2 Chronicles 5:1-14 - Homiletics

The first worship in the finished temple.

The homiletic matter of this chapter may be said to be one. For we are, in fact, brought face to face with the central interest—the mystic presence, and veiled glory of the tabernacle or temple, in connection with the outer worship—the whole form of the outer worship of the Church visible of God's ancient people. This central interest means the ark—the ark of the covenant; the ark, with its two Divine autograph tables of stone; the ark, with the mercy-seat upon it, and its overshadowing guardian cherubim. This ark is now to be installed in the place of long "rest "—long, though indeed it ought to have been so much longer. We may notice—

I. In the first place, THE SOLEMN , SEDULOUS CARE with which "the king, and all the heads of the tribes, and the chief of the fathers of the children of Israel," drawing upon their chastened memories of former error, neglect, irreverence, and consequent disastrous punishment, brought up from the city of David, even Zion, that ark by the hands and under the strict escort of its proper conservers, viz. "the priests, the Levites."

II. That the occasion was one observed and celebrated with UNTOLD , UNNUMBERED SACRIFICES .

III. Looking into the real significance of the ark, so far as we can determine it, we are called to notice the TREMENDOUS SANCTION implied in THE COVENANT . The heads of a complete moral law for all the world, world without end, are surely what is to be understood to be written, in the handwriting of God, graven on those tables. The covenant of mercy rests, and is based upon, these "observed and done." From the moment that the dawning impossibility of observing these takes any shape (however dim to the merely self-trustful and self-confident), the prefigured form of the cross, however dim it also be, begins to take shape. There are countless sacrifices "before the king, before the ark"—they are all speaking the "of necessity" ( Hebrews 8:3 ) that arises out of the significance of that ark, or rather of that which is embodied in it. No wonder, then, that its ordained symbolizing of the Divine presence should be so mysterious, so deep, yet ever, as a fact, so reverently asserted and fenced. It is within the veil; it is in the most holy place; it is unseen, unvisited except "once a year;" the cloud of awe and of glory, of darkness and of radiancy, is its visitant; it is the consecrate site of the Shechinah, before which a marvelling and adoring people wait, gaze, bow down, "as seeing the invisible" One!

IV. Lastly, THE DEEP SATISFACTION that results to the Church of God from a genuinely deep impression of his presence abiding in and with it. It was when the full chorus of adoring praise and joyful devotion, because of "the Lord and the ark of his strength having arisen into their rest" ( Psalms 132:8 ), resounded with leaping tumult of holy gladness, that "the cloud filled the house," and that "the glory of the Lord filled the house." All this was but the sensible projecting, for the earlier Church, of the greater spiritual facts and realities with which the Church of modem day is well acquainted, although it ought to be so much better acquainted with them than it is.