Walking on Heaven: The Grammar of Glory Text: 1 Kings 6:29-30
Introduction: God's House, God's Rules
We live in an age that is allergic to glory. Our architecture is utilitarian and ugly, our art is a chaotic mess, and our worship services are often designed to be as casual and unimpressive as possible. We have been taught, subtly and not so subtly, that spirit is good and matter is bad, or at least suspect. We think of true spirituality as something ethereal, abstract, and disconnected from the physical world. But the Bible will not have it. God is the one who made the material world, and He declared it good. And when He condescends to dwell with man, He does not do so in a minimalist beige box. He does so in a house that shouts His glory from every surface.
Solomon's temple was not just a building. It was a sermon in stone and gold. It was a scale model of the cosmos, a symbolic representation of God's dwelling place in heaven, brought down to earth. Every detail, from the dimensions of the rooms to the carvings on the walls, was dictated by God and was pregnant with theological meaning. To miss this is to read the Old Testament in black and white when it was written in glorious Technicolor. To the modern, pragmatic mind, overlaying a floor with gold seems extravagant, perhaps even wasteful. But God is not a pragmatist; He is a king, and His house is a palace. The temple was designed to overwhelm the senses and teach Israel what kind of God they served. He is not a tame God. He is a God of infinite, weighty glory.
The details we are looking at today are not incidental decorations. They are not the ancient equivalent of religious wallpaper. They are a catechism carved in wood and overlaid with gold. They teach us about the nature of true worship, the path back to God's presence, and the ultimate destiny of the entire created order. We are looking at a picture of Heaven on earth, and we are being told what kind of place God is preparing for His people. This is not just about Solomon's day; it is about our day, and the day that is to come.
The Text
Then he carved all the walls of the house round about with carved engravings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers, from within the inner and outer sanctuaries. And he overlaid the floor of the house with gold, in the inner and outer sanctuaries.
(1 Kings 6:29-30 LSB)
A Cultivated Paradise (v. 29)
We begin with the carvings that covered every wall of God's house.
"Then he carved all the walls of the house round about with carved engravings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers, from within the inner and outer sanctuaries." (1 Kings 6:29)
The first thing to notice is that the inside of the temple was a garden. It was a cultivated, glorified Eden. The imagery is deliberate and unmistakable. What do we find here? Cherubim, palm trees, and flowers. Where have we seen this before? The Garden of Eden was the first temple, the first place where Heaven and Earth met, and God placed cherubim at the entrance to guard the way back to the tree of life after the fall (Genesis 3:24). The tabernacle, and now the temple, are a symbolic re-entry into that guarded paradise. The message is clear: the way back to God's presence is through a new, guarded Eden.
The cherubim are not chubby babies with wings. They are awesome, powerful, spiritual beings who serve as guardians of God's holiness. In Ezekiel's vision, they are at the very center of the throne room of God (Ezekiel 10). To carve them on the walls was to say, "You are entering a holy place. You are approaching the throne of the King of the cosmos. This is guarded territory." They represent the unapproachability of God in His raw holiness, but here, inside the temple, the worshipper is on the inside of the guards. Through sacrifice and covenant, a way has been made past the flaming sword.
Then we have the palm trees. The palm tree in Scripture is a symbol of righteousness, fruitfulness, and victory. Psalm 92 says, "The righteous flourish like the palm tree" (Psalm 92:12). In the final vision of Revelation, the great multitude of the redeemed stand before the throne with palm branches in their hands, celebrating the victory of the Lamb (Revelation 7:9). The palm trees carved on the walls of the temple were a promise of the righteous life that flourishes in the presence of God. This is what you were made for, to be an upright, fruitful tree planted in the house of the Lord.
And finally, we have the open flowers. This points to a world in full and perpetual bloom. This is not a world of death and decay, of seasons that fade. This is a world bursting with life, color, and beauty. This is creation perfected. The temple is a microcosm of the new creation, a world where the curse has been undone and everything is perpetually fruitful and beautiful in the presence of its Creator.
