Today’s Word – Temple “Walk”

1 Kings 6:11 Now the word of the Lord came to Solomon, 12 “Concerning this house which you are building, if you will walk in my statutes and obey my ordinances and keep all my commandments and walk in them, then I will establish my word with you, which I spoke to David your father. 13 And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel.” RSV

Let me tell you how I’ve chosen to cherry pick this verse lest you imagine something far deeper.  1 Kings in the BibleGateway word search returned the most hits in the Old Testament for “walk:” 23 from this one book.  This passage was one that used the word “walk” more than once.  I am like a tourist, if you will, I’ve found one attraction to look at in this new place but I’ve got the whole chapter to walk me though what to see.  

Solomon is exercising his heart, his creativity and his wallet to build this structure.  The central part of this historic house, built for the Lord, was essentially a stand-alone sanctuary surrounded by many other rooms. I am thankful to have been compelled by my cherry picking to walk through this chapter and notice two things. The construction is unique in that the supporting beams of those external rooms were not directly tied into the structure of the sanctuary. Instead those beams rested on a ledger board much like we’d construct a deck against a house today, tied together but not an integrated part of each other.  That’s interesting. The chapter is filled with explicit details of the construction and grandeur of the structure EXCEPT for these 3 verses, and that’s interesting too.

The word of the Lord came to Solomon
concerning this house
IF
you will walk in my statutes
and obey my ordinances and
keep all my commandments
and walk in them,
THEN
I will establish my word with you,
I will dwell and will not forsake my people.

Amid all the verses filled with mind-blowing details of how luxurious this structure was, then, there was still not an integrated connection between the sanctuary and those outer rooms of the temple.  God has used my cherry picking to help me see how IF has become the reality of THEN, now.

IF Jesus, THEN the statutes, ordinances and commandments are established as the permanent, integrated connection between the sanctuary and those outer rooms and this is the fruit of reality now “concerning this house.”

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?”
1 Corinthians 6:19