Jesus Will Build the House for God’s Name

Recall from the previous snack that the book of Hebrews reveals that some of the prophecies concerning Solomon are also applicable to Christ. Of those that I examined, I’d now like to focus on 2 Samuel 7:13: “He is the one who will build a house for my Name.” Let’s notice first of all that Jesus referred to His own body as God’s temple when talking to the Pharisees:

John 2:19

Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

4 Dual Prophecies of Solomon and Jesus

The introduction to the book of Hebrews contains A LOT of quotes from the Old Testament scriptures. It’s become my practice to stop my reading and look up any such quotes to see if any more significance can be gained by understanding the link between original context and the quoted context. An occasion such as this presented itself when I came to the following verse:

Hebrews 1:5

For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father?” Or again, “I will be his Father, and he will be my Son?”

The second quote being referenced here comes from 2 Samuel 7:14. In context, this verse is part of God’s response to David’s desire to build a temple for God to replace the Tent of Meeting. On one hand, 2 Samuel 7 appears to refer to David’s immediate son, Solomon, who became the next king of Israel and supervised the building of God’s temple. However, here we see the book of Hebrews states that this prophecy of Solomon is also a prophecy of Christ. The implications for Solomon are obvious, but what can we learn about Christ from examining these verses further?

The Fire of the Holy Spirit

In the midst of Paul’s closing remarks to the Thessalonians, he likens the Holy Spirit to a fire that dwells within us:

1 Thessalonians 5:19

Do not put out the Spirit’s fire

It’s easy to read this and say, “Oh, I get it. The Spirit is like a fire and we’re supposed to always have the Spirit in us, like not letting a fire go out” (this was my first thought, anyway). But then I remembered something from the Old Testament. God gave the Old Covenant law for very deliberate and specific reasons. Every sacrifice in Leviticus reveals something special about Christ. Every article of the tabernacle in Exodus reveals something about how we are to live, since we are now the temple of God. Recall one of the Lessons from Psalm 1: we should delight in God’s law, but we cannot delight in the law if we do not know the law. When we read that the Spirit is a fire that we must not put out, then we should remember what is written in the law: