Worship That Overflows Text: 1 Kings 8:62-66
Introduction: The National Barbecue
We live in an age of tidy, respectable, and tragically anemic worship. Our services are often timed to the minute, designed to be palatable, and carefully constructed so as not to make anyone uncomfortable. We have domesticated the lion of Judah and turned him into a housecat. We want a God who fits neatly into our one-hour Sunday morning slot, between brunch and the football game. But the worship of the living God, as the Bible describes it, is not tidy. It is robust, it is bloody, it is loud, and it is overwhelmingly joyous. It is a feast, not a funeral.
The scene before us at the dedication of Solomon's temple is one of the great worship services in the history of the world. And it looks nothing like what most modern evangelicals would recognize. It is an event of such staggering scale that it almost defies our imagination. It is a national covenant renewal ceremony, a massive festival of gratitude, a fortnight of feasting before the Lord. This is not quiet-time introspection. This is a national barbecue with Yahweh as the guest of honor, and the smoke from the offerings is the smoke of a victorious army celebrating its king.
We must understand that this event is not just a historical curiosity. It is a portrait of what God desires from His people when they understand the magnitude of His goodness to them. It is a picture of a nation rightly oriented, with the king leading the people in a public, extravagant, and joyful response to God's faithfulness. This passage is a rebuke to our thin, private, and often gloomy piety. It calls us to a worship that is public, costly, and overflowing with gladness. This is the kind of worship that builds a culture, that shapes a people, and that gives a foretaste of the great marriage supper of the Lamb.
The Text
Now the king and all Israel with him were offering sacrifices before Yahweh. And Solomon offered for the sacrifice of peace offerings, which he offered to Yahweh, 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. So the king and all the sons of Israel dedicated the house of Yahweh. On the same day the king set apart as holy the middle of the court that was before the house of Yahweh, because there he offered the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat of the peace offerings; for the bronze altar that was before Yahweh was too small to hold the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat of the peace offerings. So Solomon celebrated the feast at that time, and all Israel with him, a great assembly from Lebo-hamath to the brook of Egypt, before Yahweh our God, for seven days and seven more days, even fourteen days. On the eighth day he sent the people away and they blessed the king. Then they went to their tents with gladness and goodness of heart because of all the goodness that Yahweh had shown to David His servant and to Israel His people.
(1 Kings 8:62-66 LSB)
Extravagant Communion (vv. 62-63)
The dedication begins with an act of worship on a scale that is almost impossible for us to comprehend.
"Now the king and all Israel with him were offering sacrifices before Yahweh. And Solomon offered for the sacrifice of peace offerings, which he offered to Yahweh, 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. So the king and all the sons of Israel dedicated the house of Yahweh." (1 Kings 8:62-63)
First, notice who is involved. "The king and all Israel with him." This is a corporate, national act. Worship is not a private hobby. When God blesses a people, He expects a public and unified response. The king, as the civil magistrate and head of the nation, leads the way. This is the antithesis of the modern secular lie that faith must be kept private. Here, the head of state is the lead worshiper, setting the tone for the entire nation.
Now consider the offering itself. The numbers are astronomical: twenty-two thousand oxen and one hundred twenty thousand sheep. This is not a token gesture. This is lavish, extravagant, almost reckless generosity. This is a nation pouring out its wealth in gratitude to the God who gave it to them. But the key is to understand the type of sacrifice. While burnt offerings were also made, the vast majority of these animals were "peace offerings."
We must recover a robust understanding of the Old Testament sacrificial system. It was not all about sin and guilt. The guilt offering dealt with specific sins. The burnt offering, or ascension offering, symbolized total consecration, where the entire animal went up in smoke to God. But the peace offering was different. The peace offering was a communion meal. It was a fellowship meal. God got His portion, the fat, which was burned on the altar. The priest got his portion. And the worshiper and his family got the rest. The peace offering was an act of sitting down and sharing a meal with God. It was a declaration of peace, fellowship, and friendship. What Solomon and Israel are doing here is throwing the largest fellowship dinner in human history, and God is the guest of honor. This is worship as joyous celebration and communion.
A Good Kind of Problem (v. 64)
The sheer scale of this celebratory worship created a logistical challenge, a wonderful problem to have.
"On the same day the king set apart as holy the middle of the court that was before the house of Yahweh, because there he offered the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat of the peace offerings; for the bronze altar that was before Yahweh was too small to hold the burnt offering and the grain offering and the fat of the peace offerings." (1 Kings 8:64)
The bronze altar, which was thirty feet square and fifteen feet high, was a massive structure. It was built for heavy use. But on this day, it was insufficient. The gratitude and joy of the people, expressed in this mountain of sacrifices, literally overflowed the divinely appointed means. The worship was too big for the altar.
This is a beautiful picture of godly zeal. God is not a petty bureaucrat who gets flustered when our worship is too exuberant. When the hearts of the people are right, and their gratitude is genuine, God makes allowances. Solomon, acting in wisdom, doesn't halt the proceedings because of a technical limitation. He consecrates the courtyard, effectively making a bigger altar. He improvises so that the worship can continue. This is a lesson for us. Our forms and structures of worship are important, but they exist to serve heartfelt worship, not to stifle it. When genuine revival and gratitude break out, it will often overflow our neat and tidy structures, and that is a good thing. It is a good problem to have when your church's joy is too big for the building.
A Fortnight of Feasting (v. 65)
The celebration was not only massive in scale but also in scope and duration.
"So Solomon celebrated the feast at that time, and all Israel with him, a great assembly from Lebo-hamath to the brook of Egypt, before Yahweh our God, for seven days and seven more days, even fourteen days." (1 Genesis 1:3 LSB)
The entire nation was present. "From Lebo-hamath to the brook of Egypt" describes the ideal borders of the promised land, from north to south. This was the whole covenant people gathered as one. This was a fulfillment of God's promises to Abraham, a visible demonstration of the great nation He had made.
And what did they do? They "celebrated the feast." For fourteen days. This was the seven-day dedication feast, immediately followed by the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles. For two solid weeks, the nation's business was to feast before Yahweh. Think of the logistics. Think of the fellowship. Think of the sheer joy. This is what building a godly culture looks like. It is built on shared memory, shared gratitude, and shared celebration. Our modern world tries to build culture on grievances and resentments. God builds His culture on gratitude and feasting. Feasting is a declaration that our God is a God of abundance, not scarcity. He is a God of life, not death. He is a God of joy, not misery.
The Fruit of True Worship (v. 66)
The conclusion of this great event shows us the intended result of all true worship.
"On the eighth day he sent the people away and they blessed the king. Then they went to their tents with gladness and goodness of heart because of all the goodness that Yahweh had shown to David His servant and to Israel His people." (1 Kings 8:66)
After two weeks of intense worship and feasting, the people are not exhausted or spiritually drained. They are filled with "gladness and goodness of heart." True worship is not depleting; it is restorative. It fills our tank. It sends us back to our ordinary lives, to our "tents," with joy and a good heart.
Notice the order. They blessed the king, acknowledging his faithful leadership in this great work. Good leadership is a gift from God and should be honored. But the ultimate source of their joy is explicitly identified. Their gladness was "because of all the goodness that Yahweh had shown." This is the essential grammar of worship. Worship is not something we do to get God to be good to us. Worship is our joyful, grateful, celebratory response to the goodness He has already shown us. The grace of God comes first, and our worship is the fruit. They remembered God's faithfulness to His covenant with David and to the entire nation of Israel, and their hearts overflowed.
The Greater Temple, The Better Sacrifice
This entire glorious scene is a shadow, a magnificent type, pointing forward to a greater reality. Solomon, the son of David, the prince of peace, builds a house for God and provides the sacrifices for the people to draw near. This points us directly to Jesus, the greater Son of David, the true Prince of Peace.
The temple Solomon built was glorious, but it was made of stone and gold, and it was ultimately destroyed. Jesus declared, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19). He was speaking of the temple of His body. He is the true meeting place between God and man. He is the temple that can never be destroyed.
And what of the sacrifices? One hundred and forty-two thousand animals were slaughtered. Rivers of blood were shed. And for all that, this ocean of blood could not take away a single sin. It could only cover it over for a time, pointing forward. As the writer to the Hebrews tells us, "it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins" (Heb. 10:4). The very vastness of the sacrifice at the temple dedication screams its own inadequacy. If that much blood was insufficient, what could possibly be enough?
The answer is the blood of the Lamb of God. Jesus Christ offered Himself, once for all, as the perfect sacrifice. He is our guilt offering, taking our specific sins upon Himself. He is our burnt offering, the one who was wholly consecrated to the Father's will, even unto death. And He is our peace offering. His sacrifice did not just deal with our sin; it made peace between us and God. It opened the way for communion, for fellowship, for a meal with God.
That is what we celebrate at the Lord's Table. The Lord's Supper is our peace offering. It is our version of this great feast. We come, not with thousands of oxen, but with faith in the one sacrifice that was sufficient for all time. We come to have communion with the God who has shown us all His goodness in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ. And because of that great goodness, we too should go forth from our worship with gladness and goodness of heart, ready to live as His people in the world.