Whilst ‘all the earth sought to Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart’, 1 Kgs. 10. 24, he was also a most industrious king. His wisdom was matched by his work. The Queen of Sheba was left breathless when she saw, amongst other things, ‘all Solomon’s wisdom, and the house that he had built.’ Solomon was a builder. He built ‘the house of the Lord’, ‘his own house’, ‘the house of the forest of Lebanon’, and ‘the wall of Jerusalem’, together with various other cities. He was also in the ship-building industry, 1 Kgs. 9. 26. We cannot possibly rival Solomon in wisdom or work, but at least we can be ‘always abounding in the work of the Lord’.
His greatest project was ‘the house of the Lord.’ It was the focal point in Jerusalem. Corinth boasted fine buildings, but there was one building there that was precious to the apostle Paul. It was ‘God’s building’, and it was a temple! ‘Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?’, 1 Cor. 3. 9, 16. Solomon expended time and energy in building ‘the house of the Lord.’ Some years ago, a brother’s obituary notice in the ‘Believers Magazine’ said this: ‘his input into the local assembly was massive’. He followed in the steps of Solomon!
Solomon employed a wide variety of workmen. To begin with, there were men who ‘bare burdens’, ‘hewers in the mountains’, ‘builders’ and ‘stonesquarers’, 1 Kgs. 5. 13-18. Then there were the specialists, one of whom was Hiram. He was ‘cunning to work all works in brass’, 7. 14. The New Testament reminds us that ‘as every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God’, 1 Pet. 4. 10. Notice that Solomon used the best materials. There were ‘great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones’, and ‘pure gold.’ David had already prepared ‘for the holy house … three thousand talents of gold, of the gold of Ophir, and seven thousand talents of refined silver’, 1 Chr. 29. 3-4. The ‘house of God’ today still requires ‘gold, silver, precious (costly) stones’. These spiritual commodities, like their literal counterparts, are only obtained through hard work. We must be busy mining and quarrying for them in the word of God.
