The Pillars

2 Chronicles 3:17:  "He (Solomon) erected the pillars in the front of the temple, one to the south and one to the north.  The one to the south he named Jakin and the one to the north Boaz."

There is a beauty even in the naming of the pillars of Solomon's temple, for the pillars in effect guarded the entrance way into the very presence of the Holy God.   Once Solomon had constructed the temple (taking seven years to do so [see 1 Kings 6:38]) and had presented a prayer of dedication, "fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the LORD filled the temple."  Although God was not restricted to specific places to receive the worship and sacrifice of man, He chose this temple as a place for His covenant people to worship Him (see 2 Chron. 7:12).  God offered Himself to His people, and they were permitted to come into His presence with offerings for sin and offerings for thanksgiving for His goodness to them.

As one faced the entrance to the temple, the pillar to the left was named Jakin, which means "He shall establish."  The pillar to the right was named Boaz, which means "In His strength."  It seems that God desired for the place where the people would make sacrifice for the atonement of their sins be symbolically guarded by two supports which would remind the people that a holy God establishes His accessibility (afforded through His grace) through His strength alone.  

Of course, God too gave stern warning to His people that if they turned away from their surrendered obedience and devotion to the Lord that He would uproot them, reject their temple that had been crafted, and would make His people an object of ridicule and their worship place a heap of rubble (see 2 Chron. 7:19-21).  Sadly, the Israelites would do the very thing that the Lord warned them of, and He sent the invading Babylonians into the land.  They destroyed the temple, taking the very pillars and the other precious articles of the temple away to Babylon (see Jeremiah 52:17, 2 Kings 25:13).

This is a good word for us, for we know that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19).  So also, we as the Church are collectively the temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16).  We celebrate that it is solely through the strength of God that He has established our redemption; namely, it was through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ that we were afforded the hope of accessibility to a Holy God, where we are privileged to offer our worship, our sacrifice, and our thanksgiving.

Still, we know that our God is not duplicitous.  Just as He rejected His covenant people for their wayward rebellion, so too our God will reject our worship of Him, if we choose to worship other people or things more than the One True Lord.  God has established a covenant bond with us through the cross, but He will not permit His holiness to be treated with contempt, through our rebellion/disobedience.  So let us not collectively as the Church or individually as dwelling places for His Spirit treat such a privilege with contempt, that it would bring the judgment of God upon ourselves.