It is a special day in Israel. After seven years of construction (See 1 Kings 6:38 NKJV), the temple is completely finished.
In a prayer of thanksgiving and dedication, Solomon beseeches God to never forget His people. He presents numerous scenarios, including ones where God’s people will go astray, but when they turn their hearts back to God and pray, Solomon implores God to bring them back to Him, to re-establish them in their land, to remember His people.
It is a powerful prayer, one that could be studied in detail, but Solomon then turns and blesses the people, and it is his blessing that strikes me as being a real eye-opener. Let’s take a look at each piece of this special blessing:
“Then [Solomon] stood and blessed all the assembly of Israel with a loud voice, saying: ‘Blessed be the Lord, who has given rest to His people Israel, according to all that He promised. There has not failed one word of all His good promise, which He promised through His servant Moses.'” (1 Kings 8:55-56 NKJV)
True enough, it was a peaceful time in Israel’s history, perhaps the most peaceful they had ever known. But if you look back into the more immediate history of these people, you will recall the Philistine oppression, the tyranny of the Midianites and the Mesopotaniens, the Moabites, the Canaanites, etc. How could this be a fulfillment of God’s promise? It sounds like Solomon hasn’t read his history books!
Yet God had fulfilled His promises, and the generation that built God’s temple were the generation who actually got to see this fulfillment!
The lesson for us? God’s promises aren’t always fulfilled when and how we think they will be. But just because we don’t see our expected outcome doesn’t mean God isn’t fulfilling them!
Let’s look at the next line of his blessing:
“May the Lord our God be with us, as He was with our fathers. May He not leave us nor forsake us, that He may incline our hearts to Himself, to walk in all His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, which He commanded our fathers.” (1 Kings 8:57-58 NKJV)
I find Solomon’s wording very interesting here: May He not leave us nor forsake us, that He may incline our hearts to Himself.
What is God’s motive here for not leaving us?
It is to bring us into fellowship with Him!
Most of us think that when God promises to not forsake us, it is so that we will have all that we need. But God’s primary purpose is to draw us to Him!
Why?
Because He knows that we will never know the fullness of happiness that can be ours on this Earth unless we are drawn to Him, unless we humbly submit our hearts and lives to Him, unless we are fully “broken” and made anew by Him!
So why should we seek after God’s promise to not forsake us? For selfish gain?
No!
Our motivation needs to be to establish that fellowship, that relationship, with our Lord and Maker!
Let’s look at the next line:
“And may these words of mine, with which I have made supplication before the Lord, be near the Lord our God day and night, that He may maintain the cause of His servant and the cause of His people Israel, as each day may require, that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other.” (1 Kings 8:59-60 NKJV)
What is Solomon, in his wisdom, telling us here?
He’s telling us the real reason we should desire for God to answer our prayers!
But wait. Shouldn’t we want God to answer our prayers so that we will find happiness? Comfort? Stability?
No, those things aren’t mentioned at all. Instead, Solomon says, “that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is not other!”
In other words, God wants us to stop looking to our own small concerns. He wants us to start looking to and caring about the concerns of the unsaved world! Our real reason for praying for God’s miracles in our lives is that His name be glorified to those who don’t know Him, for when His name is glorified, the unsaved will be drawn to Him!
And then Solomon concludes his supplication to the people: “Let your heart therefore be loyal to the Lord our God, to walk in His statutes and keep His commandments, as at this day.” (1 Kings 8:61 NKJV)
It seems fitting that Solomon would conclude by reminding the people to stay true to God. After hundreds of years of history has shown the people the result of not staying true to God, it seems logical that he would try to ensure that peace continue in the land. But this is not the reason Solomon gives. The word “therefore” refers back to the message he has just portrayed. He is telling us to keep our hearts loyal to God so that we can enter into deeper and deeper fellowship and relationship with God. As a result of this, our faith in Him will become unshakable, and the end-product of this will be that God’s name would be glorified to the unsaved world!
Friends, the next time we pray and make supplications before our God, let’s remember Solomon’s famous address to the people. Let’s make sure our motives and reasons are in line with God’s!
In His love,
Lyn
Lyn Chaffart, Speech-Language Pathologist, mother of two teens, Author and Moderator for The Nugget, a tri-weekly internet newsletter, and Scriptural Nuggets, a website devoted to Christian devotionals and inspirational poems, with Answers2Prayer Ministries.