1 Kings 7:1

It had taken Solomon seven years to build the house of the Lord. This shows how promptly he did that work. It took Herod forty-six years to build his temple (John 2:20). At the beginning of his career the service of the Lord came before all else in the king's heart. His own house mattered less than the temple, yet it cost him thirteen years of labor.

He failed to remember the divine principle he had been given to record. We see this in the comment added to the statement that he spent seven years building the Lord's house. "But Solomon was building his own house thirteen years," nearly twice seven. Sadly, how often we start our own service in real dependence on the Lord! We feel fully that we can do nothing apart from Him. Then, for one reason or another — sometimes even from delight in the work itself — we drift into depending on our own methods or our own energies. Or we lose sight of God's object because we are taken up with our own.

Some have called this a failure on Solomon's part, but I have seen it rather as a picture. I suggest his own house stands for the assembly, the Church. In this picture, almost double the work has gone into the assembly compared with the work that went into creation, which the temple stands for. The twofold work of redemption and new creation has brought the assembly into being. Solomon's own house was the most intimate circle in which he moved. In the same way, we today are in the most intimate circle in which Christ moves.

The first is called Solomon's "own house," "his house where he dwelt," his own residence… Solomon did not judge in this house. He dwelt there. Scripture presents it in a mysterious way. It is a house of intimacy. But it comes right after the temple, and it is its counterpart, so to speak. God dwelt in the temple and had "many rooms" there for His own. The temple was an image of the Father's house. The house we have before us here is the Son's house (1 Chr. 17:13). If we look for its parallel in the New Testament, our thoughts turn at once to the Church. Of it He said, "On this rock I will build my church."

Both the temple and the house of Solomon took a long time to build, but both were finished in the end (v. 11). The work was not wasted. That does sometimes happen to people who have not counted the cost first. But what God builds always comes to a perfect finish. The temple pictures the Father's house in glory. Solomon's house pictures the Church on earth, in her condition and circumstances, where God's order is to be kept among His people.

It may be interesting to recall that Solomon built four houses, according to the Scriptures. First, the temple which took seven years to erect; then his own house, which took thirteen years to complete. He also built a house in the forest of Lebanon, and a house for Pharaoh's daughter, his Egyptian wife… We have thought that all these houses carry a meaning as pictures, and that all have the world to come in view. The world to come is the kingdom day, the thousand-year reign of our Lord Jesus Christ, when God will be publicly displayed in all His glory to the farthest bound of the universe.