“One time the king went to Giv‘on to sacrifice there, because that was the main high place. Shlomo offered a thousand burnt offerings on the altar there.”– 1Kings 3:4
At the beginning of his reign, Solomon was spiritually close to the Lord.
We know this is the case because soon after becoming King, he went to Gibeon to worship.
Gibeon still carried great authority and was seen as the chief worship spot for Adonai.
Verse 4 says it was Israel’s great high place, or HA-GADOL BAMAH in Hebrew.
Notice the word BAMAH is not being used in a negative sense here.
Even though I railed pretty harshly against the private BAMOT or high places scattered all over the place in Israel, not all of them were heathen at their core.
True, a lot of them used to be Canaanite Ba’al worship centers.
But they had been converted into altars dedicated to the God of Israel.
So don’t automatically assume false gods were worshipped there.
Having said that, that doesn’t mean they were right or effective for what they were meant to do.
The argument I posed yesterday still stands.
The reality is that the Wilderness Tabernacle was a tattered memory of what it had been.
And the single piece of furniture that made any designated worship spot for the Lord holy was missing.
Of course, I’m talking about the Ark of the Covenant.
Well, I really shouldn’t say it was missing.
David had transported the Ark to a tent shrine he had built for it in the City of David.
Anyway, the point is the Holy of Holies was empty.
The Wilderness Tabernacle and its altar were located miles away from the Ark of the Covenant.
There was an altar in the City of David, another on the height above it at Mount Moriah (built on Araunah’s threshing floor), and the original bronze altar was still at Gibeon.
So the situation on the ground fell far short of the standard of perfection laid out in the Torah.
Yet that didn’t stop Solomon from worshipping with great zeal by offering a thousand burnt offerings.
This leads to our takeaway for today.
We’re living in a fallen world…and that comes with problems.
Was the Lord meant to reject every attempt at sacrificial atonement simply because no single place fully met the requirements given at Mount Sinai?
Would the God of Israel turn away from His people just because every form of worship or ritual had been compromised in some way?
Life in this world will never line up perfectly to give us a smooth or flawless path into a right relationship with God.
And the Lord does not require perfection to love or rescue us.
That, in practical terms, is what grace means.
It was true back then, and it holds just as true for today.
That’s your lesson for today.
Done.
Leave a Reply