"For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever" (2 Chronicles 5:13).

There is a whole psalm devoted to this refrain. It opens by calling us to give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; to give thanks to the God of gods; and to give thanks to the Lord of lords — and after each line comes the answer, "for his steadfast love endures forever" (cf. Psalm 136:1–3). The entire psalm, all twenty-six verses, follows this pattern.

The word translated "steadfast love" or "lovingkindness" is the significant Hebrew word hesed, which signifies God's faithfulness to keep His covenant promises. I believe it has more to do with God's unswerving fidelity to His covenant than with any kind of affection He has for Israel. In other words, in my view this hesed is covenant love, given to the covenant people of God.

God's hesed is declared to be "everlasting"; other versions say it "endures forever." The sense is not simply a faithfulness that will last a long time. It also carries the sense of enduring through every upheaval or adverse circumstance that might try to derail it. God's faithfulness to His covenant is entirely trustworthy. It is not hindered by human depravity or frailty, so it is utterly dependable.

In contrast to our utterly dependable God, I am reminded this morning of my own frailty, depravity, ignorance, and limitations. Who am I to claim any kind of wisdom, understanding, discernment, or insight over any other believer? In myself I am nothing — just food for worms. Whatever dignity I possess is not my own. My only boast is in God's mysterious choice of this servant for salvation, which He has revealed to me through His inviolable and holy Word.

Yet it is on this basis that I boldly stand against unbiblical teaching. On this basis I resist the culture's influence to skew godly priorities. On this basis I try patiently to serve and lead those God places in my care.

I remember reading Roland H. Bainton's book Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. Luther found himself standing against the political and religious establishment of his time. He was likely even estranged from friends and family. Yet he took his stand on the Word of God and would not be moved. He is one of my heroes for this.

Today I see prevailing winds that are not only anti-Christian but also sub-biblical. Outside the church there are strong political, legal, academic, and cultural forces that, in my view, are pressuring Christians to accept what Scripture calls sin, including abortion and sexual immorality. Within the church there are strong ecclesiastical forces that elevate tradition, experience, tolerance, and cooperation over biblical truth. To still claim to be "biblical," some allegorize biblical truths and redefine biblical terms to fit their experience and new theology.

Friends, the covenant promises we hold dear are grounded in the inspired and inerrant Word of God. If we compromise Scripture, these promises will also be compromised. And if God's promises are no longer sure, in what can we hope?

So let us lay aside our petty domestic squabbles and fight the real fight of faith. What are money, houses, or cars? These are all passing away. What are trainings, tests, and programs? These too will pass. What are soccer lessons, violin practice, and superior academics? These will be done and gone soon enough. When will we see what matters and stop letting ourselves be so affected by worldly concerns?!

Instead, let us submit daily to God's holy Word. Let us focus our thoughts, energy, and resources on putting God's priorities into practice. We were designed to bring Him glory! Let us carefully learn what He has written for us to do in His Word. Then let us begin to whittle away everything in our lives that distracts or tempts us from trusting, obeying, and delighting in Him above all else.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The context of 2 Chronicles 5:13 is one of the most glorious moments in Israel's history. As the ark was brought into Solomon's temple, the Levitical singers and 120 trumpeters sounded "as one," praising God with the words "for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever" — and at that moment "the house of the Lord was filled with a cloud," so that the priests could not stand to minister (5:13–14). The refrain became Israel's great confession of faith, sung again at the temple's dedication (7:3, 6), by Jehoshaphat's army marching into battle (20:21), and by the returned exiles when the foundation of the second temple was laid (Ezra 3:11).

The comment is right that hesed is deeply tied to covenant. Scholars also note that the Old Testament sometimes extends God's hesed more broadly: "The Lord is good to all" (Psalm 145:9), and Jonah complained that God's hesed reached even Nineveh (Jonah 4:2). Psalm 136 itself celebrates God's steadfast love first in creation (136:4–9) before recounting Israel's redemption. God's covenant love for His people is the fullest expression of a goodness that overflows to all He has made.

153,600 men were conscripted to build the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem (cf. 2 Chronicles 2:17–18). An astronomical amount of gold, bronze, silver, and wood was used for the purpose as well. After the Temple was built and many sheep and cattle were sacrificed to the Lord, the glory of the Lord filled the Temple.

The New Testament says that our body is the temple where God's Holy Spirit dwells (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:19). Then what did we do to make our body the temple of the Lord? Nothing! We did absolutely nothing for it! It was free because Jesus paid on our behalf far more than it took for King Solomon to build the Temple — a Temple that was later completely destroyed. There is no room for pride in who we are now. God has chosen us, and we simply accepted it!

