However, since I was gone this past Sunday, I did not preach. And since these posts are composed of snippets from the previous Sunday's sermon, I don't have a sermon to snip! So I thought I would use a sermon that I shared during our summer Sunday evening "Heart of Worship" campaign.
The mere mention of Solomon’s name brings incredible pictures to our mind. He was wise, rich, honored, the builder of the temple. 1 Kings 10:14-15 tells us that “The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents (23 metric tons, 2.2 billion dollars at today's market price) , not including the revenues from merchants and traders and from all the Arabian kings and the governors of the land. King Solomon made two hundred large shields of hammered gold; six hundred bekas of gold went into each shield.”
Solomon's gold weighted 666 talents, the equivalent of 23 metric tons of gold. And that didn’t include even include revenue from Arabian merchants, traders, kings, & governors.
Verse 15 tells us that King Solomon made 200 large shields of beaten gold, using 600 shekels of gold on each large shield. This would mean that each shield would have been made with about 7 1/2 pounds of gold. At today’s price, that would be almost $180,000 per shield. These shields represented splendor, blessings, and a heart turned toward God (or as David is described in another passage...a man after God's own heart).
But only five years after the death of Solomon, another King, Rehoboam, took over. Only four chapters after the description of Solomon's gold and his golden shields, we read in 1 Kings 14:25-27: “In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem. He carried off the treasures of the temple of the Lord and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made. So King Rehoboam made bronze shields to replace them and assigned these to the commanders of the guard on duty at the entrance to the royal palace.”
Rehoboam was described as an evil king, one who did not follow the commands of the Lord and one who led the people of Israel into idolatry. In the fifth year of his reign, the king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem and robbed the beautiful Temple of God of its treasures and riches. Included in the plunder were the 200 golden shields that Solomon had made.
So what do you do when you don't have the real thing, but you don't want anyone to know you don't have the real thing? You fake it!
Rehoboam made shields of brass (copper/bronze) to replace the gold ones, & gave them to his commanders of the guard on duty at the entrance of the royal palace. You see, the thing about brass is, if you work at it long enough, if you polish it hard enought, you can make it look like gold. You can pretend it is the real thing.
Rehoboam made shields of brass (copper/bronze) to replace the gold ones, & gave them to his commanders of the guard on duty at the entrance of the royal palace. You see, the thing about brass is, if you work at it long enough, if you polish it hard enought, you can make it look like gold. You can pretend it is the real thing.
Shields of brass for shields of gold. This was the last recorded event in the pitiful reign of Rehoboam. At today’s prices, those shield would cost about $33.00 each.
From $180,000.00 to $33.00.
From gold to brass.
From magnificent to ordinary.
From splendid to mundane.
From extraordinary to routine.
From glorious to boring.
What happened? When you don't have the real thing, you have to fake it! But the deal is, brass will never be the same as gold.
And our rituals, routines, and traditions will never take the place of a heart of worship. Could it be that the reason why so many worship services are...to put it bluntly, boring, is because we have become busy polishing the brass instead of taking care of the gold? We have exchanged the splendor of worship for the mundaneness of ritual. We have reduced the magnificent to the ordinary. My prayer each day recently has been, "God help me not to fake it. Help me to not go through the motions. Help me to have a heart of true worship."
And our rituals, routines, and traditions will never take the place of a heart of worship. Could it be that the reason why so many worship services are...to put it bluntly, boring, is because we have become busy polishing the brass instead of taking care of the gold? We have exchanged the splendor of worship for the mundaneness of ritual. We have reduced the magnificent to the ordinary. My prayer each day recently has been, "God help me not to fake it. Help me to not go through the motions. Help me to have a heart of true worship."
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