Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1489
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, August 10, 1879
“Whatever prayer and supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward this house: then hear in Heaven, Your dwelling place, and pardon, and do, and give to every man according to his ways, whose heart You know; (for You, even You only, know the hearts of all the children of men) that they may fear You all the days that they live in the land which You gave unto our fathers.” 1Kings 8:38-40.
(When the regular congregation unanimously left their seats to be occupied by strangers, who crowded the building to its utmost capacity).
You all know that the Temple at Jerusalem was the one place of sacrifice throughout all the holy land, for thus had the Lord spoken, “Whatever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers which sojourn among you, that offers a burnt offering or sacrifice, and brings it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer it unto the Lord: even that man shall be cut off from among his people.” According to God’s Law there was one altar and it was counted a high crime when the tribes which dwelt beyond Jordan built another. And their brethren sought them, saying, “Rebel not against the Lord in building an altar besides the altar of the Lord our God” (Josh. 22:19). As there was only one high priest, so there was only one altar—and sacrifice might not be offered anywhere else but on that altar at Jerusalem.
Therefore, when a man wished to present his offerings to God, he went up to the Temple which Solomon dedicated by the prayer in which our text occurs. The people afterwards built altars on high hills and in green groves, but these places and the sacrifices offered there were contrary to the mind of God. There was but one altar and one sacrifice—and that was at the Temple. That is why, when the godly Israelite prayed, he looked towards the one place of sacrifice, not in superstition, but in believing remembrance of the one sacrifice and the one altar and the one glorious token of the Divine Presence which shone over the Mercy Seat within the veil. He knew that God could only accept him through the one sacrifice and, therefore, he looked that way.
The people especially looked toward the Temple in prayer in times of national calamity. In drought, or when the crops were consumed by locusts or by caterpillars, or when blast and mildew destroyed the hope of harvest, or in time of war or pestilence, their supplications were presented unto the one Jehovah—all eyes looking towards His one sacred shrine where the one sacrifice smoked upon the altar. But although there were those special opportunities and God heard their prayers as a nation, it is very pleasant to observe that He regarded the griefs of individuals. Every man, says the text, that knew the plague of his own heart, was to spread forth his hands towards that one place of sacrifice and pray. And God would forgive him and deliver him.
That is my subject tonight. The Lord will hear whatever prayer and supplication is made by any man in reference to his own personal affliction if his heart is turned towards God’s own temple. But what is that temple? And where is it? There are now no material temples beneath the whole Heaven unless the bodies of Believers may be so called—and no one thinks of looking to them. No, “The Most High dwells not in temples made with hands.” No one place is more sacred than another—
“Where’er we seek Him, He is found, And everyplace is hallowed ground.”
There remains one Temple, however, and that is the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is Temple, Altar and Sacrifice! And if you would look the right way in prayer and if you desire your prayers to be answered, you must look to Him by the eye of faith.
Look! There He sits at the right hand of God! Having finished the one Sacrifice and made Atonement for sin forever, there He sits—Priest, Altar, Offering, Temple—and every true supplicant must enter into the holiest by His blood, “by a new and living way, which He has consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh.” Whoever beneath the wide heavens is conscious of the plague of his own heart or has anything that plagues him or anything that troubles him, he may turn his eyes towards Christ, the true Temple, with a certainty that God will hear his prayer and answer his request and send him deliverance. “We have an Altar,” and that Altar is our Lord’s own blessed Person! We have but one and we tremble for those who set up another—and to that One we look with confident hope, being assured that the Sacrifice once offered there has made our peace with God and procured acceptance for our supplications—
“We build no altar—You have died
We deck no priestly shrine.