There is a sense in which we might without irreverence almost invert these words, and yet gain rather than lose their true significance. "The palace is not for God," we might even say, as a literal resting-place. It is for man as the worshipper, as the servant, as the conscious and devout adorer, of Him Who created him after His own image; for man as a place for a worship which may reclaim, and purify, and uplift his fallen nature, which may bring him into communion with his Father and his God.
I. We also may echo the words which the chronicler places in the mouth of David, and say that the work he planned was great great in itself, greater in results achieved, outliving its own ruin and the destruction of its successor. Yet, like all human works, it contained elements of imperfection, germs of decay. The very existence of the Temple was made the plea for establishing rival sanctuaries, dedicated to another worship than that of Jehovah.
II. The second and the newer Temple found no rival, stood supreme in the nation's heart. But a sevenfold darker spirit entered into the empty house of the Jewish Church. The material altar received their superstitious reverence. He who sanctified the altar was forgotten. In the name of, and as defenders of, that Temple, the Temple's guardians condemned to death One greater than the Temple -One who taught His people to look forward to a worship that should be confined to no temple's walls, whose disciple breathed his Master's spirit when he saw in vision a city of Jerusalem of which he could say, "I saw no temple therein; for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it."
G. G. Bradley, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xx., p. 289.
References: 1 Chronicles 29:5. Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 11, and vol. xx., p. 350; T. Kelly, Pulpit Trees,p. 306; F. E. Paget, Helps and Hindrances to the Christian Life,vol. ii., p. 254. 1 Chronicles 29:9-29. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., p. 349. 1 Chronicles 29:10-13. C. Wordsworth, Occasional Sermons,3rd series, p. 17.