Series: Teach Us to Pray: Lessons from Old Testament Prayers

Scripture: 1 Kings 8:22-61

Speaker: Pastor David Hallett

After a seven-year construction, King Solomon offers a special prayer of dedication for the Temple he has built for God. This temple was the concrete evidence of God’s presence with His people. In his prayer, Solomon’s most earnest plea is repeated three times: “that all may know that the LORD is God and that there is no other.” Solomon might have assumed automatic blessing from God because he built the temple. Instead, he prayed that God would glorify Himself through His presence in that temple and that all nations would seek to bring Him glory. He also prayed for forgiveness for God’s people, knowing that they could never fully meet His standard of holiness. In the NT, Jesus becomes the ultimate presence of God with His people (John 2:18-22) and we, as believers, also become the temple of God by His Spirit (1 Cor 3:16; 1 Cor 6:19,20). Just as it was Solomon’s prayer, It should be our prayer that as God’s temple we would live in a way “that all may know that the LORD is God and that there is no other.”