1 Kings 6

1 Kings BUILDING IN SILENCE1 Kings 6:7 . The Temple was built in silence. It ‘rose like an exhalation.’ ‘No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.’ Perhaps it was merely for convenience of transport and to save time that the stones were dressed in the quarries, but more probably the silence was due to an instinct of reverence. We may fairly use it as suggesting two thoughts. I. How God’s house is mostly built in silence. ‘ The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation.’ {1} In reference to its advance in the world. Destructive work is noisy, constructive work is silent. God was in ‘the still small voice,’ not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire. Christ’s own career, how silent it was! Drums are loud and empty. The spread of the kingdom was unnoticed by the world’s great ones-Caesars, philosophers, patricians, and it silently grew underground. Hence may flow- {a} An encouragement to those whose work is inconspicuous. {b} A lesson not to mistake noise and notoriety for spiritual progress. {c} Guidance as to our expectations of the advance of Christ’s kingdom. It will transform society by slow, often unnoticed, degrees, by radical change of individuals’ habits. The elevation of humanity will be slow, like the imperceptible rise of the Norwegian coast. Sudden changes are short-lived changes. ‘Lightly come, lightly go.’ What matures slowly will last long. {2} In reference to its growth in our souls. Silence is needed for that.

There must be much still communion and quiet reflection. The advance in the Christian life is variously likened to a battle, since there are antagonists and struggle is needed to overcome; and to vegetable or corporeal growth, which the mysterious indwelling life works without effort and almost without consciousness, but it is also likened to the erection of a building, in which there is continuity, and each successive course of masonry is the foundation for that above it. That work of building is work that must be done in silence. If we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, we must silently drink in the sunshine and dew, and so prosperously pass from blade to ear, and thence to full corn in the ear. Surely nothing is more needed in these days of noisy advertisement, and measurement of the importance of things by the noise that they can make, than this lesson of the place of silence in Christian progress, both for individuals and for the Christian Church as a whole. II. How God’s house is built of prepared stones. That is true, in one view of the matter, in regard to the Church on earth, for there must be the individual act of repentance and faith before a soul is fit to be built into the fabric of the Church. There is providential training of men for their tasks before these are given to them. But the highest application of the symbol which we venture to find in our text is to the relation between the earthly and the heavenly life.

1 Kings 6:15 . He built the walls within with boards of cedar — He wainscoted the house, as we now speak, with cedar. Both the floor of the house and the walls of the ceiling — Or, from the floor unto the ceiling; that is, from the bottom to the top. And he covered the floor with planks of fir — Or, with another sort of cedar, which was a great deal firmer and more lasting than fir. See 1 Kings 5:8 .

1 Kings 6:16 . He built twenty cubits on the sides of the house — He speaks here of the most holy place, which contained in length twenty cubits, and might be said to be on the sides of the house, because it took off twenty cubits in length from each side of the house, and was also twenty cubits from side to side, so it was twenty cubits every way. He built them for it within, even for the oracle, the most holy place — The last words are added to explain what he means by the word oracle, which he had not used before: this was the most important of all the parts of the house, because here the divine glory was present, and from hence God gave answers when he was consulted, on which account it is termed the oracle.