- Lesson 7 in the BaptistWay Press Connect360 unit “Solomon: No Ordinary Kind of Wisdom” focuses on 2 Chronicles 5:1-14.
Finally, the worship service began. The Temple has been prepped, the animals were on the altar, and the priests were moving the ark to the Most Holy Place. In Solomon’s day, worship services could be performed only by priests—men from the tribe of Levi specially chosen by God to oversee the Temple. It was the priests alone who could make sacrifices, and it was the High Priest alone who could enter into the Most Holy Place once a year to offer a sacrifice for the sins of the people. Can you imagine the relief once that sacrifice had been made each year?
Only one atonement is all-sufficient
Verse 6 tells us the priests were sacrificing “so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered” (5:6). The truth is there were not enough animals in all of Israel, much less the entire world, to atone for the people’s sin, “for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:3-4). Instead, Christ came into the world and gave us a better way, his own blood given at the cross, “and by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). Once for all. Some of the most beautiful and liberating words ever spoken. For Solomon, it was the priest alone who could approach God. For us, Jesus has become our high priest (Hebrews 8). For Solomon, countless animals had to be sacrificed to absolve sin. For us, Jesus became sin that we might become “the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
As we worship this week, we approach God through Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, and we remember that we stand not on our own righteousness, but on Christ alone. Jesus told the woman at the well in John chapter 4, “believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father” (John 4:21). Instead of a physical location, New Testament worship takes place in the heart of the true believer.
The presence of the Lord
The singers and musicians had made themselves ready for the culmination. The lead worshipers, Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun, along with the choir and musicians, were to “make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord” (5:13), but what happens next, nobody could have expected. The Bible says when the song of worship was raised, the Temple was filled with a cloud so thick that everything else halted in its path. The glory of God filled the room, and everything stopped.
This week prepare your own heart for worship before Sunday. Take time to remember God’s faithfulness, pray for unity, and then expect to encounter him. It is in that moment that we as a church can truly say, “Surely, the presence of the Lord is in this place.”
Compiled by Stan Granberry, marketing coordinator for BaptistWay Press.
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