"He is good; his love endures forever" (2 Chronicles 5:13).

AI-Expanded Reflection

The contrast the comment draws is strong, and 1 Peter 1:18–19 makes it explicitly: we were ransomed not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. The most costly building project of Israel's history is set beside a price that no treasury could pay.

The 153,600 laborers of 2 Chronicles 2:17–18 were resident foreigners conscripted for the work, and the burden of Solomon's forced labor would later surface as the grievance that split the kingdom (1 Kings 12:4). The magnificent temple had human costs that the next generation felt. The temple of the Spirit, by contrast, is built on the cost Christ bore Himself.

It is also worth noticing that the glory filled the Temple while the singers and musicians were praising together "as with one voice" (2 Chronicles 5:13–14). Paul's temple language often has this corporate sense: in 1 Corinthians 3:16 and Ephesians 2:21–22, it is the gathered community together that is God's dwelling place, not only the individual body. Both senses are true, and each guards against pride in its own way.

But who can really build him a worthy home? Not even the highest heavens can contain him! So who am I to consider building a Temple for him, except as a place to burn sacrifices to him? (2 Chronicles 2:6 NLT)

Solomon recognized that the Temple had no spiritual significance in itself because God was so much greater than the Temple. The Temple only served a function, "as a place to burn sacrifices to him [the LORD]." God could make the Temple significant or not as He pleased. Later, when Ezekiel described the desecration of the Temple through idolatry and God's glory departing from it, the Temple then became meaningless.

In the same way, the church too has no spiritual significance in itself because God is so much greater than the church. It is merely an assembly of believers, who gather to worship the Lord together. However, if the church loses sight of God's Word, the call to holiness, and the mission to make disciples, then it too becomes meaningless.

Friends, I wish all of us would stop thinking about "going to church" but rather "being the church," for the Bible clearly says that we ourselves both individually and corporately are God's Temple and God's Spirit dwells in us (1 Corinthians 6:19–20; 3:16–17). Therefore, rather than seeing the priority of knowing God's Word as the responsibility of pastors in Sunday Sermons or Wednesday Bible Studies, we should see this as our personal responsibility. Rather than seeing holiness as something to simply give a nod to on Sundays and church events, we should be striving to clear out every action, word and deed in our lives, families and businesses that do not bring honor and glory to Christ. Rather than seeing the mandate to make disciples as just the role of missionaries and "professional" ministers, we should recognize that this is the responsibility of every Christian, both to baptize and teach new believers.

When we have a congregation of over three hundred believers in our local church and celebrate only a handful of conversions each year, it may be evidence that we have a seriously sickly church. We may comfort ourselves in thinking that we are a "giving" church, but the mandate is not to give but to go, it is not about tithes but making disciples. We give minor attention to what God says is of chief importance and major attention to things God does not even address at all. In the New Testament, there is no command for weekly Sunday service, or tithing, or special events, or even fund-raisers (except for the poor) and revivals. But there is a command to diligently study the Word. There is a command to pray diligently. There is a command to go and make disciples. There is a command to holy living and for members to both encourage and admonish each other in this. There is a command to visit the sick, prisoners, and foreigners. And these things we are to do not just weekly but daily as a normative part of our Christian lives; however, it appears that we are still not persuaded to trust and obey God. The very fact that we have so many people willing to pay hundreds of dollars to go for weeks to a revival event every year indicates that we must still be a sickly church. Why do you continually need revival? Unless you are dead. Or unless you are revived only for a moment and then need to be revived again. Doesn't this mean that you are sickly? My dear friends, since you are sensible people, consider what I'm saying and judge rightly.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Solomon’s confession that the heavens cannot contain God guards against treating the temple as a residence that confines its owner. Yet the building is not consequently without spiritual significance. The same narrative describes its consecration and the manifestation of God’s glory. Its significance is received from God’s promise and action, not manufactured by its dimensions or materials. This distinction between dependence and meaninglessness is central to a careful application.

The New Testament makes a corresponding claim about the church. Believers are God’s temple through the Spirit, individually in the bodily discussion of 1 Corinthians 6 and corporately in the congregation addressed in 1 Corinthians 3. The church is therefore more than a building or an optional audience for religious instruction. It is a people whose shared life belongs to God. That identity gives weight to truthfulness, holiness, mutual care, and accountability.

