Thought from today’s Bible reading from 1 Kings 7; 2 Chronicles 4.
When you read the descriptions of the temple, it is easy to be impressed with the great expense and skill that went into creating the house of God. Yet this was not just meant to be aesthetically impressive. There were other reasons as to why it was fashioned as it was.
“Then he made the ten golden lampstands in the way prescribed for them and he set them in the temple, five on the right side and five on the left” (2 Chronicles 4:7).
Here we see the description of one of the articles that would furnish the new temple – the lampstands. How were these designed? They looked to the pattern that was given for the lampstand that would be used in the tabernacle (cf. Exodus 25:31-40).
There is not a direct correlation between these two. The tabernacle had one lampstand, the temple had ten. The instructions for the design were specifically for the lampstand in the tabernacle. Yet we see an important attitude that Solomon possessed: he thought to look to God’s instructions to influence his course of action.
When we make decisions in life, we need to respect and love God’s word enough that our desire is to not just obey it, but to allow its principles to influence every activity in which we are engaged and every decision we make.
Tomorrow’s reading: 1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 5
[I’m using the Chronological reading plan on the Bible Gateway website if you’d like to follow along, too.]
Daily Notes & Observations contains all 365 articles from this series and is available in paperback from Gospel Armory.