These images were everywhere, "from within the inner and outer sanctuaries." From the moment a priest entered the holy place to the moment the high priest entered the Holy of Holies, he was surrounded by this Edenic, heavenly imagery. He was walking in a symbolic heaven. The entire building was a constant reminder that fellowship with God is a return to paradise.
Walking on Heaven (v. 30)
Next, we are told what the priests walked on.
"And he overlaid the floor of the house with gold, in the inner and outer sanctuaries." (1 Kings 6:30 LSB)
This is a staggering detail. We are accustomed to thinking of gold as something for crowns, for jewelry, for the things we place up high. We don't typically use it for flooring. We walk on dirt, on wood, on stone, on carpet. We walk on the common stuff. But in God's house, the very ground is glorious. The floor was made of wood, and then completely covered in pure gold.
What is this teaching us? It is a lesson in value. In God's economy, in His presence, glory is the norm. It is the very foundation. Gold, in Scripture, represents what is precious, pure, divine, and enduring. To walk on gold is to walk in a realm where the most precious thing in our world is as common as pavement. This points us directly to the ultimate temple, the New Jerusalem. John sees the holy city coming down out of heaven from God, and he tells us that "the great street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass" (Revelation 21:21).
Solomon's temple was a type, a foreshadowing, of the ultimate reality. The priests walking on a golden floor were rehearsing the final state of the redeemed, who will walk on streets of gold in the new creation. This detail was a powerful, tangible promise of eschatological glory. It says that the destiny of God's people is not a disembodied spiritual existence, but a solid, tangible, physical new creation that is overflowing with a glory that we can currently only imagine.
This also teaches us about the nature of holiness. To be in God's house is to be in a place where everything, from top to bottom, is consecrated to Him. There is no division between the sacred and the secular here. The floor is as holy as the altar. The ground you stand on is as consecrated as the ark of the covenant. This is a picture of total sanctification. It is a call for us to understand that in Christ, our whole lives, the very ground we walk on, is to be holy to the Lord.
From a Stone Temple to a Living Temple
Now, we must be careful not to leave this glorious account back in the Old Testament. The New Testament is insistent that this temple was a shadow, and the reality has now come in Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself is the true temple. He said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19), speaking of His body. He is the place where God and man meet perfectly. He is the true Holy of Holies.
But the story doesn't stop there. Through our union with Christ by faith, we, the church, have become the temple of the living God. Paul asks the Corinthians, "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16). Peter says that we are "living stones" being built up into a "spiritual house" (1 Peter 2:5). The glory that filled Solomon's temple now fills the gathered people of God.
So what do these ancient carvings and golden floors mean for us? It means that the church is to be a cultivated paradise. We are to be a community where righteousness flourishes like the palm tree, where the beauty of holiness is in full bloom. We are to be a people guarded by the holiness of God, a place where the world can see a picture of the restored Eden. Our life together is meant to be a display of heavenly realities.
And we too are to "walk on gold." This does not mean we need to pave our church aisles with bullion. It means that we must live our lives on the basis of what is eternally precious and pure. We are citizens of the New Jerusalem, and we are to live like it now. Our foundation is not the shifting sand of this world's values, but the solid gold of God's Word and His promises. We are to treat the ground of our lives, our work, our homes, our relationships, as holy ground, consecrated to Him.
The temple of Solomon was glorious, but it was temporary. It was ultimately destroyed because of Israel's sin. But the temple that God is building now, the church of Jesus Christ, is indestructible. It is a living, growing temple, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Every time we gather for worship, we are entering the outer courts of that heavenly reality. And we are being built up together into a dwelling place for God, a house whose beauty and glory will one day fill the entire earth, as the waters cover the sea. We are destined to live in a world where the floor is heaven, and every wall sings of paradise restored.