More Precious Than Gold

 DEVOTION

1^ST KINGS

MORE PRECIOUS THAN GOLD

1 Kings 6:14-22

14 So Solomon built the temple and completed it. 15 He lined its interior walls with cedar boards, paneling them from the floor of the temple to the ceiling, and covered the floor of the temple with planks of pine. 16 He partitioned off twenty cubits at the rear of the temple with cedar boards from floor to ceiling to form within the temple an inner sanctuary, the Most Holy Place. 17 The main hall in front of this room was forty cubits long. 18 The inside of the temple was cedar, carved with gourds and open flowers. Everything was cedar; no stone was to be seen. 19 He prepared the inner sanctuary within the temple to set the ark of the covenant of the LORD there. 20 The inner sanctuary was twenty cubits long, twenty wide and twenty high. He overlaid the inside with pure gold, and he also overlaid the altar of cedar. 21 Solomon covered the inside of the temple with pure gold, and he extended gold chains across the front of the inner sanctuary, which was overlaid with gold. 22 So he overlaid the whole interior with gold. He also overlaid with gold the altar that belonged to the inner sanctuary.

NIV

The entire interior of the temple was overlaid with gold. We can imagine how that looked as the candles reflected off the gold. The Holy of Holies was 30 feet wide, 30 feet long, and 30 feet high. It was lined with gold, and Solomon put the ark of the covenant in the inner sanctuary. We have nothing like that today, although some have built ornate churches, and we have been in St Peter's, where there are many places that are overlaid or are pure gold. Some of the more orthodox churches of the past and present have made the altar the central place, and some still have gold inlaid portions. Although gold is a precious metal and our current culture has tried to establish the sale of gold as a form of financial security, we have something more precious than gold, much pure gold. First, the blood of Jesus is precious to us because it holds the key to our salvation. He is the precious cornerstone of our faith. David sang that song about the law, statutes, precepts, commands, and the ordinances of the LORD are more precious than gold, than much pure gold, and sweeter than honey from the honeycomb. Solomon adorned the interior of the temple to reflect the glory of God. We wonder if we have adorned the temple of the Holy Spirit so that we reflect the Lord’s glory in ever-increasing glory. We cannot line our bodies with gold, but we can make the temple, our bodies, a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to the Lord. We know it is not about making our bodies holy in the sense of what we eat or drink, but it is about the condition of our hearts. It is from the heart that comes out of our mouths, which can either defile the temple or reflect his glory. Because we consider Jesus, the cornerstone, who is precious to the Father, more precious to us than all the gold in the world, we should live accordingly. His word is more precious than anyone’s word, for His is the Word of God, and the rest is nothing but words of men. People might have many good words to say, but none are like the perfect Word of God, which is more precious to us than gold, much pure gold. Let us lift up Jesus, who is more precious to us than gold, than much pure gold.