The Place of Worship

Thomas Spurgeon.

1 Kings 8:29

That your eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which you have said, My name shall be there…

I. THE HOUSE OF GOD. Our text speaks of heaven as God's dwelling-place. Perfectly true. But where is heaven? Heaven is above us, but it is also beneath and about us. Now it was this thought that appealed even to Solomon aa he knelt with outspread hands before the glory lit altar of the new temple. For a moment he seems to have been staggered: But he recovers himself speedily, however. It was God's house. Why was it God's house? He Himself had selected the site; it had been built on the Divine-plan; the builders had been directed in all the arrangements. God's own promise was in the matter, and it had been fulfilled to the letter.

II. THE HOUSE OF PRAYER. I like, however, to remember that it is, in the second title, a place of worship, a House of Prayer. Solomon used the first Temple for that purpose at the outset, and named it so from the beginning. And those who could not tread its sacred courts were to open their windows toward Jerusalem, and throw the arrows of their prayers through the lattice which looked that way. The Temple, in a word, was to be the medium and the mediator between the yearning hearts of men and the bounteous hands of the Lord God of Israel. Things have changed since then; old things have passed, away; behold, all things have become new.

III. THE HOUSE OF MERCY. — "When thou hearest, forgive." Forgive! Ah yes, yes, we shall need to pray that prayer amongst the rest. Prayers for succour and for strength, prayers for comfort and for joy, will need to be supplemented with prayers for pardon. Some nowadays profess to have got far away beyond this. I am not ashamed to confess in one sense that I have not. The Lord has taught us so to pray, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors"

(Thomas Spurgeon.)