Week 3
Overview

Worship and the Glory of God

Welcome to Week 3 of our 21 Days of Encounter. Having explored spiritual practices for encountering God through Moses’ tabernacle and looked at the priority of His presence through David’s tent, we’re now going to focus on the power of worship and the presence of God’s glory by studying Solomon’s temple. 

Like David, Solomon’s desire was great:

The temple I am going to build will be great, because God is greater than all other gods. But who is able to build a temple for him, since the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain him?
2 Chronicles 2:5-6

In other words, Solomon wanted to build a place where the presence of God could dwell and where His people could meet with Him. But he also recognised that God is omnipresent and cannot be limited to a particular place.

This serves as a great reminder for us today. As the new covenant people of God, we know that individually and collectively we are the new temple of God – the place where God particularly resides.  But we also must remember that God cannot be contained, He is present everywhere! 

This week we’re going to be delving into 2 Chronicles 5, which tells the story of how Solomon, having finished the work on the temple, brought the ark into the inner sanctuary and how the consecrated, united worship of the priests and Levites resulted in the cloud of God’s glory filling the temple. We’re going to be looking briefly at what the glory is, and why it’s so precious, and then focussing on how we can live and worship the Lord in such a way that we experience an increase of His glory in our own lives and in all of our gatherings!