1 Chronicles 28:11-19

The temple plan 28:11-19

God had revealed detailed plans for the temple to David (1 Chronicles 28:19). Evidently God had instructed David as He had Moses (Exodus 25-31). The writer did not include all the details of the plan David received from the Lord any more than the writer of Kings did. Nevertheless God revealed the instructions for the temple as specifically as He had revealed the instructions for the tabernacle. The postexilic Jews must have had more detailed plans than are available to us today.

". . . the Temple of Old Testament Israel was not essentially a ’religious’ center where religious activities such as sacrifice and worship were carried out; it was the house of Yahweh, the palace of the Great King who could and must be visited there by His devoted subjects. Losing sight of this downplays the centrality of covenant as a fundamental theological principle. When one understands that Yahweh had redeemed and made covenant with His elect people Israel as a great king makes covenant with a vassal, the role of the Temple as the focal point of Israel’s faith becomes immediately apparent. It is the palace of the Sovereign, the place to which they make periodic pilgrimage to proffer their allegiance and to offer up their gifts of homage. Seen as such, the care with which even its most minute details are revealed and executed is most intelligible, for as the visible expression of the invisible God, the Temple with all its forms and functions becomes a sublime revelatory vehicle of the character and purposes of the Almighty." [Note: Merrill, "A Theology . . .," p. 176.]

"A problem in many churches today is the failure to recognize that corporate worship is an experience to be governed to a certain degree by order and propriety. David did not concoct the design of the temple by his own imagination, nor could Solomon build it as he pleased. The very architecture of the place was intended to teach Israel important lessons about the glory, grandeur, and awesomeness of their God. Christian worship that does less should be called into serious question." [Note: Idem, "1 Chronicles," in The Old . . ., p. 313.]