The original rightly challenges the outsourcing of discipleship to professionals. Regular attendance cannot replace personal obedience, and giving money cannot substitute for every other form of service. However, participation in gathered worship and financial partnership need not compete with mission. They can equip and sustain it. The New Testament’s commands to assemble, encourage one another, and share resources should be considered alongside the absence of a prescribed modern church program. A practice is not automatically wrong because its exact scheduling details are not commanded.

The comparison between membership numbers and conversions also requires restraint. A low number may invite examination, but conversion totals do not provide a complete diagnosis of a church’s health. Faithful witness can meet resistance, and impressive totals can conceal shallow formation. Examine the quality of teaching, care for vulnerable people, truthfulness about failures, and sustained witness as well as visible results.

The constructive response is to connect the gathered and dispersed life of the church. Receive instruction together, then practice it in homes, workplaces, and relationships. Share resources in ways that enable service, and return with honest accounts of needs and opportunities. Being the church includes gathering as the church; the question is whether that gathering forms people whose lives increasingly reflect the God who dwells among them.

Hiram, king of Tyre, replies to Solomon by letter, saying the LORD's love for His people is what made Solomon their king, praising Israel's God for creating heaven and earth, and for giving David such a wise son, gifted with intelligence and discernment, to build both a temple for the LORD and a palace for himself (a paraphrase of 2 Chronicles 2:11–12).

Even a pagan king recognized Solomon's wisdom, including his discernment specifically. Discernment is clearly presented here as a good thing — yet many Christians today have abandoned it entirely, worried about seeming judgmental. "Do not judge, or you too will be judged" (Matthew 7:1) has taken on more meaning than originally intended. Judgment can be negative, meaning condemnation — but it can also be positive, meaning discernment. We're not to condemn others, but Scripture clearly calls us to discernment. Jesus tells us to love the Lord our God with everything we are, and to love our neighbor as ourselves (a paraphrase of Luke 10:27). Paul similarly prays that love would abound in knowledge and depth of insight, so believers could discern what's genuinely best, remaining pure and blameless until Christ's return (a paraphrase of Philippians 1:9–11).

We should be like the Berean Jews, who examined Scripture daily to test whether Paul's teaching was actually true, and many of them believed as a result (a paraphrase of Acts 17:11–12).

When did discernment become a negative trait? Simply mention the word, and you risk being called "of little faith." But discernment isn't the same as unbelief — it means filtering everything through Scripture's own light to determine what's true and what isn't. When a doomsday prophet recently declared May 21, 2011 as "Judgment Day, guaranteed by the Bible," should we believe it simply because it's proclaimed in God's name? It's precisely because of false prophetic messages like this one that we need genuine discernment, not blind faith.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The distinction this comment draws between condemnation and discernment is worth reinforcing with the immediate context of Jesus's own "do not judge" statement, since Matthew 7 doesn't actually end there — just a few verses later, Jesus tells His listeners to watch out for false prophets and identify them by their fruit (Matthew 7:15–20), which obviously requires making exactly the kind of evaluative judgment this comment is defending. Read together, the passage isn't banning discernment at all — it's warning specifically against hypocritical, self-righteous condemnation (the "plank in your own eye" that precedes it, Matthew 7:3–5) while still expecting believers to exercise real discernment just a few sentences later.

The Temple's splendor is recorded in detail here — countless amounts of gold, silver, bronze, and gemstones used to decorate it, representing God's holiness. Once everything was complete, God's glorious cloud filled the Temple as all Israel gathered to celebrate its dedication. I think about what Paul means in 1 Corinthians 3:16, asking whether we realize we ourselves are God's temple, with His Spirit living within us (a paraphrase). What their hands built for God's glory was utterly destroyed, first by Nebuchadnezzar, then again by Rome — but what the Lord Jesus built in three days is now indestructible. Its beauty can't be compared to anything in this world, since God Himself resides in it — our own bodies. The Israelites consecrated the Temple, its furnishings, and themselves before the LORD Almighty with thousands of sacrificial lambs and bulls, all only temporary. Jesus, our good Shepherd, died and rose once for all! Let's praise Him, since He is good, and His love endures forever.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The contrast this comment draws between the Temple's eventual destruction and the believer's own body as an indestructible temple is worth extending with one clarifying nuance — Paul's own point in 1 Corinthians isn't that believers' physical bodies are literally indestructible (they clearly aren't, since they eventually die like anyone else's), but that the Spirit's presence within them is permanent and can't be lost the way a physical structure can be destroyed by an invading army. That distinction actually strengthens this comment's own argument rather than weakening it — the point isn't physical durability, but a fundamentally different kind of permanence, tied to the Spirit rather than to stone and gold.