“Our God Reigns!” – FBC Morning Light (6/3/2024)

Well a good Monday morning to you, I hope you had a wonderful weekend and that the month of June is getting off to a great start for you. Well today you're in reading in a Bible reading plan in the book of Psalms again, but I want to go back to Friday's reading where we read 1 Kings chapter 6 and 2 Chronicles 3 and then 1 Kings 8 and then 2 Chronicles 5, and I want to zero in on something that Solomon understood and he expressed in chapter 8.

God's House Cannot Contain Him

So in 1 Kings 8, the temple has been built and it is a grand and glorious majestic structure, as well it should be, as well it should be. You know, I believe that what we present to the world as the place where God meets with us should reflect well on our God.

Now does that mean it has to be covered with gold and have all kinds of silver and all that kind of thing? No, I don't think so. But I do think that in the context of where that building resides, if we're meeting in a structure for combined worship as the gathered people, which we should somehow or another, that if we have a dedicated building like that, then it symbolizes to the community in which we live that God meets us here, God meets with us here, and that structure, that facility, should reflect well in the context in which it is built.

So, you know, I for example think it's a shame and a tragedy when a church building is run down in a community and it just looks, it looks out of place in a bad way. Anyway, that's beside the point. Okay, so Solomon has built this grand and glorious structure and it now comes to the point of the time of needing to dedicate it.

And in his prayer of dedication, he makes this comment, and I think it's important to get this, because the temple is referred to as God's house, it's the temple of the living God, but Solomon says in verse 27, he says of chapter 8,.

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Will he live be confined to dwelling on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you, how much less this temple that I built. You know, God can't be confined to planet Earth, much less to this, in the grand scheme of things, and in this comparison to the vastness of the universe that God has created, in which he habits, this tiny little building isn't going to contain him.

And here's what I want us to get, that Solomon understood what some fail to get, the figurative expression you've heard, you can't put God in a box. And yet people try to put God in a box. They try to limit him to this particular place or way of being, and it's as if he resides within that framework, within that box.

And the only framework in which God resides is that which he has described of himself, the eternal one, the self-existent one, the one who can't be measured, who is in himself immeasurable. He has only put limits on himself in regards to the character that we understand, and so on and so forth.

But what we try to do is put God in a box as far as where he is in our ability to meet with him, what he can do, what he can't do, things of that nature. Now, if the magnificent structure that Solomon built, with all of its gold and its glory, was not a structure that could contain God, there's no framework that we can create, that man can create, that is going to hem him in.

The universe, the heaven and the heavens cannot contain him, how much less something of our construction can do so. So our God is so big, so great, so glorious, there's nothing our God can't do, there's nowhere our God can't be, and so we praise him, and we don't confine him.

Prayer and Closing Encouragement

Our Father and our God, we do thank you for who you are, thank you for your glory, your majesty, your greatness, that is far beyond anything that we could even imagine. We praise and thank you for it, in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, listen, I hope your week gets off to a good start, and may the Lord bless you in it. Good day.