a few years after Solomon died.
But you would think that if God's presence was in the temple, there's no possible way any Egyptians could have gotten in there to loot the temple. God's, uh, presence would have overwhelmed them. There's no way they could have even gone in. So God's presence wasn't in the temple when the Egyptians came and looted it. So that is how fast people stopped following the regulations of the
temple, unfortunately. But anyway, going back to my main point that I completely got off topic with, the most holy place was partitioned off and gold chains were there to protect the entrance to the most holy place. And this was done so that the priests wouldn't accidentally wander in. The gold chains would completely, uh, cover the entrance. And then somebody, if they had to get in there, like the priest, once a year, the high priest, he could unlock the
chains and go in. But otherwise it was completely off limits for 364 days out of every single year. Now, inside the most holy place, it says two cherubim, um, of wild olive wood were made, each 15ft tall. And they were placed in the inner sanctuary. They had a wingspan of 15ft, each wing being seven and a half feet long. And then the two cherubim were identical in shape and size, and each was
15ft tall. So these biggest, 15, uh, feet tall cherubim statues m, were also placed in the innermost sanctuary, the most holy place. And that's because they symbolized protection. Every time you see a cherubim, um, it's typically a guardian of some sort. And so these cherubim were signifying guarding the most holy place. So the priest, every single time he went into the most holy place, would see these cherubim and remember, oh, I have to be very careful in here. This is the
most holy place place. This is being guarded and protected. So the two cherubim were placed in the innermost sanctuary. And what's interesting is that they were identical in size and shape, is what it says. Can you imagine how long it would have taken an artisan to make these statues and make them exactly the same? This would have been so difficult. I can't even imagine, you know, like, taking the time to be able to do something like
that. So Solomon was hiring the best of the best to be able to reproduce two statues that were identical in shape and size. Nowadays, it would be much more easy to produce a statue that is exactly the same as another, because there are molds and there are casts and stuff like that that we use nowadays, which, well, maybe they did have a cast, but I would imagine, because it was made of wild olive wood, it says in verse 23, you can't really cast wild olive wood, then it was overlaid with gold
after that. So really good artisans that had to carve out these statues from the wild olive wood and make them identical to each other. He decorated all the walls of the inner sanctuary in the main room with carvings of cherubim, palm trees and open flowers. He overlaid the floor in both rooms with gold. So everything was overlaid with gold. Everything had these beautiful carvings of cherubim, like I said, embossed into the
wood and then overlaid with gold. For the entrance to the inner sanctuary, he made double doors of wild olive wood with five sided doorposts. So there was these doors that covered the inner sanctuary and then chains that covered those. The double doors were decorated with carvings of cherubim, palm trees and open flowers. The doors, including the decoration of the cherubim palm trees, were overlaid with gold. Of course, everything was gold in
this, inside this temple. Then he made four sided doorposts of wild olive wood for the entrance to the temple. So the entrance to the holy place, but not the most holy place. There were two folding doors of cypress, wooden. Each door was hinged to fold back and forth upon itself. I'm not quite sure what that means. If I'm being 100% honest, I'm not really sure. The doors were decorated with carvings of cherubim, palm trees and open flowers,
all overlaid evenly with gold. So, yeah, these gold doors were completely covering anybody being able to see the inside of the holy place. Nobody could see the inside. It was for the priest's eyes only. And so these big doors covered the entrance to the temple. Only the priests could go inside there, it says. Then the walls of the inner courtyard were built so that there was one layer of cedar beams between every three layers
of finished stone. So there were some outer courtyards that first kings six doesn't get into, but second chronicles does get into. And that talks about the different courtyards for different occasions and for different people. So the courtyards were outside, and that was where the congregation could gather to worship at the temple. Nobody could go inside other than the priests, but they could go to the courtyards and worship there. The foundation of the Lord's temple was laid in mid spring. Mid
spring, sorry. And in the month of Ziv, during the fourth year of Solomon's reign, the entire building was completed in every detail by mid autumn, in the month of bowl, during the 11th year of his reign. So it took seven years to build the temple. It's really interesting that the number seven keeps popping up. And I don't know if Solomon planned this. I really doubt it. But seven in scripture is the number of perfection. So it took seven years for Solomon to build
this temple. The perfect number, the number that signifies perfection. It's just really interesting that that happened. I don't believe that there's any coincidences. I don't believe that Solomon planned that. I think that's just how it worked out, and it worked out in a really interesting way. Now, the one last thing I want to say about this, and that's because I always have to end every single episode by saying, what
can we learn from this? We can learn that the outside of the temple, by comparison, was not as beautiful as the inside of the temple. Why does that matter? Because the outside does not matter as much as the inside. And we are all the temples of God bless. So what we look like on the outside and what we do on the outside does not nearly matter as much as our heart. And what we are giving to God bless on the inside.
Clearly, in both circumstances of the tabernacle in the wilderness and this temple that Solomon built, both cases, the inside the temple was absolutely gorgeous, and it was really only for a few people's eyes. Yet the outside of the temple and the tabernacle were not nearly as impressive. Maybe. Yes, impressive in a way, but not nearly as impressive as the inside. I believe that that is how God bless intended it, because the temple is a picture of us nowadays. God bless
cares about what is inside of us. God bless cares about our hearts. He doesn't look at the outside appearance. He looks at the heart. So we have to make sure that our heart is pure before God bless so that the Holy spirit has a comfortable place to live. Well, faithful listeners, fall is here. You know, my trees are changing. I've got a beautiful little red tree right outside my window here, and my other trees are mostly green, but I can see little pops of color here and
there. And because it's fall, you're going to need a nice fall hat, a beanie, rather, which is located in my shop. It is the psalm, um 40 beanie. It has psalm um 40, verse two on it. It is a very cozy hat, very comfortable, and you'll be doing exactly what deuteronomy says, which is wearing God's word on your forehead. So pick up one of the beanies today, wear God's word on your forehead, and also do it
comfortably. So, faithful listeners, I will see you guys tomorrow for an episode from first Corinthians where we will have that special guest on. But guys, I hope you have a really great rest of your evening. And as always, faithful listeners, happy listening and God bless.