1 Kings 8:27-30, 41-43
“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27)
This question, asked by Solomon in his prayer of the dedication of the Temple, pushes our human understanding of God. In early 1 Samuel, the idea was that God was only present with the Ark of the Covenant. That is why the Ark was taken into battle, and eventually lost to the Philistines. Now the Temple is built, the Ark is in its place, and we are told that God is not just there, God cannot be contained by the highest of heaven.
That challenges us today in our understanding of God. What limits do we place on God? There is a passage in 1 Kings 20, where the Syrians were trying to pin God to a certain area of operations. They concluded that the Lord is a God of the hills, so they wanted to battle against the Israelites in the valley; where they thought the Lord would not be able to help them. How many times do we put such limitations on God?
No, we do not say the Lord is the God of the hills, but maybe we say that God is only for my private life. We do not acknowledge God, nor God’s truth in our public lives. The God that is the Creator of the Heavens and the earth, that cannot be contained in the highest of heavens, nor does the sovereignty of God limit itself to matters of religion. God is not the God of just the inner life, God is the God of our morals, our relationships, our work, and our opinions. The Syrians wanted to put God in a box, and they learned that could not happen to their own peril.
Also, Solomon addressed the issue of who is God for. He anticipated the foreigners would come to seek the Lord and to pray at the Temple, and God would hear them. Because God is not just the God of the Israelites (or Christians). God is the God of all people, whether they conform to our expectations or not.
We do not push our understanding of the God that Paul presented to the Athenians: “God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ (Acts 17:27-28)”
Jesus, talking of the Temple in Jerusalem agreed with Solomon, “‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.’ (Mark 11:17). We need to get God out of the box we have created for him, stop restricting him to only a narrow area of influence, and discover the God that speaks to all of life and human existence. Pastor Greg
